VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
More than a principal: A mixed methods exploration of successful high school leadership in the Western Cape, South Africa
Keywords: Successful school leadership
South Africa
School leadership
Principal leadership

School leadership matters. After teachers and teaching, school leadership is the most important determinant of student achievement in school, although there is still uncertainty regarding what successful school leadership is and what successful school leaders do in non-Western contexts. This mixed methods study explores successful high school leadership in South Africa. Specifically, a questionnaire was administered to 38 principals from academically high-achieving schools in a range of socioeconomic contexts throughout the Western Cape, and 14 principals were interviewed. An integrated analysis reveals the paradox of uniqueness and universality of successful school leadership in South Africa, outlining that while there is no single best approach, various similarities exist between successful school leaders and the established international literature. The study finds that successful principals adapt to their context, amalgamate transformational, instructional and distributed leadership styles, set direction, develop people, constantly redesign the school with teaching and learning, and, importantly, strive to make a difference in the lives of others. By shining a light on these characteristics and practices, the study offers theoretical, practical and personal advice to aspiring school leaders.
Religious pluralism in pre- medieval India (600 A.D. – 900 A.D)
Keywords: Pluralism
Tolerance
Hinduism
Indian religion

A study of post-Gupta literature [including two contemporary plays] and archaeological sources in order to ascertain the extent to which pluralism of religion was present in popular culture, even though the sectarian textual tradition frequently opposed each other as heretical sects. The main hypothesis of the thesis is the existence of variegated sectarian traditions, which coexisted in the public sphere, despite the machinations of the sectarian theologians.
Development of a dual fermion approach to the fcc Hubbard model
Keywords: magnetism
dual fermion
CT-QMC
DMFT

We develop a codebase for performing dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) and dual fermion (DF) calculations on the Hubbard model, by modifying, extending, and interfacing several pre-existing open-source codes. This is used to examine the Hubbard model on a face-centered cubic (fcc) lattice, to obtain numerically-exact results at the level of DMFT and investigate the effect of non-local electron correlations within the dual fermion approach.
Our code centres around a modified implementation of the CTHYB quantum Monte Carlo technique used as an impurity solver. We discuss the modifications made, and validate our code by comparing its results to known results in the literature. The DF calculations are obtained by using the CTHYB results as inputs to an extension of the OpenDF code, which we likewise validate by comparison of our results to those of previous authors.
We study the magnetic phase diagram, magnetic susceptibilities, and single-particle dynamics of the Hubbard model on the fcc lattice. Within DMFT a large FM region is found above half-filling, the phase boundary of which is located precisely by susceptibility and magnetisation calculations. A large AFM phase is found around and below half-filling with contributions from instabilities towards the X and W points. Single-particle spectra are obtained using the Maximum Entropy method for a wide range of temperatures and fillings demonstrating how the spectra change as the FM phase boundary is crossed.
The non-local correlations taken into account by the DF approach reduce the critical temperatures of both the FM and AFM regions. Corrections in the FM region are small and strongly suggest that DMFT is able to capture the relevant physics in this region of the phase diagram.
The code developed as part of this project opens the door for further investigations of the Hubbard model on the fcc, and other lattices, across wide ranges of parameter space.
Adult height and the risk of cardiovascular diseases: investigating causality using genetic associations in two ethnically diverse populations
Keywords: height
Mendelian randomisation
cardiovascular diseases

Background: Taller adult height has been associated with lower risk of most vascular and respiratory diseases, but higher risk of other diseases (cancer and some vascular diseases) in studies predominantly from European populations. The causal relevance of height for different cardiovascular diseases remains unclear.
Methods: Instrumental variables for height were constructed from up to 3200 genetic variants having genome-wide significant association with height in published European ancestry based sources. Conventional observational and causal genetic associations (Mendelian randomisation analyses) of 1 SD (~6.5 cm) taller height with cardiovascular diseases and risk factors were assessed in 1M participants from the UK Biobank (UKB) and the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) studies, supplemented with data from CARDIoGRAMplusC4D and METASTROKE consortia.
Results: The genetic instruments selected explained 16.9% of the variance of height in UKB but only 10.5% in CKB. The association of genetically elevated height was inversely associated with coronary artery disease (odds ratio [OR] per 1 SD taller height: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.84, 0.89; n=78 960 cases), systolic blood pressure and LDL cholesterol, positively with atrial fibrillation (1.32; 95% CI: 1.27, 1.38; n=13 365) and lean body mass, but null with ischaemic stroke overall. However, for ischaemic strokes subtypes available in METASTROKE, the association was inverse with large-vessel stroke (OR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.84, 0.99; n=2167) and positive with cardioembolic stroke (1.13; 95% CI: 1.05, 1.22; n=2365). Genetically elevated height was also positively associated with all ischaemic stroke among UKB and CKB participants with atrial fibrillation. Observational and genetic associations with diseases were directionally consistent, and were inverse with haemorrhagic stroke (n=7819, mostly from CKB).
Conclusions: Genetically elevated height is inversely associated with occlusive cardiovascular diseases, potentially mediated by blood lipids and blood pressure, but also positively associated with atrial fibrillation and cardioembolic stroke, potentially through its association with lean body mass.
Improvements in electron cryo-tomography towards understanding virus surfing
Keywords: Virus surfing
Cryogenic specimen warping
Flexo
CryoET
Membrane fusion protein
Cryo-SOFI
MLV
Cryo-FM
HSV gB
Herpes Simplex Virus
sub-tomogram averaging
HSV glycoprotein B
Super-resolution cryo-fluorescence microscopy
Murine Leukemia Virus
CryoEM
sub-volume averaging
Electron Cryo-Tomography

Electron cryo-tomography (cET), in combination with sub‑volume averaging (SVA), is a powerful technique for determining the structure of complex biological specimens that are not amenable to more traditional structure determination methods. In Chapter 1, SVA was used to achieve a sub-nanometre resolution structure of Herpes simplex virus 1 glycoprotein B in its pre-fusion conformation. Nevertheless, several challenges still undermine the routine use of cET for structural cell biology. Imaging with an electron beam damages specimens, leading to localised warping of tomograms and reduced resolution of SVA maps if not compensated for. Using densities of biological structures within tomograms as fiducial markers is one solution to this problem. A software implementation of this concept, termed ‘Flexo’ and its application is demonstrated in Chapter 2. While this improves tomogram quality, other issues persist. The lack of a specific labelling technique for cET often limits the use of SVA to large and recognisable structures; correlation with super‑resolution cryo-fluorescence microscopy (cryo‑FM) is a promising solution. The primary drawback of this technique has been devitrification induced by the high laser intensities typically required. Chapter 3 describes Cryo-SOFI as a general solution to this problem, enabling substantial resolution improvement in cryo‑FM, and allowing cET to be performed in a correlative fashion. Chapter 4, explores the avenues of combining live-cell FM imaging with cET to study the transport of virus particles along cellular protrusions, called virus surfing. Events of surfing and static viruses can look alike in cET snapshots, making it necessary to link these high-resolution observations with their dynamic history. This led to the development of techniques towards live-CLEM: correlative live‑cell light and electron microscopy, which also revealed that cells undergo major structural changes during the preparation for cryogenic preservation. Overall, the work presented in this thesis presents a number of promising solutions to overcome some major obstacles for cET to fulfil its full potential for in situ structural cell biology.
Modal ethics: the role of counterfactuals in stoicism
Keywords: Stoic Logic
Ethics
Ancient Logic
Logic
Determinism
Compatibilism
Modal Logic
Ancient Philosophy
Stoicism

This paper argues that interpreting Stoic compatibilism through the lens of Chrysippus’ modal logic (specifically his account of counterfactual possibility) reveals a broader understanding of moral responsibility than is typically discussed. Moreover, this understanding suits the school’s emphasis on human nature and moral improvement. To the Stoics, the moral agent is considered responsible for all acts of assent (and thus all impulses, beliefs and thoughts) but modal responsibility goes beyond this. If the agent is considered responsible in the presence of a counterfactual opportunity to act otherwise - even in circumstances that she was not immediately able to control – then she is forced to consider the notion of internal consistency and temporalised understanding of external hindrance employed by Chrysippean possibility. Thus, moral responsibility understood this way encompasses an understanding of the agent’s nature as a being that is teleologically capable of virtue and a consideration of her future moral development. The paper attempts to consider the interweaving system of logic, physics and ethics in a holistic manner to reveal the full scope of Stoic responsibility.
Adaptation and genetic conflict
Keywords: Genetic Conflict
Adaptation

Genes that increase organism fitness can come to prominence as a result of natural selection, leading to the appearance of organismal design, or ‘adaptation’. However, genes that compromise organism fitness can also come to prominence if they are able to secure a selfish propagation advantage from doing so. Such genes are called ‘selfish genetic elements’. I consider the consequences of selfish genetic elements for organismal design (adaptation). First, I consider a fungus in which – strikingly – different nuclei in the same individual may be genetically different from each other (‘chimera’). I show how such diversity could be maintained by natural selection, and what consequences this has on the organism. Second, I consider, in general and in a range of specific biological scenarios, whether selfish genetic elements might be expected to gain control of organism traits. I show that the ‘parliament of genes’ is generally effective in suppressing selfish genetic elements, meaning organism design is generally preserved. Third, I ask whether animals can, in principle, evolve to recognise kin via genetic cues. I show they often can, as long as genetic kin discrimination is favoured, over indiscriminate cooperation and indiscriminate defection, at the individual level (it maximises individual fitness).
Optimising the outcomes of the Oxford unicompartmental knee replacement
Keywords: Clinical outcomes
Unicompartmental knee replacement

The two main surgical options for knee arthritis are total knee replacement (TKR) and unicompartmental knee replacement (UKR). UKR has advantages over TKR but has higher revision rates. As a result, UKR only forms 10% of all primary knee replacements. The broad aims of this thesis were to determine; the long term implant survival of the Oxford UKR and to assess current and develop new evidence based strategies to reduce revision rates.
A systematic review investigating the long term outcomes of 8,658 Oxford UKRs found the 10 year implant survival was 93% with leading revision causes including aseptic loosening, pain and bearing dislocation. There was a lack of cementless studies.
A large prospective cementless Oxford UKR cohort study (n=1000) in Oxford allowed the assessment of long term clinical outcomes using various endpoints; reoperation, revision and revision to TKR. The respective 10 year survivals were 96.6%, 97.5% and 98.9%.
A retrospective observational study from the National Joint Registry (NJR) was used to compare the long term outcomes of 14,814 matched cemented and cementless UKRs. The cementless group has significantly reduced revision rates (HR=0.76) given rates of revision for aseptic loosening, pain and lysis decreased. However the revision rate for peri-prosthetic tibial fracture increased. These results were mirrored by a systematic review comparing fixation types for all UKR types (n=10,736).
Other retrospective observational studies from the NJR were used to investigate the effect on revision rates of (1) increasing surgeon caseload, (2) Microplasty (new guiding surgical instrumentation) and (3) adding a second femoral peg on revision rates. All three were associated with lower revision rates.
A radiostereometric study of polyethylene wear was undertaken to determine why an increased rate of bearing fracture has been observed. The wear rate for the current bearings are 57 μm/year which is substantially higher than in previous studies. Although moulded bearings were found to have less wear than machined, no factors studied including recent changes to the bearing resin or manufacture accounted for the increased wear.
An experimental study found that new wider surgical saw blades halved the force required to seat the tibial component whilst maintaining fixation achieved. This should reduce the risk of periprosthetic fractures and is now used clinically.
This thesis has characterised the performance of the Oxford UKR and has highlighted strategies to lower UKR revision rates, to levels similar of TKR. If this is achieved the only real disadvantage of UKR compared to TKR will have been addressed.
Valued: A participatory ethnography of the gender lens investing movement
Keywords: Impact Investing
Socially Responsible Investment
Resistance
Investing in Women
Advocate
Gender Lens Investing
Finance for Social Change

Research in socially responsible investing (SRI), corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, and social impact investing focuses on how social issues are introduced into finance after an organization, institution or investor has accepted the integration of the social issue (post-acceptance perspective). However, advocates start the introduction of these issues into finance decades before a post-acceptance perspective can be studied. Through a case study of investing in women or gender lens investing, this study explores the process, motivations and resistance experienced by advocates introducing social issues into finance. A multi-method approach was used to triangulate findings through participatory ethnography, desk research, attendance at public conferences, roles in intimate gatherings of advocates, participation in projects, and a series of 42 formal interviews with advocates, both men and women, in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US. Findings show that the process for introducing social issues into finance from an early advocate perspective is challenging, non-linear, fraught with resistance, and requires an understanding and acceptance of different frames of reference and subgroups amongst individual advocates. In the case of investing in women it was found that individuals advocate from three distinct frames of reference: a development champion perspective focused on measures, impacts and counts; an integrated financial risk perspective focused on financial indices and alpha returns; and a visionary value perspective focused on experimentation, innovation, paradigm-shifts, and seeing value or worth in things previously undervalued or not valued. Study findings provide an understanding of the motivations and process that is used by early advocates to introduce social issues into finance and provides a framework for future research of gender lens investing (or the introduction of gender issues into finance).
Global legal institutions in local contexts: the making of commercial arbitration in China
Keywords: commercial arbitration in China
legal anthropology
Chinese arbitration

The study to be presented here examines the practical processes and outcomes of commercial arbitration in China. It aims to provide an anthropological account that illustrates and explains how a transnational legal institution such as commercial arbitration is implemented in the contexts of Chinese arbitral organs and local bureaucratic sectors. Specifically, this thesis takes on two tasks. The first is to identify and present some of the Chinese arbitral practices that can be described as “vernacularized” due to their deviance from the “best practices” of international arbitration law. In particular, I am concerned with practices that pertain to aspects of institution-building and dispute-processing. The second is to analyze what may be the “local factors” – in both institutional and sociocultural terms – that contribute to these practical results of vernacularization. Drawing on my twelve-months ethnographic fieldwork in China, I show that opposed to the Euro-American model that it borrows, Chinese commercial arbitration has become highly bureaucratized and mediatory. I argue that these drifts towards state bureaucracy and mediation can be explained by a distinct mode of “reasoning” in which the aspiration to state authority operates as a presumptive constraint on how local actors consider their compliance or other forms of engagement with legal rules. For participants observed, this constraint is not necessarily absolute, but it does have a presumptively decisive force that tends to undermine other competing reasons for engaging with law. By foregrounding the deliberative aspect of transnational legal practices in their local settings, what I attempt to achieve is to better identify and explain its relationship with the broader “sociocultural” conditions with which local actors are entangled. In so doing, it is my hope that this study would not only help better explain China’s frequent deviance from its commitment to the rule of law but also break fresh ground in studying legal phenomena anthropologically in the Chinese society and beyond.
An ecological approach to Aristotle’s theories of light and vision
Keywords: perception
light
illumination
vision
Aristotle

Scholarship on Aristotle’s theory of visual perception has traditionally held that Aristotle had a single, static conception of light and that he believed that illumination occurs prior to and independent of the actions of colours. I contend that this view precludes the medium from becoming actually transparent, thus making vision impossible. I offer an alternative to the traditional interpretation, using contemporary conceptual tools to make good philosophical sense of Aristotle’s position. I call my view the ‘ecological’ interpretation. It postulates two conceptions of light: non-visible mobile propagated light and visible static illumination, produced by the interaction of propagated light with the environment’s coloured textured surfaces. I argue that these contemporary conceptual tools can find a foothold in and consistently enrich Aristotle’s extant position and that, with their aid, we can restore coherence to his theories of light and vision.
Evaluating inquiries
Keywords: Inquiry
Accuracy Gain
Information Value
Evidence-gathering

How should we go about collecting evidence when we’re looking to settle some question? In this thesis, I develop and defend an account of the evaluative and normative epistemic dimensions intrinsic to the practice of evidence-gathering. Chapter 1 introduces the topic. Chapter 2 is devoted to laying out the positive proposal, which makes use of the notions of accuracy and competence to spell out the conditions under which an act of evidence-gathering is successful, rational, and skillful. It also shows how the account can be applied to the simple case of inquiry into polar questions as well as to the more complex cases of inquiry into wh-questions and subject matters. Chapters 3 and 4 provide arguments for accepting the account. Chapter 3 zooms in on the central notion of the proposed account, accuracy gain, and argues that such a notion independently provides the best available measure of information value, namely the usefulness of a certain piece of information given the aim of settling a certain question. This is done by showing that accuracy gain fares better than competing measures from information theory, Bayesian statistics, and decision theory on a number of fronts. Chapter 4 first looks at how the proposed account fares vis-à-vis three main competing views about the aim of inquiry, arguing that it emerges as superior in several respects. Then, the Chapter considers three objections that may be raised against the proposed account, and argues that these can be met. Chapter 5 concludes by looking at potential avenues for future research.
Investigating the links between transcription and mRNA 3' end processing
Keywords: CPF
transcription rate
RNA Polymerase II
Seb1
in vitro
mRNA 3' end processing

RNA Polymerase II (Pol II) is responsible for transcribing all protein coding genes and some non-coding genes. Protein-coding mRNAs undergo extensive processing during Pol II transcription in order to become functional molecules. This includes 5’capping, splicing and 3’end cleavage and polyadenylation. mRNA processing is coordinated by the phosphorylation of the Pol II carboxy-terminal domain (CTD) and has been shown to be affected by transcription rate. However, the molecular mechanisms underpinning regulation of mRNA processing by transcription are not well understood. Here, I aim to address this by establishing an in vitro system which allows to the study of processes linked to transcription such as mRNA 3’ end processing. The work presented here contains detailed studies of Pol II Rpb1 mutants that show opposite effects in RNA processivity and transcription rate using an in vitro transcription system and state-of-the-art in vivo approaches such as PRO-seq (in collaboration with the postdoctoral visitor), studying how transcription rate contributes to the ability of Pol II to interact with factors and reconstitution of the 3’ mRNA processing machinery that is involved in cleavage and polyadenylation.