VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The role of autophagy in DNA damage
Keywords: TEX264
Topoisomerase I
Camptothecin
Autophagy
DNA Damage Repair

Camptothecin (CPT) is a genotoxic agent widely used for the treatment of colorectal cancer. It acts by preventing the hydrolysis of the covalent bond between Topoisomerase-I (TOP1) and DNA. TOP1 is an enzyme that relieves the topological stress caused by the unwinding of the helix during replication. The prevention of its release from DNA creates TOP1 cleavage complexes (TOP1ccs): bulky adducts that block the progression of DNA polymerases. TOP1ccs are highly toxic for replicative cells and need to be repaired. Although the proteasome plays a role in the degradation of TOP1ccs, the studies describing this have been conducted with micromolar doses of CPT, unreachable in clinical settings. Nanomolar doses of CPT are considered as more clinically relevant. Therefore, the DNA damage they cause, and the repair pathways involved need to be investigated further. Recently, it has been shown that the TOP1ccs induced by nanomolar doses of CPT are partially processed by the complex consisting of the unfoldase p97, the protease SPRTN and TEX264. TEX264 is a transmembrane protein located at both the nuclear envelope and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Interestingly, TEX264 is a key player in selective autophagy of the ER. Autophagy is the recycling mechanism of the cell and is essential for general cellular homeostasis. Autophagy has a dichotomous role in cancer due to both its tumor-suppressor and tumor-promoting effects. In fact, the upregulation of autophagy for the survival of hypoxic or chemotherapeutically-targeted cancer cells is currently being studied. Consequently, we hypothesised a role for autophagy in the repair of nanomolar dose-induced TOP1ccs. Here, we show that micromolar doses of CPT elicit a different type of DNA damage compared to the more clinically-relevant nanomolar doses. Interestingly, isolation of proteins on nascent DNA (iPOND) has allowed us to observe the increased presence of numerous autophagy proteins at the replication fork. This technique allows to pulldown proteins in close proximity to the replication fork. Additionally, we study the autophagy-dependent clearance of proteotoxic aggregates formed upon nanomolar CPT treatment, proposing an explanation for the irrelevance of the proteasome in this context. Finally, the regulation of the autophagy receptor TEX264 is investigated with regards to a specific post-translational modification arising after CPT treatment. Taken together, these findings show that autophagy plays a key role in the repair of the DNA damage caused by clinically-relevant doses of CPT.
A study of the behaviour of newts
Keywords: newts
behaviour

Many ethologists have found the sexual behaviour of animals to be a fruitful field of study. This thesis reports an investigation of the sexual behaviour of the Newt, an animal that has hitherto received little attention from ethologists. “The study includes a number of species of the European genus Triturus (Urodela, Salamandridae).
The Introductory Chapter presents information concerning the biological background to newt sexual behaviour, including life-history, general behaviour and sensory capacities, together with an account of the observational and experimental procedures used in the study.
The sexual behaviour of the Smooth Newt, Triturus vulgaris, is described. The behaviour consists of a complex sequence of actions which lead to the transfer of a spermatophore from male to female. This sequence may be repeated a number of times in the course of a sexual encounter.
By a form of sequence analysis a number of correlations are established between male and female behaviours. For some behaviours, temporal correlations are established also. The hypothesis that these correlations are indicative of causal relationships is tested by a number of experiments in which the behaviour of the female is manipulated.
Much of the sexual behaviour sequence can be understood in terms of male responses to the female's general movements and, at certain points in the later part of the sequence, to specific stimuli provided by the female. Not all transitions between male behaviours can be explained in these terms; some parts of his behaviour are stereotyped patterns which are unaffected by the female's behaviour.
The sexual behaviour of T. vulgaris is compared with that of the Palmate Newt, T. helveticus and the Alpine Newt, T. alpestris, using data obtained during this study, and with that of the Crested Newt, T. cristatus, using the account given by J.B. Nelson (1959). Differences in the details and in the overall pattern of sexual behaviour in these species are discussed.
Some pilot experiments to investigate reproductive isolation between T. vulgaris and T. helveticus are described. These suggest an ethological isolating mechanism based on female selective responsiveness to the male's display.
Newt sexual behaviour is discussed as a functional system and is compared with the sexual behaviour of some other animals. Some factors _ that affect courtship success (i.e. successful spermatophore transfer) are discussed.
The evolution of sexual behaviour within the genus Triturus is discussed. Evolutionary aspects are considered also in relation to the sexual behaviour of other Urodeles.
Motivational aspects of sexual behaviour are discussed, with particular reference to the concepts of behavioural conflicts and thwarting. It is argued that the newt courtship sequence is better understood in terms of stimulus-response relationships than through the use of motivational models.
The ecstatic dis-order: a cultural and literary investigation of post-unification Italy (1861-1915)
Keywords: Antonio Fogazzaro
twentieth century
Italian literature
Italian culture
ecstasy
religion
Gabriele D'Annunzio
nineteenth century
Luigi Capuana
occult
Matilde Serao
science

This thesis explores the way the notion of ecstasy permeated Italian culture between 1861 and 1915 in a variety of different discourses, and, specifically, those related to religion, science, and ‘occulture’. Focusing on mystical ecstasies, magnetic ecstasies, mediumistic trances, hypnotic trances, and hysterical extases, I show how ecstatic subjects were often regarded as ab-normal, disorderly individuals needing to be overseen, governed, or repressed, consequently unveiling the power dynamics informing the relationship between ecstatics and normative agencies. I also show how some of the most significant authors of Italian post-Unification literature, i.e., Matilde Serao, Antonio Fogazzaro, Luigi Capuana, and Gabriele D’Annunzio, delivered literary depictions of ecstasy, finding in the latter a fundamental trope to explore the disorderly, inner tensions of the self, partly anticipating Freud’s theorisations on the unconscious and the death drive. My research is underpinned by the theoretical framing of this double ‘ecstatic dis-order’, unveiling a dialectical tension between ecstatic, disorderly drives and normative, orderly ones, against the backdrop of the development of modern Italy and the modern Italian self.
Roll-to-roll vacuum deposition of organic thin films followed by in-line curing
Keywords: polymers

The process that is being investigated is a roll-to-roll vacuum deposition of a polymer film by evaporation of a liquid monomer followed by in-line curing. In the process, a continuous stream of an acrylate is introduced in a hot tank in order to be flash evaporated. Afterwards, the monomer vapor passes through a nozzle and is directed to a cooled, moving substrate where it re-condenses as a liquid monomer film. The deposition takes place in a vacuum chamber at approximately 10-4mbar. The moving substrate carrying the liquid film moves away from the evaporation source towards an ionizating radiation source, plasma or electron beam, inducing the curing and crosslinking of the liquid films, solidifying them to become a network polymer.
The research project is based on making a robust comparison of an acrylate-based coating cured with one of two power sources, plasma and electron-beam, with an investigation of the influence of process parameters on the materials properties. For the purpose of this line of research, the chemical used is a difunctional acrylate, TGPDA. The comparison will include a deep study on the chemical and physical properties obtained by different power sources, at different powers and radiation time. The aim of this part of the project is being able to link the parameters of the curing source with the polymer properties, i.e cross-linking density, curing degree, mechanical properties, topography and thickness. Furthermore, it would help in the better understanding of the cure control, particularly when investigating more advanced processes, such as the mixed materials and selective curing.
The cultural evolution of warfare practices: examining the roles of social structure, political complexity, and resource ecology with cross-cultural comparative analyses
Keywords: cross-cultural
cultural evolution
warfare

This thesis investigates how forms of wartime violence changed with the scale and complexity of past human societies. Data on aspects of social and political structures, subsistence practices, and warfare were coded from ethnographic and secondary historical sources for a global sample of societies. Four studies are presented that examine variation in warfare cross-culturally and historically, specifically the prevalence of self-sacrificial actions for other group members, levels of indiscriminate killing of enemies, and the taking of enemy body parts as trophies. These behaviors were tested for relationships with social complexity and associated variables, including military formalization and reliance on agriculture. Overall, there was no evidence for any clear relationships. These efforts resulted in the creation of datasets representing archaeologically, historically, and ethnographically recorded societies and defined new variables for specific wartime behaviors which had not previously been the focus of quantitative comparative analyses. More broadly, it contributes to the growing area of cultural evolutionary research with comparative historical databases and to research on the evolution of warfare through human history.
Identifying the closest wild relative of sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.)
Keywords: crop wild relatives
sweet potato
systematics
taxonomy
Ecuador
botany
molecular phylogenetics
sweetpotato

Thanks to its relative resilience, nutritional value, and high dry-matter content, sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.) is a vital staple food around the world, especially for small-scale farmers in drought-prone areas. The development and distribution of Vitamin A-rich, orange-fleshed varieties has proved a particularly valuable tool in combatting malnutrition and mineral deficiency, and made sweet potato an increasingly popular health food. Despite this agricultural and dietary importance however, sweet potato’s origin and domestication are still relatively poorly understood. Several outstanding questions remain about how sweet potato evolved, including whether sweet potato is an auto or allohexaploid, why it possesses two independent chloroplast lineages, and how it developed its thickened storage roots. Answering these inter-related questions is integral to assembling sweet potato’s complex hexaploid genome; understanding the development of key traits; identifying, classifying and utilising wild and cultivated diversity; and assessing how geneflow and introgression have shaped all three.
Central to answering these questions is the need for an improved understanding of the systematics and taxonomy of sweet potato’s immediate crop wild relatives (CWRs), and in particular the identification of its closest wild ancestor, or “progenitor”. Given current knowledge of the likely genomic structure of hexaploid I. batatas, this progenitor is thought to be autotetraploid – with two identical subgenomes – but no such taxon has yet been identified. The lack of previous progress in identifying this tetraploid progenitor of cultivated sweet potato is largely the result of extensive taxonomic confusion over nomenclature and species delimitation for sweet potato CWRs, which has been exacerbated by a complex evolutionary history for I. batatas involving polyploidy and potential hybridisation and introgression.
In this thesis, I provide a comprehensive review of all putatively wild tetraploid material resembling or previously associated with I. batatas, before placing them within the phylogenetic and taxonomic framework established by the recent Foundation Monograph of the genus Ipomoea L. in the Americas. I identify and describe sweet potato’s closest CWR I. aequatoriensis T.Wells & P.Muñoz, providing a complete systematic account of its diversity and exploring its relationship to the cultivated crop. I have been able to achieve this by integrating material from germplasm and natural history (herbarium) collections – two data sources that are generally treated separately – and by the application of a combination of analytic approaches that include the latest in high-throughput sequencing technologies, bioinformatics, and rigorous morphological analysis. Doing so provides vital new insights into the origin of one of the world’s most important food crops.
The principle of sovereignty and state cyber operations
Keywords: cyberspace
public international law
non-intervention
sovereignty
cyber operations
due diligence

Cyber operations possess unique attributes that pose significant challenges for the application of international law. While there is widespread agreement among states that, in principle, international law applies to state cyber operations, considerable uncertainty remains over how international law applies to cyber operations that fall below the threshold of a use of force, effectively resulting in so-called “grey zones” where the application of rules is unsettled. Principally, this leads to the question of how the principle of sovereignty, as well as its derivative rules and related obligations of conduct, specifically the principle of non-intervention and due diligence obligations, may govern state cyber operations. This thesis argues that it is not possible to extrapolate a customary international law “rule of sovereignty” with a cyber-specific application from the principle of sovereignty under existing international law. Proposals for the formation of a cyber-specific customary international law “rule of sovereignty” featuring precise content tailored to the technical attributes of cyberspace to delineate criteria to determine its violation therefore constitute the further development of norms, requiring both state practice and opinio juris to crystallise. There currently exists a significant body of contrary state practice and insufficient opinio juris to support the development of such a rule. The thesis argues that the principle of non-intervention is capable of a broad application where coercion requires a degree of pressure to deprive the target state of control of its state functions, challenging the understanding that mere influence alone is not capable of being coercive and therefore may not qualify as a prohibited intervention. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that due diligence obligations are anchored in primary rules that are developed by states to apply in certain areas of activity, and that the current position of states is clear in determining that they are under no binding obligations in relation to cyber operations.
The DS scholia on the Aeneid and their manuscript tradition
Keywords: Vergil
Seruius auctus
DS scholia
Vergilian exegesis
Aeneid

No thorough investigation comparable to the one which Murgia dedicated to the transmission of Servius’ commentary has hitherto been dedicated to the transmission of the DS scholia on the Aeneid. This thesis, which consists of four chapters, is intended to fill this gap. Chapter I provides a description for each independent witness, identifying the traditions to which their commentaries and notes belong. Chapter II discusses the main features of the different versions of the DS scholia preserved by each independent witness. Chapter III identifies five groups of witnesses which can be shown to emanate from the independent witnesses. Chapter IV addresses the question of the relationships between the independent witnesses.
The aims of the thesis can be described as twofold. First, it lays the foundation for a new critical edition of the DS scholia, clarifying which witnesses can be dismissed as useless and which principles should be adopted to govern the employment of the others on the basis of a discussion of dozens of passages. Second, it offers the first detailed analysis of the way in which the DS scholia were read and studied from the early eighth century, when the Spangenberg fragment was copied, to the end of the sixteenth century, when Daniel’s edition appeared. This analysis not only makes it possible to conclude that medieval scholars engaged with the DS scholia in a much more active and complicated way than is normally believed but also sheds new light on how scholiastic authorship could be perceived between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.
Stocks, memes, and desperation capitalism: an ethnographic case study of r/WallStreetBets
Keywords: r/wallstreetbets
stocks
retail investing
memes
social media
desperation capitalism

Increased availability of digital technologies, such as consumer-level investing platforms, have democratised the financial services industry. Similarly, social media has provided a new forum for retail investors, individuals who are investing without institutional support, to find and share financial advice. Against the backdrop of institutional distrust spurred by the 2008 economic crisis and the COVID-19 cost-of-living crisis, retail investors increasingly turn to investment communities on social media, viewing the stock market as an escape from financial uncertainty. Though prior research has demonstrated that investments made based on information provided from social media largely results in losses, online investing communities, most notably r/wallstreetbets, have continued to attract new users. In this thesis, I demonstrate how social media influences the behavior of retail investors and explain why they are drawn to social media investing communities despite the high likelihood of incurring losses. To conduct this research, I undergo an ethnographic case study of r/wallstreetbets, an online investing community hosted on Reddit known for anti-institutional meme culture and high-risk investment advice. The results demonstrate that users prone to economic biases have their vulnerabilities amplified by social media. Anti-institutional sentiment spurred by lingering resentment for institutions and their role in creating economic crises causes users to trust unregulated information on social media over the regulated advice provided by banks. The investment advice on social media incentivizes users to pursue unnecessarily high-risk trades, exemplified by ‘YOLO trading’ commonly seen on r/wallstreetbets. This culminates in a theory of desperation capitalism, describing why young people feel forced to adopt high-risk money-making strategies to escape financial precarity. The findings of this thesis can help policy-makers, institutions, and academics understand what draws retail investors to social media for advice, resulting in better strategies to mitigate the impacts of dubious online investment advice.
How South Africa's borrowed higher education policies alienate the Higher Certificate students and contribute to the creation of NEETs
Keywords: linguistic imperialism
NEETs

A review of four South African policies reveals that the post-apartheid government harbours neoliberal values that promote competition in higher education and promote the use of English. Through a critical document analysis, the research aimed to ascertain if the use of only English in South African higher education policies lead to a reproduction of neoliberal policies that actively exclude higher certificate students in universities. This study found that the neoliberal values further disenfranchise vulnerable student groups exemplified by the higher certificate cohort in university contexts as the policies barely address their linguistic rights through quantifiable strategies. Instead, English is promoted as necessary in both education and employment. The state’s failure to reflect on linguistic access is most perilous for students who are already outcasted in universities and the neoliberal focus on bachelor's programmes within Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics condemns vulnerable students to possible NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) status. Robert Phillipson’s ideas on linguistic neoimperialism are used to situate this discussion. Ideas on disinvestment and disconnection are entertained as one of possible solutions to linguistic neoimperialism.
Sleep and torpor in rodents and bats: from brain activity to social interactions
Keywords: hamsters
torpor
circadian
sleep
bats

Many biological processes are not constant but instead oscillate between periods of activity and inactivity. This temporal patterning is observed at the most fundamental levels of biology, such as the firing of neurons, through to complex integrated changes in vigilance and metabolism at the level of whole organisms. Periods of inactivity span multiple time scales from millisecond OFF periods in neuronal networks to hour long bouts of sleep and torpor through to periods of hibernation lasting weeks at a time. As the significance of sleep in the lives of all animals and the potential to translate protective functions associated with torpor to humans are increasingly recognised, so too is the importance of discovering why these patterns evolve, how they are regulated and what functions they provide. Here we present an anthology of studies covering a range of topics in sleep and torpor research at different levels of organisation ranging from brain activity through to social interactions.
First, we detail the process of validating a new miniaturised recording device for sleep electrophysiology in freely behaving Egyptian fruits bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus). Next, we present a method of studying ON/OFF period cycles by detecting low amplitude neural activity segments in laboratory mice (Mus musculus) and report the discovery of vigilance-state-dependent duration and a duration-dependent homeostatic response in OFF periods to demonstrate its utility. Finally, we summarise findings of two investigations into factors that may regulate torpor in Djungarian hamsters (Phodopus sungorus). In one investigation we address the role of light in controlling the diurnal timing of torpor entry, showing that extension of the photophase can delay torpor. In a separate investigation we address the potential of social environments to disrupt torpor and influence torpor depth, in particular by characterising the ultrasonic soundscape in relation to sleep and torpor.
These seemingly disparate investigations are connected by an overarching objective: to champion disruptive approaches in sleep and torpor research including the use of more diverse models, developing new analytical techniques and exploring underappreciated interactions with elements of natural environments. Thus we hope that this body of work will generate discussion pertaining both to our findings and to the methods by which they were achieved.