VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Reproductive rights in India: the search for a 'new' constitutional home
Keywords: discrimination
reproductive rights
reproductive justice
India
privacy
maternal health
synthesis
abortion

Reproductive rights remain deeply contested. Their scope, the duties they impose on the State, their response to conflicting interests, and in some cases their very protection within constitutions are being fiercely debated globally. In India, reproductive rights are not enumerated constitutionally. The Thesis seeks to construct the appropriate constitutional home for reproductive rights in India, to both anchor these rights within the Constitution and define their contours.
In Part I, the Thesis delineates what makes the constitutional home ‘appropriate’. It argues that reproductive rights aim to guarantee ‘real and effective’ reproductive decision-making. Reproductive decision-making ought to be valued because it is undergirded by two sets of interests, those represented by the individual and the social dimensions. The two dimensions are independent yet interrelated. The appropriate constitutional home for reproductive rights must, then, protect both interests and capture their interrelationship.
In Part II, the Thesis examines the existing constitutional home for reproductive rights in India: Article 21, the right to life and personal liberty. The Thesis then adds a second pillar to the home: Article 15, the right to non-discrimination. The Thesis interprets both provisions constitutionally and doctrinally. In turn, it assesses the provisions, so understood, against the normative framing in Part I, to arrive at a key conclusion. Articles 21 and 15, in their roles within the constitutional home, independently protect (or possess the potential to protect) the interests represented by the individual and the social dimensions respectively.
In Part III, the Thesis moves beyond treating the provisions in isolation to viewing them in synthesis. The Thesis illustrates the contributions of the synthesis, in constitutionally grounding reproductive rights, through the use of two examples: abortion and preventable maternal mortality and morbidity. The Thesis shows how the synthesis captures the interrelationship between the individual and social dimensions, to strengthen the constitutional protection granted to reproductive rights, at each stage of analysis: identifying the rights violation, conducting the limitations analysis, interpreting the law, and scoping positive duties on the State. The Thesis, thus, proposes a ‘new’ constitutional home for reproductive rights in India: the synthesis between Article 21 and Article 15.
Viennese keyboard music in the reign of Karl VI (1712-40) : Gottlieb Muffat and his contemporaries
Keywords: 18th century
Viennese keyboard music
Keyboard instrument music
Karl VI
Keyboard music
Gottlieb Muffat
Vienna
Austria
eighteenth century

The object of this thesis is to draw attention to the work of Gottlieb Muffat, most of which is still unpublished and unknown. Although it has received some scholarly attention during the past 100 years, studies of his music are patchy and often based on an excusably incomplete knowledge of the sources. The publication of 2 definitive article on Muffat in MGG has opened up possibilities for further study rather than closing the subject. There is still room for a general survey of the kind included in this thesis. The methods used here expand the work of previous authors by adopting a more critical attitude to the sources, by examining 211 aspects of Muffat's music rather than concentrating on his suites, and by setting his music in a wider context.
A large amount of Baroque keyboard music has been examined in preparation for this thesis, in order to place Muffat's work in a general framework rather than viewing it in isolation. As a basis for comparison with his contemporaries and predecessors, an account is given of the various influential factors in his musical background, and a list has been compiled to show the kind of keyboard music which was circulating among Viennese composers at the time. There is also a more comprehensive and up-to-date list of sources for the keyboard music of Muffat himself, and of his Viennese colleagues, than has hitherto been available. Although much of the material in these lists is not newly-discovered, they draw together the existing information and add some new details. Problematic aspects of the sources are discussed, and while a conclusive solution is rarely possible, some suggestions are put forward to clarify the situation. Certain re-attributions and approximate datings are made.
Continued in thesis ...
Basement geology, tectono-stratigraphic and diagenetic evolution of the presalt succession in the Northern Campos Basin, Brazil
Keywords: pre-salt reservoirs
petrography
rift basin
tectono-stratigraphy
Campos Basin
Brazil
faults
diagenesis
seismic interpretation

The Campos Basin (SE Brazil) hosts significant hydrocarbon accumulations in reservoirs above and below a layer of evaporites. The rift to post-rift lacustrine carbonates that constitutes the Pre-Salt reservoirs have been the object of several studies focused on the depositional and diagenetic characteristics of these Barremian to Aptian carbonates. Nevertheless, the basement geology, tectono-stratigraphic evolution and geochronologic constraints for the hydrothermal diagenesis are yet to be established. This thesis presents a novel integrated geological study of the entire presalt sequence utilizing 2D and 3D seismic surveys and sidewall cores from a hydrocarbon accumulation in the northern Campos Basin. The basement is constituted by anisotropic, high-grade supracrustal rocks in the East and relatively isotropic granitic rocks in the West. Lithologies, structural style and age suggest a correlation with the onshore Cabo Frio Tectonic Domain. The overall rift evolution probably started during the Berriasian with a peak of rift-related faulting from the Hauterivian to Barremian, followed by a rift transition and post-rift stages (Barremian to Aptian). The pre-existing metamorphic fabric was selectively reactivated whenever its orientation was favourable. Petrography and geochemistry show diagenetic phases composed predominantly of quartz, calcite and dolomite to ankerite series, and secondarily pyrite, Sr-barite and svanbergite. Additional studies of stable isotopes, fluid inclusion microthermometry and LA-ICP-MS U-Pb geochronology in the diagenetic minerals provide evidence for three tectono-diagenetic events that occurred under distinct diagenetic settings during the Barremian to Aptian, the Albo-Cenomanian and the Campanian to Maastrichtian stages. The diagenetic conditions were initially hydrothermal and progressively attained geothermal equilibrium under deep-burial conditions towards the Late Cretaceous. These diagenetic episodes were not necessarily coeval with magmatic events were are always coeval with basin-scale tectonic events described previously using balanced cross-sections in the post salt section.
Educated expectations: graduate mothers and their work in the long 1950s
Keywords: Women
History
Work

This thesis opens up original perspectives on middle-class women’s lives in post-war Britain by bringing together and interrelating their experiences of different types of work. By developing an analysis informed by the history of emotions, the scholarship of feminist economics and the ethics of care, it illuminates the ways in which work – paid or unpaid, caring, domestic or voluntary – impacts self-fulfilment and contributes to the sense of self. It addresses together different aspects of educated women’s lives, which have tended to be addressed separately in historical scholarship. It is based on the data set contained in the papers of the social scientist Dr Viola Klein. Using over nine hundred completed questionnaires from a 1963 social survey and accompanying notes and letters, contextualised by published social surveys, statistics, correspondence and oral history, it examines how graduate women conceptualised the ways in which they combined domestic responsibilities with an intellectual life. The nuancing of middle-class women’s approach to work is made possible through the finely textured detail of responses to Klein’s survey. Many women were motivated to work by a desire for intellectual fulfilment and a role beyond that of wife and mother. This thesis demonstrates that many middle-class mothers could gain a sense of agency by arranging their lives so that they were able to achieve intellectual fulfilment alongside family life. Although there were undoubtedly compromises and frustrations, the process of reflection and negotiation could be creative. Teaching was a popular form of work for women graduates in post-war Britain, and there were increasing opportunities for those who had studied medicine or dentistry at university to practice within the new National Health Service. The widening of these professional fields raised fundamental questions about the interrelationships between paid and unpaid caring, domestic and voluntary work, motherhood and marriage.
Theories of self-regulation
Keywords: Deregulation
self-regulation
Trade regulation
Social responsibility

Self-regulation is becoming more and more prevalent in the UK, yet there has been very little theoretical examination of the issues involved. This thesis aims to fill that gap. The main intuition examined is that self-regulation will be a feasible form of regulation only if there exists some state, attainable via some form of regulation, which raises both industry profits and total social welfare, relative to the latssez faire.
Modelling self-regulation thus involves finding situations in which the laissez faire is not welfare-optimal; in which sellers can improve upon their profits, relative to those at the laissez fafre; and in which this profit-improvement happens also to raise total social welfare. Such situations may exist when there is asymmetric information between sellers and consumers and/or externalities.
Chapter 3 examines quality choice under hidden irreversible action, It is shown that any comparison between the welfare under self-regulation and that under laissez faire will turn on the relative signs and values of (a) the net between-seller externality; (b) the difference in quality valuations between marginal and infra-marginal consumers; and (c) the effect of quality choice on total output. Under certain circumstances, however, self-regulation will certainly be the welfare-superior.
Chapter 4 examines quality choice under moral hazard. Self-regulation is shown to be feasible. It is also compared with external regulation: If qualities are observable (with a lag) but not verifiable, an SRO may have an advantage over an external regulator in that an SRO can condition its regulation on quality. Self-regulation in fact becomes more likely to be welfare-superior to external regulation (a) as fraud becomes more important relative to cheating on quality; (b) as sellers become more homogeneous in terms of capital; and (c) as the observation lag becomes greater.
Chapter 5 considers the factors that might influence the optimal number of SROs in an industry.
Cognitive approaches to non-invasive brain stimulation in the treatment of depression
Keywords: Negative bias
Phenotyping
Reinforcement learning
Non-invasive brain stimulation
Depression

This thesis investigated two cognitive approaches for improving the application of non-invasive brain stimulation in the treatment of depression. The goal of the first project was to test whether combining transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with a reinforcement learning task can reduce negative biases in depression. Recent research suggests that negative biases might arise from overestimating the informativeness of negative vs. positive information which might lead to increased learning from negative information. Two samples were recruited to test whether bifrontal tDCS applied during reinforcement learning increases reward vs. punishment learning in healthy participants and individuals with low mood. For the experimental paradigm, we used the Information Bias Learning Task which manipulates the relative informativeness of reward and punishments. As hypothesised, real compared to sham tDCS selectively increased reward learning in healthy individuals. To investigate whether this effect might be helpful to normalise reinforcement learning in depression, we compared performance between individuals with low mood and healthy participants. We found that individuals with low mood adjusted their punishment learning rate less, and their reward learning rate more to changes in informativeness than healthy individuals. Bifrontal tDCS normalised learning rate adjustment in individuals with low mood, which might be beneficial in depression treatment. The reported findings were only observed in response to bifrontal tDCS applied during (as opposed to before) task performance. This suggests the hypothesis that tDCS combined with reinforcement learning might have larger antidepressant effects than tDCS alone, which can be tested in future clinical trials. The second project was motivated by the idea of investigating different cognitive phenotypes of depression to guide treatment selection for individual patients. Previous research indicates that the relative severity of anxiety vs. anhedonia might differentiate between phenotypes that differ in the TMS target region they best respond to. We therefore recruited participants with varying symptom levels on an online platform to test which parameters extracted from five cognitive tasks differentially relate to symptoms of anxiety and anhedonia. The cognitive process which seemed to best differentiate between anxiety and anhedonia was punishment learning with volatile and stable associations. Future clinical trials are needed to test whether these cognitive task parameters have any clinical value, for example for selecting the optimal TMS target region.
Teaching acting to singers: harnessing historical techniques to empower modern performers
Keywords: pedagogy
Handel
acting
singers
gesture
opera
baroque

This thesis examines how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century acting techniques could be used in conjunction with twentieth- and twenty-first-century theory and praxis to create modern acting tools for the dramatic training of classical singers. Classical singing curricula tend to focus overwhelmingly on the vocal element of performance, with acting and movement classes ordinarily comprising only a fraction of the overall tuition. This thesis argues that techniques deriving from historical acting are by their nature especially suitable for the training of singers and can be effective and beneficial even when taught within a short timeframe. The historical precepts underpinning this work’s theoretical foundations are drawn from a large corpus of treatises published across Europe between 1528 and 1832, and from a contextual investigation of the London stage in the first half of the eighteenth century. Historical insights are then brought into conversation with modern theatrical practices and studies in pedagogy, drama and psychology to produce blueprints for new techniques, which are subsequently refined through application in teaching settings. Chapter 1 outlines the theoretical basis of historical acting: classical beauty, the art of rhetoric and naturalness. Chapter 2 explores more technical aspects of the craft, proposing a classification system of gesture relevant to opera. Chapter 3 expands the enquiry into the practice and training of eighteenth-century performers and begins the methodological discussion for the new teaching method. Finally, Chapter 4 examines key stages in the development of the new teaching method and outlines the main exercises comprising it. The new teaching method aims to equip singers with a compendium of innovative and specialised tools for aiding their preparation and performance in the visual domain (movement and gesture). While the resulting skills are especially fitting for pre-1900 operatic repertoire, they can be used to perform repertoire from any period. The broad applicability of this method and its targeted development for the conservatoire curriculum could significantly improve the acting training provision for classical singers.
Kotahi te moana, only one ocean: Pacific environmentalism, 1970–1995

Keywords: Pacific
Ocean Governance
Regionalism
Conservation
Climate Change
Anti-nuclearism
Environmental History
Indigenous Knowledge

“Pacific environmentalism” emerged as a regional ethic connecting Oceania and protecting Pacific peoples’ ways of thinking and relating to the natural world. It combined a customary body of knowledge about Pacific ecologies shaped over centuries, with decolonial politics, international science, and regional principles. This thesis considers the place of Pacific environmentalism within Pacific societies and the global environmental movement from 1970–1995. It argues that Pacific people consolidated knowledge about their ocean and islands, specifically that they are interconnected, indigenous, and inviolable, and used this to further self-determination—first as part of a regional movement, and then to make global interventions.
To account for Oceania’s vast geographical distance and thematic diversity, while demonstrating the operation of a new environmental regionalism, the thesis is structured episodically around the origins and early work of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), an intergovernmental regional organisation. After locating SPREP in Pacific responses to nuclear colonialism, insular laboratories, and preservationist national parks in the mid-1970s, the thesis shows how Pacific scientists, diplomats, community leaders and allies retooled environmental management for regional socio-ecologies. Research conducted regionally maintained Pacific people were an indivisible part of island systems, connected by the ocean into a shared, interdependent environment. Environmental regionalism through SPREP proceeded collectively, effectively mediating technocratic metropolitan influence by emphasising traditional knowledge and community-based management, while counteracting extractive mining, fishing and forestry. Advocacy on the issues of nuclear waste dumping and climate change turned self-determination into sovereignty, using United Nations forums to challenge neo-colonialism and dependency, establishing Pacific regimes of ocean governance and interregional associations of like-minded island regions. Pacific environmentalism prevented further ecological imperialism and the region’s integration into globalised environmental management; its elaboration contributes an environmental dimension to Pacific histories of political regionalism and a regional critique of “global”-yet-Western histories of environmentalism.
Dynamics in the regulatory genome
Keywords: gene regulation
genome
ChIP-seq
cohesin
dynamics

The way in which DNA is uniquely folded in the nucleus into specific conformations enables and/or reflects cell-type specific interactions of active cis-regulatory elements, namely promoters and enhancers, to regulate specific programs of gene expression. The cohesin protein complex is a key player in the dynamic organisation of genome folding, orchestrating chromatin looping through a process known as loop extrusion. How this process is directed in a cell-type specific manner is currently unknown. A widely accepted hypothesis is that cohesin is recruited to active cis-regulatory elements, however current methods are unable to assay the dynamic nature of cohesin loading onto the chromatin. To address this, in this thesis I have developed inducible cellular models that enable cohesin to be tracked in a dynamic manner, in an attempt to answer this question.
Initially, I investigated if a single active enhancer was capable of recruiting cohesin to a neutral region of the genome. Using a high-resolution chromosome conformation capture approach, I showed that a new 3D domain was formed following activation of the enhancer, and that cohesin was recruited to this locus. Whilst this provided convincing evidence that cohesin plays a key role in this process, perhaps via loop extrusion mediated domain formation, data from a single locus provides no way of testing where cohesin was first recruited upon the activation of the domain. In the next two chapters I developed two novel cellular models to investigate cohesin dynamics on a genome-wide scale by orthologous ‘push’ and ‘pull’ technologies. In doing so I aimed to investigate whether active cis-regulatory elements are responsible for driving the recruitment of cohesin on a genome-wide scale.
Exploring the role of GPR65 in driving the pathology of ankylosing spondylitis
Keywords: immunology
antibody discovery

Genome wide association studies have identified GPR65 risk loci with many immune-mediated diseases, including ankylosing spondylitis; however, its pathogenic role remains unknown. The inflamed synovial joint has a low pH signature, therefore understanding the role of this lymphocyte-expressed, proton-sensing GPCR in the context of joint inflammation is important.
With no commercial reagents available, I set out to generate monoclonal antibodies specific to human GPR65, with the aim to use them as tools in further studies. Phage display technology paired with novel antigen design, and multiple immunisation strategies proved challenging and largely unsuccessful in my hands. Despite terminal sera titres binding GPR65-expressing HEK cells, antigen-specificity was lost upon screening against primary cells.
In parallel, I have explored receptor expression on PBMC subsets and interrogated the biology of GPR65. Upon stimulation, cellular activation and pro-inflammatory cytokine release was suppressed from cells that express the highest levels GPR65 at pH6.5, compared to those at neutral pH. Due to their receptor expression profile, response to extracellular pH changes and involvement in disease, I focused on mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells. Significant partial recovery of pH-dependent IFNγ inhibition was observed, at transcriptional and protein levels, when silencing GPR65 in this cell subset; whilst at neutral pH, a pro-inflammatory role for GPR65 activity was proposed, with an increase of IL-17A production from TCR-stimulated MAIT cells detected.