VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Child maltreatment and antisocial behaviour in the United Kingdom: Changing risks over time
Keywords: latent growth curve modelling
1958 British birth cohort
child abuse
antisocial behaviour
child maltreatment
time series

This thesis examines whether the risks associated with child maltreatment have changed over time in the UK; investigating changing risks at the societal and individual level. By adopting a unique socioecological approach, the thesis aims to determine whether: (a) the national incidence of child maltreatment has changed over the last 150 years, and (b) the impacts of child maltreatment on the risk of antisocial behaviour change across an individual’s life-course.
The following methods were used to address these research aims and overcome challenges in child maltreatment research: multiple measures of child maltreatment, pre-existing sources of historical epidemiological data, observational study designs, and analytical methods that are sensitive to repeated measures (e.g. time series analyses, latent growth curve analyses). Research included developing a novel data source on the incidence of child maltreatment over time (iCoverT data source), examining long-term trends in child maltreatment from 1858 to 2016, and analysing 50 years of longitudinal data from the 1958 British birth cohort study.
Results from examining societal risk over time showed that long-term trends in the incidence of child maltreatment have decreased since the 1850s. However, more recent trends have increased since 2000, especially for child protection registrations for emotional abuse and neglect. Results from examining risk across an individual’s life-course found that child maltreatment is associated with an increased risk of antisocial behaviour, with a persistent and stable association remaining up to 50 years old. Together, these findings demonstrate the long-lasting burden of child maltreatment at the societal and individual level.
This thesis makes an important contribution to the literature by highlighting the role of time and epidemiological research methods in better understanding child maltreatment, and helps identify future directions for reducing the burden of child maltreatment.
"Según parecía por las Crónicas antiguas": Representing ruling queens in medieval Castilian historiography
Keywords: María de Molina
Berenguela of Castile
Catherine of Lancaster
Urraca of León &amp; Castile

This thesis explores narratives of ruling queenship in medieval Castilian histories, tracing the evolving treatment of female rulers through a broad range of Latin and vernacular texts from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. The investigation focuses on diverse accounts of four queens who exercised royal authority in the kingdom of Castile in the High and Late Middle Ages: Urraca of León-Castile (regnant 1109-1126), Berenguela of Castile (regent 1214-1217 and co-regnant 1217-1246), María de Molina (regent 1295-1301 and 1306-1321), and Catalina de Lancaster (regent 1406-1418). In line with methods of historiographical analysis developed by Leonardo Funes, Georges Martin, and Aengus Ward, I combine close reading of the texts with consideration of the socio-political contexts of their production and reception. The first chapter examines narratives of Urraca’s sole rule across four different centuries, from the contemporary Historia compostellana to the Crónicas anónimas de Sahagún, for which I propose a recontextualization as a wholly late-fifteenth century text. The diversity of these accounts underscores the flexible treatment of ruling queenship by medieval historians. The second chapter, closely tied to the first, considers representations of Berenguela in the Latin chronicles produced around the court of Fernando III and the vernacular chronicles of the Alfonsine tradition. The analysis of multiple contemporary accounts gives insight into the creation of competing narratives, and reveals the subtle transformations wrought upon the ultimately dominant version. The third chapter evaluates the singular image of María de Molina which emerges from the Crónica de los reyes de Castilla and chronicles of the reigns of Fernando IV and Alfonso XI. The fourth chapter explores the fragmented narratives of Catalina de Lancaster’s regency which emerge from the vernacular, non-royalist histories of the reign of Juan II.
Back to the future? PSNR and state regulation of petroleum resources
Keywords: indigenous peoples
sustainable development
petroleum
government take
hydrocarbons
environmental protection
regulation
customary international law
state responsibility
nationalisation
Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources

This thesis is an exploration of the evolution of State regulation of upstream oil and gas activities, whether this evolution reflects the emergence of a change in the content of the permanent sovereignty over natural resources doctrine as a rule of customary international law and what the implications of that would be for international law. The study of the evolution of State regulation is carried out through case studies of State practice of twenty-five countries in three specific areas that are: government take, nationalizations, and local development, with regard to hydrocarbon upstream activities.
These changes in regulation are looked at from the point of view of the justifications that States have given for them, either domestically or in international fora. These justifications are then assessed under rules of international law that could affect the scope of the primary norms or secondary rules of State responsibility. As regards the former concepts such as legitimate expectations, energy security, equity, and conflicts of rules are analysed. As to the latter, circumstances precluding wrongfulness including state of necessity and force majeure are the key elements.
These case studies are then analysed and compared in the light of these concepts. The conclusion of the thesis is that there is evidence that State practice in relation to upstream hydrocarbon activities has evolved to the extent that the concept of permanent sovereignty over natural resources has evolved to include concerns such as the protection of local communities, but continues to include the long-standing concern with regard to energy security.
Weathering change: climate change vulnerability and women in cocoa farming
Keywords: vulnerability
climate change
Africa
gender

Climate change is increasingly recognized as a hurdle to achieving development goals in developing countries and emerging economies. While mitigation is still a focus of many climate change activities, adaptation strategies are recognized as essential to respond to the current and projected impacts of climate change. The concept of vulnerability is often used to identify what adaptation measures must specifically address, and is discussed in terms of three components: exposure to shocks or long-term stress; sensitivity of a system to the event; and capacity to adapt. Women are considered a vulnerable demographic, because of their reduced access to land, financial and productive resources, and information. This dissertation integrates a vulnerability framework with gender considerations as a means to explore many of the factors influencing climate change vulnerability among women in a case study of cocoa farming in the Central Region of Ghana.
The research is based on semi-structured interviews with female members of three communities, representing a cross-section of the different associations with land and farm decision-making, ranging from primary operators of cocoa farms to producers of food crops on a spouse’s land for subsistence and local markets. The interviews highlighted the importance of income sources and diversification, access to information, and perceptions of empowerment and agency as contributors to vulnerability to projected climate change impacts. Women without direct access to cocoa generally had fewer assets at their disposal and shorter planning horizons that might lead to greater vulnerability. Despite these differences, most of the women demonstrated a positive outlook and future orientation that is often taken as a sign of adaptive capacity. This research demonstrated the need for more nuanced assessment of vulnerability among women, but also for rethinking the depiction of women as disempowered actors and the types of policies crafted to support climate change adaptation and development.
Investigating the role of Leucine Rich Repeat Kinase 2 (LRRK2) in human induced pluripotent stem cell derived macrophages
Keywords: Parkinson's disease
LRRK2
Macrophages
iPSC

Mutations in Leucine Rich Repeat Kinase 2 (LRRK2) are the most prevalent cause of familial PD. Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) have linked its variants with increased risk of developing sporadic PD, inflammatory bowel disease, and leprosy, diseases commonly associated with inflammation and immune dysfunction. LRRK2 is predominantly expressed in a subset of immune cells, notably macrophages and microglia and has been implicated in innate immunity. Yet, most studies report conflicting results, and data are based on mouse models or in immortalised cell lines which do not faithfully recapitulate all aspects of tissue macrophages. In this thesis, macrophages and microglia differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) have been used as a genetically tractable tool that expresses LRRK2 at physiological levels from its endogenous promoter in its normal human chromosomal location. Using this physiologically relevant cell model, the aim of this thesis was to investigate the expression, subcellular localisation and role of LRRK2 protein in macrophages and microglia. This thesis maps the cleavage region of an N-terminal proteolytically cleaved form of LRRK2 in macrophages and shows that LRRK2 can form heterodimers of full-length and cleaved forms. My results demonstrate that LRRK2 is recruited to late phagosomes and that treatment of LRRK2 kinase inhibitors leads to the formation of LRRK2 super-coated phagosomes. However, I demonstrate that LRRK2 is not required for the acidification of phagosomes, and its role at the phagolysosome remains unresolved. Lastly, using hiPSC-microglia in co-culture with iPSC-cortical neurons, I demonstrate that in human cells, LRRK2 is robustly expressed in microglia and is undetectable in cortical neurons. In this co-culture model, under the conditions tested, inflammatory cytokine release was broadly unaffected by LRRK2 mutation or KO, although two different TNFα assay approaches gave conflicting results. This thesis provides novel insights into the role of LRRK2 in macrophages and microglia, and shows that hiPSC-macrophages and microglia can serve as a valuable platform to examine LRRK2 biology.
Fast gates and mixed-species entanglement with trapped ions
Keywords: Trapped ions

Building a quantum computer is one of the outstanding contemporary goals in physics. Trapped-ion qubits are among the most promising contenders, achieving the highest precision gates out of all platforms. However entangling gates have previously only been performed in a regime where their speed is limited by the motion of the ions in the trap. The work in this thesis demonstrates entangling operations beyond this speed limit. In addition, entanglement of different species of ion has been performed. This is an important step towards building a scalable quantum computer, by being able to interface and connect trapped ion qubits via photonic links.
We demonstrate mixed-species entangling gates using a method that requires only a single laser for both species. In an experiment demonstrating the technique with two isotopes of calcium, 40Ca+ and 43Ca+ , we achieved a Bell state fidelity of F = 99.8(6)%. We also perform a Bell test with the two different isotopes, achieving a violation of the CHSH inequality by 15 standard deviations with CHSH parameter S = 2.228(15), without making a fair-sampling assumption. We then use the same gate mechanism to perform an entangling gate on two different atomic species, 43Ca+ and 88Sr+ . In a proof-of-principle experiment we achieved a Bell state fidelity of F = 83(3)%.
For achieving faster two-qubit gates we shape the amplitude of the laser pulses driving the gates. The pulse shapes are specifically designed to yield low error rates and be insensitive to the optical phase of the driving field. We perform an entangling gate with fidelity F = 99.78(3)% in tg = 1.6 μs, a factor of 20 − 60 times faster than the previously highest-fidelity trapped ion gates with only a factor ≈ 2 increase in gate error. We also demonstrate entanglement generation within 480 ns, less than a single period of the centre-of-mass motion of the ions.
A ‘seedbed’ for post-colonial leaders
Keywords: LSE
Liberalism
Harold Laski
Internationalism
British Empire
Socialism
India

This thesis explores the transition between an imperial and post-colonial world by assessing the intellectual and political education of post-colonial leaders from India, as well as Africa, the West Indies and Canada, who studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science [LSE]. The period under scrutiny, from the end of World War I to the early 1950s, witnessed an increasing number of students from British colonies studying in UK universities, with LSE in particular becoming one of the most diverse in the country. At the same time, a number of factors combined to make LSE a fruitful place to examine the larger themes of higher education’s place in late imperial history, the intellectual background of post-colonial leaders and the role of internationalism in nationalist movements. This includes the expansion of LSE’s faculty to include the Marxist Professor of Political Science Harold Laski [1926-50], who developed close relationships with colonial students, the School’s leading role in the research and teaching of the social sciences and its location in central London, which positioned it within walking distance of myriad organisations that offered students the opportunity to network with co-nationals and peers from other colonies while actively engaging in contemporary debates.
The overarching argument is that the classes and political experiences overseas students at LSE were offered promoted graduates inclined towards particular varieties of internationalism, socialism and a belief in the power of the social sciences to transform society by facilitating expert advising and planning. In doing so, LSE was both highly progressive but also less radical than previously thought, demonstrating consistency with nineteenth and early twentieth century notions of the imperial ‘civilising mission’ and reformed liberalism.
Hydrodynamic optical-field-ionized plasma waveguides for laser plasma accelerators
Keywords: interferometry
optical-field-ionization
low-density
HOFI
LWFA
laser plasma
plasma waveguide
LPA
high-intensity
hydrodynamic
laser wakefield accelerator
axicon
laser plasma accelerator
Sedov-Taylor
guiding
OFI

This thesis documents the experimental development of low-density hydrodynamic optical-field-ionized (HOFI) plasma channels. Results from two experiments are presented; the first, a proof of concept experiment, performed in Oxford, demonstrating for the first time that the formation of low-density (&Tilde;1017 cm-3) hydrodynamic plasma channels was possible using optical-field-ionization. The second experiment, performed at Astra-Gemini TA2, aimed to demonstrate the generation of low-density axicon-formed HOFI plasma waveguides and subsequently to demonstrate high-intensity guiding in those waveguides at the highest available repetition rate.
In the Oxford experiments, short (2-4mm) HOFI plasma channels were generated in hydrogen with a spherical lens and probed with longitudinal interferometry. The channels had on-axis densities between 1.6 × 1017 cm-3 and 1 × 1018 cm-3 and matched spot sizes of order 30μm to 60μm. A computational investigation into the guiding properties of the measured plasma channels indicated that they would be suitable as plasma waveguides.
In the experiments at Astra-Gemini TA2, HOFI plasma channels up to 16mm in length were generated in hydrogen using an axicon. These were probed with both longitudinal and transverse interferometry and had on-axis densities as low as 2 × 1017 cm-3 . These waveguides were subsequently used to successfully guide high-intensity (>1017 W cm-2) pulses over the full 16mm or 14.5 Rayleigh ranges, with a maximum throughput of 60 % observed for the higher intensities. The variation in guiding with pressure and with guided beam intensity was investigated experimentally. It was found that the high-intensity guided pulse modified the HOFI plasma channel, with the result of increasing the relative throughput of the guided beam.
Bayesian nonparametric methods for dynamics identification and segmentation for powered prosthesis control
Keywords: State-space modelling
Prostheses
Probabilistic programming
Time-series
Healthcare robotics
Signal processing

Robots need to be able to adapt to their surroundings. Robots whose core function relates to the rehabilitation and assistance of humans, need to be able to adapt to humans. But not all humans, one human in particular: their user. This is an adaptive control problem which speaks of the need for powered prostheses to have anthropomorphic adaptive capabilities. However, it is inconceivable that all possible movements, dynamics and tasks can be preprogrammed into such a system. Prostheses, like robots, need to be able to learn and improve, either by themselves unsupervised, or with the help of human supervision.
The United States alone is home to more than two million amputees, where below-knee amputations is the most common form. The same country is also home to 4.7 million stroke survivors, many of whom could make use of rehabilitation robots. Vascular diseases, such as diabetes, cause 54% of all amputations and the number of diabetes and pre-diabetes cases in the United States currently exceeds 100 million and growing.
Whilst this thesis does not attack the root causes, it does present a three pronged approach for framing the adaptive control problem required for effective rehabilitation. We develop methodology that structures the problem into one of learning a control framework for lower extremity active prosthetics. First, we consider incidence detection as a key element of any control strategy. We study the dynamics of falling under the aegis of classification and state-space modelling. We use the standard Kalman smoother to inpaint missing observations. Then dimensionally reduce the feature space to demonstrate increased classification accuracy, compared with our reference study.
Secondly, we move to the temporal segmentation of similar time-series. This is done using the Bayesian nonparametric paradigm within the framework of state-space modelling and probabilistic programming. Models are rarely correct for real world data. Rather than comparing models that vary in complexity, this approach fits a single model that can adapt its complexity to the observations. This unbounded analysis of the state-space is required given the need for the proposed control framework to grow with new observations.
Finally, we investigate multiple incidents of walking velocity, and propose a learned control strategy able to smoothly transition between the incidents. We combine Gaussian process regression with impedance control, and gait-cycle regression to form a locomotion envelope. The learned control capabilities allow the wearer to smoothly transition between self-selected velocities.
Good but not good enough: the limitations of a social assistance program for children in South Africa –the case of the child support grant
Keywords: cash transfers
child support grant
south africa
child poverty

Background: In recent years cash transfer programs have increasingly become the strategy of choice for poverty alleviation in middle and low income countries. Several child cash transfer programs have been implemented in middle and low-income regions such as Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and many of them have been found to be effective in improving child outcomes.
South Africa‘s child support grant (CSG) constitutes the largest cash transfer programme in the country and the continent. Even though evidence exists which shows that the CSG is associated with improved child outcomes,less research has gone into examining how the different aspects of the grant all work together to facilitate or limit it as a policy instrument for child poverty reduction. Such evidence is important in facilitating an understanding of the capacity of the CSG as a poverty alleviation strategy in a developing country context.
Methods: This dissertation utilises a mixed-methods approach to explore: 1) barriers to CSG take up; 2) the adequacy of the CSG in supporting its recipients; 3) participants’ views on current topical issues surrounding the CSG.
Results: Despite evidence that the CSG is important in tackling child poverty, this dissertation found that the grant is not without its shortcomings as a poverty alleviation instrument. The limitations of the grant are influenced by the policy environment, operations, institutions working alongside the CSG, and the social context in which the grant is implemented.
Conclusion: The findings raise important questions about the capacity of cash transfers to make a significant difference in the lives of poor children and their families if they are neither substantial nor linked to other poverty measures in developing country contexts. The policy recommendations that have been made can strengthen theChild Support Grant’s potential to lift children out of poverty in South Africa.
“The foundations of the national glory are in the homes of the people”: the Addison Act, the First World War, and British housing policy
Keywords: homes fit for heroes
addison act
housing
homes
addison

This thesis examines the relationship between the First World War and housing conditions in Britain. The Housing, Town Planning, &c.; Act, 1919 – passed immediately after the war following years of investigation and formulation by Christopher Addison and the Ministry of Reconstruction – completely changed the face of British state housing policy. The importance of the war in engendering the first major foray of the state in to the provision of dwellings for the working classes is widely acknowledged, yet the importance of the specific conditions which engendered the policy has not previously been explored.
This thesis enriches our scholarly understandings of both the Addison Act and state housing in Britain more widely by closely examining the reciprocal relationship between housing and the First World War in Britain. It builds a more comprehensive picture of the deterioration of housing conditions during the war, and tracks the specific impact they had both on war policy and the plans for reconstruction; in particular, it demonstrates that the Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act, 1915, was the single most important element in determining the scale of the post-war housing programme. In doing so, it elucidates the myriad challenges the Addison Act faced, and highlights the approaches the Ministry of Reconstruction considered and implemented in an attempt to address them. It draws attention to the hitherto neglected importance of women in the creation of the post-war programme and highlights the influence of pronatalism and the ideas of a healthier future nation on the planning process. Furthermore, closer investigation highlights that for policy-makers in the Ministry of Reconstruction, the housing programme was a ‘silver bullet’: not only did they seek to repair a market irreparably broken by the 1915 Rent Act, but they saw the post-war housing programme as an opportunity through which to fix a wide number of societal problems.