VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Thermomechanical behaviours of unfilled/filled thermoplastic polyurethane
Keywords: High-rate Behaviour
Thermoplastic Polyurethane
Unfilled/filled Polymer
Dynamic Mechanical Analysis
Thermomechanics

Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) exhibits enormous mechanical performance and extensibility in both engineering, industry and scientific applications. The filled polymer which enclosed rigid particles has mainly improved on mechanical properties. The work focused on three TPUs, carbon-black-filled TPU, supramolecular TPU, and sugar-filled TPU. To characterise their advantages and fundamental properties, thermo-mechanical analysis, mechanical experiments and scattering techniques can be used. However, testing rubber material in high rate responses is difficult. Therefore a principle of time-temperature superposition was employed to associated mechanical behaviour with temperature and loading rates. The principle was as foundation connecting all experiments and modelling procedures to cooperate the thermo-mechanical data with linear viscoelastic theory. Upon this methodology, these behaviours in TPU and its composites can be calibrated, further predicted on high strain rates. The study of the interpretation of the phenomenological model is not only responsible for reproducing strain-stress behaviour from low- to high-strain rates, but also take advantage of time-temperature equivalence on thermo-mechanical behaviour for objectives linking between different conventional experiments. The purpose of the research is to characterise mechanical behaviour on different types of TPU materials, explore their properties especially in high strain rates, at last develop the application of viscoelastic theory in order to describe polymer at large deformation in high rate experiments.
Investigating multi-regional neural dynamics associated with cocaine-paired memory
Keywords: memory
drug
tetrode
behaviour
neuroscience
cocaine
neural oscillations
electrophysiology

Rewarding experiences bias the formation of memories such that future re-exposure to corresponding stimuli biases behavioural selection such to increase the probability of re-encountering reward. This crucial feature of the nervous system is hijacked by drugs of abuse such as cocaine; whose neuropharmacological actions impose dramatic enhancement of neural reward signals, forging the formation of cocaine-paired memories. These memories constitute a diverse range of informational modalities spanning multiple brain areas. Due to the powerfully rewarding nature of cocaine, these brain-wide representations tend to outcompete other, more useful memories, precipitating stubborn patterns of cocaine-seeking behaviour. This thesis combined a novel model of dynamic cocaine-seeking behaviour with a parallel five brain site electrophysiological recording strategy. These experimental tools enabled me to explore the hypothesis that specific patterns of frequency-specific multiregional co-ordination support the recall of cocaine-paired experience and precipitate cocaine-seeking behaviour. My results suggest that cocaine-seeking behaviour, expressed initially after conditioning and renewed following an extinction period, was most linked to the enhancement of patterns of multiregional co-ordination (“barcodes”) in the beta (15–25 Hz) range. VTA 4 Hz oscillations emerged as an important agent for the temporal orchestration of beta activities, showing cycle-specific correlates of beta-selective modulation. Using a preliminary cell-type prediction pipeline, the putative dopaminergic population in the VTA showed firing properties which were reminiscent of the control of beta activities across regions, The results in this thesis provide the scaffolding onto which a final experiment will be developed, which aims to provide a causal demonstration to the conclusions from this thesis; that VTA 4 Hz and dopamine-controlled multiregional beta co-ordination patterns are involved in the precipitation of cocaine-seeking behaviour.
Mediate words: translation, nationalism, and religion in the works of Robert Browning and B. Kojo Laing
Keywords: Postcolonialism
Comparative Literatire
translation
Victorian Poetry
Religion
Kojo Laing
World Literature
Ghana
Nationalism
Robert Browning

This thesis mediates comparative encounters between two authors themselves interested in mediating between different linguistic and cultural communities. By reading the Victorian British poet Robert Browning and the twentieth-century Ghanaian poet and novelist Kojo Laing alongside one another, and by allowing the numerous and surprising points of similarity, congruence, and connection between them to organise critical reading, the three main chapters of this thesis explore the affiliative range of literary texts outside of their ‘format of habitual connection’. This entails developing a comparative criticism attuned to the ways in which congruent contexts (times of nation-building, tensions between liberalism and imperialism) and shared contexts (Anglicanism, English as a ‘global’, imperial language) relate to congruent and shared stylistic techniques (multilingualism and grotesque comedy, for instance). It also entails a revised notion of ‘world literature’ that reflects how a text’s tendency to gesture towards interrelationships past national borders might remain in tension with a reticence or uncertainty about the ways in which this gesturing can overlook local difference. Proceeding from an analysis of both authors’ translational desire to stretch the English language through the incorporation of foreign linguistic elements (Chapter One), and their different but related tendencies to interrogate the limits of nationalist discourse and national geographies (Chapter Two), to their shared interest in the relationship between religious and spiritual affiliative communities and comic and grotesque literary styles (Chapter Three), this thesis explores the manifold junctures between Laing’s and Browning’s texts—and, indeed, junctures between different ways of reading them. What emerges is a literary cartography capable of reflecting the ways in which texts that themselves attempt to think beyond the confines of national borders, cultural limits, and linguistic communities relate to one another.
Investigating the regulation of membrane protein assemblies by lipids and other small molecules using native mass spectrometry
Keywords: membrane proteins
ion mobility spectrometry
native mass spectrometry
surface-induced dissociation
detergents

In this thesis I describe the application of native mass spectrometry to investigate membrane protein interactions with lipids and other small molecules. This work is a combination of method development, resulting in novel ways to study membrane protein-lipid complexes by native mass spectrometry, and application of established techniques to important biological targets.
In chapter 2, I demonstrate for the first time the ability of surface-induced dissociation to distinguish between interfacial and non-interfacial phospholipid binding. Additionally, I show that combining this method with the modern high sensitivity instrumentation and statistical analysis enables the observation of subtle differences in oligomeric stabilities of membrane proteins in the presence of different species of interfacial lipids.
Chapter 3 describes application of native mass spectrometry to the investigation of a selected set of novel and established detergents. Controlled delipidation of membrane proteins is readily achieved by selecting a specific detergent from this set. Furthermore, a protocol for selective removal of either phospholipids or lipopolysaccharide with the aid of these detergents is presented. These findings contribute both towards the practical applications to membrane protein research and also towards a better fundamental understanding of detergents in general.
Chapter 4 describes the use of native mass spectrometry to probe the effects of lipid binding on a horse Na+/H+ transporter, NHE9. I show, that in the absence of specific lipid interactions NHE9 is unable to maintain its dimeric form. These results complement the recently obtained high-resolution structure of this protein.
Finally, chapter 5 illustrates investigation of the human MAPEG protein family. I use collision-induced dissociation experiments to demonstrate the preference of one member of this family, LTC4S, for particular phospholipid classes. I also identify appropriate native mass spectrometry conditions for another member of this family, MGST2, and link its instability to the removal of structurally important lipids by membrane mimetics.
The historiography of the village community in medieval law
Keywords: legal custom
legal history
village community
medieval law
customary law
law
medieval history
Paul Vinogradoff

This thesis explores the English medieval village community as both a lived historical reality and as a legal historical concept. It traces the study of the village community from the historical studies in the early nineteenth century, and through to current research on the topic. It does so in order to make the following claims: first, the village community remains an interesting and valuable object of legal historical study in demonstrating a ‘bottom-up’ notion of law, despite having fallen out of favour; secondly, the early scholarship still has some interesting concepts to offer in the form of a focus on community-led decision making and its role in the early common law, despite many of its premises being disproved in the intervening one-hundred-and-fifty years; thirdly, a definitional framework other than legal positivism, which does not accommodate concepts emerging from custom unless and until they are given the authoritative weight of a sovereign authority, is required in order to describe these customary law concepts. This partly explains why today’s legal theory, often dominated by legal positivism, does not tend to engage with customary law, but doing so is a valuable enterprise as one of many enlightening models of law. A detailed consideration of the substantive customary laws of village communities demonstrates alternative ways of making and conceiving of law not dependent directly on state authority, and property rights not focused on individualistic aims. It engages in a discussion as to whether medieval customary law ought to be considered ‘law’, concluding in favour and arguing that this enables a more fulsome consideration of the English medieval legal landscape.
How is information in working memory selected and prioritised for action?
Keywords: retro-cue
attention
working memory
EEG
eye-tracking

Flexible cognition necessary for everyday behaviour depends on working memory (WM)–the ability to keep information in mind for a later use. Not all items in WM are represented equally. Attention can be allocated to select and prioritise task-relevant content for a forthcoming action.
Chapter 2-3 used behaviour, eye-tracking and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the consequences of selecting a single feature in WM for the representation of other features belonging to the same item. Orientation judgements were faster and more precise when another feature of the same object was cued for an orthogonal task during the delay. Colour selection in WM engaged spatial attention, indexed by contralateral alpha suppression and gaze bias, and was associated with a boost in the representation of the cued object’s memorised location (Chapter 2) and orientation (Chapter 3) as decoded from EEG voltages. The results provide evidence for obligatory attentional spread between an item’s features in WM and support a special status of location in selecting and binding features. Finally, EEG decoding revealed that the cued item was automatically compared with the probe at recall, suggesting selected WM content may be in a prioritised state for interacting with new sensory input and guiding decision-making.
WM is more than a passive store of recent experiences and is fundamentally future-oriented. Chapter 4 tested whether WM contents are configured as prospective task-sets for guiding behaviour. In one experiment, a prioritised item drove responses in a task-specific manner even when irrelevant in the context of a nested task. In a second experiment, task-foreknowledge improved WM-guided behaviour and enhanced retro-cued prioritisation on reaction times. Together, the results indicate that prioritised WM items are configured as prospective templates optimised for context-dependent action. Neuroimaging studies are needed to elucidate the precise mechanisms of task-specific coding in WM. Chapter 5 proposes an EEG experiment, in the form of a Registered Report, to test the hypothesis that prioritised content is stored in a functional state that is intrinsically linked to its anticipated use. I predict that patterns of neural activity coding for remembered items will be task-specific. The suitability of the analysis pipeline was demonstrated on simulated neural data.
The results of this thesis highlight a key role of attentional selection in preparing WM representations for future action and motivate further research into the ways information in WM may serve as functional states for decision-making.
Development of a novel outcome measure for forensic mental health services
Keywords: Outcome measurement
Forensic mental health services

Forensic mental health services provide care to people in secure psychiatric hospitals and specialised community teams. Such services are typically low-volume and high cost, often highly restrictive and average length of stay is long. Measuring the outcomes of care is important to safeguard patients and the public, monitor progress, inform treatment plans and support service evaluation. Despite this, little is known about which outcomes are most important and existing outcome measures have focused on clinical risk and symptoms, neglecting functioning and quality of life, with limited patient input to their design or reporting. The overall aim of this study was to develop a new empirically-based outcome measure for forensic mental health services. Over four hundred existing instruments were identified and the quality of ten was assessed in detail. The evidence base for their use as outcome measures in forensic mental health services was limited. Clinicians judged these same ten instruments to be unsatisfactory in terms of content validity. Thematic analysis was used to develop an outcomes framework based on patient interviews and multi-stakeholder focus groups. Forty-two outcomes were identified in the six domains of ‘about me, my quality of life, my health, my safety and risk, my life skills and my progress’. In a Delphi process to prioritise these outcomes eight of the top fifteen outcomes were shared between patients/carers and professionals. Based on these results, a new outcome measure, the FORensic oUtcome Measure (FORUM), was developed, including both patient reported and clinician reported questionnaires. In a sample of 62 patients and 35 clinicians encouraging evidence of validity and reliability was established. Feedback from both patients and clinicians indicate that the FORUM is easy to use, comprehensive and relevant. These results indicate that the FORUM is a promising new instrument to measure outcomes in forensic mental health services.
Discernment of phytoplankton groups from optical properties.
Keywords: barents
ocean-colour
ecology
ecosystem-monitoring
phytoplankton
remote-sensing
climate-change
arctic
satellite
phenology

The Barents Sea is a highly seasonal and productive shelf ecosystem, representing a gateway between the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Anthropogenic climate change is causing rapid changes in temperature, ocean chemistry, water column structure and sea-ice persistence. Sea-ice extents are declining twice as fast in the Barents Sea as other Arctic regions, establishing a mandate to investigate the impact of these environmental changes on productivity in the Seasonal Ice Zone. This is the remit of Arctic PRIZE (PRoductivity in the Seasonal Ice ZonE), and this thesis was conducted under the auspices of work package 3, studying phytoplankton compositional and phenological variability.
Remote-sensing is a key means by which ocean ecosystems are monitored and there have been recent efforts in the literature to employ ocean-colour to recognise different assemblages of phytoplankton. It is routine practice in the remote-sensing literature to distinguish functional assemblages from cell-counts and then seek bio-optical signatures to be targeted in remotely-sensed imagery. The analysis herein suggests that switching between different data types in this way introduces a translation error that undermines remote-detection efforts. We therefore recommend that functional assemblages are defined and identified directly from their bio-optical properties.
Thereafter, a scheme of bio-optical functional types is defined, based on Barents Sea phytoplankton communities, and a bio-optical algorithm is developed with the aim of retrieving this structure in remotely-sensed ocean-colour.
This algorithm is applied to study community compositional change, facilitating the integration of previous in-situ studies towards a more complete understanding of incipient ecosystem change. In addition, the ascendancy of temperate-mode autumnal phytoplankton blooms is investigated and relationships to evolving environmental conditions are explored, producing strong evidence that Atlantic inflow currents regulate the intensity of autumnal blooms in the Barents Sea.
In sum, growing Atlantic influence in the Barents Sea is found both to cause community compositional changes and concomitant phenological shifts that may change Barents Sea ecosystem function.
Courting beyond the court: performing commensurability in the early European trade with Japan, 1609-1641
Keywords: Richard Cocks
strangership
history
William Adams
Japan
cross-cultural commensurability
global history
Dutch East India Company
East India Company
early modern

Between the years 1609 and 1641, merchants of the English and Dutch East India Companies (EIC and VOC) lived and worked in the port city of Hirado in Tokugawa Japan. The arrival of these companies marks the first time that western Europeans had encountered Japan following the formation of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603. Lacking the resources and training of royal embassies, and neither desirous nor capable of military intervention, the English and Dutch merchants were required to pursue strategies of social integration in Japan, in order to develop the network of social relations needed for successful trade.
This dissertation examines the mechanisms by which these merchants were able to integrate with the Japanese they encountered during their time at Hirado. It argues that strangership – the ambivalent and potentially hostile relationship between estranged parties – was a significant threat to trade. By locating points of cross-cultural commensurability between their disparate societies, the European merchants were able to develop trust with the local Japanese and overcome, in large part, the challenge of strangership. It suggests that this process was facilitated by the fact that all three countries were being shaped in broadly similar ways by shared ‘early modern’ forces.
Drawing on written and visual sources from the EIC and VOC factories at Hirado, this study examines the ways in which the European merchants were able to develop cross-cultural commensurability in five central aspects of the Euro-Japanese relationship: the formation of distinct cultural identities, the use of entertainment and socialising as a means of constituting social networks, the impact of space on social relations, the use of formal and informal gift exchanges as a social mediator, and the role of violence in resolving conflicts of honour and status.
Affirmative action and the question of general category in India: judicial treatment of constitutional, legislative, and executive interventions in determining backwardness and intra-classification challenges
Keywords: economically weaker sections
affirmative action
reservation
socio-economic disadvantage

The proliferation of reservations based on persistent demands of upper-castes or advantaged groups has given rise to a complex set of recurrent legislative interventions in India. 2019-Amendment provision of quota benefits to EWS or socially advantaged sections based on economic disadvantage marks a crucial shift in the constitutional policy of reservations. This thesis critically engages with the constitutional and state legislative reservations policies, and their judicial treatment, for EWS and upper-castes in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Haryana. The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter undertakes an analysis of the legislative and judicial history of Indian interventions and outlines the political economy behind them. The second chapter critically analyses the judgements challenging the constitutionality of the 2019-Amendment and state measures. Chapter 3 carries out an analysis of major problems and themes inductively identified and evaluates how discrimination law theory best explains the implications of the post-2019 regime on Indian affirmative action and multi-dimensional substantive equality. It is argued that reservations for upper-castes are not affirmative action measures and substantive equality. They amount to collateral discrimination as they burden cognate groups with quotas not meant for reducing relative group disadvantage. They are also discriminatory towards existing status groups. The de facto nature of EWS is of ‘upper-caste Hindu men’ which misses addressing intersectional poverty discrimination. As a key implication, the commitment of the Constitution towards substantive equality stands diluted and symbolised by enabling advantaged groups access to quotas historically devised for protected groups. The distinction between historical discrimination-based reservations and general poverty alleviation measures has collapsed giving rise to accommodating all positions of injustices under reservations. In the long-term, such developments may lead to withering-down and may displace historical discrimination-foundation for reservation policy to a general system of communal quotas for all castes and classes based on income poverty ground.