VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Applications of optimal control for emissions management in road vehicles
Keywords: Optimal Control
Emissions Control
Fuel-optimal Driving

Improvements in the availability of sensed and actuated vehicular systems have increased the opportunity for applying automatic control. Classic methods for designing control architectures are no longer sufficient due to the highly non-linear behaviour and heavy coupling between sub-systems. As a result, there is scope to employ computationally powerful optimisation techniques to investigate design trade-offs in these increasingly complex systems.
This thesis intends to take a multi-faceted look into the use of powerful optimal control techniques to solve some of the control problems arising in the automotive sector. In particular, a number of different control problems focused on emissions management are considered.
The first scenario relates to the fuel optimal control of a road vehicle, with a specific focus generating fuel-optimal drive cycle trajectories incorporating emissions constraints. A simplified model will be used initially to examine the solution structure and highlight any important features which occur in the solving of such eco-driving problems. Additionally, there are comparisons to be made between using a continuously variable transmission and a more traditional discrete gearbox. The second scenario considers an optimal driving problem for a vehicle equipped hybrid electric powertrain with a thermal aftertreatment model. A large percentage of tailpipe emissions are produced when the three-way catalytic converter is cold. Increased flexibility of power delivery enables the engine to be powered greater than the tractive demand, which prompts quicker heating and thus producing less total emissions. The drawback to this method is an increase in the tailpipe flowrates during this heating period. The possibility and scope for the reduction of emissions is considered.
The final scenario considered in this thesis will cover the optimal control of gasoline engines with combustion mode switching events. In particular, a turbocharged gasoline engine equipped dual-independent variable valve timing is considered. For engines operating in a stoichiometric regime, three-way catalytic converters are effective at reducing emissions. If the combustion mode is switched to lean, there is an increase in the tailpipe nitrous oxides (NOx). In order to avoid this, a lean-NOx trap is installed in the tailpipe, which requires periodic regeneration to ensure its effectiveness. Dynamic compensation of all actuators vastly improves the performance of the switching control. This thesis presents a number of suitable modelling techniques to investigate these scenarios, the results of which can be used to aid in the design of realtime control algorithms.
Questions of value: an evaluative study of self-defense theory and practice in Germany, England, and the United States
Keywords: notwehr
provocation
retreat
battery
self-defence
culpability
autonomy
passive
mistake
Dadson
forfeiture
justification
deterrence
conflict
necessity
waiver
proportionality
excuse
Self-defense
imminence

Self-defense is a topic about which scholars, legislators, judges, and laymen alike have strongly held—and often strongly divergent—opinions. While some favor ‘tough-on-crime’ approaches according broader leeway to defenders, others advocate for a more empathetic, ‘humanitarian’ construction of the law.
By way of illustration of such polarities of perspective, consider the 20th century German case allowing a farmer to shoot a youthful fruit thief in the back because the ‘right need never yield to the wrong.’ Many contemporary commentators, in contrast, reject deadly force to defend property, considering it justified only when death is threatened. Despite what will be argued is the inherently value-laden nature of such choices, debates surrounding self-defense have in the main more narrowly focused on the ‘technical’ legal aspects of the exercise of self-preferential force.
This thesis tests the hypothesis that values, including protection of the attacker and defender, general and specific deterrence, maintenance of equal standing, and ensuring the primacy of the legal process, provide the rationale for self-defense and should, therefore, be treated as decision-grounds for determining when self-preferential force should be authorized. The hypothesis relatedly posits that such a value-centric approach to self-defense law will improve the transparency and quality of decision-making.
To test this hypothesis, the thesis develops the ‘value-based model’ of self-defense that seeks to offer a plausible (though not the only) value-centric approach. Following a thematic literature review, the thesis uses the value-centric perspective to address certain central theoretical questions underlying self-defense doctrine. Finally, the thesis deploys the value-based model as a template against which to compare the self-defense laws of Germany, the U.S., and England.
The thesis ultimately confirms the hypothesis that a broader consideration of the values implicated in self-defense will improve the transparency and quality of decision-making, and, correspondingly, reduces the impact of hidden normativity.
Capacity and culpability
Keywords: Capacity
Crime
Incapacities

How should the criminal law account for defendants’ incapacities? It’s often claimed that some incapacities make individuals less culpable for wrongdoing. But what follows if this is true? Like many others, I claim that the criminal law ought not to convict offenders disproportionately to their culpability. Thus, if incapacities render individuals less culpable, then the criminal law ought to account for that lowered culpability. But rather than accepting this ‘culpability principle’ under the guise of non-instrumentalist retributivism, I instead derive it from instrumental considerations regarding fair labelling.
Next, I survey how the law accounts for incapacities. I generate and populate a novel threefold taxonomy of incapacity rules, comprising what I call incapacity doctrines, incapacity relativisations, and counterfactual incapacity relativisations. I then defend the use of these incapacity rules from certain critiques, including from those who argue for the abolition of some incapacity rules. Many incapacity rules are formulated not (only) by reference to their target incapacities, but (also) by reference to certain proxy attributes, and in particular to the relevant incapacity’s aetiology. I defend the use of such proxies but critique those rules which require proof of aetiological proxies in addition to proof of the underlying incapacity.
The final chapters ask why and how incapacities exculpate. I defend the widely accepted view that incapacities exculpate if they make defendants less able to conform to the requirements of a norm. Finally, I ask what it means for one to be incapable of something. I argue that we cannot rely only on metaphysical considerations when ascribing incapacities for the attribution culpability.
Sun Yat-sen on China's place in international society
Keywords: Sun Yat-sen
Standard of Civilization
Tianxia
Expansion
International Society

This thesis argues that Sun Yat-sen's intellectual engagement with China’s entry into international society should be seen through the prism of tianxia wei gong (all-under- heaven is shared by all), the crown jewel in his ideas on international relations. While the literature on the expansion of international society essentially frames China as a passive recipient of the standard of civilization, Sun’s conceptualization of tianxia shows an active in-depth engagement with worldviews emanating from aspiring entrant nations which have hitherto been neglected. His conceptualization of tianxia rests on his belief in the possibility of equality and justice between nations, including those yet to attain full membership in international society, anchored by a moral hierarchy centered around wangdao and self-rectification. The analysis of Sun’s tianxia presented here suggests that standards of civilization are far more multi-dimensional and nuanced than the existing literature portrays. In essence, the standard of civilization should not be seen merely as a one-dimensional checklist of objective and discrete items to be checked off one by one. Sun’s ideas on tianxia and international relations suggest that there is more agency on the part of new entrants than commonly assumed. However, Sun’s privileging of the moral over the political dimension of self-rectification, while being the defining characteristic of his ideas, is also its key weakness, because Sun never effectively addresses the issue of what happens in the event that countries start prioritizing their immediate political or economic interests over morality. Finally, it is open to question whether nations not rooted in Confucian culture or familiar with the concept of wangdao could ever self-rectify and center themselves in Sun’s tianxia.
Responses to deaths in custody: the politics of prisons and immigration removal centres
Keywords: Deaths in custody
Politics of punishment
Prisons
Punishment
Suicide
Immigration removal centres
Immigration control

My DPhil thesis explores responses to deaths in custody. Specifically, it is concerned with how a range of different actors respond to suicidal behaviour – including self-harm, attempted suicide and completed suicide – in prisons and immigration removal centres (IRCs).
It is a theoretical and empirical work, with two overarching aims. The first is to engage with theoretical accounts of imprisonment and immigration detention, as exemplified by literature on the sociology of punishment, and the politics of criminal justice and migration control. Throughout the thesis, I treat prisons and IRCs as social and political institutions, and analyse responses to the problems within them, including suicidal behaviour, as partly political in nature. The theoretical sections of the thesis are found mainly in Chapters 2 and 3, which review a wide range of relevant literature and develop an original argument about responses to deaths in custody. The theoretical claims made in these chapters are substantiated in later empirical sections.
The second aim is to make an original empirical contribution to the study of responses to suicidal behaviour in custody. There are three different types of ‘response’ that I discuss in the thesis, each of which corresponds to an empirical chapter. These are: prevention work inside immigration detention that is carried out by detainee custody officers and managers (Chapter 5); investigations into deaths in prisons and IRCs that are carried out by independent professionals (Chapter 6); policy efforts by political elites and expert bodies to reduce the number and rate of deaths in custody (Chapter 7). In each case, I set out the distinctive dynamics of the field, whether it is the internal life of an immigration detention centre, the bureaucratic process of a death investigation, or the bewildering world of government policymaking. The final chapter connects the theoretical and empirical sections of the thesis.
An integrated metagenomic approach to investigating disease heterogeneity in sepsis due to community-acquired pneumonia
Keywords: Metagenomics
Sepsis
Community-acquired pneumonia

Sepsis is defined as life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. There is an increasing global burden of disease and it is associated with high mortality, long-term disability and shortened life expectancy. Clinical management of sepsis remains supportive rather than curative and progress in sepsis research has been severely constrained by a heterogeneous disease phenotype, limiting the interpretation of clinical trials and the development of effective therapeutic interventions. One source of heterogeneity is the pathogen but the frequent failure of clinical microbiology to identify the infecting organism in sepsis has limited efforts to understand the effect of disease heterogeneity involving the pathogen. Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is the most common cause of sepsis and clinical microbiology is unable to provide a diagnosis in 47% of such cases, suggesting that alternative methods such as clinical metagenomics may enable improved diagnostics.
Clinical metagenomics involves the application of next-generation sequencing technologies to characterise all the DNA and/or RNA present in a sample, enabling analysis of the entire microbiome as well as the human host genome or transcriptome from patient samples. This thesis presents the development and validation of Castanet, a method for targeted metagenomic sequencing using probe-based enrichment. Clinical metagenomic data is presented for 573 patients admitted to intensive care with sepsis due to CAP, including 447 patients for whom clinical microbiology did not identify a pathogen. In addition, digital droplet PCR data is presented for the most frequently identified causative bacteria (Streptococcus pneumoniae) and reactivated virus (Epstein-Barr virus) in the metagenomic cohort. Finally, this thesis explores how improved resolution of microbiology in the sepsis cohort can be applied to transcriptomic and genomic-based approaches to understand the host response in sepsis. This includes exploration of Epstein-Barr virus reactivation, differential gene expression analysis for different pathogens, and analysis of the association between specific HLA alleles and susceptibility to different pathogens.
This thesis demonstrates the utility of integrating metagenomic data with other omic methods to enable improved understanding of the heterogeneous host response in sepsis, with opportunities for a precision medicine approach.
BRCA2 loss induces an innate immune response via activation of the cGAS-STING pathway
Keywords: cGAS-STING
innate immune response
BRCA
oncology
DDR
cancer
DNA damage response

Heterozygous germline mutations in BRCA2 predispose to cancer. Such BRCA2-deficient tumours are sensitive to PARP inhibitors. Yet, tumours acquire resistance and, eventually, relapse. The tumour suppressor BRCA2 plays key roles in genome maintenance. Chromosome instability upon loss of BRCA2 induces senescence and apoptosis. However, it can promote tumourigenesis, if p53 signalling is defective. Still, a p53-deficient tumour cell remains confronted with accumulating chromosome instability even though cell death is evaded.
Here, we investigated how p53-deficient tumour cells react to BRCA2 depletion on a transcriptional level. Expression of BRCA2 was inhibited for 4 or 28 days and differential gene expression was characterised. As an early response to loss of BRCA2 (4 days), genes involved in cell cycle, organelle fission, chromosome segregation, DNA replication and DNA repair were downregulated. Furthermore, cell cycle progression was perturbed which was associated with cell cycle arrest in G1. On the other hand, chronic loss of BRCA2 (28 days) resulted in upregulation of genes associated with an innate immune response. We confirmed that loss of BRCA2 instigated formation of micronuclei activating the cGAS-STING pathway which, in turn, cascaded into a type I IFN response. Moreover, treatment with PARP inhibitors further stimulated the activation of the type I IFN response in cells and tumours lacking BRCA2.
These findings demonstrate that genomic instability upon loss of BRCA2 inflicts a cell-intrinsic typeI IFN response which can be further stimulated pharmacologically by treatment with PARP inhibitors.
Improving wellbeing in student paramedics: targeting risk factors and predictors of PTSD
Keywords: PTSD
Student Paramedics
Emergency workers
posttraumatic stress disorder

Student paramedics are at an increased risk of developing mental health problems compared to the general population due to the nature of their work. They are especially at high risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a severe stress reaction that can occur after exposure to traumatic events. To date, interventions aimed at reducing poor mental health or preventing the risk of PTSD in this population have not been very effective. Evidence-based interventions are urgently needed.
This thesis aims to address poor mental health in student paramedics. First, by evaluating a tool to improve wellbeing and reduce psychological distress (Study 1). Second, by targeting factors relevant to the development of PTSD with a specific focus on assessing and understanding rumination, a risk factor for PTSD, characterised by abstract thinking, and modifying responses to intrusive memories, a predictor of PTSD (Chapters 2, 3 and 4). No previous studies have looked at these factors in a population of student paramedics.
Study 1 showed that daily planning ahead can improve wellbeing in student paramedics significantly better than reading about mental health. Planning ahead also reduced psychological distress and increased the experience of mindfulness in student paramedics as did reading about how to cope with stress. Study 2 developed and validated a new measure of concrete and abstract thinking (CAT). The CAT fills a gap in the literature by providing a user-friendly, valid, reliable and population-specific measure of concrete and abstract thinking. A ‘Best Version CAT’ is recommended for further use. Abstract thinking measured by the CAT was associated with established measures of rumination, worry and PTSD. Study 3 builds on this by assessing abstract thinking (using the CAT) as a predictor of PTSD symptom severity, at 6-week and 6-month follow-up in a large sample of student paramedics. Findings revealed that abstract thinking predicts PTSD symptom severity over and above established measures of rumination at 6-weeks but not at 6-months. Finally, Study 4 aimed to reduce intrusive memories and maladaptive responses to intrusions after an analogue trauma film. The study failed to show superiority of a stimulus discrimination technique over a counting intrusions technique, both of which seemed to help student paramedics disengage from trauma memories.
The results of this thesis contribute to our understanding of factors that may influence the wellbeing and mental health of student paramedics. A better understanding of these factors may, in the future, help to inform targeted PTSD prevention for student paramedics and emergency workers more broadly.
Self-weighing and self-regulation for weight loss
Keywords: Weight Loss
Self-regulation
Self-monitoring

Intentional weight loss requires self-regulation to override externally-driven behaviours. Self-regulation theory hypothesises that individuals automatically self-regulate when they find that their current state is not in line with their goals. In the context of weight management, this process involves self-weighing, contextualising weight measurements, reflecting on and evaluating previous behaviour, and planning and performing weight loss actions. The research presented in this thesis explored barriers to and benefits of self-weighing and self-regulation for weight loss in adults with overweight or obesity. In a think-aloud study, I investigated the extent to which self-regulation occurs naturally. I found that action planning was performed rarely, but was a significant predictor of weight loss. Individuals found self-weighing useful, but fluctuations hindered the interpretation of weight changes. With an observational analysis, I then explored why individuals trying to lose weight stop weighing themselves. I found individuals concurrently reduced their physical activity and gained weight preceding a stop in weight monitoring, suggesting that individuals lost motivation to lose weight and struggled receiving negative weight feedback. An app market review explored user reviews of weight tracking apps, finding that users gained motivation from receiving (graphical) feedback on their progress. Based on the findings from these three studies, I developed a weight loss intervention guiding individuals through the complete self-regulation process, whilst addressing several identified barriers. To support individuals` interpretation of weight changes, I employed daily weighing and weight tracking, but weekly reflection on weight changes. The intervention additionally encouraged individuals to experiment with weight loss actions on a daily basis, and evaluate their usefulness once a week. A randomised controlled trial (RCT) tested the early effectiveness of the intervention against daily weighing only, finding a significant weight loss effect at 8-week follow-up (-3.20kg, 95% CI=-4.49, -1.92). Participants found the intervention acceptable and feasible. Altogether, my research suggests that self-regulation can be an effective weight loss strategy when individuals are guided through it, supporting further research in this area. The long-term effectiveness of the intervention warrants further testing in a larger RCT.
Approaches to the historiographies and iconographies of the Roman worship of Mithras
Keywords: Mystery cults

This thesis proposes a flexible conception of the Roman worship of Mithras, in which it can be seen to have been influenced by contemporary religious, cultural, and artistic traditions and innovations. It builds upon a model familiar in Mithraic studies: a sustained examination of existing Mithraic scholarship, combined with an interrogation of the surviving evidence. In particular, it responds to a recent call to use the material evidence more centrally in Mithraic studies; its methodology is rooted in empiricism and contextual analysis. Each chapter takes either a single or a cluster of connected historiographic theories about the worship of Mithras, and contrasts them with the textual and material evidence that has traditionally been used to support them.
This thesis interrogates the nature of the worship of Mithras in the Roman world. Building from a definition of religion – and an understanding of what might have been the constituent features of ancient forms of worship – it covers constructions of the origins of Mithraic practice, its membership, sacred space, possible meanings in mythology and ritual, and the relationship between god and worshippers. It ends with an emphasis on cultural and religious borrowings and appropriations. It hopes, through its focus on material culture, and on flexible approaches to ancient religious practices, to act as a possible case study for other cults in the Roman Empire.