VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Human obesity and Arctic adaptation: epidemiological patterns, metabolic effects and evolutionary implications
Keywords: Inuit
Arctic
Canada

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the occurrence, determinants and consequences of obesity among the Inuit people in the central Canadian Arctic, based on the Keewatin Health Assessment Study (KHAS), conducted during 1990/91 in 8 Inuit communities in the Northwest Territories (n=434 adults aged 18yr+). Data from three other surveys are included for comparison: (1) the 1190 Manitoba Heart Health Survey among 2200 predominantly Caucasian residents of the province of Manitoba; (2) the 1986-87 Northern Indian Chronic Disease Study among 704 Cree-Ojibwa Indians from Northern Ontario and Manitoba; and (3) the 1990-91 Chukotka Chronic Disease Survey among 362 Chuckchi and Inuit in coastal Chukotka in the Russian Far North.
Judged by both body mass index and two skinfold thicknesses, obesity among the Inuit in the Keewatin region is as prevalent as it is in the general North American population. This is a new development over the past two or three decades, the result of rapidly changing physical activity, diet and other lifestyles. Obesity is more prevalent among women, among whom there is also a higher prevalence of central fat patterning.
Age, education and non-smoking status (females only) are consistently identified as independent predictors of various obesity indices on multivariate analysis. While better educated men are more likely to be obese, the relationship is reversed in women, possibly due to the different sex roles and their associated stress levels in a rapidly acculturating and modernizing society.
When different categories of obesity indices are compared, there is a consistent pattern of an increasing trend in blood pressure and one or more of the lipids but no significant change in glucose or insulin level. This observation distinguishes the Inuit and Chukchi from Caucasians and Amerindians. Even where a relationship exists, as with triglycerides and HDL-cholesterol, the magnitude of response is also lower among the Inuit.
The differential effect of obesity on glucose, blood pressure and lipids in Inuit compared to non-Inuit suggests a type of selective insulin resistance, the underlying mechanism of obesity and several chronic diseases. The Inuit metabolism reflects their almost exclusive diet of fat and proteins. Apart from its public health importance, the study of Inuit obesity can shed some light into issues related to the peopling of the Americas: are the Inuit "exempt" from the "New World syndrome", and can the "thrifty genotype" explain the differential occurrence of diabetes among Arctic and Subarctic hunter-gatherers? It provides an opportunity to elucidate fundamental questions relating to the interaction of genetic and environmental factors in disease causation and distribution.
A measurement of the W boson charge asymmetry with the ATLAS detector
Keywords: Parton Distribution Function
W boson
ATLAS
LHC
charge asymmetry
PDF fit

Uncertainties on the parton distribution functions (PDFs), in particular those of the valence quarks, can be constrained at LHC energies using the charge asymmetry in the production of W± bosons.
This thesis presents a measurement of the electron channel, lepton charge asymmetry using 497 pb-1 of data recorded with the ATLAS detector in 2011. The measurement is included in PDF fits using the machinery of HERAPDF and is found to have some constraining power beyond that of existing W charge asymmetry measurements.
The effects of contact patterns and genetic specificity on host and parasite evolution
Keywords: generalism
Red Queen
Host-parasite
resistance
infectious disease
virulence
infectivity
sociality
castration
coevolution

Many bacteria, viruses and other parasites cause severe morbidity or mortality in their host populations, creating strong selection for physiological or behavioural mechanisms to avoid disease. Likewise, changes in host susceptibility and contact patterns can dramatically influence the spread of infectious diseases, and hence selection for traits such as virulence and infectivity range in parasites. Understanding how ecological and evolutionary changes in one population affect selection in another represents a key challenge for theoreticians and empiricists alike, and is essential for gaining further insights into host-parasite relationships.
This thesis contains theoretical models that explore how genetic and environmental factors shape the evolutionary and coevolutionary dynamics of hosts and parasites. In particular, the roles of genetic specificity (i.e. genotype-by-genotype interactions) and population mixing patterns are investigated, using both mathematical models and computer simulations. A broad range of scenarios are covered, including the coevolution of broad resistance and infectivity ranges (generalism), the persistence of coevolutionary cycling and the maintenance of sex, the effects of mating behaviour on disease prevalence and evolution, and the evolution of sexual and social behaviour. The models presented herein develop our understanding of host-parasite relationships and highlight the importance of genetic interactions and ecological feedbacks.
The relationship between Russia and Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan from 2000-10: A post-Imperial perspective
Keywords: Russia
soft power
constructivism
Belarus
Imperialism
Kazakhstan
Post-imperialism

This study aims to account for the high degree of influence and intensity displayed in bi-lateral relations between Russia and the other post-Soviet states – specifically Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan (BUK.) It seeks to do so by employing an analytical framework based around the concept of ‘post-Imperialism,’ arguing that persistent legacies of the imperial past have both ensured a high degree of intensity in bilateral relationships as well as providing pathways of influence over certain policy areas – primarily for Russia, but in some instances for BUK as well. It also seeks to examine imperial legacy issues as distinct ‘types’ – from physical economic and military infrastructure, to cross-border constellations of elite personnel to the normative and cognitive inheritances of imperialism amongst both the elite and the population at large. It concludes that Russia has been able to mobilise and employ power resources not available to alternative actors in order to ‘punch above its weight’ when competing with other powers for influence in the post-Soviet space, and preserve certain Soviet era patterns of relations. It is not the focus of this study, but it is to be hoped that the framework will prove useful for researchers in other former imperial polities in future.
The impact of socioeconomic position of severe maternal morbidity outcomes amongst women in the UK and Australia
Keywords: socioeconomic
morbidity
maternal
disadvantage

Aims: The aims of this thesis are to investigate the risk of severe maternal morbidity amongst women from different socioeconomic groups in the UK, explore why these differences exist and compare these findings to the setting in Australia.
Methods: Three separate analyses were conducted. The first used UK Obstetric Surveillance System (UKOSS) data to assess the incidence and independent odds of severe maternal morbidity by socioeconomic group in the UK. The second analysis used quantitative and qualitative data from the 2010 UK National Maternity Survey (NMS) to explore the possible reasons for the difference in odds of morbidity between socioeconomic groups in the UK. The third analysis used data from the Victorian Perinatal Data Collection (VPDC) unit in Australia to assess the incidence and odds of severe maternal morbidity by socioeconomic group in Victoria.
Results: The UKOSS analysis showed that compared with women from the highest socioeconomic group, women in the lowest ‘unemployed’ group had 1.22 (95%CI: 0.92 – 1.61) times greater odds associated with severe maternal morbidity. The NMS analysis demonstrated that independent of ethnicity, age and parity, women from the lowest socioeconomic quintile were 60% less likely to have had any antenatal care (aOR 0.40; 95%CI 0.18 – 0.87), 40% less likely to have been seen by a health professional prior to 12 weeks gestation (aOR 0.62; 95%CI 0.45 – 0.85) and 45% less likely to have had a postnatal check with their doctor (aOR 0.55; 95%CI 0.42 – 0.70) compared to women from the highest quintile. The Victorian analysis showed that women from the lowest socioeconomic group were 21% (aOR 1.21; 95%CI 1.00 – 1.47) more likely and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were twice (aOR 2.02; 95%CI 1.32 – 3.09) as likely to experience severe morbidity.
Discussion: The results suggest that women from the lowest socioeconomic group in the UK and in Victoria have increased odds of severe maternal morbidity. Further research is needed into why these differences exist and efforts must be made to ensure that these women are appropriately prioritised in the future planning of maternity services provision in the UK and Australia.
The industrial organization of input markets
Keywords: waterbed effect
buyer power
price discrimination

This thesis consists of three closely connected pieces of work and an enhanced version of my M.Phil. thesis. The first three substantive chapters analyse vertical contracting in input markets under the exercise of differential buyer power. Chapters 2 and 3 consider the case of a supplier selling its output via a supermarket that offers captive demand (due to customers who anyway make a trip for their weekly shopping), which its rival, a local store is not able to offer. It is shown that the supermarket can negotiate an input price lower than the local store's only if its advantage translates into sufficient bargaining strength in setting contracts. The existence of a waterbed effect, the implications of a partially covered market, a nonlinear pricing structure and welfare implications of a ban in discrimination are also explored. Chapter 4 modifies the standard model where size determines buyer power to show that if quantities need to be decided in advance, an increase in a retailer's size is always welfare improving. For the presence of waterbed effects, we propose a novel insight that runs across different classes of models: following a discount to one retailer, the supplier faces two competing incentives - it wants to extract profits from the rival retailer but it also wants to transfer sales towards it. The waterbed effect is shown to be present only if the discount to the retailer is small, so incentives for profit extraction outweigh those for transferring business.
Finally chapter 5 studies a firm's strategic incentive to outsource when its product displays network effects. It shows that a firm would choose to increase its observable marginal cost to make its competitor less aggressive and thereby increase its own probability of winning competition for the market. This is robust to small levels of uncertainty.
The development of a novel and efficient HAC vector delivery system to human cells
Keywords: Artificial Chromosome HSV

Human Artificial Chromosomes (HACs) have been confirmed as viable gene expression vectors and a potential tool for gene therapy. However, standard lipid-based delivery methods pose a developmental barrier. The work presented in this thesis includes the development of a novel and efficient HAC vector system for gene delivery into human cells using Herpes Simplex Virus-1 (HSV-1) amplicon technology. The development of HSV-1 amplicons for HAC delivery is a major step forward in the HAC field. In this study, utilising the technology allowed the generation of HACs at a high efficiency in a range of human cell types, which is a significant step in the development for HAC gene expression systems. Further work also showed a significant difference in HAC stability between cell lines. Real-time PCR analysis determined that Aurora B was over expressed in cell lines in which the HACs were unstable. This correlated with high levels of chromosomal instability and was confirmed by western blot analysis. Since Aurora B is a kinase involved in at least two cell cycle checkpoints, cellular phosphorylation levels were perturbed to mimic that observed in the unstable cells, using okadaic acid, which is both a protein phosphatase inhibitor and activates Aurora B. Treatment of cells showed an increase in both HAC and overall chromosomal instability and an increase in histone H3 Serine 10 and Serine 28 phosphorylation. The project also focussed on the development of a gene expression system using HSV-1 amplicons. Two different strategies were explored. Firstly, one approach involved engineering the HPRT genomic locus into an HSV-HAC vector, by Red mediated recombination for complementing the HPRT deficiency in HPRT- HT1080 cells. As an alternative approach, co-infection of two different HSV-1 HAC amplicons for generating a single HAC gene vector was investigated. Initial experiments utilising the latter approach were the most successful and show promise for generating HAC containing genes via this strategy.
Validation of self-reports for use in contact research
Keywords: observer-reports
predictive validity
context effects
cross-group friendship
self-reports
contact hypothesis
validity

The aim of this thesis was to investigate whether self-report measures of contact are valid for use in research testing the ‘contact hypothesis’. The vast majority of contact research has relied on the assumed validity of self-report methods of data collection (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006), even though the potential weaknesses of self-report methodology generally have been well documented. This reliance is necessary, as self-reports remain the only practical method so far developed of measuring certain of the facilitating conditions developed by Allport (1954/1979), and particularly of direct and indirect cross-group friendship (Pettigrew, 1998; Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, & Ropp, 1997). However, if self-reports are not a valid method for measuring contact, the derived implications of a large portion of the research effort are potentially flawed. This thesis attempted to address this important oversight, using a variety of methods to investigate whether the use of self-reports in future research on intergroup contact is appropriate. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that self-reports of contact show considerable resistance to context effects, particularly in comparison with self-reports of the more subjective construct of attitudes. Studies 3-5 demonstrated that self-reports of contact agree with the observer-reports of a single observer who knows the target intimately – the spouse or parent. Studies 6 and 7 replicate this agreement through the consensually supported observer-reports of three close friends of the target, thereby reducing any variance due to individual response biases. Finally, studies 8 and 9 demonstrate the concurrent criterion-related validity of self-reports of contact, in that they are able to predict contact on a very large online network called Facebook, on which real-world rather than purely online friendships are primarily represented. These findings offer considerable support for the validity of self-reports as a suitable method for measuring contact. As self-reports remain the only method which has thus far proven suitable for the measurement of those aspects of contact which are essential for exploration of the contact hypothesis, this thesis presents a very heartening and optimistic conclusion and supports the continued use of self-reports in contact research.
Post-Keynesian financial spaces, places, and flows: geographies of finance and financial crisis
Keywords: Financial crises--case studies
Financial crises--history

This dissertation is a reaction to the public policy failures that culminated in, prolonged, and exacerbated the 2008 financial crisis in the United States. Between the winter of 2007 and the summer of 2009, the US private economy contracted severely. As of the summer of 2014, after a five-year recovery period, employment losses have been restored, but employment growth has not returned the US to its pre-crisis trend. This outcome is not the effect of a transient deviation that regularly happens as the economy moves through the business cycle; nor should the troubles in the US financial sector appear historically anomalous. The world's premier capitalist economy is prone to bouts of financial dysfunction. This feature is not simply a matter of the irrational exuberance of its investors, the euphoria of its speculators, or the folly of its bankers. I argue here that political-economic choices structure the distribution of financial crises at multiple scales. Broadly speaking, I find that the effects of financial crises on growth are uneven, affected by institutional structure, and carry important ramifications for the direction of change in the provision of financial services and its regulatory system. The thesis features four empirical chapters. In the first, I perform an econometric analysis of the effects of a wide variety of financial crises on employment growth by economic sector, for a sample of countries over a thirty-year period. The final three chapters are a case study of the US experience with the 2008 banking crisis and asset market crash, focusing on the role of the banking regulatory system in allocating losses over territory, on the economic performance of metropolitan areas, and on the distribution of losses within the financial sector in two major financial centers, Los Angeles and San Francisco. I reach my conclusions by using standard methodological tools within the sub-field of economic-geography and conceptual insights from the sub-field of financial-geography.
Structure, dynamics, and robustness of ecological networks
Keywords: complex systems
networks
time series
food webs

Ecosystems are often made up of interactions between large numbers of species. They are considered complex systems because the behaviour of the system as a whole is not always obvious from the properties of the individual parts. A complex system can be represented by a network: a set of interconnected objects. In the case of ecological networks and food webs, the objects are species and the connections are interactions between species. Many complex systems are dynamic and exhibit intricate time series. Time series analysis has been developed to understand a wide range of natural phenomena. This thesis deals with the structure, dynamics, and robustness of ecological networks, the spatial dynamics of fluctuations in a social system, and the analysis of cardiac time series. Biodiversity on Earth is decreasing largely due to human-induced causes. My work looks at the effect of anthropogenic change on ecological networks. In Chapter Two, I investigate predator adaptation on food-web robustness following species extinctions. I identify a new theoretical category of species that may buffer ecosystems against environmental change. In Chapter Three, I study changes in parasitoid-host (consumer-resource) interaction frequencies between complex and simple environments. I show that the feeding preferences of parasitoid species actively change in response to habitat modification. Ecological networks are embedded in spatially-heterogeneous landscapes. In Chapter Four, I assess the role of geography on population fluctuations in an analogous social system. I demonstrate that fluctuations in the number of venture capital firms registered in cities in the United States of America are consistent with spatial and temporal contagion. Understanding how physiological signals vary through time is of interest to medical practitioners. In Chapter Five, I present a technique for quickly quantifying disorder in high frequency event series. Applying the algorithm to patient cardiac time series provides a rapid way to detect the onset of heart arrhythmia. Increasingly, answers to scientific questions lie at the intersection of traditional disciplines. This thesis applies techniques developed in physics and mathematics to problems in ecology and medicine.
Probabilistic models of RNA secondary structure
Keywords: RNA secondary structure
bioinformatics

This thesis develops probabilistic models of RNA secondary structure. The first chapter introduces RNA secondary structure prediction, in particular stochastic context-free grammars (SCFGs), and considers a novel method for automated design of SCFGs. Many SCFGs are found with a similar predictive quality as those commonly used for RNA secondary structure prediction. The second chapter discusses the effect alignment quality, evolutionary distance between sequences, and number of sequences in an alignment have on RNA secondary structure prediction. By combining statistical alignment and SCFG models we can, in a statistically sound setting, average structure predictions over the space of alignments to decrease loss created by poor alignments. The third chapter incorporates additional biological information about RNA secondary structure formation into the decoding of the SCFG posterior distribution. Combining iterative helix formation, phylogenetic modelling, and a distance function between alignment columns leads to the an improvement in the accuracy of comparative RNA secondary structure prediction. Finally, appendices briefly discuss further work concerning probabilistic models of RNA secondary structure which may be of interest to the reader.
Expanding health care services for poor populations in developing countries: Exploring India’s RSBY national health insurance programme for low-income groups
Keywords: low and middle income countries
social health insurance
health policy
social policy

Health is deemed central to a nation’s development. Accordingly, health care reform and expansion are key policy priorities in developing countries. Many such nations are now testing various methods of funding and delivering health care to local disadvantaged populations. Similarly, India launched the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) national health insurance programme for low-income groups in 2008. The RSBY intends preventing catastrophic health-related expenditure by improving recipients’ access to hospital-based care.
This thesis is an in-depth qualitative evaluation of the RSBY in Delhi state. It examines the RSBY’s effectiveness in fulfilling its goals and meeting local health care needs. Walt and Gilson’s (1994) actors-content-process-context model informs the research design and an actor-centred “responsive” (Stake 1975) or “constructivist” approach guides data analysis.
Three research questions are examined: (i). Why was a health insurance programme launched and why now? Why was this model favoured over alternate methods of service expansion? (ii). Is the RSBY delivered as intended? If not, why? (iii) How does the RSBY affect patients’ access to services?
The findings are based on documentary sources, observation of implementation sites and activities and 164 semi-structured interviews with RSBY policymakers, insurers, NGOs, doctors, and patients.
The results show improved access to curative and surgical care for RSBY patients. However, RSBY’s focus on hospitalisation and omission of primary and outpatient services had undesired negative effects. The lack of ambulatory facilities led RSBY patients to self-medicate or use dubious quality informal providers. By only allowing inpatient care, the RSBY also seemingly encouraged the substitution of outpatient care with costlier hospitalisations. In effect, the RSBY’s design contributed to cost increases and poor patient outcomes.
While more funds and human resources were needed to improve RSBY implementation, the performance of frontline agencies could potentially improve through more stable, longer-term contracts. Similarly, modifying RSBY’s monetary incentives for doctors may lead to better service delivery by them.
By evaluating the RSBY’s strong points and shortcomings, this thesis provides key lessons on strengthening policy design and health service delivery in developing countries. Thereby, it makes a broader contribution to understanding the determinants of successful policymaking.