VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Non-equilibrium dynamics of interacting many-body quantum systems in one dimension
Keywords: Prethermalization
Non-equilibrium time evolution
Quantum Quenches

In this thesis we study three examples of interacting many-body systems undergoing a non equilibrium time evolution.
Firstly we consider the time evolution in an integrable system: the sine-Gordon field theory in the repulsive regime. We will focus on the one point function of the semi-local vertex operator eiβφ(x)/2 on a specific class of initial states. By analytical means we show that the expectation value considered decays exponentially to zero at late times and we determine the decay time. The method employed is based on a form-factor expansion and uses the "Representative Eigenstate Approach" of Ref. [73] (a.k.a. "Quench Action").
In a second example we study the time evolution in models close to "special" integrable points characterised by hidden symmetries generating infinitely many local conservation laws that do not commute with one another, in addition to the infinite commuting family implied by integrability. We observe that both in the case where the perturbation breaks the integrability and when it breaks only the additional symmetries maintaining integrability, the local observables show a crossover behaviour from an initial to a final quasi stationary plateau. We investigate a weak coupling limit, identify a time window in which the effects of the perturbations become significant and solve the time evolution through a mean-field mapping. As an explicit example we study the XYZ spin-1/2 chain with additional perturbations that break integrability.
Finally, we study the effects of integrability breaking perturbations on the non-equilibrium evolution of more general many-particle quantum systems, where the unperturbed integrable model is generic. We focus on a class of spinless fermion models with weak interactions. We employ equation of motion techniques that can be viewed as generalisations of quantum Boltzmann equations. We benchmark our method against time dependent density matrix renormalisation group computations and find it to be very accurate as long as interactions are weak. For small integrability breaking, we observe robust prethermalisation plateaux for local observables on all accessible time scales. Increasing the strength of the integrability breaking term induces a "drift" away from the prethermalisation plateaux towards thermal behaviour. We identify a time scale characterising this crossover.
Electric vehicles in China: past, present and future
Keywords: energy consumption and CO2 emissions
China
policy
demonstration
Electric vehicles

Abstract As the world's major car-producing countries and companies are increasing research and development efforts on vehicle electrification, electric vehicles (EVs) are developing rapidly from the development and testing stage to commodity production and application stage. As the largest global vehicle manufacturer and new vehicle market, China has considered the EV as one of the key tools to solve the increasing energy security issues and environmental pollution issues in the road transport sector. However, as a new market, what the challenges and key factors are in the EV promotion process is still not clear. The main objective of this dissertation is to answer this question through evaluating the effectiveness of EV development in China on energy savings, environment protection and policy demonstration. Instead of covering all determinants, this dissertation mainly focuses on four key aspects: the current statues and issues surrounding China’s EV development and promotion; the energy consumption and carbon emissions of EVs based on the power mix both at the state level and regional level; the potential diffusion trend of the EV penetration and the sensitivities of the key impact factors; and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the EV demonstration program in China. Applying a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods (such as lifecycle analysis, diffusion model and evaluation framework), this dissertation found that, in addition to the technology limitation of the EV, there are still many issues surrounding the environmental, industry, infrastructure and policy aspects, which have hindered EV development in China. To accelerate EV promotion, more comprehensive and diversified policy strategies should be developed instead only focusing on the financial subsidies. The charging infrastructures, for example, showed a more important role in EV penetration than the pricing factors, based on current market conditions. For the energy and environmental motivations, although the pure battery EV (BEV) can achieve a great reduction in fossil energy consumption, its benefits in carbon emission savings is not obvious due to China’s heavy reliance on coal-fired power generation. The plug-in hybrid EV (PHEV) seems to be the right choice as a transit technology, according to its performance with emission savings in the current market situation. An evaluation framework has been developed in this dissertation to discuss the effectiveness of the EV demonstration program in China, and help to guide a more balanced development of EVs by considering comprehensive aspects, which include the EV industry, market conditions, policy support, and environmental impacts. Ultimately, this dissertation provides recommendations for the policy implementation for developing a diversified and flexible policy strategy for the EV penetration in China based on different technology choices (EV types), different situations (national and regional) and different timelines (short-term, mid-term and long-term).
Essays on the marriage market
Keywords: Family Economics
Women's Preference towards Marriage
Human Capital Formation
Two-Sided Information Asymmetry
Assortative Matching
Matching in Marriage Market
Intra-household Specialization

This thesis consists of a short introduction and three self-contained chapters.
Chapter 1 develops a model of intra-household specialization and human capital formation for couples, taking into account of assortative sorting on income potentials in the marriage market. I assume people are matching on potential wage growth rates which differ across individuals and are realized through actual work experiences. The model is estimated by a simulated minimum distance estimator with PSID data from 1968 to 2011. I find there is strong positive assortative matching on wage growth rates, which helps explain the correlated wage growth residuals of married couples. If matching is switched to random, there will be more variation in household specialization arrangements and higher observed wage growth rates. The estimated elasticity of substitution between market goods and home production is approximately 0.37. Husband's time and wife's time turn out to be complements in the home production function.
Chapter 2 studies a marriage market with two-sided information asymmetry in which the gains from marriage are stochastic. Contracts specify divisions of ex-post realized marital surplus. I first study a game in which one side of the matching market offers contracts, and then study a social planner's problem, finding necessary and sufficient conditions for a truthful direct revelation mechanism to achieve matching efficiency. These conditions become more stringent as the number of agents in the matching market increases.
Chapter 3 examines the relationship between women's preference towards marriage and her marital outcomes. I propose using the mother's marital status as a proxy for her daughter's ex-ante preference towards marriage. Using 1980 and 2008 U.S. Census data, I estimate the impact of women's preference towards marriage and their educational attainments on their probability of getting married, and with Heckman correction, the impact on their husbands' earnings conditional on being married.
Cato the censor and the creation of a paternal paradigm
Keywords: Political Competition
Roman Comedy
Latin Didactic
Classical Reception
Roman Oratory
Roman Republic

This thesis analyses the relationship between Marcus Porcius Cato Censorius and his eldest son, Marcus Porcius Cato Licinianus, considering its importance for Cato's public image and political career, investigating its place within some of the central cultural debates of the 2nd century BC, and looking at the impact which this relationship had upon received impressions of Cato the Censor as presented by later Latin authors. This is done primarily through the examination of the written works which Cato addressed to Licinianus, the extant fragments of which are presented here, with a translation and commentary, in the first modern edition to treat these texts as a unified project. The subsequent sections of this thesis set the works which Cato addressed to his son within the context of the general cultural debate and individual political competition which engaged Rome's ruling elite during this period; Cato's adoption of a paternal persona within these works is related to the character's popular appeal in the military sphere and on the comic stage; and the didactic pose and agricultural instruction featured in these texts is used to illuminate some of the challenges posed to Cato's successful performance of his duties as censor. A final section considers the reappropriation of Cato's relationship with his son as found in the De officiis of Cicero, the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian, and the anonymous Disticha Catonis. This thesis suggests that the Censor's relationship with his son, and the works which he addressed to the young man, played a more significant part in Cato's public image and political career than has hitherto been acknowledged. These texts illuminate some of the finer points of Cato's clever political strategy and they offer fresh insight into the popular culture and elite competition of the period in which he lived. The relative importance of this relationship within Cato's public life helps to explain the popularity of later images of the Censor as a paternal and educational figure and offers us a better understanding of modern conceptions of Cato.
Realising intersectionality in discrimination law
Keywords: Equality
Intersectionality
Discrimination

The central aim of the thesis is to understand why intersectionality remains at the fringes of mainstream discrimination law and to provide an alternative vision to the dominant conception of single-axis discrimination. This aim is pursued by translating intersectionality theory into the conceptual and doctrinal precincts of comparative discrimination law of South Africa, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The thesis is divided into three parts. Part One posits the framework of 'intersectional integrity' as forming the backbone of the category of intersectional discrimination. Its normative core insists on mapping the intersections between identities as creating unique and shared patterns of group disadvantage by considering people’s identities as a whole. It is this bipartite framework against which the doctrine is considered.
Part Two deals with the doctrinal limitations which impede a successful claim of intersectional discrimination. The comparative analysis fine-combs through the judicial interpretation to understand how it fares against the framework of intersectional integrity. The judicial strategies emerging from the doctrinal analysis are consolidated in the form of a graded spectrum which captures the proximity of each response from the category of intersectional discrimination. Beyond this conceptual reimagination, it also considers how other tools in discrimination law need to be recalibrated to accommodate an intersectional claim. These include the conception of equality and discrimination, the criteria for selection of analogous grounds, the understanding of indirect discrimination, the relationship between impact and justification analysis, apportioning the burden of proof and determining the standard of scrutiny.
Part Three consolidates the normative insights emerging from the thesis. A restatement of the theoretical and doctrinal recalibrations helps imagine how a lawyer would walk through the labyrinth of discrimination law for realising a claim of intersectional discrimination.
The emergence of multiple status systems in adolescent communities
Keywords: status hierarchies
Stochastic Actor-oriented Model (SIENA)
multiplex networks
group formation
adolescent communities
network evolution

How do informal groups emerge in adolescent communities? What distinguishes a group from just a set of students? Who will end up together in a group and who will be left out? Why are there more groups in some classrooms and fewer in others? What determines whether these groups overlap in their members or they are completely segregated, perhaps antagonistic?
While a huge body of research in sociology and social psychology focuses on these questions, an integrated approach that is able to answer all of them is yet to be developed. Without realizing that these five issues are interrelated, we cannot hope to understand how groups influence individuals and how they shape our communities.
This thesis proposes an integrative theory of informal group formation in communities. Based on the tradition of Social Network Analysis, it develops a framework in which interpersonal relations and reputations are formed through a process called informal status production. Groups emerge from this micro-process by the alignment of positive relations and agreement in peer-perceptions between actors.
The main micro-mechanisms predicted by the theory are tested on a unique longitudinal network dataset from school classrooms. To this end, a new empirical procedure was developed, by which a few aggregated networks can be constructed from tens of relational items. This allows the analysis of rich network data with several relational dimensions.
The empirical studies of multiplex network dynamics confirm that there are strong interdependencies between friendships and perceptions. Students who agree about their peers tend to become friends, but more so when they hold a minority opinion in the class. This contributes to group formation. Friends also influence each other's perceptions, but we manage to show that the presence of groups around them interferes with this process by moderating the influence of individual peers.
Identification and characterisation of myofibroblast markers in human colon and colorectal cancer microenvironment
Keywords: AOC3
myofibroblasts
cancer microenvironment
NKX2-3

Myofibroblasts (MFs) are one of the most significant stromal cell types in epithelia such as in the gut. They play an important role in regulating the normal colorectal stem cell niche and facilitating tumour initiation, growth and progression through inter-cell signalling. Abundant presence of MFs is often associated with poor prognosis in cancers. The aim of this project is to identify new myofibroblast markers to distinguish them from others cells in the stroma, and also to establish patterns of myofibroblast gene regulation.
First, we identify the membrane protein that home-raised IgG1 antibody PR2D3 recognises on myofibroblasts, by using immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry based amino acid sequencing, as the AOC3 membrane primary amine oxidase, with additional reactivity to myosin heavy chain 11 (Chapter 3). The AOC3 expression in myofibroblasts in vivo and in vitro is validated by extensive expression profiling analyses. Our results demonstrate that AOC3 is expressed by myofibroblasts and that it functions as an SSAO enzyme (Chapter 4). Furthermore, we successfully separated primary myofibroblasts from fresh tissues by FACS sorting using AOC3 as a myofibroblast-specific surface marker (Chapter 5). Analysis of whole genome microarray mRNA expression profiles between myofibroblasts and fibroblasts revealed 4 candidate genes that were the most significantly differentially expressed in the two cell types; NKX2.3 and LRRC17 are highly expressed in myofibroblasts, while SHOX2 and TBX5 are highly expressed in fibroblasts (Chapter 6). NKX2.3 is essential for TGFβ-induced myofibroblast contraction and migration ability. Knockdown of NKX2.3 using siRNA caused a decrease of myofibroblast-related gene (ACTA2, MYH11 and AOC3) expression and an increased expression of fibroblast gene, SHOX2 in myofibroblasts. This suggests that NKX2.3 is a key mediator for maintaining myofibroblast characteristics and functions. Our work presented here shows that myofibroblasts and fibroblasts have significantly different expression profiles for a few key genes and that they differ in their response to TGFβ.
In conclusion, the results clearly show that TGFβ activated fibroblasts and myofibroblasts, as defined by the expression of AOC3 and NKX2.3, are distinctly different cell types.
Uniform multicommodity flows in random networks
Keywords: Random Graph
Multicommodity flow
Component structure
Percolation
Hypercube
Network

Given a network &Nscr;, and a collection &Vscr; of unordered pairs of vertices in &Nscr;, a corresponding uniform multicommodity flow F of volume φ consists of simultaneous flows of volume φ of unique commodities between each pair of vertices in &Vscr;. The maximum uniform flow volume is the maximum value of φ such that there is a uniform multicommodity flow of volume φ in &Nscr;, within the capacity constraints.
This thesis considers networks with random edge-capacities. Multicommodity flows are of interest in operational research and combinatorial optimisation and sampling. They have been studied extensively from a "worst-case" perspective, but the "typical" behaviour of multicommodity flow problems is much less well understood. In order to address this, a model is considered in which the underlying graph is fixed and the edge capacities are random. Aldous, McDiarmid and Scott studied the case in which the underlying graph is complete, the edge capacities are independent, each distributed like a given random variable C, and &Vscr; is the collection of all unordered pairs of vertices.
Another very natural example is the d-dimensional (hyper)cube Qd, with independent random edge capacities, where the probability of an edge having zero capacity is less than 1/2. Two models are studied. In the first, flows are routed between all antipodal (opposite) pairs of vertices, and in the second, flows are routed between all vertex pairs. In both cases, as d tends to infinity, asymptotic values for the maximum uniform flow volumes are determined.
A detailed characterisation is given next for the size and distribution of components in a random subgraph of the hypercube where the probability of an edge being present is a constant less than 1/2. It is shown that, whp, other than the main component, the number of vertices in any component is bounded by a constant and that the number of components of a given size or configuration is asymptotically normal. Multicommodity flows in the largest component of such a network are then analysed.
Two further random structures are considered. Firstly, a network formed by giving each edge of a random cubic graph a capacity of 1 is considered. In this case the capacities are not random but the structure of the underlying graph is. This case is of interest as it is a tractable example of a graph with the 'small world' property that the diameter increases like log n. Secondly the argument of Aldous, McDiarmid and Scott is generalised to give results for directed and undirected complete multipartite graphs. Lastly multicommodity flows in a directed hypercube are considered.
The phenomenon of political authority: an analysis of selected issues pertaining to its nature and limits
Keywords: Form
Nature
Raz
Normal justification thesis
Self-authorship
Comprehensive
Authority
Limits

In what way must people interact for the phenomenon, as opposed to the concept, of political authority to exist? What are the factual and normative conditions that must be satisfied for rule over others to be political and authoritative? In this thesis, I argue that answering these questions is essential to understanding the nature of the phenomenon of political authority and is analytically prior to any questions about the scope of its exercise and content of its justification. I argue that only when a plurality of persons—as members of a community—exchange conflicting (or incompatible) reasons for action, for the sake of determining how their actions should be regulated, with their conflicting proposals for action then finally resolved through a process of deliberation and decision, can the phenomenon of political authority in fact exist. My account of these factual and normative conditions means that the nature or form of political authority is characterised by practical conflict, deliberation, decision and action. Further, my account of political authority, which I model on an analysis of the nature of 'self-authorship', means that political authority can exist only when it is accompanied by a plurality of autonomous persons. If my account is right, it has implications for two of Joseph Raz's claims about the exercise and justification of political authority. First, legal systems qua political authorities do not by nature claim comprehensive authority. Second, for the 'normal justification thesis' to be logically tenable, it must be qualified so that political authority is justified only if its exercise is consistent with the autonomy and equality of its subjects. I conclude with a consideration of why I differ from Raz on these issues, suggesting that the reason for this disagreement is that we have different understandings of the nature of politics.
Ceria morphologies as Pd nanoparticles support for heterogeneous catalysis
Keywords: Heterogeneous Catalysis
Ceria
Morphologies
Nanoparticles

Ceria is well known for its unique properties in fast oxygen mobility and formation of oxygen vacancies which makes ceria an excellent catalyst support for metal nanoparticles. Promotional effect of ceria has been well established in a number of reactions including three-way catalyst and CO oxidation. These unique properties of ceria are dependent on the surface facets it exposes, where they can be enhanced by the exposure of high energy surfaces such as (100) and (110).
The work presented in this thesis involves controlling the surface exposed by the ceria support by making them into cube and rod morphology, which predominantly expose the (100) and (110) surface, respectively. Hence, the effect of these surfaces on the ceria support can be investigated. The ceria morphologies were deposited with Pd nanoparticles and their catalytic properties were tested on methane combustion and gas-phase formic acid decomposition reactions. In both of the catalyst test reactions, the Pd deposited on the ceria cubes support had shown superior catalytic properties compared to the Pd deposited on the ceria rods support, indicated by the former's higher activity, TOF and resistance to poisoning. Based on the characterisation techniques performed in this study such as TPR, ambient pressure XPS, STEM-EELS and pulse isotopic oxygen exchange, the enhanced catalytic properties of Pd/ceria cubes were attributed to the high energy ceria (100) surface which led to more favourable formation of oxygen vacancies and faster oxygen mobility.