VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Hydrodynamics of highly-loaded axial flow tidal rotors
Keywords: floating tidal
CFD
axial-flow rotors
passive control
tidal energy
blade deformations
hydrodynamics

This thesis presents a study on the hydrodynamics of a highly loaded tidal rotor designed for blockage using numerical models. First, the thesis presents a thorough evaluation of flow analysis methods for CFD simulations. This is a methodological review that enables a coherent and consistent study of axial-flow rotors with blade-resolved CFD simulations under different operational conditions including blade deformations, blockage, and transient flow effects.
Following the methodological assessment, a hydrodynamic analysis of a parametrically deformed axial-flow tidal rotor blade is discussed. The study shows the importance of blade deformations in rotor loads and performance. The hydrodynamics are decoupled by their twist and flapwise deformation components, with only the twist deformation effects successfully explained through two-dimensional blade-element theory. The hydrodynamic changes due to flapwise deformations, with a significant impact on loads and performance, are explained by changes in radial flow through the rotor and across the wake not considered in blade-element theory. These changes in flow induce an inboard load augmentation and an increase in near-tip load shedding, both affecting sectional lift and drag coefficients. The hydrodynamics of both deformation components are shown to be approximately independent of each other, which further enables an exploratory analysis of passive control strategies. Blade deflections as parts of passive control strategies are then shown as a potential alternative to active pitch control systems for tidal turbines.
The high-fidelity simulations were also used to evaluate the constituent parts of blade-element momentum (BEM) models. The simulation data was used to correct the empirical momentum function used at high-load regimes, significantly improving the predictive capabilities of a BEM model, whereas tip-loss correction models were identified as the most significant shortcoming in BEM modelling, greatly affecting the accuracy of the load and performance predictions.
The final part of the thesis evaluates the hydrodynamics of a catamaran-style floating tidal platform, designed to assess transient load effects on rotor blades. Using a seakeeping time-domain hydrodynamic model, coupled with a dynamic BEM model, which is verified through comparison with experiments and high-fidelity simulations, the floating tidal turbine was analysed under the combined effects of waves and currents. The result of this analysis highlights a non-linear interaction between waves, platform motions and loads, having a limited impact on average power and thrust but with a dramatic change in load fluctuations. The analysis highlights the challenges of operating floating tidal rotors near the free surface.
The subject of romance
Keywords: Middle English
individuality
medieval literature
narrative theory
medieval romance
character
subjectivity

This thesis argues that the romances written in England between 1100 and 1500 should be afforded a more central – and indeed originary – position in the history of the literary subject. It is contended that the genre of romance is intimately concerned with the depiction of individuals: that this is, in fact, in every sense the subject of romance. The introduction outlines the growing significance of the individual in fiction after the twelfth century, situating romance as the key secular genre in this development. The following chapters explore the ways in which convention, expectation, and genre intersect with the representation of identity. The thesis suggests that the depiction of subjectivity is no less central in medieval romance than it is in the modern novel; as the forerunner to the novel, romance has been both celebrated and condemned for its emphasis on plot, its repetitive storylines, and recognizable character-types of knight, and lady. By reading for these conventions, the thesis offers new readings of well-known verse and prose romances (such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur) and several lesser-studied, ‘popular’ examples of the genre (including Amis and Amiloun, The Squire of Low Degree, and Le Bone Florence of Rome). As they attempt to uphold the tenets of chivalry (an ideology of constant striving and becoming), the protagonists in these texts grapple with complex and often contradictory inner lives – these are communicated to their audiences through the expression of emotion, and other ‘shorthands’ to interiority. The potential for transgression and poetic freedom is explored in a variety of romances, and their characters are recovered and expanded. The thesis concludes with a reflection on the sometimes uncomfortable positions the subjects of romance must face; unlike our own society, individuation emerges as an inevitable, but not altogether happy, state of being.
Competition law and economic inequality

Keywords: empirical legal studies
competition law
inequality
market power

Scholars and policymakers have recognized inequality as a major social problem affecting political stability, deteriorating public health, and destabilising crime levels. It is increasingly acknowledged in public discourse that competition law could have important effects on inequality levels. However, the specific ways and mechanisms through which a competition law regime might interact with economic inequality remain largely unexplored from an empirical perspective. The thesis aims to address this literature gap.
The thesis empirical findings support a link between competition law and enforcement and economic inequality via its relationship with the levels of competition. The US case study backs the hypothesis that major changes in antitrust laws may have been correlated with macroeconomic trends of rising markups, declining labour share and rising economic inequality. The thesis also found evidence that countries which adopt the text of antitrust laws (as opposed to EU text) are more likely to show higher levels of economic inequality.
The relationship between the scope of competition law and income inequality was somewhat inconclusive at the macro level using a large cross-country dataset, observing a statistically significant relationship in some specifications, but not all. Nevertheless, I found a positive link, statistically significant, between an effective competition policy and the labour share trend, exploring a data set of highly developed countries. The main mechanism through which competition policy affects the labour share is its ability to constrain markups: competition policy is negatively correlated to markups, while markups are negatively correlated to labour share.
The thesis then explores the implications for further research and policy. I argue that competition law is suited to influence pre-distribution of wealth and income and can be further tuned to accommodate concerns for equality. I offer practical ways to implement my approach via prioritising schemes and a greater focus on low- and middle-classes.
Conservation banking in California: uneven dividends
Keywords: commodification
market environmentalism
conservation banking
conservation finance
Neoliberalization of nature
neoliberal governance

Critically engaging with a political ecology analytical framework and the neoliberalization of nature in the form of the U.S. market-based biodiversity banking model, this thesis draws attention to the ways in which conservation banking in California results in inequitable distribution of benefits and costs among its broad network of human and nonhuman actors. Drawing upon two case study conservation banks in California’s San Joaquin and Coachella Valleys, the thesis argues that the state’s conservation bankers multiply their economic and socio-political benefits through diversification of value streams and capital accumulation. Meanwhile, the different nonhumans involved derive more or less benefit depending somewhat upon how charismatic and commodifiable they are, rather than purely upon the broader role they play in biodiversity. The state’s governance approach to conservation through this model is simultaneously progressive, conservative, and neoliberal, in that it acts as a forerunner in U.S. conservation banking, yet adheres primarily to a traditional species-focused environmentalism mindset that favors a minority of nonhuman and human elites. California’s conservation banking program aims to conserve biodiversity while facilitating robust and broad economic development, yet the nature privatization and commodification involved actually reinforces neoliberal modes of benefit consolidation.
It is hoped that this analysis will encourage biodiversity banking scholars to take a wider view of the diversified value bankers derive beyond the sale of market credits, and prompt governance entities to consider the way nonhuman charisma and affect influence the extent to which favored species—rather than ecosystems—are conserved in an endangered species focused paradigm.
Reading and translating with scripture - a study of textual growth in the Enochic theophany in the Book of the Watchers 1:1-9
Keywords: Book of the Watchers
Theophany
Textual Growth
1 Enoch
Ethiopic Enoch

The Enochic Theophany in the Book of the Watchers 1:1-9 is a dynamic text that grew and evolved as it was translated into, and transmitted in, new and changing socio-linguistic and socio-religious contexts. This dissertation traces and examines how the Enochic theophany continued to grow and evolve in Aramaic, Greek, Ethiopic and Latin versions, and focuses on the hermeneutical and text-critical implications of these features of textual growth. Rather than dismissing these shifts and developments in the text as ‘corruptive’ or ‘degenerative’ features in the history and life of the Enochic theophany, the methodology employed in this project envisages them as vital and generative features that reveal how the text was read, interpreted, and re-signified as it was translated and transmitted. This study does not attempt to recover an irretrievable ‘original Aramaic’ text, or to restore the hypothetical margins of the Aramaic fragments using the later versions as a guide, but instead traces the vitality and dynamism of the Enochic theophany as a participant in an ongoing and shifting theophanic and Enochic-Noahic discourse that was not static or unilinear. Therefore, the focus will be less on what the text was, but rather on what the text came to be.
States of indifference: administering solidarity in post-crisis Athens
Keywords: volunteering
bureaucracy
crisis
Athens
debt
austerity
solidarity

Characterised as the Solidarity Movement, the grassroots response that followed the Greek debt crisis has widely been understood as a challenge to neoliberal imperatives and an alternative to austerity. This thesis upsets such understandings by attending to the ironies of solidarity. Unpicking anthropology’s moral attachments to the Solidarity Movement, it questions the limits of scholarship that presupposes resistance, and where solidarity collapses with the idea of the ‘alternative’. Contrary to prevailing academic accounts, solidarity was not harmonious but rooted in fractured understandings of dependency, as volunteers struggled with their own habits of care and those of others. Driven by anxieties about corruption, the volunteers developed an administrative regime that limited how participants interacted with the space of solidarity. Through this proceduralisation, the volunteers displaced the indifference of the bureaucratic state with an indifferent rendering of solidarity. Egalitarianism had the further effect of compelling them to set themselves apart as the arbiters of equality. By cultivating themselves as disinterested agents, the volunteers concealed the ethical nature of their efforts and distinguished charity from solidarity. Pursuing solidarity thus led the volunteers to confront a number of ironies: that the space they created was not one of harmony but repeated conflicts; how a longing for the mundane was enfolded in radical aspirations; and that caring meant finding ways not care. In conclusion, the thesis considers the interplay of engagement and disengagement, offering a comparison between volunteers and anthropologists, by considering them as adjacent moral subjects. Interrogating the power rooted in the ability render ethical attachments, it reflects on how solidarity participates in a nostalgic desire for certainty in a moment, concurrent in anthropology, whereby potentials of self and engagement have become occupied by a politics of compassion.
The suffering Christ: an international symbol of piety and identity, 1450-1550
Keywords: suffering Christ
late medieval Christological devotion
the suffering Christ and the Reformation
late medieval piety

This thesis analyses images of the suffering Christ between circa 1450 and circa 1550 from across Western Europe, including Western-ruled territories in the Christian East (Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus). Objects from various media have been examined. At the heart of this study is a database of 500 images, from which key points have been drawn. Using this data, and supplementing it with the themes expounded on by contemporary devotional texts and images, this thesis posits that the image of the suffering Christ was ubiquitously at the heart of late medieval piety. It thus argues against historiographical trends which overemphasise the place of the Virgin Mary and the saints in pre-Reformation Catholicism. It also takes issue with the claims of Caroline Walker Bynum that blood was the focus of late medieval devotion. The multiple iconographies which define Christological piety suggest that we cannot take a single depiction or part of Christ in isolation of the rest. Indeed, the thesis argues that many of these iconographies were fractals through which Christ and His Passion could be communicated to the devotee. Through these iconographies, as well as material exchanges and material culture, Christus patiens was a – if not the most –prominent feature in the late medieval pious landscape. The image was also a dynamic one. Community was structured around it, and the otherness of confessional misfits reinforced. Its pairing with texts also elevated devotion by combining the visual and meditational; there is evidence of people facilitating this process by colouring images and sewing or pasting them into texts. The suffering Christ was also the focus of intense and highly visual meditation during the Mass. Finally, this study examines how this image fared with the onset of reform, arguing that Christ’s suffering body was of enduring importance as a key battleground of the Reformation.
Scattering amplitudes and Wilson loops in twistor space
Keywords: scattering amplitudes
twistor theory
Wilson loops

Scattering amplitudes are fundamental and remarkably rich observables in quantum field theory. The basic observation that makes scattering amplitudes fascinating is that in theories with massless particles of spin s ≥ 1, they are much simpler than might be expected from traditional Feynman diagram techniques for computing them. This simple observation might ultimately have profound consequences for our view of quantum field theory. The broad aim of this thesis is to understand and exploit the hidden simplicity and structure in scattering amplitudes.
The quantum field theory with the simplest scattering amplitudes in four dimensions is planar = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. This theory has provided considerable inspiration in developing new computational techniques and has provided many important theoretical insights. In this theory, there is a remarkable correspondence between scattering amplitudes and null polygonal Wilson loops, observables which on first inspection look very different. In this thesis, we will provide new insights into this correspondence using methods from twistor theory and exploit the symmetries of the problem to find new ways of computing scattering amplitudes.
‘Two hands, multiple fingerprints’: understanding the development of water markets in China

Keywords: institutional diversity
policy transfer
water markets
water rights
China

Since several countries have used formal and informal regulatory and institutional mechanisms to deal with water competition, they have become pivotal to our understanding of the role of water markets in water management. In ‘Two Hands, Multiple Fingerprints’: Understanding the Development of Water Markets in China, I examine the emergence, diffusion, and diversity of water markets in China. In this dissertation, through an historical analysis of three case studies across northern and north-western China, I argue that the water supply infrastructure and water markets have developed alongside one another, thus culminating in a “two-hands” (government and market) approach to water governance. Drawing on an original transactions data set for the period from 2000 to 2019, I extend the analysis of the “two hands” approach to water governance by (1) identifying the different configurations of water markets, and (2) looking at how they have developed across space and time. I argue that, in multiple ways, which are based on critical junctures in Chinese politics, the central government influences patterns of water-rights trading. In addition, Chinese–Australian development projects have exerted an external influence over China’s water rights and market reforms.
This dissertation contributes to theories of institutional choice in two domains – the relation of institutions to different types of infrastructures, and the role of hybrids and the potential for configurations to discern different pathways. Its findings show patterns of institutional development in Chinese markets that move beyond a dichotomous relationship between state and market. This dissertation also extends the policy transfer and diffusion literature by analyzing the rise, fall, and revival of tradable water rights policy through the lens of individual actors and bilateral development cooperation. It highlights the political role of individual actors along three functional dimensions – (1) the part played by the former minister of water resources, Wang Shucheng (1998–2007), in transforming market ideas into policy; (2) the role of senior Chinese officials engaged in best-practice learning from Australia (2005–2007) in helping to draw up a national framework for water entitlements and allocations in China; and (3) the activities of scientists in designing an online trading platform in the Shiyang Basin based on lessons learned from Victoria, Australia. Finally, the dissertation highlights the importance of the structure of the international system as a driving force behind the bilateral development cooperation. The Water Entitlements and Trading Project (WET) and the Australia China Environment Development Partnership (ACEDP) occurred when Australia pursued a policy of accommodation with China at a time when the international consensus was to integrate China into global institutions.
Learning system adaptive legged robotic locomotion policies
Keywords: adaptive control
legged robotics
reinforcement learning

The ability to form support contacts at discontinuous locations makes legged robots suitable for locomotion over highly unstructured terrains. While recent years have witnessed significant robotic developments, delivering extremely dynamic and robust hardware solutions, the control intelligence for legged robots to perform agile and sophisticated maneuvers remains an active area of research. This thesis, therefore, focuses on the control of legged systems, particularly, quadrupedal robots.
The research presented in this thesis is driven by the motivation that a controller governing the behavior of a system should thoroughly utilize its potential while also adapting to variations in system dynamics through emergence of behavior that still achieves the control objective.
Sampling-based search methods allow explorations along vast regions of operation, thereby, enabling discovery of near-optimal solutions. Similarly, data-driven reinforcement learning (RL) strategies allow development of controllers which exploit system dynamics to achieve the control objective described by a high-level reward function. The problem of legged robot locomotion can thus be approached using reinforcement learning to obtain robust and dynamic control solutions. Additionally, the control policy describing the behavior of the system can be parameterized as a deep neural network to perform complex non-linear mapping of the robot state information to desired control action. This approach of utilizing a deep neural network is then referred to as deep reinforcement learning. In this dissertation I focus on employing deep RL strategies for quadrupedal locomotion.
I present that encouraging the RL control policy to even implicitly model system dynamics allows for emergence of adaptive control behaviors. I use this observation throughout this thesis to develop system adaptive control strategies leading up to an ambitious goal of obtaining an RL locomotion policy capable of zero-shot transfer to quadrupeds of varying kinematic and dynamic properties.
Although the main contributions relate to RL, I also recognize the benefits and drawbacks of different control approaches, and thus explore modular control architectures which utilize both model-based and data-driven model-free strategies for robot locomotion. In this regard, I present training and control architectures which exhibit dynamic locomotion behavior over terrains with varying steps and inclines, both in lab experiments and field trials.
In combination, the works presented in this thesis investigate, and, in my firm belief, further the state of legged robotic control advocating for development of artificial control intelligence which matches the level of complexity demonstrated by massively evolved biological counterparts.
The impact of explosive volcanic eruptions on the North Atlantic climate system
Keywords: Stratospheric dynamics
Atmospheric Dynamics
Volcanic eruptions

Volcanic eruptions have a variety of impacts on the climate, from short-term reductions in temperature lasting only days, to longer term impacts due to the influence of stratospheric aerosols lasting 2-3 years, and even decadal scale effects arising from the impact on the oceans. Large tropical eruptions have the biggest impact on the stratosphere and have the potential to have long lasting global impacts. These large eruptions allow sulphate aerosols to be formed within the tropical stratosphere and transported globally by the stratospheric circulation, not only causing the well-known global averaged surface cooling, but also heating within the stratosphere due to the aerosols which can cause significant dynamical feedbacks.
In this thesis, I investigate the impact of such large tropical eruptions on the North Atlantic wintertime climate. I analyse observational and reanalysis datasets for periods within 1870-2010 using multiple linear regression to try to isolate the volcanic response from other forms of climate variability in sea level pressure (SLP), sea surface temperature (SST), the North Atlantic jet latitude and speed, and atmospheric blocking. I do this at various lags from 0 to 5 years following an eruption, which shows the initial wintertime surface response similar to a positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phase as found in previous studies. However, the strongest signal appears during the first winter and doesn’t persist as strongly into the second as these studies have suggested. Focusing on time periods centred on specific eruptions shows the strongest response comes from the Mount Pinatubo eruption of 1991, and that the eruption of Agung in 1963 shows a very different response pattern. A ‘lag 4 response’ also appears during the 5th post-eruption winter in several fields, which, if real, could suggest the influence of other mechanisms, possibly involving the ocean, and warrants further investigation.