VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Gender in law under and after state socialism: the example of the Czech Republic
Keywords: Czech Republic
work
equality
discrimination
women
law in society
family
post-communist transition
law in context
gender
feminist legal studies

The thesis examines the expressions and origins of negative attitudes to gender equality in the Czech Republic, which have been noticeable especially in the process of implementation of the EU sex equality acquis. It asks whether and how they can be explained with reference to socio-legal developments that started during Czechoslovakia’s State Socialist past, but are still relevant today. In order to answer these research questions, the thesis examines how gender equality has been regulated through law and how it has been understood by law-makers, judges and legal scholars in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic during State Socialism (1948-1989) and Transition (1989-today).
The thesis examines legal developments in gender-relevant areas, most importantly in antidiscrimination law. It also excavates the underlying, sometimes hidden, but crucial understandings of key concepts such as ‘women’, ‘gender’, ‘equality’, ‘discrimination’ and ‘rights’. The thesis argues that while formal legal guarantees for women have largely been satisfactory in the Czech Republic by international standards, the way these formal legal guarantees are understood, interpreted and applied has not been gender-progressive.
It argues that the reasons for this are: (i) entrenched patriarchal ideas about women’s appropriate role both in private and public life; (ii) a failure to understand gender as a social construct and to recognize gender order as a pervasive social structure; (iii) an inadequate conceptualization of equality and a refusal to combat sex discrimination; and (iv) a limited understanding of the role of law and of rights in the shaping of social relations. It argues that these understandings have been considerably path-dependent on State Socialism, be it through a rejection of anything perceived as State Socialist (which has harmed redistributive policies), as well as through the mostly unconscious retention of ideas or their absence (which has led to a blindness to the cultural aspects of patriarchy).
Gender differences in problem discussion : the depressive effect of co-rumination in same-sex friendships
Keywords: depression
social psychology
anxiety
co-rumination
adolescence
friendships

The main objective of this thesis was to examine gender differences in co-rumination using observational, experimental, and diary methods. At the start of this project there were no existing studies which had assessed co-rumination in this way and this thesis intended to be an exploratory investigation of co-rumination using these methods. Rose (2002) defined co-rumination as ‘excessively discussing problems within a dyadic relationship’ (p. 1830) and used it to explain why females have closer, more supportive, friendships (Rose & Rudolph, 2006) but are also more susceptible to depression (Weissman & Klerman, 1977). Her findings suggest that co-rumination has maladaptive outcomes for females (increased depression and anxiety) but not for males. The six studies within this thesis aimed to investigate the outcomes of co-rumination using adult (Studies 1- 4), adolescent (Studies 5 and 6) and child samples (Study 6). The first three studies within this thesis assessed co-rumination using dyadic analyses of observational and experimental data. The results of these studies indicated that scores from the co-rumination questionnaire (CRQ) and the co-rumination coding scheme (CRCS) were associated with affect, but that the co-rumination manipulation used in Study 3 had no effect on levels of affect. CRCS was mainly predictive of depressive outcomes whereas CRQ was predictive of both depressive and anxious outcomes. The research indicated that CRQ scores positively correlated across the two dyad members. However, each dyad member’s score showed different associations with affect, depending on whether the dyad member was presenting his or her own problem for discussion. The diary studies indicated that co-rumination was best assessed using daily items which were more predictive of changes in positive and negative affect than the CRQ. It was clear from the studies within this thesis that co-rumination did not only have negative outcomes for females, and that future research should examine the outcomes of co-ruminative discussions for males and females. It was suggested that future researchers should conduct similar experimental research to Study 3 but that they should include multiple co-ruminative interactions and more immediate assessments of co-rumination in the days following a co-ruminative interaction.
The relationship between type Ia supernovae and their host galaxies
Keywords: supernova
distance scale
cosmology

This thesis studies the relationship between type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) and their host galaxies. The sample consists of 527 SNe Ia with redshift z<0.09 discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). We obtained high-quality photometric and spectroscopic data of the host galaxies and determined their stellar mass Mstellar, star formation rate (SFR), gas-phase/stellar metallicity, stellar age and SN offset.
In the first part of the analysis, we compare the SN Ia photometric properties to the host parameters. Strong correlations between the SN Ia light-curve width (stretch) and the host age/mass/metallicity are found: fainter, faster-declining events tend to be hosted by older/massive/metal-rich galaxies. There is also some evidence that redder SNe Ia explode in higher metallicity galaxies. SNe Ia in higher-mass/metallicity galaxies also appear brighter after stretch/colour corrections than their counterparts in lower mass hosts, and the stronger correlation is with gas-phase metallicity suggesting this may be the more important variable. We also compare the host stellar mass distribution to that in galaxy targeted SN surveys and the high-redshift untargeted Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). The difference between each stellar mass distribution can be explained by an evolution in the galaxy stellar mass function, coupled with a SN delay-time distribution proportional to t-1. Finally, we found no significant difference in the mass-metallicity relation of our SN Ia hosts compared to field galaxies, suggesting any metallicity effect on the SN Ia rate is small.
In the second part of the analysis, we compare the SN spectral features to the host parameters. We find that SNe Ia with higher Si ii λ6355 velocities tend to explode in more massive galaxies. We study the strength of the high-velocity component of the Ca ii NIR absorption, and find that SNe Ia with a stronger high-velocity component are preferentially hosted by galaxies with a low Mstellar, a blue colour, and a high SFR, and are therefore likely to arise from the youngest progenitor systems. When combined with other studies, our results support the scenario that these high-velocity features are related to an interaction between the SN ejecta and a circumstellar medium (CSM) local to the SN.
Dilemmas of regional governance: sub-national territorial politics and river basin management in the USA, France, China, and India
Keywords: river basin management
water resource management
water resource conflict
water resource politics
sub-national politics

This dissertation identifies and explores the dilemma of regional governance, namely how to address political and economic challenges which occur at the meso-, as opposed to local, national, or international scale. Drawing on a large body of theoretical work on decentralization and federalism, this dissertation addresses the question, how do different institutional arrangements for political, fiscal, and administrative decentralization influence the capacity of political systems to capture regional-scale externalities? It does so by examining the responses of four different political systems, two federal and two unitary, to the problem of capturing economic externalities through River Basin Management (RBM), a quintessential regional issue. RBM outcomes are operationalized in terms of efficacy of capture of both water quality and quantity externalities which occur within inter-jurisdictional river basins.
Through close historical analysis of six paired case studies across the four country cases, the dissertation argues that the capacity of political systems to capture regional-scale externalities depends on the ability of sub-national jurisdictions to pursue localized preferences, which is in this dissertation referred to as sub-national territorial politics. These politics are most prevalent in federal systems, which typically accord sub-national territorial jurisdictions with greater political power and fiscal resources. These political systems feature fewer and weaker regional governance institutions, and generally less effective regional-scale externality capture, than their counterparts.
This dissertation contributes to a growing "sub-national turn" in comparative politics in two ways. First, it identifies the geographically-rooted interests which often shape sub-national actor preferences, particularly with respect to natural resource issues. Second, the dissertation discerns the lack of political incentives for central governments to resolve disputes between sub-national administrative jurisdictions, particularly in the federal systems in which these units are the basis for political representation at the national level.
Simulation and control of windfarms
Keywords: wind turbine
optimisation
supervisory control
fatigue
wind power plant
genetic algorithm
mechanical engineering
control engineering
wind energy

This thesis examines the design of supervisory controllers for windfarms of pitch-controlled wind turbines. The control objectives are the maximisation of the financial income from the generated electricity and the minimisation of the turbines' fatigue damage. The design exploits the wide variations in the ratio of financial income to fatigue damage which are found both spatially across windfarms and as a function of time. The supervisory control strategy makes use of the ability of pitch-controlled turbines to operate with variable power set points; a capability which is rarely exploited in practice.
A windfarm simulation which has been developed for the purposes of testing supervisory controllers is described. It is shown that the simulation is a suitable test-bed for this application. Results are presented which demonstrate how the fatigue damage of a turbine's gearbox and structural components vary as functions of the mean wind-speed, turbulence intensity and power set point, both for isolated turbines and for turbines experiencing wake effects.
A lifetime performance function is proposed and 'ideal' power set point curves are evaluated using a genetic search algorithm. It is shown that significant improvements in performance can be achieved if the operation of the turbines is altered to take account of variable electricity tariffs.
A windfarm control strategy that splits the turbines into interacting and non-interacting categories is found to give good results. Using data generated by the simulation, it is shown that simple cost functions can be developed for non-interacting turbines which, when used in a controller, give performance that is close to the 'ideal'. A similar cost function is applied to a group of three interacting turbines, and it is found that substantial reductions in all measures of total annual fatigue damage are achieved for a small reduction in total annual financial income. The on-line implementation of windfarm supervisory controllers is discussed and the behaviour of a simple hill-climbing algorithm is examined using a simulated group of three interacting turbines.
Architecture of the HIV-1 glycan shield
Keywords: gp120
glycosylation
broadly neutralising antibodies
vaccines
HIV

In recent years the glycan shield of the HIV-1 envelope spike (Env) has emerged as a potential target for microbicide and vaccine design. The densely packed glycans on its surface include an intrinsic population of under-processed oligomannose structures, and a number of lectins and broadly neutralising antibodies (bnAbs) have been isolated which are reactive to these ‘non-self’ glycan structures. The potential value of these agents in therapeutic or vaccine contexts depends upon the prevalence of their glycan targets in nature and their resilience to sequence mutation. Here the prevalence of oligomannose-type glycans on recombinant gp120 was demonstrated across a panel of isolates, revealing subtle cross clade differences. Alanine scanning of all potential N-glycosylation sites (PNGSs) within a model gp120 demonstrated the overall stability of the oligomannose population, but highlighted regions of glycan clusters where individual glycans act to limit the processing of their neighbours. This was formally demonstrated for the N332 ‘site of vulnerability’, where deletion of nearby glycosylation sites led to altered glycan processing at the N332 site. A panel of N332-dependent bnAbs was screened for their ability to tolerate such changes in glycan processing, with differing results. While some displayed promiscuous binding, others were more sensitive to glycan microheterogeneity. Site-specific glycosylation analysis of the PGT135 epitope revealed that an intolerance of certain glycoforms may explain its limited breadth. While a greater understanding of Env glycan microheterogeneity and bnAb promiscuity is required, these findings reveal insights into the architecture of the HIV-1 glycan shield that suggest it is a conserved and robust target for drug and vaccine design.
Studying the brain mechanisms of dyspnoea with functional magnetic resonance imaging
Keywords: dyspnoea
neuroimaging
perception
FMRI
psychology

Dyspnoea (breathlessness) is a debilitating, often poorly controlled, symptom of cardiopulmonary, neurovascular and psychological disorders. This thesis develops the necessary methodology to dissociate aspects of the acute dyspnoea experience using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) in healthy volunteers. The neuronal mechanisms underlying dyspnoea anticipation, its perceived intensity and unpleasantness and the modulation of these mechanisms by the opioid remifentanil were explored.
We investigated the subjective perception of respiratory loading, a commonly used dyspnoea stimulus, and its potential systematic confounds on FMRI due to cerebral blood flow changes. Investigation of the perception of respiratory loading at different levels of hypercapnia (increased end-tidal CO2) showed that hypercapnia should be kept to a minimum to avoid increased baseline respiratory unpleasantness whilst maintaining the stable arterial CO2 (isocapnia) beneficial for FMRI analysis. Investigation of the effects of respiratory loading (± 9 cmH2O) on cerebral blood flow showed that systematic confounds of respiratory loading on perfusion-based neuroimaging data were small (~5%) and did not significantly alter neural activation in response to visual stimulation.
Isocapnic respiratory loading during a classical fear-conditioning paradigm during FMRI was used to investigate dyspnoea anticipation, and dissociate the intensity and unpleasantness of acute dyspnoea by modulating unpleasantness with remifentanil. Differential neural networks were found to be involved in perceived intensity (thalamus, insula, somatosensory cortex) and unpleasantness (hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex). Remifentanil reduced respiratory unpleasantness without affecting the perceived intensity and differentially reduced brain activity during both dyspnoea anticipation and perception.
This thesis showed the potential of isocapnic respiratory loading for the study of dyspnoea with FMRI. This stimulus revealed, for the first time, brain activation for dyspnoea anticipation, perceived intensity and unpleasantness. The opioid-sensitive nature of the anticipation and unpleasantness of dyspnoea provides brain targets for future research and might facilitate more effective dyspnoea palliation.
Power functions and exponentials in o-minimal expansions of fields
Keywords: real numbers
power function
model completeness
exponentiation
o-minimal
decidability

The principal focus of this thesis is the study of the real numbers regarded as a structure endowed with its usual addition and multiplication and the operations of raising to real powers. For our first main result we prove that any statement in the language of this structure is equivalent to an existential statement, and furthermore that this existential statement can be chosen independently of the concrete interpretations of the real power functions in the statement; i.e. one existential statement will work for any choice of real power functions. This result we call uniform model completeness. For the second main result we introduce the first order theory of raising to an infinite power, which can be seen as the theory of a class of real closed fields, each expanded by a power function with infinite exponent. We note that it follows from the first main theorem that this theory is model-complete, furthermore we prove that it is decidable if and only if the theory of the real field with the exponential function is decidable. For the final main theorem we consider the problem of expanding an arbitrary o-minimal expansion of a field by a non-trivial exponential function whilst preserving o-minimality. We show that this can be done under the assumption that the structure already defines exponentiation on a bounded interval, and a further assumption about the prime model of the structure.
An incomplete understanding: Clarifying some causes and consequences of the 'poor comprehender' profile
Keywords: language
poor comprehenders
reading comprehension
working memory

The research presented in this thesis had two overarching aims; the first, to supplement our knowledge concerning the aetiological underpinnings of poor comprehension, and the second, to investigate the impact of being a poor comprehender on behavioural and educational outcomes in the school context. A combination of standardised test batteries, novel experimental paradigms, and questionnaire measures were used to obtain data that addressed hypotheses connected to these two aims. Poor comprehenders were found to have working memory deficits, as well as more specific deficits in suppressing irrelevant information from working memory. However, these deficits were largely confined to the verbal domain, giving credence to the theory that their poor performance on working memory and suppression tasks may be driven by underlying language difficulties. Poor comprehenders did show some evidence of broader executive deficits in both the verbal and non-verbal domains, raising the possibility that there might be subgroups of poor comprehenders with distinct aetiological profiles. In terms of behavioural and educational outcomes, poor comprehenders’ deficits were found to impact selectively on these areas, producing a distinct pattern of behavioural and educational impairments. These findings highlighted the need for early identification of, and effective intervention for, poor comprehenders.
What is the difference between a moral realist and a moral anti-realist?
Keywords: realism
creeping minimalism
Michael Dummett
anti-realism

This paper addresses the question of how to distinguish moral realism from moral anti-realism. An influential view, prevalent primarily due to the work of Michael Dummett, appeals to semantic features of realism such as truth, bivalence, and surface form. However, minimalist accounts enable an anti-realist to appropriate any such semantic feature. The semantic characterisation is thus unable to distinguish adequately between moral realists and moral anti-realists. This is the problem of Creeping Minimalism. An alternative characterisation of the debate is proposed, making use of the distinctively metaphysical criteria of ontological inclusion/exclusion. Semantic minimalism is not an issue here, and the possibility of minimalism about ontology is shown to be incompatible with both realism and anti-realism, thus preventing the recurrence of Creeping Minimalism.
Rational macroeconomic learning in linear expectational models: an analysis of the convergence properties of macroeconomic models under partial information rational expectations and Bayesian learning
Keywords: JEL:E00
feasible rational expectations equilibria
indeterminacy
sunspots
partial information
generalized Schur decomposition
Bayesian learning
JEL:C11
JEL:C60
rational expectations

The partial information rational expectations solution to a general linear multivariate expectational macro-model is found when agents are uncertain about the true values of the model's parameters. Necessary and sufficient conditions for convergence to the full information rational expectations solutions are given, and the core of an algorithm for the Bayesian updating of beliefs is provided. In the course of this a new class of full information rational expectations equilibria is described and some of its desirable properties proven.
Automatic validation and optimisation of biological models
Keywords: partial evaluation
a posteriori
correctness
CellML
units
cardiac
error analysis
reliability
computational optimisation
lookup tables

Simulating the human heart is a challenging problem, with simulations being very time consuming, to the extent that some can take days to compute even on high performance computing resources. There is considerable interest in computational optimisation techniques, with a view to making whole-heart simulations tractable. Reliability of heart model simulations is also of great concern, particularly considering clinical applications. Simulation software should be easily testable and maintainable, which is often not the case with extensively hand-optimised software. It is thus crucial to automate and verify any optimisations. CellML is an XML language designed for describing biological cell models from a mathematical modeller’s perspective, and is being developed at the University of Auckland. It gives us an abstract format for such models, and from a computer science perspective looks like a domain specific programming language. We are investigating the gains available from exploiting this viewpoint. We describe various static checks for CellML models, notably checking the dimensional consistency of mathematics, and investigate the possibilities of provably correct optimisations. In particular, we demonstrate that partial evaluation is a promising technique for this purpose, and that it combines well with a lookup table technique, commonly used in cardiac modelling, which we have automated. We have developed a formal operational semantics for CellML, which enables us to mathematically prove the partial evaluation of CellML correct, in that optimisation of models will not change the results of simulations. The use of lookup tables involves an approximation, thus introduces some error; we have analysed this using a posteriori techniques and shown how it may be managed. While the techniques could be applied more widely to biological models in general, this work focuses on cardiac models as an application area. We present experimental results demonstrating the effectiveness of our optimisations on a representative sample of cardiac cell models, in a variety of settings.