VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Intelligibility and comprehensibility of Japanese speakers of English from a global Englishes perspective
Keywords: ALSLA2019
ALSLA

This study investigated how different listener factors are associated with the intelligibility and comprehensibility of Japanese speakers of English. Specifically, the association between the two dimensions of speech understanding (intelligibility and comprehensibility) and three listener factors (listeners’ first language, familiarity with English spoken by Japanese people, and listeners’ English level) was examined. A total of 67 listeners from three different L1 groups (Japanese, Mandarin, and English) participated in this study. They listened to thirty-two English sentences spoken by two different Japanese groups (high proficiency and low proficiency) and rated the intelligibility and comprehensibility of those speech acts with a transcription task and a Likert scale, respectively. Their familiarity with Japanese accented English and English proficiency was measured with a questionnaire. Statistical analyses revealed that when the speaker and listener shared the same L1, both intelligibility and comprehensibility were high, indicating there was a shared L1 effect. The effect was greater in the case where speakers’ English level was low. Similarly, listeners’ familiarity with English spoken by Japanese people was significantly correlated with both intelligibility and comprehensibility. These correlations tended to be stronger when the speaking participants' English level was low. By contrast, there were no significant correlations between listeners’ English proficiency and intelligibility, nor between listeners' English proficiency and comprehensibility. An implication of these findings is that sharing a L1 and familiarity with a speakers’ L1 accented English could enhance intelligibility and comprehensibility. Additionally, these results can be interpreted as showing that a high level of English does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of English speech by non-native English speakers.
Determinants of migration: the role of social and trade policies
Keywords: Migration Determinants
Social Policy
Trade Policy

The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the role of social and trade policies as determinants of migration. The thesis has four core independent chapters that aim to address five major challenges in migration and development research: the effect of non-migration policies, the interplay and dichotomy of internal and international migration, the challenge in conducting impact evaluation of policies on migration, the bridging of structure and agency in migration research, and the way to approach explanatory complexity in migration determinants research. The contribution of this thesis falls mainly in explaining the determinants of South-North and internal migration.
On social policy, this thesis finds overwhelming evidence on the robust role of welfare services and programs in origin countries through risk-diversification and relative-redistribution channels. I propose a term called reverse magnet hypothesis and provide the identification strategy to test its robustness. One finding is that the scope and type of welfare programs influence migration decision through the behavioural influence it provides through the relaxation of financial constraints.
On trade policy, this thesis finds no migration theory can individually explain global migration. Instead, I find evidence of multiple pathways and combination of different migration theories that serve as causal conditions for total migration and high-skilled migration. This thesis finds that capital linkages play a focal role in migration. It also finds a counterfactual evidence of migration hump, which indicates that the relationships between capital, trade, and migration flows are indeed dynamic.
This thesis shows that methodological and theoretical pluralism enrich explanations on migration determinants. Also, the role of origin country determinants should no longer be neglected nor underutilised in migration determinants literature.
Stochastic transport models in confined networked environments
Keywords: Stochastic Modelling
Transport on networks
Stochastic transport
Networks

Diffusion of macromolecules within the intracellular environment, tissue generation in scaffolds, and the transport of blood cells through aortic media, are examples of processes which hinge upon the optimal transport of biological agents within complex crowded environments. For example, the organelles within a typical mam- malian cell create an environment with a range of heterogeneous microscopic spatial structure known to impede macromolecular motion. A significant challenge for bio- mathematicians is to develop mathematical transport models on macroscopic length scales that incorporate the key effects of the microscopic spatial structure and the spatial exclusion between biological agents. A useful abstractification is to approx- imate complex environments as networked topologies that are capable of describing a huge range of heterogeneous spatial structures. This thesis focusses broadly on the extension of stochastic transport models confined to networked environments and their analysis. We introduce a framework for macromolecular transport in a domain that is deconstructed into two region types; one where molecules move freely, and another where there are strong macromolecular crowding effects. Through analysis of the equilibration time, algorithms for optimal network construction are designed and tested. Additionally, we explore search processes for multiple interacting searchers within a networked environment. Quantifying the efficiency of the search process via the parallel cover time, we provide optimal strategies that minimise the cover time of a fixed population of particles. Finally, we propose a new measure of particle displace- ment that accounts for the total winding of the path of a particle as it moves through a network, finding that statistics of the particle displacement are a function of network topology. Together, this work represents a key step in developing generic algorithms for topological optimisation of stochastic networked systems. Such concepts are of growing importance within modern information theory, biophysics, biotechnology, network science, statistical physics, traffic flow and robotics.
Algebraic methods for chemical reaction networks with extrinsic noise
Keywords: Toric Varieties
Extrinsic Noise
Reaction-Diffusion
Chemical Reaction Networks

Many biological mechanisms can be understood as a complex interaction of chemical reactions. In order to explain the wealth of biochemical phenomena in systems biology, a sophisticated analytic framework for these chemical reaction networks is needed. This thesis investigates the role of extrinsic fluctuations in biochemical reaction mechanisms and develops mathematical tools for the systematic study of extrinsic noise.
The first part of this thesis studies variability in biological processes which manifests itself as randomised rate constants. This variability can stem from many sources, such as different cellular environments, or upstream stochastic effects, which directly influence the reaction network under study. As variability is often modelled as constant, but unknown parameters, parameter-free algebraic methods are developed in this thesis to study large classes of chemical reaction networks named families. In particular, these methods allow for parameter-free model rejection, or model testing and give upper bounds on the algebraic complexity of these tasks. Further, a parameter-free result on the capability of multistationarity in infinite classes of networks is proved.
The second part of this thesis studies time-varying extrinsic noise, such as fluctuating experimental conditions, which directly influences the reaction rates. A particular focus is on upstream stochastic networks, propagating their stochasticity into the main network under study. Crucially, as the stochasticity in the system is imposed externally, the analysis of such models is not subject to the constraints of stochastic methods. While intrinsic noise imposes rigid restrictions on the modelling process, it is shown how in extrinsic noise models the deterministic model structure stays intact. Consequently, in this thesis, algebraic methods for deterministic networks are extended to be applied to networks subject to extrinsic noise in order to find oscillations and preclude stochastic switching. The effects of intrinsic stochasticity are also compared to the effects of extrinsic noise and the framework is extended to correlated (coloured) noise.
New visions of the human in contemporary French fiction: bodies, writing, survival
Keywords: speculative fiction
Houellebecq
dystopian
post-apocalyptic
Rufin
humanism
posthumanism
storytelling
Volodine
embodiment
survival
Darrieussecq
contemporary French fiction

This thesis examines the work of four contemporary French novelists—Antoine Volodine, Jean-Christophe Rufin, Michel Houellebecq, and Marie Darrieussecq—whose work probes the limits of the human and expresses anxieties about the future of humanity. The thesis critically analyses the ways in which “the human” has re-emerged as a vital axis of reflection and anxiety for contemporary novelists. This is demonstrated by the proliferation of works that borrow from science fiction, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, and related speculative genres. Adapting familiar conventions and tropes, these authors insert themselves into a popular cultural heritage while pursuing idiosyncratic scenarios of human transformation that speak strongly to contemporary fears about political violence, social injustice, and ecological catastrophe. Ultimately, I argue that these novels continue to find enduring value in the concept of humanness and humanity, but that they recognise the necessity of articulating new visions of the human appropriate to global social and cultural change.
The thesis comprises four chapters that focus on a small number of novels by a single author. Each chapter engages in close reading framed by conceptual insights from posthumanist criticism, theories of embodiment, and twentieth-century philosophy in order to demonstrate the significance and relevance of these novels. Though they pursue distinct critical paths, these analyses are linked through a shared emphasis on three themes—embodiment, writing, and survival—which I identify as sites of particular importance with respect to questions of humanness. In particular, I argue that each author expresses a belief in storytelling as a humanising force beyond the transformations and traumas to which narrators and characters are frequently subject. Taken together, the four chapters of this thesis illustrate how commonplace understandings of the human are being challenged in contemporary French fiction while simultaneously attributing considerable ethical force to the persistence of an identifiable humanity.
Homogenisation of the electrothermal behaviour of granular material
Keywords: Composite material
Method of multiple scales
Thermal radiation
Thermal transfer
Electrical transfer
Homogenisation
Granular material

Granular material is a critical component of many industrial applications and is particularly important for metallurgical processes. In particular, granular carbon experiences electrical heating in a metallurgical furnace known as a calciner. As the temperature of the carbon increases, its chemical and physical properties transform, namely to resemble those of graphite. However, the high temperatures within the calciner make ex- perimental measurements very difficult to obtain. Consequently, a funda- mental understanding of the inner mechanisms of the process has proved to be most challenging.
Mathematical models can be used to assimilate the behaviour of the fur- nace by studying the tight coupling between electric and thermal conduc- tion. However, for the multitude of particles present within the calciner, direct or discrete models that consider every particle individually are com- putationally intractable. It has been shown that the electrothermal be- haviour on the scale of a particle is crucial to explain the behaviour on the scale of the furnace, yet the former scale is several orders of magnitude smaller than the latter.
In this thesis, we propose mathematical models to approximate the physi- cal phenomena that govern the operation of the calciner furnace, validate their accuracy and demonstrate their numerical feasibility. The models that we study are founded upon the homogenisation technique known as the method of multiple scales. This is a systematic, effective-medium ap- proach that exploits the vast discrepancy between the scale of the furnace and the scale of the particles to extract homogeneous effective parameters from the heterogeneous media. In particular, we discuss how to extend the standard multiple scales technique to include a nonlinear, nonlocal, integral boundary condition for radiative transfer. Furthermore and signif- icantly, we demonstrate the influence of contact resistance by considering jumps in the electric potential at contact interfaces and conducting an asymptotic analysis to study the effect of microscopic contacts.
Uncertain identities in German-language novels since 2010
Keywords: Eva Menasse
Uncertainty
Saša Stanišić
2010s
Wolfgang Herrndorf
Identity Narratives
Felicitas Hoppe
Jenny Erpenbeck
Literaturbetrieb

Literary authors in the German context have a high degree of public visibility, but performatively enact their public role in different ways. Whether they are actively involved in broader social and political debates or simply trying to maximise, through their public presence, the impact of their work, their identities inevitably take on a political dimension, which in turn affects the reception of their work in complex ways. This thesis explores experimental identity narratives in five recent German-language novels, arguing that these texts nuance, question, or destabilise their authors’ own public identities. Through a detailed discussion of five texts published after 2010 – Eva Menasse’s Quasikristalle (2013), Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Sand (2011), Saša Stanišić’s Vor dem Fest (2014), Jenny Erpenbeck’s Aller Tage Abend (2012), and Felicitas Hoppe’s Hoppe (2012) – it explores how fictional identities within these texts renegotiate authorial identity constructs beyond them. They all centre around narratives of individual and collective identities which are blurry, fragmented, or elusive. By using narrative elements such as narrative voice, focalisation, and order of narration in experimental and often disorienting ways, they generate uncertainty about the identities – collective and individual, contemporary and historical – which they present. The novels discussed in this thesis exemplify and yet resist recent debates about authorship and identity politics. By combining a study of contemporary performative models of authorship within the German Literaturbetrieb with narratological readings of the aforementioned five novels, this thesis shows that a profound ambivalence concerning models of identity is characteristic of twenty-first- century fiction and its underlying expectations of authorship.
The role of the retrosplenial cortex in associative memory
Keywords: associations
retrosplenial cortex
memory
optogenetics
behaviour

Encoding of episodic memories involves associating different features of the environment and experiences. Understanding how sensory-sensory associations are encoded would shed light on the basis of how events are stored in the brain.
The retrosplenial cortex (RSC) is known to reciprocally connect to the hippocampal formation and to sensory areas. Its connectivity suggests a role in both episodic and spatial memory processes. A role in the formation and storage of sensory associations might underlie these processes and is supported by RSC-lesion and -inactivation studies.
In this thesis, I use optogenetics to inactivate the RSC while mice perform various memory paradigms to clarify the function of this structure in encoding associations to support memory. Thus, I develop a sensory associative memory task in mice which allows me to test sensory-sensory associations. Developing, for the first time, an appetitive sensory preconditioning (SPC) paradigm in mice, failed to provide robust results. So, I chose an aversive SPC paradigm as the best way to probe neutral sensory associations in mice.
I show that while control mice successfully learned the preconditioned association in the task, precise closed-loop optogenetic disruption of the RSC when mice form associations between neutral stimuli reduces performance to chance levels. Moreover, I demonstrate that this disruption is independent of spatial confound.
Using the same technique to silence RSC activity during short-term or long-term spatial learning did not affect the formation and retrieval of memory, in contrast to previous studies.
Finally, in order to truly address the question of how sensory-sensory associations are formed, I present preliminary data of a calcium imaging study aimed at understanding the mechanisms by which these associations are formed in the RSC.
In summary, I established a new sensory preconditioning task for mice allowing us to timely probe associative memory between neutral stimuli. Optogenetic silencing of RSC demonstrate the necessity of the RSC in this type of memory and combined with future functional imaging studies will help understand how the brain forms neutral associations.
HIV-1 induction of macrophage immune mediators
Keywords: Macrophage
Vpr
Inflammation
Chemotaxis
HIV/AIDS
Myeloid cell

Clinical studies convincingly associate increased monocyte migration and markers of myeloid cell activation with the pathogenesis of inflammatory conditions in HIV-1-infected individuals. However, the mechanisms by which myeloid cells contribute to HIV-1-associated inflammation are poorly understood. HIV-1 infection of human macrophages is believed to induce an innate immune response that includes IFN-I production. Previous studies also implicate the HIV-1 accessory protein Vpr as a potential modulator of pro-inflammatory antiviral responses to HIV-1 infection, but these reports are contradictory and require clarification.
To determine the immune mediators induced by HIV-1 and modulated by HIV-1 Vpr, I transduced human monocyte-derived macrophages with single-round pseudotyped viruses that were either competent or deleted for Vpr expression. Wide-scale soluble proteome analysis of conditioned media from the HIV-1-transduced human macrophages highlights that HIV-1 induces expression of a subset of pro-inflammatory factors, among which the interferon gamma-induced chemokine CXCL10/IP-10 is markedly enhanced. I find no evidence of enhanced primary monocyte migration towards either transduced MDM supernatants or recombinant soluble Env, a ligand for CCR5. Further analyses of macrophage supernatants using an IFN-reporter cell line and multiplex immunoassays show that HIV-1 Vpr expression downregulates IFN-α and IL-1β production. Together, these data support the idea MDMs elicit a modest innate response to HIV-1 of which the accessory protein Vpr is a negative regulator.
Music in the urban Amazon: a historical ethnography of the Manaus opera house
Keywords: Teatro Amazonas
opera
the Amazon
historical ethnography
Brazil

This thesis presents a historical ethnography of the Teatro Amazonas, an iconic opera house in Brazil’s Amazonian city of Manaus. Often referred to as the ‘opera house in the jungle’, the Teatro is overtly indexed through its broad geographical setting – a setting that has both garnered global attention and stoked fervent contention at a time of anxiety about climate change. Today, conservationist fervour means that many people the world over have become invested in the vast Amazon region not changing over time. This thesis responds to this state of affairs and to recent scholarship that draws critical attention to which parts of the globe have their human histories widely recognised and which do not. It analyses select moments from throughout the Teatro’s lifespan (1897 to the present), exploring the opera house’s changing relationship with its uniquely important geographical setting.
The five chapters proceed in chronological order but leave gaps and cover time periods of varying lengths. Chapter One (1850-1896) explores the ‘opera house in the jungle’ epithet by examining the historical context out of which the Teatro came to be built. Chapter Two (1897-1907) nuances the common depiction of the Teatro’s initial decade as a ‘golden age’ of abundance and progress. Chapter Three (1937-1971) crafts a musical history of the mid-twentieth century (supposedly a fallow period at the Teatro), preceded by an ethnography of the opera house’s archive as it stood in 2017. Chapter Four (1997-2017) scrutinises an ongoing cultural project based at the Teatro, arguing that, from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, opera in Amazonia changed from an ephemeral status symbol to a productive stimulus for diverse local musics. Chapter Five (2017) explores the entangled urban and rainforest settings that surround (and permeate) the Teatro today, and argues that the opera house has become a potent catalyst for negotiations of Amazonian geographies. Finally, the conclusion reflects on the endeavour of writing a long history of an Amazonian opera house.
The recollections: the works and days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)
Keywords: fiction
Japan
duration
sound
anthropology
film/video
geography

This dissertation contains the following elements: a 480-minute film, a forty-four-minute LP, and a supplementary text of 30,847 words.
The film, The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin), is a fiction recorded for a total of twenty-seven weeks, over a period of fourteen months, in a farming village population forty-seven in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It is a film that I wrote, directed, edited, sound recorded, and produced. The film is a geographic description of the work and non-work of a seventy/seventy-one year-old farmer named Tayoko. A georgic in five books. A portrait of a family and of a landscape.
It is a film concerned with, among other things, extended duration, sustained attention, contingent forces, collective economies, market failure, oral history, the non-dramatic, the anti-fragile, plainspokenness, looking, and listening. A film that falls outside of a Deleuzian taxonomy of the Movement-Image and the Time-Image to be what I would describe as a Terrane-Image film.
While one is free to watch the film as one would wish, I would propose that an ideal screening would take place wholly within a single day. There are intermissions built into the film roughly every two hours. I recommend a fifteen-minute first and third intermission along with a longer lunch break during the second intermission. This makes for a total experience of between nine and nine and a half hours.
The album, The Works and Days: The Black Sections, is something of a sound collage album. It is two sides of twenty-two minutes each. It was produced from out of the roughly five hundred hours of sound I recorded over the course of the film production combined with excerpts of musical compositions featured in the film.
The supplementary text, The Recollections, is primarily a set of reflections—associations, antecedents, ancillaries, etc—called up for me from the earliest stages of the film’s ideation on through to my recent regarding of the completed edit. It serves as an abridged accompaniment to the film so as to make many of the film’s implicit concerns explicit. As the text reveals many key moments in the The Works and Days, it is ideally intended to be read only after one has seen the film.
The electronic version of the dissertation is typeset to accomodate double-sided printing.