VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The common language of 'competence': or how rediscovering the often-overlooked distinction between competence and power leads to better legal reasoning on whether the European Union may act
Keywords: principle of conferral
competence
power
European Union
law

Ever since the European Coal and Steel Community, the principle of conferral has governed Community and Union action. The European Union may only act if, and insofar as, the Member States have authorised it to do so in the Treaties. To act, the Union needs ‘competence’. What that concept means, however, is not always sufficiently clear. And that is a problem. ‘Competence’ is crucial. But it does not yet convey the same ideas in all actors. Through a thorough analysis of primary and secondary Union and Community law, their preparatory documents, and case law of the Court, this DPhil aims to change that. It argues that ‘competence’ is about more than competence alone. There is also power. Competence is the field in which the Union may act. Power is the EU’s institutions’ actual authorisation to act. To fall within a certain field of competence, a measure must pursue the objectives of that competence and relate to its subject matter. Those are the two dimensions of competence. Power, too, has two dimensions. It determines which legal instrument may be adopted through which type of legal act. There are also power modalities. They relate to the procedural side of the exercise of power: which EU institution(s) may act and through which voting majority. Together, these concepts form the common language of ‘competence’. This conceptual nuance always existed in Community and Union law. Bringing it forward is desirable. Questions of ‘competence’ arise whenever the EU prepares to act. It is important that they can be answered with nuance and precision, and in a legal language which is understood by all participants in the debate. That is what this DPhil is about.
Late Quaternary hydrological change from fluvial archives in southwestern Africa and the palaeoclimate implications
Keywords: Southern Africa
fluvial sediments
palaeoclimate
quaternary
dryland
palaeoenvironment

Fluvial sedimentary sequences provide important archives of late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental change. In drylands, these stores of information in fluvial landforms can be found in regions that are commonly scarce in long-term palaeoproxy records due to low levels of precipitation and poor organic preservation. In southwestern Africa, proposed drivers of Quaternary climate change carry with them a suite of hypotheses with respect to patterns of precipitation variability, yet poor coverage of palaeoclimate archives has to date made it challenging to assess model-based predictions. Here, fluvial archives offer the potential to provide the spatial and temporal coverage of palaeorecords that is required. Whilst it is well-established that dryland fluvial systems respond to hydroclimate changes on Quaternary timescales, deciphering the palaeoenvironmental histories they preserve is often complex. To date, the utility of records from fluvial archives in southwestern Africa has been hindered by low-resolution chronologies, limited use of robust methods to interrogate the context of sediment deposition, and a focus on individual studies with limited consideration of regional controls.
This thesis addresses these challenges through: i) the production of a new fluvial record from the Huab River using a detailed assessment of stratigraphic, compositional, and sedimentological changes and a high-resolution luminescence chronology; ii) the construction of a chronological database to compile and analyse quality-assessed fluvial histories from southwestern Africa; and iii) an empirical-model data comparison to interrogate these fluvial records in the context of other palaeorecords and palaeoclimate model simulations to test hypotheses of the spatial patterning of late Quaternary precipitation. The new Huab River record spans the entirety of the Holocene, recording evidence of distinct flow regimes at 12 to 9 ka, 7 to 5 ka, 4 to 1 ka, and 1 ka to present. The database collates a scattered fluvial literature and has enabled an assessment of controls on fluvial archive preservation and interpretation. The timing and nature of phases of river flow are consistent between the Huab and nearby records, and patterns of fluvial activity across southwestern Africa map onto patterns of precipitation anomalies inferred from other palaeorecords and those simulated by a suite of climate models. These data indicate spatial differences in rainfall response between coastal and inland southwestern Africa, supporting hypotheses of a difference in the dynamics of the tropical rainbelt over the ocean and land, the role of ocean-atmosphere feedbacks, and the role of westerly-derived rainfall. Together, these findings demonstrate the utility of robust fluvial archives for reconstructing palaeoenvironmental change and have allowed for recommendations to be made for priorities for future research on fluvial archives, both in southwestern Africa and beyond.
Cardiovascular remodelling after hypertensive pregnancy: the impact of postpartum blood pressure control
Keywords: postpartum
cardiovascular remodelling
pre-eclampsia
blood pressure
pregnancy
hypertensive

Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) are associated with an increased risk of later cardiovascular disease. Whether this relates to how HDP are managed or because HDP merely identify women predisposed to disease is debated. HDP induce significant cardiac remodelling and, several years ago, the researchers I work with proposed a novel hypothesis: that failure of cardiovascular recovery postpartum permanently alters blood pressure (BP) trajectory. In support of this, persistent BP elevation six weeks postpartum, and/or adverse cardiac remodelling predict future hypertensive risk. Furthermore, in a randomised trial [SNAP-HT] investigating feasibility of BP self-management postpartum, diastolic BP was lower 6 months postpartum in the intervention group. I have now tested this hypothesis further using two clinical trials. Firstly, by performing long-term follow up of the SNAP-HT cohort I found that BP differences were sustained for up to four years postpartum, consistent with a permanent alteration in blood pressure trajectory. I then undertook the Physician Optimised Post-partum Hypertension Treatment trial (POP-HT), a prospectively randomised open blinded endpoint study of >200 women, with pre-eclampsia or gestational hypertension, who required anti-hypertensive medication on discharge. The trial was appropriately powered for blood pressure differences with randomisation 1:1 to either physician-optimised postpartum BP self-management or usual care. The trial demonstrated the intervention significantly reduced systolic and diastolic BP 6-9 months postpartum, measured by both clinic and 24hr ambulatory BP. Differences were evident by one week postpartum and the intervention was associated with reduced postnatal readmissions. Echocardiography and cardiovascular magnetic resonance demonstrated BP reductions associated with improved left ventricular systolic and diastolic function, beneficial atrial and ventricular remodelling, and increased aortic compliance. These findings provide significant evidence supporting the hypothesis that effective puerperal BP control has long-term benefits for the mother, including reduced readmission rates, improved BP for up to 4 years after, and beneficial cardiovascular remodelling.
Symbiotic modernity: the emergence of the Ōsui school of thought in modern Japan
Keywords: religious history
intellectual history
the United States
Japan
transnational history

This thesis examines the development of a hitherto overlooked yet thriving current of thought and culture in modern Japan between the 1860s and the 1920s, which manifested in such diverse realms as religion, gender, race, war, agriculture, and education. An important aspect of this intellectual trend was the rejection of the male God. Instead, God was reconceptualised as multi-gender, challenging the hierarchical ideologies of gender, race, class, and disability that underpinned Western modern civilisational discourse. This project links previously unconnected people, including farmers, thinkers, and educators, for the first time as part of significant cultural-intellectual phenomena in early twentieth-century Japan.
A key figure of the phenomena was Arai Ōsui (1846–1922), a samurai-intellectual from Japan’s civil-war-defeated North. People of different professions and social strata flocked to study Ōsui’s anti-imperial teachings in the very apotheosis of state imperialism. Nevertheless, Ōsui has been forgotten in the historiography, predominantly narrated through the lens of the nation-state led by civil war victors and their views on civilisation and progress. Through the perspectives of Ōsui and his comrades, this thesis offers an alternative view of modern Japanese history outside of the state-centred ideological paradigm of Western modernity.
I argue that the cooperative work of Ōsui and his Japanese comrades, along with their Russian, American, British, and Korean allies, led to the emergence of a competing conception of universal human progress. The concept that I term ‘symbiotic modernity’ encapsulates their efforts to realise a non-hierarchical and inclusive world by replacing the inequality of Western modernity with equality, nationality with transnationality, and the state-centric with people-centric. While the dominant narrative of modern Japanese history, centred on the victorious state side, began with Japan’s Opening (Kaikoku) to the West and Western modernity, this thesis presents a different beginning and outcome of the opening, through Ōsui’s quest for symbiotic modernity.
Class and the picturesque: the 'cottage' in interwar England
Keywords: cottage class picturesque architecture style interwar housing council conservation preservation weekend

This thesis seeks a new understanding of the forces that shaped the external appearance of the small house between the wars. Most architectural history approaches the question via ‘style’: the Arts & Crafts or neo-Georgian in early council houses; ‘mock’ Tudor in suburban semis; interwar experiments in the Modern. Instead, I argue that the key to small house external aesthetics after 1919 is to be found in the concept of the Cottage Picturesque – a problematic continuity, with class and cultural dimensions, that inflected English domestic architecture long after the codification of the Picturesque in the 1790s.
The Picturesque is posited here as an academically neglected but significant factor in pre- and interwar professional architectural discourse – influential in determining the external appearance of state-funded council houses; in shaping the visuality of spec-built estates; and in embodying the ‘other’ that many professional architects rejected in favour of both neo-Georgian and Modern variants of Formal architecture. Methodologically, the German historical tradition Begriffsgeschichte – the history of concepts – is used to show how the idea of the cottage, and the class and cultural meanings sublimated in it, affected the politics and aesthetics of interwar homebuilding.
The thesis examines the relationships between working-class council houses specifically discouraged from looking like the Cottage Picturesque; traditional picturesque cottages appropriated by politicians, conservationists, and middle-class weekenders in the 1920s; new-build speculative housing that the public bought and architects deprecated because it was designed to evoke the cottage; and early modernist houses, celebrated by architects but treated with suspicion by the public because their aesthetics were at odds with the Picturesque tradition. A key conclusion is that the state’s repudiation of picturesque cottage architecture for new social housing between 1918 and 1922 – and the spec-builder’s enduring interest in it – were crucial to architecturalising England’s class distinctions before World War Two.
Fiction and reality in Aristotle's philosophy of geometry
Keywords: geometry
mathematical objects
applicability problem
Aristotle
mathematical truth

This thesis investigates and attempts to reconstruct Aristotle’s philosophy of geometry. The aim of this work is to tell a plausible story as to how, exactly, Aristotle thought mathematics could work without appealing to Platonic entities. This means investigating, on the one hand, how his account could make sense of mathematical truths and could fit with the mathematical practice of his time, and on the other hand, how it made sense of the application of mathematics to the physical world.
The thesis is divided in two parts. The first part offers a close reading of Metaphysics M.3, and of its two main claims: that geometry is about sensible objects, but not qua sensible, and that geometers are allowed to posit as separate what is in fact not separate. I give a radically anti-Platonist account of geometrical truth, according to which geometry is true in virtue of sensible substances and their properties. However, I claim that Aristotle relies on a moderate form of fictionalism (which only concerns the mode of being of the entities in question) in order to account for geometrical practice.
The second part of the thesis inquires whether Aristotle is justified in assuming that geometry is applicable to sensible reality. I focus in particular on the notion of intelligible matter, and on the role of change in geometry. I find that the applicability of geometry to sensible reality can be granted only by limiting its scope to localised configurations, both in space and in time.
Nprl3 is a highly conserved regulator of erythropoiesis
Keywords: haematopoiesis
haematopoietic stem cells
red blood cells
erythropoiesis
genomics
cell biology

The neighbouring genomic positions of Nprl3 and a-globin, which share a topologically associated domain, have been maintained for over 500 million years. Nprl3 contains 4 of the 5 a-globin enhancers in mice, and 3 of 4 in humans. However, the potential functional requirement of this genomic linkage has not been investigated until now.
As part of the Gator-1 complex, the canonical signalling of Nprl3 has been defined in cell lines. Gator-1 provides negative regulation of mTORC1, a critical controller of cellular metabolism. We aimed to confirm this signalling in erythroid cells, and to investigate whether Nprl3 is required during erythropoiesis at steady state. Analysis of Nprl3-/- fetal livers revealed severe impairment of erythroid development. Autophagic flux was significantly dampened in Nprl3-/- erythroblasts, which is a possible driver of the observed block in erythropoiesis.
To discover whether NPRL3 is also required for human erythropoiesis, NPRL3-knockout was induced in primary human CD34+ progenitors using an RNP-editing system. These progenitors demonstrated reduced ability to produce enucleated erythroid cells compared to their negative control counterparts. We also used this model to investigate whether NPRL3 is particularly important in the context of fluctuating nutrients or growth factors. NPRL3-knockout erythroblasts demonstrated defective mTORC1 signalling responses to iron deficiency, amino acid withdrawal and erythropoietin stimulation. This suggested an intriguing role for NPRL3 as an environmental interpreter, which could be particularly important in the highly metabolically active and nutrient-demanding process of erythropoiesis.
We further aimed to characterise the role of Nprl3 in broader haematopoiesis, and to observe whether Nprl3 influences erythroid lineage commitment. In competitive bone marrow - fetal liver chimera experiments, Nprl3-/- fetal liver cells contributed poorly to erythroid lineage reconstitution of irradiated adult bone marrow. An intriguing competitive disadvantage was also observed at the HSC level.
Importantly, Nprl3 expression is known to be elevated in erythroid cells, increasing ~30-fold during erythroid lineage commitment due to a-globin enhancer activity. We sought to discover whether this erythroid-specific increase in Nprl3 expression is required for the functionality outlined above. This was achieved using transgenic mouse models to eliminate all interactions between Nprl3 and the a-globin enhancers, which resulted in impaired erythropoiesis reminiscent of Nprl3-/-.
Overall, in this work we show that Nprl3 is functionally important in erythroid cells, and that this is supported by transcriptional influence of the a-globin enhancers. We hypothesize that the deep evolutionary coupling of a-globin and Nprl3 has enabled the a-globin enhancers to control metabolism, as well as a-globin production, in developing erythroid cells.
By us alone: army veterans, patriotic values and re-militarization of Russia, 1991-2022
Keywords: USSR
war studies
Russia
violence
narrative analysis
war veterans
Chechen war
state propaganda
War in Afghanistan

This thesis investigates the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989) and two military operations in Chechnya (1994-1996, 1999-2000) and shows that they still have a significant impact on Russian society, influencing it in fundamental ways, from political and social processes down to the socialization of private citizens.
My study contributes to answering two key research questions: in what ways do Russian citizens experience the shifts in social norms, conventions and public discourses brought home by former soldiers? And how exactly did the veterans of these wars become one of the powers supporting the regime? I show how the interests of veterans have been corresponding to, conflicting with, or existing in interplay with, the interests of the state during the last three decades, and how the wars made veterans continue building their self-identity in compliance with the narratives accepted by their comrades-in-arms.
I also examine the social consequences of veterans’ exposure to violence in wartime, which include further violence in later wars, in criminal gangs, and at home. I look at changes in gender norms in post-war society and claim that army service has been crucial for shaping male identity, and a rise in militaristic masculinity became one of the legacies of these wars. The final question that I explore is the role of veterans in the militarization of Russian society through the implementation of the state programmes of “patriotic education”, which also play a significant role in normalizing violence and spreading it throughout Russian society.
The discussion is based on my own semi-structured interviews with war veterans conducted in 2019-2021, and interpreted in terms of narrative analysis. They constitute completely new primary sources which can be used in future research.
Atmospheric circulation on slowly rotating planets in the Solar System, and beyond
Keywords: Solar System planets
exoplanets
atmospheric circulation

Atmospheric circulation on Venus and Titan is characterised by prograde superrotating jets at the equator, and meridional overturning circulations that extend a significant distance towards the poles. Circulation of this type is characteristic of planets that are slowly rotating. By contrast, the atmospheres of the Earth and Mars, which are more rapidly rotating, feature zonal jets in mid-latitudes, and overturning circulation that is confined to the tropics. However, while planetary rotation is likely the main determinant of a given planet’s atmospheric circulation, other factors also have an important influence. This has been illustrated by numerical experiments using models of slowly rotating Earth- like planets, which do not automatically generate Venus or Titan-like circulations.
The aim of this thesis is to improve our understanding of the different circulation regimes that may be obtained on slowly rotating planets. This is achieved by developing a theoretical framework within which the circulation of different slowly rotating planets can be easily compared. Additionally, for the case of Titan, this thesis presents an in- depth investigation of the specific atmospheric phenomena that differentiate it from other slow rotators.
Recently, the array of possible circulation regimes has expanded significantly, due to the discovery of tidally locked planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. If we restrict our attention to temperate planets, then theoretical considerations suggest most will be slowly rotating. Tidally locked planets have a permanent day side and night side, which strongly influences their atmospheric circulation. Consequently, these planets occupy circulation regimes that are different from those exhibited by the slowly rotating planets in the Solar System.
To characterise the atmospheres of slowly rotating tidally locked planets, this thesis proposes a new analysis technique that divides the total circulation into physically meaningful constituent components, in much the same way as the circulation of the Solar System planets is divided into zonal jets and meridional overturning. It is also shown that the proposed decomposition of the circulation can be used to aid the observational characterisation of these planets, by showing how different parts of the decomposed circulation contribute distinct features to a planet’s thermal emission.
The effects of mTOR inhibition in ischemic stroke
Keywords: ischemic Stroke
mTOR
rapamycin
fasting

With a global incidence of 9.5 million cases annually and 56 million disability-adjusted life-years, ischemic stroke is the primary cause of adult disability in developed countries. However, the significant successes in stroke trials have been in the field of reperfusion therapies for ischemic stroke, whereas clinical trials focusing on amplifying the brain’s intrinsic neuroprotective pathways have so far been unsuccessful for numerous reasons. One neuroprotective target that has been shown to play an essential role in cell death after stroke is the mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1), a key regulator of the cells' energy supply, which can be modulated pharmacologically through rapamycin and non-pharmacologically through dietary intervention. The overarching aim of this thesis was to investigate the therapeutic potential of mTOR inhibition in ischemia. I found that post-stroke rapamycin treatment improves cerebral perfusion in the hyperacute phase, decreases lesion volume, and improves functional outcomes at three days in a rat model of focal stroke using magnetic resonance imaging. I then showed that rapamycin application after oxygen-glucose deprivation improves the function of pericytes and endothelial cells in vitro but does not prevent cell death. Finally, I found that fasting following ischemia might be an alternative strategy to improve stroke outcomes by decreasing inflammation, stabilizing the BBB, and reducing stroke volume. Together, these data highlight the potential of therapeutic options beyond reperfusion therapies and suggest that targeting metabolic regulators such as the mTOR pathway using pharmacology or dietary modulation might be effective adjunct therapy options alongside reperfusion for patients suffering from an ischemic stroke.