VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
From paradox to policy: the problem of energy resource conservation in Britain and America, 1865-1981
Keywords: energy geography
systems theory
energy history
resource geography
energy conservation

The idea that we can 'save energy' has become a commonplace homily. But with a moment's reflection it is clear there is nothing self-evident about saving energy. Do we save fuel or a system’s ability to 'do work'? Do we conserve for perpetuity or to prolong use? Is the motivation resource economy, scarcity, productivity, or - more recently - climate change mitigation? And what stops the fruits of individual parsimony being consumed elsewhere? This thesis offers a history of the idea that we can conserve energy by using it more efficiently. In recounting this story, it is argued that conserved energy is a 'metrological resource' produced by practices of measurement, calculation, and computation. A second argument is that the history of ERC offers an under examined example of a 'resource ontology’; the social processes through which nature is imbued with utility and value. Accordingly, the study of, what is termed, energy resource conservation (ERC herein) involved a novel research method which focused upon the scientific and intellectual processes of resource making, as much as the material. This thesis begins in 1865 with the publication of William Jevons' The Coal Question (1865), in which the resource conservative principles of Classical political economy were overturned. Jevons argued that increased efficiency of coal use would serve only to increase the rate and scale with which coal was used. Proceeding from this anti-thesis, the following chapters outline how, irrespective of Jevons' claim, policies based on the principles of scientific management were applied to the conservation of fuel resources for conserving natural resources. In pre-war America, a complex system of 'pro-rationing' extraction licenses were introduced to conserve the productive capacity of petroleum wells. However, a significant shift occurred during the Cold War, as the conservation of fuel became increasingly conflated with the econometrician's notion of efficient resource allocation. But the most significant developments occurred in the nineteen-seventies, in response to a perceived crisis in energy supply. Fuel policy became a more systemic 'energy policy', which drew on scientific management, graph theory, systems theory, statistical mechanics, and computational econometrics in an attempt to quantify and demonstrate how society could act to conserve energy resources by increasing the efficiency of energy use. The resulting science, and its concomitant policies were an odd mix of cold war rational decision making theories, détente science, scientific radicalism, and liberal economic theory, all given a countercultural and environmentalist gloss in the latter half of the decade. On the basis of this conflation of ideas, a new approach to energy saving that emerged, which transformed the principles of energy resource governance, shifting the onus to conserve from producer to consumer, with distinct implications for post-war theories of political economy.
Study of mixed mode electro-optical operations of Ge2Sb2Te5
Keywords: Ge2Sb2Te5
GST(225)
Nano-devices
GST
Phase Change Materials
Mixed mode electro-optic operation
Optoelectronics

Chalcogenide based Phase Change Materials are currently of great technological interest in the growing field of optoelectronics. Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) is the most widely studied phase change material, and it has been commercially used in both optical and electronic data storage applications, due to its ability to switch between two different atomic configurations, at high speed and with low power consumption, as well as its high optical and electrical contrast between amorphous and crystalline states. Despite its well-known optical and electrical properties, the operation in combination of optical and electrical domains has not yet been fully investigated.
This work studies the operation of GST nano-devices exposed to a combination of optical and electrical stimuli or mixed mode by asking, is it possible to electrically measure an optically induced phase change, or vice versa? If so, how do the optical and electrical responses relate to each other, and is it possible to operate GST with a combination of optical and electrical signals? What are the technical constraints that need to be considered in order to fabricate GST devices that could be operated either optically or electrically?
In order to answer these questions, experiments that characterized the optical and electrical responses of GST based nano-devices were performed. It was found that different crystallization mechanisms may have influence in the response, and that the thermal and optical design characteristics of the device play a key role in its operation. Finally a proof of principle, of an opto-electonic memory device that can be read electrically, reset optically and write electrically, is presented. This opens up possibilities for the development of new opto-eloectronic applications such as non-volatile interfaces between future photonics and electronics, high speed optical communication detectors, high speed cameras, artificial retinas and many more.
Crisis, credibility, and corruption: how ideas and institutions shape government behaviour in India
Keywords: United Progressive Alliance
Decision-making
Ideology
Liberal
Arvind Kejriwal
India
Jayaprakash Narayan
Right-wing
Populism
Anna Hazare
Indira Gandhi
Elites
Protests
Corruption
Reform
Indian National Congress
Manmohan Singh

Anti-corruption movements play a vital role in democratic development. From the American Gilded Age to global demonstrations in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, these movements seek to combat malfeasance in government and improve accountability. While this collective action remains a constant, how government elites perceive and respond to such agitation, varies. My dissertation tackles this puzzle head-on: Why do some democratic governments respond more tolerantly than others to anti-corruption movements?
To answer this research question, I examine variation across time in two cases within the world’s largest democracy: India. I compare the Congress Party government's suppressive response to the Jayaprakash Narayan movement in 1975, and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government’s tolerant response to the India Against Corruption movement in 2012.
For developing democracies such as India, comparativist scholarship gives primacy to external, material interests – such as votes and rents – as proximately shaping government behavior. Although these logics explain elite decision-making around elections and the predictability of pork barrel politics, they fall short in explaining government conduct during credibility crises, such as when facing nationwide anti-corruption movements.
In such instances of high political uncertainty, I argue, it is the absence or presence of an ideological checks and balance mechanism among decision-making elites in government that shapes suppression or tolerance respectively. This mechanism is produced from the interaction between structure (multi-party coalition) and agency (divergent cognitive frames in positions of authority). In this dissertation, elites analyze the anti-corruption movement and form policy prescriptions based on their frames around social and economic development as well as their concepts of the nation.
My research consists of over 110 individual interviews with state elites, including the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers, party leaders, and senior bureaucrats among other officials for the contemporary case; and a broad compilation of private letters, diplomatic cables and reports, and speeches collected from three national archives for the historical study.
To my knowledge this is the first data-driven study of Indian politics that precisely demonstrates how ideology acts as a constraint on government behavior in a credibility crisis. On a broader level, my findings contribute to the recently renewed debate in political science as to why democracies sometimes behave illiberally.
A measure for measure: moderation and the mean in the literature of Spain's Golden Age
Keywords: Moderation
Excess
Calderón
Garcilaso
mediocritas
Aristotle
Golden-Age literature
Gracián
Mean

This thesis presents the first sustained analysis of the reception of the Aristotelian golden mean in early modern Spanish literature. It argues that the critically-neglected ethical credo of moderation was an important part of the classical inheritance on which Golden-Age authors frequently drew, and that despite its famous origins in moral philosophy rather than literature, it was subject to just the same kind of imitative reworking as has long been acknowledged for literary predecessors. The analysis is divided into two sections. The first takes a synoptic view of the period, assessing the transmission of Aristotle's doctrine to the Renaissance and exploring what it meant to the Golden-Age mind. That includes identifying a particular early modern reformulation of the mean, which I argue was an important factor in the popularity of the Icarus and Phaethon myths, as analogues for Aristotle's moral. The body of the thesis then comprises three case studies of the role of moderation in works which span the period’s chronological and generic range: the poetry of Garcilaso; Calderón's 'El médico de su honra'; and Gracián's 'Criticón'. These studies explore three important general trends in the reception of the mean: the association of excess and moderation with particular literary models; the incorporation of the mean into Christian thought; and its parallel existence as non-technical, commonplace wisdom. However, each chapter also constitutes an innovation within its own field, offering a reassessment of Garcilaso's relationship to literary tradition; a re-reading of the characters and plot structure of 'El médico', including the controversial King Pedro; and an analysis of the elusive moral approach behind Gracián's allegorical novel. The mean is thus remarkable for both the breadth and depth of its incorporation into literature, and a focus on its treatment offers substantial new insights into some of the canonical works of the age.
War and associative duties
Keywords: political theory
rights
self-defence
national defence
noncombatant immunity
war
associative duties
political philosophy

Combatants in war inflict untold devastation. They lay waste the environment, destroy cultural heritage, wound, maim, and kill. Most importantly, they kill. These deeds would be, in any other context, paradigmatically unjust. This thesis asks whether they can be justi-fied. There are two possible approaches: first, deny that killing in war is in fact unjust; sec-ond, argue that the injustice is overridden by weightier moral reasons. In Part I, I reject the view that principles of self-defence can render killing in war just. I argue that the most plausible theories of self-defence are hardest to apply in the cha-otic context of war, while the most practicable theories are least philosophically defensible. Moreover, none of them encompasses the inevitable noncombatant deaths that all wars bring. If killing in war is almost always unjust, perhaps we should advocate pacifism. In Part II, I propose an alternative, arguing that these injustices might be all things con-sidered justified. Combatants have morally important relationships: they have deep personal relationships with friends and family, and comrades-in-arms; if they are citizens of just communities, then that relationship is valuable too. I argue that they have associative duties to protect these relationships against the threat posed by war, and that these duties may override the injustices they must commit to avert that threat. After defending a conception of associative duties, I support this conclusion with the following argument. As well as our general duties not to harm, we have general duties to protect. Our general duties to protect sometimes override our general duties not to harm, in particular, in cases of justified humanitarian intervention. Our associative duties to protect, however, are stronger than our general duties to protect. If our associative duties to protect are stronger than our general duties to protect, and our general duties to protect can override our general duties not to harm, then our associative duties to protect should also be able to override our general duties not to harm.
Fragmented authoritarianism, selective control and the rise of entrepreneurs
Keywords: civil society
chinese politics
state-society relations

The dynamics of state-NGO relations in China is viewed through the analytical lens of 'fragmented authoritarianism'. It is suggested that the fragmented political structure that results in interagency bargaining and problems of coordination is a main reason for the inconsistency in state behaviour. State actors form diverse and sometimes conflicting strategies towards social organizations based on their own interests as well as an NGO issue-framing, with service-based NGO receiving more favourable treatment and rights-base groups facing escalated pressure, a model summarized as 'selective control'. The ambiguity in the regulations and administration of NGOs gives the state maximum flexibility in handling NGOs. The leaders of the more persistent service-based and rights-based NGOs often act as effective social entrepreneurs and policy entrepreneurs respectively. They are joined by private entrepreneurs, who are becoming as a major source of funding for NGOs through private foundations. With similar preference to the state, they act as a proxy to the state with selective funding that favours serviced-based NGOs, which results in a more treacherous conditions and further stagnation of resources for rights-based NGOs.
Between a nation and a state: the politics of Donbas displacement in Ukrainian and Russian state media
Keywords: Politics of Russia
Nation-building
State practice
Politics of Ukraine

This thesis examines how the millions of people displaced from Eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region are represented in Ukrainian and Russian state media. Articles from Ukrainian Uriadovyi Kurier and Russian Rossiiskaia Gazeta are analysed with qualitative content analysis and ideological discourse analysis to determine their attitudes towards the displaced people and to suggest what representations of displacement in these papers achieve vis-à-vis the state. Media analyses previously conducted in both countries have detected attempts to connect the mass displacement to questions of nationhood and state capacity. Also, tensions between the involuntary migrants and communities in the regions receiving large numbers of displaced people have been noted.
Analysis of the newspaper articles finds that whereas the Ukrainian publication uses the issue of displacement to construct a new national identity based on political loyalty toward the central state, the Russian paper takes the occasion to emphasise Russian state capacity, but does not deploy the topic of displacement for advancing a nation-building agenda, contrary to expectations.
Measuring impacts of youth empowerment: an international systematic review and a randomized controlled trial with out-of-school youth in Jordan
Keywords: experimental design
youth development
self-efficacy
adolescents

Youth empowerment programs (YEPs)—programs that build on young people's strengths and engage them in decision-making—have gained global attention as a strategy to improve a range of emotional, social, and behavioral outcomes. Guided by the MRC Framework for Complex Interventions, this dissertation employed a mixed-methods approach to synthesize and contribute to the evidence base on impacts of YEPs on adolescent development.
This dissertation includes a systematic review of the effects of YEPs on self-efficacy and self-esteem and a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a YEP in Jordan. Implementation and process research was also integrated to better understand impact study results and investigate issues for the dissemination of youth empowerment methodology.
In the review, three studies were included from 8,789 citations. The limited data meta-analyzed did not show an effect on self-efficacy (95% CI = -0.42 to 1.86; z = 1.23). None of the three studies independently showed significant intervention effects on the primary outcomes. Secondary outcomes showed mixed results.
The RCT assessed the effects of an empowerment-based non-formal education program for out-of-school Arab youth. The study included 127 participants, mean age of 15.9 (SD = 1.62), and data were collected at baseline and 4-month follow-up. No significant intervention effects were observed for developmental assets (e.g., self-efficacy or social skills). Analysis did show a positive intervention effect on SDQ conduct problems (95% CI = 0.13 to 1.48; d = .57); effects were mostly attributable to changes in the younger (13-15) age group.
Subgroup analysis with implementation study data indicated that a higher level of program empowerment appeared related to better outcomes. Differences in implementation and attendance across program sites may have diluted intervention effects; relationships between these variables and outcomes should be investigated in future studies with appropriate statistical power and research design. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Regulation of exosome secretion and functions by mTORC1 signalling and the microenvironment
Keywords: mTORC1 regulation, cancer survival , extracellular signalling, exosomes, reprogramming of cancer cells

Cancer cells require survival strategies to respond to microenviromental changes and out-compete their neighbours. They activate stress response mechanisms under extreme microenvironmental conditions, some of which are controlled by the amino acid-sensitive kinase complex, mechanistic Target of Rapamycin Complex 1 (mTORC1). Exosomes are secreted nanovesicles made inside intracellular endosomal compartments that mediate a specialised and complex form of intercellular signalling that can reprogramme target cells via the action of multiple active cargos. I investigated whether mTORC1 activity might modulate the type of exosome secreted in response to microenvironmental changes.
Here I identify a new form of mTORC1-regulated exosome biogenesis and signalling involving recycling multivesicular endosomes (rMVEs), a previously unrecognised site for exosome biogenesis. Reduced activity of a specific form of glutamine-sensitive mTORC1 in HCT116 colorectal cancer cells results in an ‘exosome switch’ in which exosomes are preferentially released from these compartments instead of late endosomes. Importantly, RAB11a is found in association with at least a proportion of rMVEs that generate these alternative exosomes and is loaded on to some of their ILVs, providing a RAB signature of compartmental origin. I provide evidence that this exosome switch is conserved in other cancer cell types.
My study also presents a proteomics analysis of extracellular vesicle (EV) preparations from normal and mTORC1-inhibited cells. I demonstrate that EV preparations isolated following exosome switching have enhanced pro-angiogenic properties and novel tumour growth-promoting activities. Activation of the receptor tyrosine kinase c-MET and its downstream mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) ERK via phosphorylation is stimulated by these EVs, providing a potential explanation for their growth-promoting effects. Subsequent studies in the lab have demonstrated that several of these pro-tumorigenic activities are mediated by exosomes. I conclude that stress-induced mTORC1 inhibition allows tumour cells to initiate a novel exosome secretion pathway that potentially mediates a cancer cell survival plan that reverses microenvironmental change and supports tumour adaptation. In the future, blocking this response could improve patient outcome following treatment with mTORC1-inhibitory or anti-angiogenic drugs that have currently met with limited success in the clinic.
From the life: the art of Francis Barlow (c.1626-1704)
Keywords: etching
painting
Francis Barlow
political satire
birds
allegory
drawing
Aesop's Fables

Francis Barlow (c.1626-1704) was one of the most prolific picture makers to work in England during the second half of the seventeenth century. Surprisingly, there has not been an account of his life and works in almost forty years, and even then Barlow was presented rather narrowly as the 'first master of English book illustration' (Hodnett, 1978). Barlow is now chiefly remembered for his illustrated Aesop's Fables (1666), but he has also gained attention as a satirist, and as a sporting artist. This dissertation attempts to piece together the many facets of wide-ranging oeuvre. Following the introduction, which reveals new information about his life, Barlow's works are investigated in eight chapters, arranged according to the heuristic categories of natural history; religion and politics; and hunting and travel. As the chapters proceed, the interconnectedness of Barlow's works is revealed, as is the lack of distinction between the aspects of seventeenth-century society and culture, which they reflect.
The dissertation mainly recovers Barlow as a painter. It is argued that Barlow has been forgotten as a painter due to a strong connoisseurial tradition in the history of British art, which has tended to underrate his painting. No less than forty-three paintings are interpreted and placed into a chronology. Striving to understand them in a seventeenth-century context reveals Barlow's craft, his relationships with a wide range of patrons, and the nature of his place in the London community. Extrapolating from what we know about Barlow’s activities as a graphic satirist, the politick of his patrons, and the 'internal' evidence of the narratives of his paintings, this study demonstrates how, at least for Barlow, painting was not merely decorative.
Learning transformation-invariant visual representations in spiking neural networks
Keywords: STDP
Neuroscience
Spiking Neural Network
Visual System
Object Recognition

This thesis aims to understand the learning mechanisms which underpin the process of visual object recognition in the primate ventral visual system. The computational crux of this problem lies in the ability to retain specificity to recognize particular objects or faces, while exhibiting generality across natural variations and distortions in the view (DiCarlo et al., 2012). In particular, the work presented is focussed on gaining insight into the processes through which transformation-invariant visual representations may develop in the primate ventral visual system.
The primary motivation for this work is the belief that some of the fundamental mechanisms employed in the primate visual system may only be captured through modelling the individual action potentials of neurons and therefore, existing rate-coded models of this process constitute an inadequate level of description to fully understand the learning processes of visual object recognition. To this end, spiking neural network models are formulated and applied to the problem of learning transformation-invariant visual representations, using a spike-time dependent learning rule to adjust the synaptic efficacies between the neurons.
The ways in which the existing rate-coded CT (Stringer et al., 2006) and Trace (Földiák, 1991) learning mechanisms may operate in a simple spiking neural network model are explored, and these findings are then applied to a more accurate model using realistic 3-D stimuli. Three mechanisms are then examined, through which a spiking neural network may solve the problem of learning separate transformation-invariant representations in scenes composed of multiple stimuli by temporally segmenting competing input representations. The spike-time dependent plasticity in the feed-forward connections is then shown to be able to exploit these input layer dynamics to form individual stimulus representations in the output layer. Finally, the work is evaluated and future directions of investigation are proposed.