VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
An investigation of the association between sleep disturbance and mood instability
Keywords: sleep problems
Mood instability

Mood instability (MI) and sleep disturbance (SD) are common in the general population, especially among persons with mental illness. Independently, MI and SD are associated with a range of poor health outcomes; however, there exists little evidence about their relationship. Using a series of six studies, this thesis investigated the relationship between MI and SD as transdiagnostic features on a shared pathway to ill health.
A systematic review of the prevalence of MI in the general population showed few and highly heterogeneous reports available within the literature. The results of the review highlight pervasive challenges underlying the study of MI, particularly the absence of consistent definitions and thoroughly validated measurement tools.
To investigate the epidemiological association between MI and SD, studies two and three examined data from a nationally representative survey of English adult household residents. Study three revealed that both MI and SD are common and closely linked within the population and associated with increased occurrence of suicidal ideation and behaviour. Study four showed that MI and SD are strongly and significantly associated with a wide range of poor mental and physical health and social outcomes such as difficulties with activities of daily living, socioeconomic indicators, and diagnosed health conditions.
In study four, prospective data on MI and SD from electronic health records from secondary mental health care showed that MI and SD are associated with significantly higher rates of mental health services use, hospitalisation, and prescribed medication.
Finally, an attempt to disentangle the directionality between MI and SD found strong cross-sectional evidence, but weak evidence of temporal trends between mood and sleep changes.
Taken together, the results of this thesis highlight existing and ongoing challenges to the study of highly temporal data on a large scale. However, the findings of this thesis provide essential knowledge for linking future epidemiological studies with high resolution examination of dynamic processes such as MI. Clinically, there is a critical need for increased recognition of MI and SD as modifiable risk factors of illness and related complications, rather than secondary symptoms. Earlier and effective intervention may help to reduce the burden associated with MI and SD, and mental illness.
Testing and learning on distributional and set inputs
Keywords: Bayesian
Kernel methods

As machine learning gains significant attention in many disciplines and research communities, the variety of data structures has increased, with examples including distributions and sets of observations. In this thesis, we consider sets and distributions as inputs for machine learning problems. In particular, we propose non-parametric tests, supervised learning, semi-supervised learning and metalearning methodologies on these objects. In each case, with careful consideration of the input structure, we construct models that are applicable to various real life tasks.
We begin by considering the problem of weakly supervised learning on aggregate outputs, where the labels are only available at a much coarser resolution than the level of inputs, such that a set of inputs corresponds to each output. Constructing a tractable and scalable framework of aggregated observation models using Gaussian processes, we apply it to the important problem of fine-scale spatial modelling of malaria incidences. In particular, it is demonstrated that the prediction of unobserved pixel-level malaria intensities is possible using finescale environmental covariates.
Utilising the same data structure, but with the interpretation that the set of samples is drawn from a distribution, we consider the problem of modelling distributions in the context of hyperparameter selection for supervised learning tasks. Through transfer of information from previously solved tasks using learnt representations of the training datasets, we construct a Gaussian process framework that jointly models all the meta-information available. In application to a range of regression and classification tasks, we demonstrate that we achieve faster convergence compared to the state-of-the-art baselines.
Multi-mass imaging in chemical reaction dynamics
Keywords: Electron ionization
Laser spectroscopy
PImMS
Molecular beams
Velocity-map imaging
Multi-mass imaging
Mass spectrometry
Ion imaging

The work described in this thesis illustrates the application of multi-mass velocity-map imaging in the investigation of molecular fragmentation dynamics. Results from three experiments, focussing on three types of fragmentation processes, are reported. Firstly, a photofragmentation and photoionization study of niobium oxide (NbO) is presented. Analysis of the recorded velocity-map images yields refined values for the dissociation energies of NbO and NbO+, which are found to be 60,650±124 cm−1 and 57,414 ± 124 cm−1, respectively. In addition, the first steps towards the study of charged metal-ligand clusters are outlined using the example of the photofragmentation of the VCO2+ complex.
In Chapter 3, the UV-induced photofragmentation dynamics of the CH2BrI molecule are studied in a time-resolved UV-pump XUV-probe experiment. While the findings are largely consistent with previous studies on this system, evidence for charge transfer processes between the XUV ionized halogen photoproducts and neutral rotationally excited CH2Br fragments are found.
Finally, Chapter 4 presents an experimental study of the dissociative electron ionization of CF3I. Following the ionization step, dissociation of singly-charged parent ions proceeds via either the C-I bond or C-F bond breaking with very different dynamics. A mixture of statistical′anddirect' bond breaking dynamics is observed, and can be rationalized by comparison with photoionization studies. Evidence for the fragmentation of doubly and triply charged ions is also found, with these processes apparently proceeding via a two-body Coulomb explosion followed by further fragmentation of the molecular product ion.
"Der Zauberberg" and the pleasures of immersive reading
Keywords: German literature
Thomas Mann
Reception
Der Zauberberg
The Magic Mountain
Comparative Literature

This is the first study of "Der Zauberberg" written from the perspective of its non-academic readers. It will be of interest to scholars of Thomas Mann, transnational German studies, comparative literature, and reception studies. Starting from the observation that literary scholarship almost never engages with the experience of non-academic readers, I argue that this is a serious limitation, since our very rationale for studying books is that they belong to human culture and matter to their readers. This is a particularly pressing problem for the study of "Der Zauberberg" because the novel portrays Hans Castorp’s gradual immersion in culture: in other words, it thematizes the very process of reading, reception, and the value and relevance of culture. In this study, I discuss hundreds of records of reading experiences – preserved in parentheses and asides and between the lines of traditional academic studies, on Internet fora and blogs, in reviews, essays and memoirs, marketing brochures from Davos and advertizing copy used to sell the novel, Mann’s fan mail and his replies to it, and in books and films, whether popular, famous or half-forgotten. The reading records that I have brought together span the century since the novel’s publication, as well as numerous languages and several continents, and testify to an energetic confrontation with "Der Zauberberg" outside the ivory tower of academia. Using the common metaphor of immersion in a book, I discuss different examples of how and why non-academic readers have engaged with the novel and what it has meant to them, and what academic readers have missed by not attending to this wealth of untapped material. Through case studies of different responses to "Der Zauberberg", I ask what it means to interact with culture, and argue that this is precisely what the novel is all about.
Constructions in stable commutator length and bounded cohomology
Keywords: Bounded Cohomology
Stable Commutator Length

The bounded cohomology of a group G with coefficients in a normed G-module V was first systematically studied by Gromov in 1982 in his seminal paper [Gro82] in connection to the minimal volume of manifolds. Since then it has sparked much research in Geometric Group Theory. However, it is notoriously hard to explicitly compute bounded cohomology, even for the most basic groups: There is no finitely generated group G for which the full bounded cohomology with real coefficients is known except where it is known to vanish in all degrees (see [Mon06]). In this thesis we discuss several new constructions for classses in bounded cohomology.
There is a well-known interpretation of ordinary group cohomology in degrees 2 and 3 in terms of group extensions. We establish an analogous interpretation in the context of bounded cohomology. This involves certain maps between arbitrary groups called quasihomomorphisms, which were defined and studied by Fujiwara and Kapovich in [FK16].
A key open problem is to compute the full bounded cohomology of a non-abelian free group F with trivial real coefficients. It is known that the bounded cohomology in dimension n is trivial for n = 1 and infinite dimensional for n = 2, 3, but essentially nothing is known about for n ≥ 4. For n = 4, one may construct classes by taking the cup product between two 2-classes, but it is possible that all such cup-products are trivial. We show that all such cup-products do indeed vanish if both classes are induced by the quasimorphisms of Brooks or Rolli.
Toll links metabolism and microbiota in the Drosophila intestine
Keywords: Toll pathway
4E-BP
Lactobacillaceae
Gut microbiota
Rapamycin
mTOR pathway

Peptidoglycan recognition protein SA (PGRP-SA) is an extracellular recognition protein, which interacts with the peptidoglycan of Gram-positive bacteria and activates the Toll signalling pathway. While many studies have described the interaction of PGRP-SA with pathogenic bacteria, studies on its response to commensal bacteria is lacking. Using Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism, we demonstrate the relationship between PGRP-SA with the indigenous gut microbiota, and how the activity of mTOR influences this relationship. Our results reveal that PGRP-SA is essential to maintain microbial load and retain Lactobacillaceae in young flies. Moreover, inhibition of the activity of mTOR restores the microbiota of PGRP-SA mutant seml flies in a density dependent manner. Translational regulation factor, 4E-BP, whose levels are dictated by both Toll and mTOR pathway of the host, mediates this host-microbiome interaction. Our results give an insight into how host factors maintain indigenous microbiota in a healthy gut. This can help us better understand the genetic basis of variation in the composition of gut bacteria, and assist in developing measures to tackle microbiota induced disorders in the future.
Why does God save the king?
Keywords: Social Movements
Protests
Regime Survival
Subsidies
Oil
Opposition
Monarchy
Authoritarianism

Inspired by the outcome of the 2010 Arab uprisings, this project explores the causal mechanisms behind regime survival in the monarchies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It is motivated by the following research question: How do Arab monarchies survive active opposition?
To answer this question, this study develops a theory about successful regime behavior that leads to survival. This theory highlights how active opposition impacts the process that leads to regime survival, and how survival-seeking regime behavior in turn affects immediate as well as future opposition. It argues that authoritarian monarchs survive by using a specific toolkit to contain (rather than exacerbate) threats. This toolkit consists of various combinations of strategies which rulers choose consistently depending on the level of threat which they face. The latter is determined by the goals and motivations of the opposition, the evolving interrelationship between the regime and different opposition actors, and various exogenous factors.
Methodologically, this project is characterized by a mixed methods triangulation approach which analyzes both quantitative and qualitative data separately before converging the results for interpretation. The author’s analysis of a wider scope of different but complementary data- from in-depth interviews, archival research, primary sources, trends and datasets- allows her to advance well-substantiated conclusions. Moreover, this study is constructed around a three-part, in-depth explanatory case-study which follows a micro-level approach to within-country and cross-country analysis. Its main theory is built through a fine-grained analysis of Morocco and Oman, confirmed through a cross-country analysis of the remaining six Arab monarchies, and further developed through a study of negative cases such as Iran’s Pahlavi monarchy and Gaddafi’s Libya.
This dissertation makes several important theoretical and empirical contributions to the fields of Comparative and Middle East politics, and its main argument presents a novel and comprehensive explanation about authoritarian persistence.
Non-contact vital sign monitoring of pre-term infants
Keywords: Camera
Non-contact monitoring
Respiratory rate
Heart rate
Photoplethysmography
Vital signs

Non-contact vital sign monitoring using video cameras enables the measurement of heart rate and respiratory rate to be performed without sensors attached to the skin of the patient. This provides advantages in terms of patient comfort and the management of skin irritation and infection. However, the use of non-contact technologies in the clinic presents several challenges such as variations in human skin colour, changes in lighting conditions, the detection of the presence of a patient in the video frame and the selection of suitable regions of interests (ROIs) from which vital signs can be estimated.
This thesis proposes a framework for the accurate and continuous measurement of heart rate and respiratory rate in pre-term infants in a real-world hospital environment. The framework has been developed and validated on the data obtained from a clinical study of pre-term infants hospitalised in the high-dependency area of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. The study involved the recording of videos and reference vital signs for 90 sessions during daytime from 30 pre-term infants, comprising a total recording time of 426.6 hours. The dataset provided a wide range of vital sign values for developing and validating the framework.
Multi-task deep learning algorithms were developed so that vital-sign estimation could be performed only when the infant was present in front of the video camera and no clinical interventions were undertaken. The algorithms are able to deal with different skin tones, lighting condition changes and variable body postures.
Heart rate is estimated from the photoplethysmographic imaging (PPGi) signal derived from subtle changes in the colour of the skin areas. Respiratory rate is estimated using data fusion from the PPGi signals along with the shape and morphological properties of the skin areas. Signal quality assessment algorithms are developed for both heart rate and respiratory rate to discriminate between clinically acceptable and noisy signals. In a test set, the mean absolute error between the reference and camera-derived heart rates is 2.3 beats/min for over 76% of the time for which the reference and camera data are valid. The mean absolute error between the reference and camera-derived respiratory rate is 3.6 breaths/min for over 78% of the time. Most of the time periods during which the video camera cannot provide estimates of heart rate and respiratory rate are lower than 30 seconds.
This thesis further investigated the feasibility of using non-contact algorithms to estimate heart rate and respiratory rate during a painful clinical procedure, a heel prick for withdrawing blood for blood gas analysis. Adaptation of the algorithms enables physiological indicators of pain to be derived from the analysis of the video camera data.
Students' and teachers’ beliefs about second language vocabulary learning: Using congruence and friction to predict outcomes in a Mexican EFL context
Keywords: Teacher beliefs
EFL
Student beliefs

This mixed-methods study investigated students’ and teachers’ beliefs about vocabulary learning, the relationship between student and teacher beliefs, and whether the nature of this relationship is related to vocabulary development among students. Previous research has investigated the relationship between students’ beliefs and learning outcomes, but little research has been conducted comparing students’ and teachers’ beliefs, especially not within the context of vocabulary learning.
The study involved two groups of participants: students and teachers. The student participant group consisted of 110 first-year high-school students studying English at a bilingual private high school in Mexico. The teacher participant group included their 4 English teachers and 4 teachers at a comparable bilingual private high school. Student and teacher beliefs about vocabulary learning were identified by means of two sets of instruments: equivalent questionnaires and interview schedules, given midway through their semester. Near the end of their course, students also completed a test of vocabulary depth, measuring acquisition of lexical items covered in class during the semester in which the self-report data were collected. The analysis of the quantitative data consisted of descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, non-parametric comparison of mean ranks, and hierarchical multiple regression, while the qualitative data were content-analysed.
The results revealed a three-factor structure for interpreting students’ vocabulary-related beliefs. Overall, across these three factors there was a high degree of agreement between teacher and student responses with no significant differences found between them. However, interview data pointed to some areas where teachers and students might hold differing views. Crucially, a measure of the extent to which students disagree with their teacher was found to predict a small portion of the variance in student vocabulary scores.
The results of this study may therefore be of benefit in second language instruction if they convince teachers of the importance of recognizing their students’ beliefs about language learning, and the importance of rationalizing their actions in the classroom to their students.
Of mice and MenB: assessing the immune mechanisms underlying meningococcal capsular group B vaccines in mice
Keywords: Outer membrane vesicles
Viral vectored vaccine
RNA-seq
Noise
Systems vaccinology
Immunological pathways
Signal sequence
Molecular determinants
Fever

Neisseria meningitidis is the causative agent of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) which claims between 50,000 and 135,000 lives worldwide annually. Disease caused by the capsular group B meningococcus (MenB) is the leading cause of infectious death in UK infants. A four component vaccine, 4CMenB, has been developed to prevent IMD caused by this capsular group, but is associated with a high incidence of fever in infants and requires multiple doses to induce adequate protection. A novel adenovirus-based vaccine encoding the MenB factor H binding protein (fHbp) with an N-terminal signal sequence (Ad-fHbp) has been developed at the Oxford Vaccine Group and was found to induce high titres of protective antibody after a single dose in mice. The central aims of the work presented in this thesis were to elucidate the immune mechanisms underlying the reactogenicity of 4CMenB and the immunogenicity of Ad-fHbp. ‘Systems vaccinology’ has provided many insights into vaccine-induced responses by combining high-throughput sequencing with conventional immunogenicity assays to characterise the gene signatures and immunological pathways underlying them. However, the RNA- sequencing (RNA-seq) component of such studies can be compromised by the impact of computational choices on the final differential gene expression (DGE) call. A novel DGE pipeline was developed in the present study to mitigate the impact of this computational ‘noise’. A ‘systems’ approach was then taken to comparatively assess 4CMenB vaccine combinations and components in order to determine the cause of fever in a mouse immunisation model. Using a combination of RNA-seq, temperature, and inflammation markers, the reactogenicity was ultimately attributed to the membrane-bound endotoxin contained in the outer membrane vesicle component of the vaccine. To explore the phenomenon of the early, sustained protective immune response induced by Ad-fHbp, a panel of N-terminal signal sequence insertion/deletion variants of the antigen were comparatively assessed for in vitro expression from mammalian cells and for immunogenicity in mice. The full-length sequence demonstrated superior early expression and induction of bactericidal antibody and was also found to significantly boost antigen-specific T cell responses when incorporated ahead of other adenovirus-encoded bacterial antigens, highlighting it’s potential as an immune-enhancing sequence element for other viral vectored vaccine transgenes. Finally, antigen-specific immunological pathways were defined for the fHbp transgene product by comparative transcriptomics. The work presented in this thesis contributes to our understanding of what constitutes a well-tolerated and immunogenic meningococcal vaccine.
Behaviour orders: preventive and/or punitive measures?
Keywords: prevention
behaviour orders
punishment

This thesis enquires into the nature of behaviour orders; specifically, it seeks to establish whether they are preventive and/or punitive. In 1998, Parliament introduced the anti-social behaviour order (ASBO), an order granted in a civil court that imposed ostensibly preventive conditions – such as curfews – on its recipient. Breach of a condition was an offence. This hybrid model was meant to overcome the supposedly unique difficulties of addressing anti-social behaviour through the criminal law. There has since been a proliferation of behaviour orders that take the form of or forms similar to the now repealed ASBO. At present, there are 33 such orders that target behaviours ranging from community nuisance to violent offending.
Behaviour orders are often described as preventive by courts and commentators. The central contention of this thesis is that though all behaviour orders are preventive, many are also punitive. The importance of this contention lies in the consequences of both classifications. Heightened safeguards, such as the presumption of innocence, must be employed when a trial may result in punishment. The current processes for the imposition of behaviour orders fall short of these standards. In addition, the thesis argues comparable safeguards should precede the imposition of preventive measures imposed by the state when these measures are coercive and based on a risk assessment. Again, such safeguards are not routinely employed before behaviour orders are imposed. In making out this argument, the thesis develops a new taxonomy of behaviour orders; offers new insight into both domestic judgments on behaviour orders and related decisions of the European Court of Human Rights; and critically engages with the concepts of punishment and prevention themselves.