VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
In praise of vanity : the Augustinian analysis of the benefits of vice from Port-Royal to Mandeville
Keywords: ethics
intellectual life
political science
Mandeville
Augustinians
Bernard Mandeville
Catholics
abbeys
Protestantism
vice
Bayle
France
Augustinian
abbey
Protestants
vanity
Port-Royal des Champs
Pierre Bayle

This is a study in the moral and political thought of the French Catholic Augustinian moralistes of the third quarter of the Seventeenth Century, and their Protestant successors, Pierre Bayle and Bernard Mandeville.
Although La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, and Nicole are best known for their closely observed and pessimistic analyses of human nature, this thesis focuses on a second feature of their thought: their arguments for the constructive potential of human corruption. The moralistes' starting point is provided by Augustinian and 'reason of state' accounts of the necessity that the human condition imposes upon us of making good use of bad means. Eager to challenge what they deemed to be a facile and conceited commitment to a natural virtue amongst their humanistic contemporaries, the French Augustinians elaborated upon this account in an original direction; they offered an exceptionally optimistic analysis of the possibilities of human cupidity, presenting it as the stuff from which a remarkably happy social life might be generated. Indeed they went so far as to offer satirical vindications not merely of the exploitation of human corruption, but of human corruption itself.
Of course the moralistes' arguments did not simply replicate one another, and the main body of the thesis attempts to distinguish between the different elaborations they gave to their defences of vanity. After a chapter on political and cultural context, Chapter 2 explores some of the sources of the moralistes' arguments in the writings of St. Augustine, and the sceptical humanists, especially Montaigne. The third chapter is devoted to La Rochefoucauld; having offered an account of the Augustinian intentions of the Maximes, the last part of this chapter seeks to draw attention to the presence in that work of a satirical vindication of vice and vanity. Pascal is the central figure in this study, and both Chapters 4 and 5 highlight the existence in the early parts of the Pensées of an audacious defence of the vanity of the people against their philosophical critics. The penultimate chapter is devoted to Nicole's more cautious and derivative account of the obligation of respecting conventions of civility and political obedience which channel vice in a beneficial direction.
Chapter 7 argues that Bayle's and Mandeville's well-known paradoxes concerning the potential of corruption run along lines already laid down by the Port-Royalists. In other words (and as the Conclusion suggests) Bayle's and Mandeville's analyses should be seen, like those of the Catholic moralistes, as contributions to a tradition which reaches through sixteenth-century Tacitists and sceptics like Montaigne, to the Enlightenment - a tradition which played an important but relatively neglected role in shaping eighteenth-century debates about commerce and virtue.
The palace and the parish: the Church of England's approach to interreligious relations with Muslims nationally and locally, 2005-2021
Keywords: religion in the United Kingdom
anthropology of religion
Church of England
Christian-Muslim relations
Anglicanism
interreligious dialogue
Islam

This dissertation examines the character of the established Church of England’s engagement with Islam from 2005 to 2021. It contends that there is a dual method which can be understood on the levels of the national and the local. With a view to the national, the year 2005 marked the Church of England’s founding of Presence and Engagement, a programme whose remit is “to think about the reality of religious diversity and how it might shape mission and ministry.” There are five core Presence and Engagement reports spanning 2005 to 2017 which are analysed alongside their concomitant General Synod debates. The Church of England’s approach to interreligious engagement with Islam on a national level is a process of inward-facing dialogue, wherein the Church of England’s chief concern is how its own identity qua national church is affected by the growth of Islam in England. As such, the Presence and Engagement reports are analysed as documentary evidence of the Church of England’s emerging subjecthood as it encounters an increasingly multireligious England. The discussion of the national level forms Part 1 of this dissertation. Part 2 of this dissertation considers the local level through a case study of the Church of England’s Diocese of Birmingham. The case study is based on ethnographic interviews with parish priests and other central Anglican figures, conducted in 2020 through 2021. It finds that the local church participates in outward-facing interreligious dialogue with Muslim individuals and communities through diverse activities in everyday life, challenging the notion of dialogue as formal. While the national and the local levels have differing priorities, they share a common vocabulary, e.g., hospitality, witness, and love, and the central motif of the parochial system. This vocabulary is used by actors across the Church to understand how they should engage with Muslims.
Visually guided motion through complex environments
Keywords: obstacle avoidance
visual guidance
fish
bird flight
gap negotiation
animal behaviour
motion capture
vision

The ability of animals to swiftly move through cluttered environments has inspired biologists interested in understanding its underlying mechanisms and engineers interested in applying its underpinning principles. To avoid colliding with obstacles, animals first need to detect that an object may be in their way. A decision then needs to be made about avoiding contact with the object so that locomotor strategies can be adjusted accordingly. In this thesis, I break down the problem of how animals negotiate clutter into three distinct, but related questions: 1) What information is needed to avoid collisions, and how do animals perceive it?; 2) how do animals choose between alternative paths to take?; 3) how are such choices implemented? I study these questions in two model species that inhabit open spaces but regularly encounter clutter: the homing pigeon (Columba livia) and the Picasso triggerfish (Rhinecanthus aculeatus). I frame their clutter negotiation behaviour as a process of sequential gap selection, allowing me to decompose it into components that can be independently evaluated. In Chapter 2, I use a combined experimental and modelling approach to model pigeons' steering behaviour algorithmically in a two-alternative forced-choice task. The birds are tracked flying inside a large hall whose open exit was separated from the release point by a curtain creating two vertical gaps. I find that their flights are best modelled by delayed proportional navigation, the same steering controller that has been used to implement all basic geometries observed in pursuit behaviour. In Chapter 3, I use a high-speed motion capture system to track pigeons flying through an artificial forest of vertical poles. I find bird gap choices are best captured by an autoregressive model, including information about the exit location, the cartesian distance between the closest obstacles, and the apparent visual gaps between all the obstacles ahead. In Chapter 4, I use a similar experimental paradigm to investigate how fish negotiate clutter, a behaviour which has never been studied in fish before. I find evidence of fish choosing clearances most directly aligned with their target based on egocentric visual cues. Finally, I show how these components can be combined to simulate realistic animal trajectories through clutter. Overall, the results of my thesis provide a valuable new framework for looking at how animals move through complex environments.
Exploring endometrial cellular heterogeneity and its role in endometriosis using single-cell transcriptomics
Keywords: endometrium
organoids
single-cell genomics
endometriosis

The human endometrium, the inner mucosal lining of the uterus, undergoes cycles of shedding, regeneration, growth, and differentiation on a monthly basis in response to steroid hormones. In endometriosis, endometrial-like cells grow outside of the uterus, and are associated with debilitating chronic pain and subfertility that can have a substantial negative impact on quality of life. Yet, it is not fully understood how the endometrium achieves its immense regenerative capacity and whether the cellular make-up of the endometrium in health and endometriosis differs. Studies profiling the endometrium at the single-cell level have so far analysed only a limited number of cells and samples, making it difficult to disentangle the inherent heterogeneity of this dynamic tissue. In this thesis I aimed to generate a comprehensive cellular map of the endometrium in a large set of donors with/without endometriosis both during natural menstrual cycles and when taking exogenous hormonal therapy. I hypothesised that by analysing a large set of endometrial biopsies we can uncover novel cell populations and disease-specific transcriptomic signatures.
The single-cell map presented in this thesis consists of ~600,000 whole cells and nuclei from 90 individuals, and was compiled by integrating data newly generated during my studies with two previously published datasets. Focusing on the epithelial and mesenchymal cell lineages, I defined novel cell populations that appear around the time of ovulation and window of implantation. Moreover, I observed cell populations specific to taking various forms of exogenous hormonal therapy. Additionally, I utilised the in vivo endometrial cellular map to dissect the cellular heterogeneity of in vitro endometrial organoids and organoid-stromal cell cocultures. Analysing ~100,000 cells, I described a population of cells expressing MUC5B, PAEP, and TFF3 as a feature present in organoids from donors with endometriosis. Altogether, the cellular maps of the endometrium in vivo and in vitro presented in this thesis have the potential to serve as a great resource to further study endometrial function and associated pathologies, as well as guide the development of novel clinical in vitro models of the endometrium.
Generalised young measures and lower semi-continuity of integral functionals
Keywords: quasi-convexity
separable compactifications
lower semi-continuity
functions of bounded variations
vector measures

The purpose of this thesis is to study representations of integral functionals of the form u → ∫Ω f(u(x))dµ(x) =: F(u) (0.0.1), when
• u ∈ Lᵖ(Ω, µ, Rᵈ) varies in different topologies,
• µ is a non-negative finite Borel measure,
• f: Rᵈ → R is continuous and has p-growth |f(z)| ≤ C(1 + |z|ᵖ).
If a sequence (uⱼ)ⱼ converges strongly in Lᵖ to some u ∈ Lᵖ(Ω, µ, Rᵐ), one can always pass to the limit under the integral sign in (0.0.1) and obtain that F(uⱼ) → F(u). However, a sequence (uⱼ)ⱼ bounded in Lᵖ(Ω, µ, Rᵐ) is not always relatively compact in the strong topology, and this happens exactly when (uⱼ)ⱼ oscillates or when (|uⱼ|ᵖ)ⱼ concentrates. In this case, F(uⱼ), in general, does not converge to F(u). After constructing a formula representing accumulation points of F(uⱼ) for sequences (uⱼ)ⱼ that are only bounded in Lᵖ(Ω, µ, Rᵐ), and so allowed to oscillate and concentrate, we use it to solve classical problems in the calculus of variations that involve gradients.
We mainly focus on classes of functions whose derivatives are integrable, for example, when u = ∇v or u = (v, ∇v), with v ∈ W¹ʼᵖ(Ω, Rᵐ). This problem has been largely studied for 1
When a sequence (uⱼ)ⱼ is bounded in Lᵖ(Ω, µ, Rᵐ), it can happen that (|uⱼ|ᵖ)ⱼ , which is a sequence bounded in L¹(Ω, µ), converges to a measure singular with respect to µ. There is extensive literature on representations of (0.0.1) when f(z) has a homogeneous-like behaviour for large values of z, but the general case has not been studied in depth.
Here we prove a new representation of limits of bounded sequence (uⱼ)ⱼ in Lᵖ(Ω, µ, Rᵐ) of (0.0.1), which are called Young Measures. Such a representation is an improvement of the well-known construction by DiPerna and Majda in [36] and enables us to manipulate such limits similarly to Alibert and Bouchitté [6], but for any continuous f that has p-growth. This is necessary as quasi-convexity does not entail a homogeneous-like behaviour of f(z) for large values of z ∈ Rᵐⁿ, when m, n > 1, so the classical theory of Young Measures cannot always be used.
Via our representation, we are able to prove a characterisation of Gradient Young Measures, which are generalised limits of sequence (∇uⱼ)ⱼ with (uⱼ)ⱼ bounded in W¹ʼ¹ (Ω, Rᵐ), in greater generality than previously achieved. We are also able to improve the lower semi-continuity result for measure derivatives in [65], to the case v = (u, Du/µ) in (0.0.1), and we also show that minimising sequences of the Dirichlet problem of (0.0.1) in W¹ʼᵖ, under a sharp p-coercivity condition, are equi-integrable when p > 1.
The importance and originality of our framework are that we can show that many properties of different classes of generalised Young Measures are essentially the same as in the classical case developed in [6], where only a small class of integrands was considered. Our framework also enables us to perform arithmetic-like operations on objects that were previously too abstract to be manipulated.
Understanding the roles of cellular RNA-binding proteins in HIV-1 infection
Keywords: HIV-1
MKRN1
RNA-binding protein
host-pathogen interaction
virus

The Human Immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is the causative agent of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) which is currently estimated to affect 37.9 million people globally, representing a serious threat to global health. Developing a fundamental understanding of the HIV-1 life cycle is paramount in the search for a cure. RNA is a central molecule in HIV-1 biology due to its dual function as messenger and genome. However, the small number of proteins encoded by HIV-1 is insufficient to enable virus infection. Hence, HIV-1 hijacks cellular RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) to fulfil its life cycle. Using in virion RNA-interactome capture we identified 104 cellular RBPs interacting with HIV-1 RNA within the viral capsid. My DPhil aimed to identify which of these RBPs regulate HIV-1 infection. By screening RBP-knockout cell lines I uncovered the effects of MKRN1, FAM120A, LSM14A, MSN, LCK, CIRBP and YBX3 on HIV-1 infection. Further analysis into the role of MKRN1 revealed a novel function for MKRN1 in the positive regulation of HIV-1 viral particle release from the plasma membrane. Additionally, I have developed a tool, HIV-1INscarlet, to enable the visualisation of the early stages of HIV-1 infection from viral particle entry to integration using super-resolution microscopy. This tool will allow for future experiments into the role of MKRN1 inside the HIV-1 capsid during the early stages of infection. Together, this work highlights novel cellular regulators of HIV-1 infection and further validates the crucial role conducted by cellular RBPs in HIV-1 infection.
A comparison of the linguistic encoding of artificial-intelligence-generated academic essays and academic essays written by MSc ALSLA 2022-23 students
Keywords: ALSLA
ALSLA2023

Background
The aim of this study was to establish whether artificial-intelligence (AI) generated essays can be differentiated reliably from human written essays in terms of linguistic features and n-gram word sequences. It also aimed to assess the quality of AI-generated essays compared to essays written by humans, and whether expert raters can differentiate between both types.
Through generative AI, people can input parameters into online software to generate different types of discourse within minutes. Though these discourses include songs, graphic art, and computer codes, one of the main concerns for educational boards globally is the use of generative AI for academic essays. Using generative AI to create essays and submitting it as one’s own undermines the fundamentals of assessment, authorship, and academic integrity. Hence, it is important to conduct research on such discourse to analyze the style in which AI can write, and how similar or distinct it is from students’ work.
Methods
A corpus of essays responding to a typical graduate-level essay prompt (seven written by MSc students and seven generated by AI) was analyzed for textual and authorial features that might help differentiate between the two. Specifically, (1) the Jaccard’s Index (a measure of linguistic similarity and difference) was calculated for each set of essays; (2) n-grams analysis was performed to determine the frequency and purpose of reoccurring long word sequences; (3) adaptive comparative judgment of the essays by university lecturers was undertaken to assess the relative quality of the essays; and (4) a ‘Turing test’ by university lecturers was performed to assess whether they can identify which essays were AI generated and which were human written when they have been told that the corpus contains the two.
Results
All essays varied in terms of linguistic features, references, length, errors, subheadings, and stylistic markers. AI-generated essays contain more 5-gram word sequences than essays written by students, despite being shorter. Lecturers tend to rate student essays as better and of more depth than AI essays; and in most cases, lecturers can differentiate between AI-generated and human written texts when they know that a corpus contains both types.
Extinction by hybridisation in the wild Rock Doves of the British Isles
Keywords: natural history
hybridisation
zoology
extinction

Hybridisation can lead to genomic admixture between populations that were previously isolated. Increased anthropogenic transportation of species, along with habitat and climate change mediating contact of populations, has caused multiple cases of ‘extinction by hybridisation’. This is when introgression leads to the loss of a population or species as a form distinct from its hybridising relative. In this thesis, I use the undomesticated Rock Dove (Columba livia) and its widespread conspecific, the feral pigeon, to explore the process of genomic replacement that characterises ‘extinction by hybridisation’. Specifically: (i) I review the scientific and conservation importance of the wild forms of domestic animals, and discuss the threats they face following gene flow from their feral conspecifics; (ii) I introduce the Rock Dove, outlining its status in the British Isles, and highlight its currently poor conservation prospects given ongoing interbreeding with the superabundant feral pigeon; (iii) I carry out the first population genomic study of the wild Rock Dove, identifying both hybrid populations as well as those exhibiting negligible signs of feral pigeon introgression; (iv) I show that interbreeding correlates with increased genomic diversity in hybridising populations, and discuss the potential benefits of gene flow between the lineages; (v) I show that plumage patterns can be used, at a population level, to make inferences about the extent of hybridisation in different Rock Dove colonies, and (vi) I examine variation in the prevalence and diversity of the disease- causing parasite Trichomonas among wild, feral and hybrid populations of Columba livia, and suggest that disease transmission may influence patterns of gene flow. Overall, this body of work extends our understanding of the process of extinction by hybridisation, specifically relating to scattered, relictual undomesticated populations which are in contact with conspecific feral domestic populations. It also provides a greater understanding of the wild Rock Dove’s genomic status and basic biology. Characterisation of the wild Rock Dove will extend the utility of the domestic pigeon as a major model organism in urban evolution, developmental genetics, and behavioural science, by allowing for a greater understanding of trait evolution and natural behaviour in a species which has been predominantly studied in a laboratory setting.
The construct validity and fairness of the international baccalaureate diploma programme mathematics internal assessment: a case study of the assessment at the United World College, China
Keywords: MEA 2022

This thesis outlines the findings of a mixed-methods study of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) Mathematics Internal Assessment (IA) carried out from students' and teachers' perspectives at an IB school in China. The present study examines the construct validity and fairness of the DP mathematics IA in the 2021–2022 academic year. The study took place in 2022, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, when IB examinations were cancelled in addition to school closures and other measures. The study of the validity and fairness of mathematics internal assessment in the context of a highly uncommon set of circumstances, as well as the lessons that may be learnt from these, is therefore given a new dimension.
The study used a mixed-methods approach, including two phases. Phase One included semi-structured interviews with five teachers and 13 students at UWC China. A survey of students' perceptions of assessment criteria with an evaluation of the validity of mathematics IA was also conducted in Phase One. Phase Two comprised quantitative analyses of Diploma Programme Year 2 students' mathematics internal assessment results and their final grades, as well as the relationship between IBDP mathematics performance and academic records of other domains.
The correlation coefficient was utilized to explain the degree to which the mathematics IA grades are associated with the mathematics final assessment grades awarded by the International Baccalaureate. The findings revealed a moderate correlation between IA scores and final mathematics grades. Furthermore, IB mathematics grades correlated significantly with physics (r = .556) but weakly with English (r = .27), which indicates that students' IA grades were valid and fair. The interview with teachers and students suggested that clearer assessment criteria and new explanatory skills of the construct should be revisited.
These findings highlight some important implications for educators regarding the validity of IA grades, which may be used in the predicted grades or by international organizations for awarding the final marks. First, it is critical for both students and teachers to understand the subject and tiering of mathematics courses and comprehend the assessment objectives, which highlights a new requirement expected of learners rather than just at the subject level. Second, the construct of mathematics IA in requiring new skills has been revisited. In addition, it’s recommended that there are five main aspects in order to support effective teaching and learning in empirical practice. Last but not least, it should be borne in mind that the study took place in China in 2022, when IB examinations were cancelled due to COVID-19. This research suggests that when conducting mathematics internal assessments throughout the epidemic, research and transferable abilities are highlighted for gains beyond construct validity comprehension.