VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Electronic quantum fluids in graphene and quantum Hall systems
Keywords: graphene
quantum Hall

This thesis focuses on several examples of strongly correlated electronic quantum fluids.
In chapter 2 we use a kinetic theory approach to describe the transport properties of bilayer graphene near charge neutrality. After solving the semiclassical Boltzmann equation, we find that the results are well approximated by a hydrodynamic two-fluid model. A fluid of electrons and a fluid of holes interact with each other via Coulomb drag.
Chapter 3 looks at quantum Hall edges. We consider a quantum Hall edge coupled to a driven quantum dot and compute the current on the edge downstream from the contact. We show that Coulomb interactions between the dot and the edge renormalize the charge in the current pulses.
Chapter 4 focuses on the bilayer quantum Hall system. Two layers of quantum Hall fluid are separated by a variable distance. At large interlayer separation, we have two well-separated composite Fermi liquids and we consider the pairing between the two layers as the interlayer separation is decreased. We propose a new trial state for this paired phase of matter and use exact diagonalization numerics to investigate this proposal.
Which surgical treatment for Dupuytren’s Contracture is most cost-effective in England?
Keywords: Cost-effectiveness analysis
Dupuytren's

Objectives: To assess the cost-effectiveness of surgical interventions offered in the NHS for adults with Dupuytren’s contracture admitted into secondary care, when compared to the mainstay of surgical treatment (Limited Fasciectomy).
Perspective: From the healthcare payer’s perspective, which would be NHS England.
Setting: Inpatient admitted secondary care in the NHS in England.
Methods: A 34-year time horizon economic evaluation was conducted using individual patient data from Hospital Episode Statistics, the UK Hand Registry, and National Life Tables. A de novo cohort Markov model was developed to assess the cost-effectiveness of admitted patient Percutaneous Needle Fasciotomy (PNF), and Dermofasciectomy (DF) to Limited Fasciectomy (LF) as a comparator. This accounts for factors like life expectancy and further treatment for each year after the average age of treatment. Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were undertaken to study model and parameter uncertainty.
Results: Using the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, LF was the dominant procedure. For one less QALY, DF would cost an additional £1030.76 and admitted patient PNF would cost an additional £2207.96. Running one-way sensitivity analysis shows that modifying the cost and utility parameter values doesn’t result in a different outcome. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis suggests that there is a maximum probability of 55% that LF is the most cost-effective procedure.
Conclusions: This supports LF as the treatment of choice for first-line surgical treatment, compared to DF or admitted patient PNF administered through inpatient admitted care pathways. Constraints of the datasets, namely follow up as well as information on other settings, limited the relevance of this model to other settings. Further research might focus on differing severity of disease, and compare other pathways, such as outpatient PNF, which might be expected to have different costs. Randomised controlled trial data would be beneficial to extend this study and add granularity to the observational data available.
The vital centre, the middle of nowhere, or something in-between: A study of political centrism in Western democracies
Keywords: political ideology
left-right
party competition
centrism
centre
voter behaviour

The nature of the centre is one of the most significant concepts in the study of comparative politics, due to its place at the fulcrum of the ideological spectrum. However, scholarly interest in the subject has not matched its importance, with a relative paucity of research leaving the idea of the centre often poorly defined, imprecise, and theoretically muddled.
The main contribution of this thesis lies in its response to this confusion. It advances a novel typology to streamline and clarify disparate conceptions of political centrism. It proposes a new theoretical framework of centrist parties and centrist voters, and contextually grounds it within the wider literature on ideology and its effects.
Guided by this typology and utilising several large-sample studies of ideology (expert surveys and manifesto content analysis for parties, and mass public opinion surveys for voters), the three empirical chapters explore several questions related to two fundamental themes – how centrist political actors differ from their counterparts on the left and right, and how centrist political actors differ among themselves.
Specifically, among other things, this thesis finds that subtle variations in centrist ideology can account for parties’ enthusiasm for European integration. It finds that many centrist voters are neither particularly moderate in their views nor are they as compromising and ideologically flexible as they are often presupposed. And it finds that the relationship between the intensity and extremity of preferences bears on electoral behaviour, as centrists are shown to be less sensitive to ideology than other voters when casting their ballots.
This research demonstrates the importance of a more nuanced and comprehensive conception of the centre, and the crucial implications it has for the wide range of subjects in the social sciences relating to political ideology, including party competition, voter behaviour, political psychology, and democratic theory.
Protecting the right to leave in an era of externalised migration control
Keywords: Externalised Migration Control
Right to Leave
Migration
Refugee Law
International Human Rights Law

This thesis explores the right to leave any country, including one’s own, in international law and its applicability to externalised migration control. Destination states and the European Union are employing a range of practices designed to prevent certain migrants leaving the state they are in and their irregular arrival, typically in cooperation with other states, private actors, and international organisations. Motivated by this phenomenon, this thesis focuses on the right to leave for migrants (including nationals seeking to leave their own state), which is fundamental on its own terms and in securing liberty and equality. It assesses the compatibility of key externalisation measures with the right and considers which actors bear responsibility for ensuing violations. Part I develops a general framework for determining whether restrictions conform with the right to leave, analysing the right’s scope and requirements and outlining corresponding obligations and duty-bearers. This shifts the focus onto challenging the traditional view that states have an almost unfettered right to exclude non-nationals, illustrating obligations to admit before demonstrating that the right to leave is exercisable irrespective of any right of entry. It then reveals the practical and legal necessity of the right for asylum seekers, appropriately formulated as a ‘right to leave to seek asylum’ and accompanied by several duties. Part II examines the law on jurisdiction and international responsibility. Applying the previous findings, Part III turns to externalisation, analysing the compatibility of visas, carrier sanctions, pushbacks, and pullbacks with the right to leave. It concludes that in most circumstances, such practices violate the right, with each actor responsible for their respective role. Overall, this thesis highlights the need for the primary contours of the right to be integrated into migration control policies and practices, compelling the dismantlement of many externalisation strategies and a re-imagining of the global (im)mobility infrastructure.
Brain imaging in UK Biobank
Keywords: neuorinformatics
confounds
UK Biobank
machine learning
neuroimaging
processing pipeline
artificial Intelligence
quality control

UK Biobank is a large-scale prospective epidemiological study with all data accessible to researchers worldwide. It is currently in the process of bringing back 100,000 of the original participants for brain, heart and body MRI, carotid ultrasound and low-dose bone/fat x-ray. The brain imaging component covers six modalities (T1, T2 FLAIR, susceptibility-weighted MRI, Resting fMRI, Task fMRI and Diffusion MRI). Raw and processed data from the first ∼42,000 imaged subjects has recently been released for general research access. To help convert this data into useful summary information, we have developed an automated processing and QC (Quality Control) pipeline that is available for use by other researchers. In this work, we describe the tools and research we have developed in order to generate the data in a way that is readily usable for researchers worldwide. The first half of this thesis will give a brief overview of UK Biobank brain imaging and the acquisition protocol, and then describe the processing pipeline and QC pipeline in detail. We also describe several quantitative investigations carried out as part of the development of both the imaging protocol and the processing pipeline. The second part of this thesis will show the research we performed to come up with a set of recommendations to deal with confounds in brain imaging studies using UK Biobank. UK Biobank is a powerful resource for studying associations between imaging and non- imaging measures such as lifestyle factors and health outcomes, in part because of the large subject numbers. However, the resulting high statistical power also raises the sensitivity to confounding effects, which therefore have to be carefully considered. Here we describe a set of possible confounds (including non-linear effects and interactions) that researchers may wish to consider for their studies using such data. We include descriptions of how we can estimate the confounds, and study the extent to which each of these confounds affects the data, and the spurious correlations that may arise if they are not controlled.
Probability and nondeterminism in compositional game theory
Keywords: category theory
open games
game theory
compositional game theory

We substantially extend previous work in the emerging field of compositional game theory.
We generalise work by Escardó and Oliva relating the selection monad to game theory. Escardó and Oliva showed that the tensor operation of selection functions computes a subgame perfect equilibirium of a sequential game. We investigate game theoretic interpretations of selection functions generalised over a monad. In particular we focus on the finite non-empty powerset monad which we use to model nondeterministic games. We prove a negative result: that nondeterministic selection functions do not com- pute the collection of all subgame perfect plays of a sequential game. We then define a solution concept related to the iterated removal of strongly dominated strategies, and then show that the tensor of nondeterministic selection functions computes the plays of strategy profiles satisfying this solution concept.
In the second part of this thesis we greatly expand the expressive power of open games, first introduced by Jules Hedges [Hed16]. In the current literature, open games are defined using the category of sets and func- tions as an ambient category. We define a category of open games that can use any symmetric monoidal category as an ambient category. This is accomplished using coend lenses which can be used to model certain bidirectional processes. Generalising open games to arbitrary symmetric monoidal categories allows us to, in particular, model probablistic games involving Bayesian agents in an open games formalism.
Faithful decides: contemporary French thought and the eternal return of religion
Keywords: French thought
eternal return
Georges Bataille
Jean-Luc Nancy
Jacques Derrida
deconstruction
continental philosophy
Gilles Deleuze
return of religion

At a time when religious fundamentalisms fight on all continents for the monopoly of religious truth, no definition seems as uncertain as that of religion. To be sure, the definitions proposed by Edward Burnett Tylor, William James and Emile Durkheim in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which all revolve around the notion of transcendent belief, have been used in social sciences for more than a century and still constitute the theoretical ground on which secularism rests in the modern West. In the past few decades, however, globalisation and the emergence of spiritual approaches to environmentalism and mindfulness in Western countries have raised the question of whether non-theistic devotion and ritual practices detached from supernatural belief should be considered as religious. Reformist currents of the Abrahamic religions have also contributed to challenging the idea that transcendent belief is conditio sine qua non of religion by emphasising ‘lived experienced’ and ‘reflective faith’. These definitional transformations go hand in hand with the urgency felt by political leaders and sociologists to distinguish religion from what is presented as its terrorist caricature. In this thesis, I argue that a way out of this definitional crisis may be found in the work of four of France’s most original contemporary philosophical voices. Through their respective non-dialectical engagements with the concept of the death of God, Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-Luc Nancy inaugurate a thinking of the religious that does not depend on transcendent belief, but rather unfolds as an open-ended trust in otherness. Over the course of four chapters, I demonstrate that, by designating faith in difference as the lowest common denominator of transcendent religions and immanent spiritualities found across the world, these thinkers lay the ground for a more inclusive approach to religious pluralism than the one currently secured by Western secularism.
Understanding immunity differences induced by whole cell and acellular pertussis vaccines in a paediatric population
Keywords: Acellular vaccine
Immunity
Bordetella pertussis
Whole cell vaccine

Bordetella pertussis causes whooping cough, a life-threatening disease in infants. Both whole cell (wP) and acellular (aP) vaccines are used for infant immunisation with aP providing less robust long-term population protection. To further understand differences between wP and aP, this thesis aims: to characterise the immune response to an aP-booster in a UK cohort by age and priming backgrounds (wP/aP) using a broad variety of assays of humoral immunity; to investigate effect of HLA-DRB1-233Thr previously associated with pertussis toxin (PT) IgG antibody levels in wP-primed infants and protection from disease; to evaluate the use of continuous temperature monitoring as an objective method of evaluating reactogenicity.
An aP booster gave the best responses in adolescents (aP-primed) and adults (wP-primed) in terms of antibody (highest for pertactin (Prn) and filamentous haemagglutinin (FHA) IgG), memory B-cells and novel functional assays (SBA, OPA, CDA). Prn-IgG was the antigen most closely correlated with novel functional antibody assays (SBA, OPA, CDA). For all antigens, IgA baseline and booster response increased with age, unlike IgG, suggesting a role of continued antigen exposure in generating this response.
The association of HLA-DRB1-233Thr variant with PT-IgG antibody levels was replicated in wP-primed Asian infants and European adolescents. There was no indication of an additional association with any functional antibody assays assessed. However, an association with PT-IgG avidity and PT-IgA, suggested a role of this variant in enhancing immunological memory in addition to initial antibody production.
Continuous temperature monitoring identified a higher number of fever episodes, characterising more accurately fever, a marker of innate immune response, post-vaccination.
This thesis provides data supporting the introduction of Prn-containing aP in adolescents and adults. Investigation of the mechanisms associated to HLA-DRB1-233Thr and protection in wP-primed individuals may give further insight into differences between aP and wP vaccine responses associated with protection.
"Subjection for the sake of virtue": voluntary slavery in Plato's Symposium and the Laws
Keywords: paiderastia
education
Symposium
virtue
Laws
Plato
voluntary slavery

What is to be made of Plato’s provocative and perplexing claim in the Laws that both Athenian citizens and citizens of Magnesia, Plato’s second-best city, should be thought of as “voluntary slaves to the laws”? How is it possible that ordinary citizens attain virtue by mimicking the subordination of those who lack the capacity for knowledge and independent reasoning? How can a state of dependence and subordination to legal authority be compatible with the acquisition of ordinary civic virtue? Approaching the Laws via the Symposium, I propose to elucidate the paradox of voluntary slavery by examining the striking but overlooked use of a similar phrase –“voluntary slavishness”– in Pausanias’s speech in Plato’s Symposium. In this novel reading of the Laws, I propose that understanding the citizens’ voluntary slavery to the laws in parallel with the beloved’s willing slavery to the lover reveals that Plato envisions ordinary citizens of Magnesia as passive beloveds. Like the beloved in Pausanias’s speech, who is permanently subjected to the training and guardianship by the lover despite being a fully-grown man, I suggest that the ordinary citizens of Magnesia are attributed a permanent status of minority and slavishness with relation to the laws because they are incapable of achieving or sustaining independent virtue. I argue that ordinary citizens of Magnesia have a status that parallels that of minors and slaves vis-à-vis the legal authority. Based on this analogy between the beloved in Pausanian paiderastia and the ordinary citizen in the Laws, I cast doubt on the idea that the Laws embodies a ‘democratic turn’ in Plato’s political thought. In contrast to much recent scholarship, I suggest that the Laws preserves, not undermines, the divide between philosophic rulers and non-philosophic ordinary citizens found in the Republic.
Rational inattention in macroeconomics
Keywords: Rational inattention

In many markets, acquiring and processing the information needed to make optimal decisions costs agents time, effort, and/or money. This thesis is concerned with the macroeconomic implications of the way households behave in the face of these costs, which is known as rational inattention. The thesis consists of three self-contained chapters.
The first and second chapters both explore limited household attention to the choice between different savings products. Regulators (e.g. FCA, 2015) have found that households who gather more information when choosing savings products obtain higher interest rates, and the chapters explore two implications of this.
The first chapter studies how the attention decision varies over the business cycle, and the impact that then has on the cycle. I find in both theory and data that attention to savings product choice is countercyclical. This amplifies business cycle fluctuations, because it introduces a countercyclical wedge between policy rates and the interest rate faced by households. In an estimated DSGE model this amplification is substantial, increasing the variance of consumption by 17%. Policies that reduce the cost of information weaken this amplification and so reduce business cycle volatility.
The second chapter explores the implications of rational inattention to savings choices for inequality and fiscal policy. In a model related to that in chapter 1, I find that poorer households pay less attention to saving choices because they have less to gain from higher interest rates. They therefore face lower interest rates, so have less asset income and less desire to save. I show that this feedback between wealth and attention renders the representative agent steady state of the model unstable with respect to idiosyncratic household income shocks. The stable steady state has a two-agent structure, with poor households at the borrowing constraint paying no attention, while wealthy households pay attention and earn high returns. As the steady state inequality is driven by endogenous attention choices, it responds to policy. I find that aggregate consumption has a smaller and more persistent response to large fiscal expansions in this model than a comparable model where inequality is driven by exogenous discount factor heterogeneity.
The third chapter, co-authored with Martin Ellison, moves away from attention to savings choices, considering the information households choose to acquire about the future of the labour market. We find that introducing rational inattention into a model with uninsurable unemployment risk can generate multiple steady states, where with full information the model has a unique steady state. Large mutations in the distribution of household beliefs can shift the economy between steady states. Labour market beliefs in the model are heterogeneous and persistent, consistent with survey evidence.
Brevard Childs’ canonical approach: an evaluation of its main elements
Keywords: Christianity
hermeneutics
biblical theology
biblical studies
theological interpretation
Brevard Childs

This thesis aims to provide an evaluation of Brevard Childs’ canonical approach, which is an approach to Theological Interpretation that aims to utilise the Bible as a vehicle to know the Christian God. This thesis is located in the academic discipline of Biblical Studies and has a substantial lean towards Old Testament (hereafter ‘OT’)/Hebrew Bible (hereafter ‘HB’) Studies as this was Childs’ specialism and is also mine today. This thesis was not initially devoted to a study of Childs’ approach, but his approach is so extensive that it warrants a thesis in itself. My argument is twofold: (i) Childs’ approach consists of three main elements that were variously developed and implemented over time, and (ii) these elements, though rich and informed, ultimately fail to complete the aim that Childs set out to achieve. Regarding originality, this thesis introduces the idea that Childs’ canonical approach is composed of these three main elements and provides what I hope is the most detailed evaluation of Childs’ approach in light of Biblical Studies. A conclusion was established by firstly identifying that the canonical approach consists of three main elements. I then undertook detailed analyses of each of these elements and evaluated them in accordance with their reasonableness and in light of the evidence from Biblical Studies. This thesis is structured in two parts. Part A aims to provide the reader with a helpful foundation before one engages in a detailed study of Childs’ canonical approach. Part B is then the main body of the thesis which analyses and evaluates each of the approach’s main elements.