VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Biodegradable microspheres for controlled drug/cell delivery and tissue engineering
Keywords: Tissue Engineering
Biodegradable microsphere
Controlled Drug/Cell Delivery

The synthetic biodegradable polymer poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) has been widely explored as substrate biomaterials for controlled drug delivery and tissue engineering. ECM component heparin and bone mineral hydroxyapatite (HA) are attractive biomaterials which can functionalize the PLGA surface to improve cell cell response and to bring in the dual growth factor delivery, because heparin and HA both can improve cell responses and bind with various proteins.
To combine the osteoconductivity of HA and the controlled drug release of PLGA microspheres, HA coated PLGA microspheres were developed by a 3 hour rapid HA precipitation on the PLGA microsphere surface. Effects of various fabrication parameters on microsphere and HA coating morphology were evaluated. This core-shell composite worked as a dual drug delivery device and demonstrated better cell cell response than PLGA microspheres without HA coating.
Three different methods, including osmogen, extractable porogen and gas-foaming porogen, were evaluated to fabricate porous microspheres as injectable cell scaffolds in the tissue engineering. The gas-foaming method produced covered porous PLGA microspheres, on which a skin layer covered all the surface pores. The skin layer was hydrolysed by NaOH to control the surface porosity. The modified open porous microspheres have large continued surface areas between pores, which provided more continued areas for cell adhesion. The porous microspheres with controllable surface porosity and large surface continuity between pores could be novel injectable cell scaffolds.
Heparin was immobilized on the open porous PLGA microspheres by a facile layer-by-layer assemble to combine the advantages of porous structure and the protein binding from heparin. The heparin-coated porous microspheres promoted cell adhesion, spreading, proliferation and osteogenic differentiation. Growth factor-like protein lactoferrin was immobilized on the heparin coated porous microspheres, which further enhanced MG-63 proliferation and osteogenic differentiation. The heparin-coated porous microspheres are promising multi-functional devices for controlled drug delivery and injectable cell delivery.
The neuroses of the railway: trains, travel and trauma in Britain, c.1850-c.1900
Keywords: railway accidents
transport history
railway history
railways
history of psychiatry
Victorian railways
railway spine
neuroses

This thesis explores some aspects of the cultural history of the railway during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. It argues that the railway was of central importance in creating and shaping Victorian attitudes to the machine and to mechanized civilization in a world increasingly dominated by large scale-technologies. In particular, it explores the significance of negative responses to the railway - fear, anxiety, nervousness, alarm, revulsion - in influencing a range of social, cultural and medical responses to the perceived degenerative threat of technological civilization. The four chapters of the thesis are organized so as to provide a progressive tightening of focus on particular aspects of the railway's significance in this context. The first, most wide-ranging, chapter explores the ways in which the Victorian railway was perceived as both an icon of progress and civilization and as a disruptive, threatening, destructive force. In particular, it seeks to establish the deep-rooted, enduring and influential nature of the fear and anxiety which the railway provoked. The second chapter is concerned with the railway journey as an experience, relating the ambivalence with which the railway was viewed to the journey as a sensory, physical and mental experience. The third chapter focuses on the accident as the most dramatic instance of the dangers of the railway, and relates its significance in contemporary culture to the wider context of the fears provoked by increasingly powerful and potentially destructive technologies. The fourth and final chapter explores the phenomenon of 'railway spine', the obscure nervous condition supposedly suffered by railway accident victims who had seemingly received no actual organic injury, but nonetheless displayed nervous, mental and physical symptoms of serious bodily disorder.
'All is pure for the pure’: redefining purity and defilement in early Greek Christianity, from Paul to Origen
Keywords: demon
purity
pollution
death defilement
baptism
dietary laws
early Christianity

This thesis examines the meanings of purification practices and purity concepts in early Christian culture, as they were articulated and formed by Greek Christian authors of the first three centuries, from Paul to Origen. As purity and defilement are especially suited for articulating difference, hierarchy and change, these concepts were essential for early Christians, shaping their understanding of human nature, sin, history, and ritual. In parallel, the major Christian practices embodying difference and change, baptism, abstinence from food or sexual activity, were all understood, emoted and shaped as instances of purification.
Two broad motivations, at some tension with each other, were at the basis of Christian purity discourse. The first was a substantive motivation: the creation and maintenance of anthropologies and ritual theories coherent with the theological principles of the new religion, and the integration of purity traditions and concepts into these worldviews and theories. The second was a polemic motivation: construction of Christian identity by laying claim to true purity while marking the purity practices and beliefs of others (Jews, pagan or “heretics”) as false. I trace the interplay of these factors through a close reading of second- and third-century Christian Greek authors discussing food abstentions, death defilement, sexuality and baptism, on the background of Greco-Roman and Jewish purity discourses.
This thesis demonstrates three central arguments. First, purity and defilement are central concepts for understanding Christian cultures of the second and third centuries. Second, Christianities developed their own conceptions and practices of purity and purification, distinct from those current in contemporary and earlier Jewish and pagan cultures, though decisively influenced by them. Third, concepts and practices of purity and defilement were shifting and contentious, an arena for boundary-marking between Christians and others and between different Christian groups.
Mathematical evolutionary epidemiology: limited epitopes, evolution of strain structures and age-specificity
Keywords: influenza
age-specificity
mathematical biology
age-structured model
infectious diseases
strain structure
antigenic variation

We investigate the biological constraints determined by the complex relationships between ecological and immunological processes of host-pathogen interactions, with emphasis on influenza viruses in human, which are responsible for a number of pandemics in the last 150 years. We begin by discussing prolegomenous reviews of historical perspectives on the use of theoretical modelling as a complementary tool in public health and epidemiology, current biological background motivating the objective of the thesis, and derivations of mathematical models of multi-locus-allele systems for infectious diseases with co-circulating serotypes. We provide detailed analysis of the multi-locus-allele model and its age-specific extension. In particular, we establish the necessary conditions for the local asymptotic stability of the steady states and the existence of oscillatory behaviours. For the age-structured model, results on the existence of a mild solution and stability conditions are presented. Numerical studies of various strain spaces show that the dynamic features are preserved. Specifically, we demonstrate that discrete antigenic forms of pathogens can exhibit three distinct dynamic features, where antigenic variants (i) fully self-organize and co-exist with no strain structure (NSS), (ii) sort themselves into discrete strain structure (DSS) with non-overlapping or minimally overlapping clusters under the principle of competitive exclusion, or (iii) exhibit cyclical strain structure (CSS) where dominant antigenic types are cyclically replaced with sharp epidemics dominated by (1) a single strain dominance with irregular emergence and re-emergence of certain pathogenic forms, (2) ordered alternating appearance of a single antigenic type in periodic or quasi-periodic form similar to periodic travelling waves, (3) erratic appearance and disappearance of synchrony between discrete antigenic types, and (4) phase-synchronization with uncorrelated amplitudes. These analyses allow us to gain insight into the age-specific immunological profile in order to untangle the effects of strain structures as captured by the clustering behaviours, and to provide public health implications. The age-structured model can be used to investigate the effect of age-specific targeting for public health purposes.
Flexible repression: engineering control and contention in authoritarian China
Keywords: contentious politics
civil society
state-society relations
authoritarian politics
labor organizations
Chinese politics

How do authoritarian states foster civil society growth while keeping unruly organizations in line? This governance dilemma dogs every state that attempts to modernize by permitting civil society to pluralize while minding its potential to stir up restive social forces. This dissertation’s main finding is that the Chinese party-state— the world’s largest and arguably the most resilient authoritarian regime—has engineered a flexible institution of state control in which the “rules of the game” are created, disseminated, and enforced outside of institutionalized channels. This dissertation demonstrates how the coercive apparatus improvises in an erratic manner, unfettered by accountability mechanisms.
The regime does not necessarily pull the levers of hard control mechanisms—the tanks, guns, and tear gas—whenever dissenters cross a line of political acceptability. Instead, in keeping with its decentralized political system and its tradition of experimental policy-making, the Chinese state continually remakes the rules of the game which keeps potential rabble-rousers on their toes. Although the regulatory skeleton of state corporatism remains intact, flexible repression is the informal institution—the set of rules and procedures—that structures state-civil society interactions. Specifically, this institution is made up of three key practices: a) decentralization b) ad-hoc deployment c) mixed control strategies. These three practices manifest in two concrete strategies used to govern aboveground and underground civil society: fragmented coercion and controlled competition. Flexible repression enables the Chinese party-state to exploit the advantages of a flourishing third sector while curtailing its threatening potential.
Through participant observation, interviews, and comparative case studies of aboveground and underground independent labor organizations, this dissertation accomplishes three goals. First, it identifies the within-country variation in state control strategies over civil society, which includes the above-ground sector as well as the underground sector of ostensibly banned organizations. Secondly, it traces the patterns of interactions between the state and civil society, generating hypotheses about the mechanisms of change. Finally, it identifies new concepts relevant for studying organized contention in authoritarian regimes. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the study of authoritarian state control and civil society contention, with an emphasis on the nexus between the two.
Biomimetic and autonomic server ensemble orchestration
Keywords: Nature-Inspired Computing
Social Insects
Server Allocation Algorithm
Biomimicry
Mathematics
Behavioural Biology
Biomimesis
Bio-Inspired Computing
Operation Research
Data Centre
Self-Organising Algorithms
Biomimetic

This thesis addresses orchestration of servers amongst multiple co-hosted internet services such as e-Banking, e-Auction and e-Retail in hosting centres. The hosting paradigm entails levying fees for hosting third party internet services on servers at guaranteed levels of service performance. The orchestration of server ensemble in hosting centres is considered in the context of maximising the hosting centre's revenue over a lengthy time horizon.
The inspiration for the server orchestration approach proposed in this thesis is drawn from nature and generally classed as swarm intelligence, specifically, sophisticated collective behaviour of social insects borne out of primitive interactions amongst members of the group to solve problems beyond the capability of individual members. Consequently, the approach is self-organising, adaptive and robust.
A new scheme for server ensemble orchestration is introduced in this thesis. This scheme exploits the many similarities between server orchestration in an internet hosting centre and forager allocation in a honeybee (Apis mellifera) colony. The scheme mimics the way a honeybee colony distributes foragers amongst flower patches to maximise nectar influx, to orchestrate servers amongst hosted internet services to maximise revenue. The scheme is extended by further exploiting inherent feedback loops within the colony to introduce self-tuning and energy-aware server ensemble orchestration.
In order to evaluate the new server ensemble orchestration scheme, a collection of server ensemble orchestration methods is developed, including a classical technique that relies on past history to make time varying orchestration decisions and two theoretical techniques that omnisciently make optimal time varying orchestration decisions or an optimal static orchestration decision based on complete knowledge of the future.
The efficacy of the new biomimetic scheme is assessed in terms of adaptiveness and versatility. The performance study uses representative classes of internet traffic stream behaviour, service user's behaviour, demand intensity, multiple services co-hosting as well as differentiated hosting fee schedule. The biomimetic orchestration scheme is compared with the classical and the theoretical optimal orchestration techniques in terms of revenue stream. This study reveals that the new server ensemble orchestration approach is adaptive in a widely varying external internet environments. The study also highlights the versatility of the biomimetic approach over the classical technique. The self-tuning scheme improves on the original performance. The energy-aware scheme is able to conserve significant energy with minimal revenue performance degradation. The simulation results also indicate that the new scheme is competitive or better than classical and static methods.
Social mechanisms of tax behaviour
Keywords: taxpayer-compliance
Sweden
corporate-tax-avoidance
Mexico
social-mechanisms
social-networks
social-interactions
tax-crimes
tax-behaviour
evasion

The main goal of this thesis is to provide a sociologically informed analysis of tax avoidance and tax evasion in contemporary Mexico and Sweden, focusing particular attention on the explanatory role of social networks, social interactions, and positive feedback mechanisms.
Two major data sources are used: (1) A panel dataset that includes all persons, 16 years or older, who resided in Stockholm County during at least one of the years 1990 to 2003 (N=1,967,993). The dataset includes detailed information on the socio-demographic characteristics, kinship networks, and criminal offences of these individuals; (2) A random sample of 36,949 firms that appeared in the Mexican Federal Register of Taxpayers for the year 2002. The records of the Mexican Federal Administrative Fiscal Tribunal provided data on all types of tax claims appealed before them during the 2002-2008 period.
A variety of approaches and techniques are used such as agent-based simulation models, discrete time event history models, random effect logit models, and hierarchical linear models. These models are used to test different hypotheses related to the role of social networks, social interactions, and positive feedback mechanisms in explaining tax behaviour.
There are five major empirical findings. (1) Networks seem to matter for individuals' tax behaviour because exposure to tax crimes of family members appears to increase a person’s likelihood of committing a tax crime. (2) Positive feedback mechanisms appear relevant because if a person commits a tax crime, it seems to increase the likelihood that the person will commit more tax crimes in the future. (3) Positive feedback mechanisms are also important for explaining corporate tax behaviour because a firm that has engaged in legal tax avoidance in the past appears to be more likely to engage in tax avoidance in the future. (4) Network effects are important in the corporate world because exposure to the tax avoidance of other firms increase the propensity of a firm to engage in tax avoidance. (5) Substitution effects between tax evasion and tax avoidance are likely to exist because when tax evasion becomes more prevalent in a firm’s environment, their likelihood of engaging in legal tax avoidance is lowered.
The results underscore the importance of a sociological perspective on tax behaviour that takes into account social interactions and positive feedback mechanisms. In order to understand microscopic as well as macroscopic tax evasion patterns, the results presented in this thesis suggest that much more attention must be given to mechanisms through which taxation crimes breed more taxation crimes.
Essays on the allocation of labour and capital in Indonesia
Keywords: economics and education
microeconomics
development economics
labour economics

This dissertation comprises three essays on the allocation of labour and capital in a large developing country, Indonesia.
In the first essay, I examine the impact of the 1998 East Asian recession on child schooling outcomes in Indonesia. Using panel data on 7-15 year-olds, I exploit the heterogeneous impact of the recession across urban communities as measured by the variation in rice price increases, under the assumption that communities where rice prices increased the most were those where real wages declined the most. I find that for the youngest children (aged 7-12 years) there is a large negative impact of higher rice prices on school attendance and no effect on labour market participation. For older children (aged 13-15 years), schooling enrolment does not respond to rice prices but labour market participation declines sharply in the worst-hit communities. I find no evidence of adverse long-term consequences on human capital formation.
In the second essay, I test the hypothesis that there exists a significant earnings differential between similar workers in the formal and informal sectors. Using panel data on salaried and self-employed individuals, I find that after controlling for firm size and individual-specific heterogeneity, there is no formal sector earnings premium, except in the public sector. The results are robust to the presence of unpaid family workers, measurement error, and non-random attrition in the survey. This questions the commonly held belief that labour markets in developing countries are segmented because of legal institutions that protect high formal sector earnings.
In the third essay, I estimate the effect of a large exchange rate depreciation on the performance of importers. The ability to manage volatility in the cost of imported inputs is likely to depend on a firm's access to external sources of finance as well its ability to hedge against exchange rate movements. Using data from a census on Indonesian firms, I find that while domestic importers face lower value-added due to a rise in their costs of production, foreign-owned importers fare better: they are more likely to sustain higher value-added, hire more labour and use more materials than domestic owned firms. This suggests another channel through which FDI can add value to a firm in a developing country, particularly with the increasing importance of trade in intermediate goods.
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis - new methods for the detection of genetic abnormalities in human preimplantation embryos
Keywords: HLA-typing
phospholipase C zeta
multiplex PCR
whole genome amplification
single cell
preimplantation genetic diagnosis
DNA fingerprinting
microarray
telomere
mitochondria
aneuploidy
real time PCR

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) refers to the testing of embryos produced through in vitro fertilization (IVF) in order to identify those unaffected by a specific genetic disorder or chromosomal abnormality. In this study, different methodologies were examined and developed for performance of PGD. Investigation of various whole genome amplification (WGA) methods identified multiple displacement amplification as a reliable method for genotyping single cells. Furthermore, this technology was shown to be compatible with subsequent analysis using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarrays. Compared to conventional methods used in this study to perform single cell diagnosis (e.g. multiplex PCR), WGA techniques were found to be advantageous since they streamline the development of PGD protocols for couples at high risk of transmitting an inherited disorder and simultaneously offer the possibility of comprehensive chromosome screening (CCS). This study also aimed to develop a widely applicable protocol for accurate typing of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region with the purpose of identifying embryos that will be HLA-identical to an existing sibling affected by a disorder that requires haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Additionally, a novel microarray platform was developed that, apart from accurate CCS, was capable of reliably determining the relative quantity of mitochondrial DNA in polar bodies removed from oocytes and single cells biopsied from embryos. Mitochondria are known to play an important role in oogenesis and preimplantation embryogenesis and their measurement may therefore be of clinical relevance. Moreover, real-time PCR was used for development of protocols for CCS, DNA fingerprinting of sperm samples and embryos and the relative quantitation of telomere length in embryos (since shortened telomeres might be associated with reduced viability). As well as considering the role of genetics in terms of oocyte and embryo viability assessment and the diagnosis of inherited genetic disorders, attention was given to a specific gene (Phospholipase C zeta) of relevance to male infertility. A novel mutation affecting the function of the resulting protein was discovered highlighting the growing importance of DNA sequence variants in the diagnosis and treatment of infertility.