VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Witches of here and everywhere: course and containment on the early modern stage
Keywords: witchcraft
Shakespeare
demonology
skepticism

This thesis is the first sustained analysis of witchcraft and the law as represented on the English early modern stage. It spans the period 1576-1642, from the rise of the professional theatres until their closure, with a brief coda testing its conclusions beyond the period of its central focus. The thesis argues that staged persecution of witches corresponded with anxieties outside the theatre around discovering and justly prosecuting witches and witchcrafts. In the early modern period, witchcraft posed a number of challenges to English law, driving developments in ways of proof and rules of evidence, and affecting contemporary conceptions of the status of confessions, witness testimony, and circumstantial evidence. In each of these areas, witch trials forced judicial process and legal theory to evolve to meet witchcraft’s epistemic-evidentiary vacancy and its perceived threat. These dilemmas also figure in early modern staged representations of witchcraft. The theatre, in turn, affected popular conceptions of witchcraft and culpability, thereby ultimately affecting how witch trials were conducted and perceived. Therefore, this thesis argues that the same ontological and epistemological factors which complicated witchcraft as a category of crime made it a fruitful narrative tool; and the exploitation of witchcraft as a foil for the construction of judicial and jurisdictional authority had its counterpart in the staging of authority and characterisation. This thesis does not advance a normative reading or insist certain plays be read primarily as ‘witch plays’ or read exclusively for their witchcraft content. Its aim is to bring aspects of staged witchcraft jurisprudence into greater critical focus in order to demonstrate how productive the embattled witch figure was to early modern English dramatists, and therefore how vital to our understanding of the period. Analysing the interplay between stage and court’s visual imaginaries of witchcraft – along with judicial strategies for controlling witchcraft – helps elucidate significant changes in both drama and the law in the period. Finally, the thesis demonstrates how staging of and storytelling around witchcraft and the law continue to be used to construct judicial and political authority in the present day.
A comparative analysis of nuclear cap binding complex proteins Cbc1, Cbc2 and putative cap binding protein Cbc3 in fission yeast
Keywords: Cbc1
RNA
Cap binding complex
Cbc3
transcription
Cbc2

Cap-binding complex (CBC) proteins Cbc1 and Cbc2 bind to the 7-methylguanosine (7mG) cap modification present at the 5’ end of RNA polymerase II transcripts and have been linked to a variety of functions in RNA regulation. Despite the finding that Cbc1 and Cbc2 bind the 7mG cap synergistically, there are also reports suggesting that CBC proteins can also act independently. Furthermore, recently a new cap binder, named Cbc3, has been discovered, with its function in the context of CBC yet to be discovered. In this thesis, S. pombe Cbc1, Cbc2 and Cbc3 are compared with respect to their co-transcriptional recruitment, interacting proteins, and the subsequent effect of their depletion on the transcriptome. Cbc1 and Cbc2 depletions resulted in diverging differential expression profiles and changes in RNA processing. Differences could not be attributed to transcriptional changes. A genetic screen showed that these genes also have diverging interactions with RNA surveillance factors. Interestingly, Cbc1 depletion, and not Cbc2, was found to rescue readthrough transcription associated with a Dhp1 temperature- sensitive mutation. This thesis thus provides data supportive of Cbc1 having a Cbc2- independent, anti-cleavage role. On the other hand, S. pombe Cbc3 was found to facilitate the recruitment of elongation factor Paf1 to protein-coding (pc) genes that are longer than ~500 bases. Furthermore, Cbc3 deletion resulted in a mild hindrance of RNA export. Taken together, my findings point to inherent CBC-independent functions for Cbc1 and Cbc2. While Cbc3 is important for transcription elongation and nuclear export, it is unlikely that it forms the basis of an alternative CBC.
Investigation of the tumour vascular response to single and fractionated irradiation
Keywords: radiation
tumour blood vessels

The effect of radiation therapy on tumour vasculature has been a subject of debate over the years. Increased oxygenation and perfusion have been documented during radiation treatments. Conversely, death of irradiated tumour endothelial cells by apoptosis, predicted to impair blood flow, has been proposed as a major determinant of tumour control. To approach these contradictions, we used video 2-photon microscopy to study the vascular response to irradiation in two different murine tumour models: MC38, a highly vascularized model with many non-perfused vessels and B16F10, a moderately vascularized model, both grown in transgenic mice with endothelium marked by the fluorescent protein tdTomato. These tumours received either a single dose of radiation (15 Gy) or a fractionated dose (5 × 3 Gy). Unexpectedly, even these high doses led to little structural change of the perfused vasculature. However, non-perfused vessels and blind ends were substantially impaired after radiation accompanied by apoptosis of their endothelium. These changes did not alter perfusion of the less vascularized B16F10 tumour, but led to increased perfusion in the more vascular MC38 tumour. After irradiation, the proliferation of endothelial cells was blocked resulting in diminished numbers of sprouts. Further, endothelial cells from control and irradiated tumours were subjected to RNA sequencing, which confirmed that irradiation upregulates the expression of genes in apoptotic pathways as well as cell cycle regulation. We now explain how apoptosis of tumour endothelial cells after radiation is not detrimental to function, because the apoptosis occurs primarily in the endothelium of non-functional small or blunt end non-perfused vessels leaving the functional vessels intact
Love in twentieth-century French thought: Sartre and Lacan
Keywords: en soi pour soi
Sartre
Lacan
Schelling

This thesis investigates the possibility of love in twentieth-century French thought, focusing in particular on Jean-Paul Sartre’s early philosophy and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis. I explore the philosophical status and metaphysical (im)possibility of love to advance my central argument that Sartre’s impossible notion of en soi pour soi developed in L’Être et le néant (1943) resurfaces in Lacan’s later psychoanalysis, notably in Encore (1975), as jouissance féminine. Sartre argues in L’Être et le néant that love is impossible, that in their attempts to love one another, subjects are helplessly trying to become en soi pour soi, which is an impossible wish to become God himself. For Sartre, the subject needs to choose between love and freedom, and this choice is a false one since the subject is unquestionably condemned to his/her freedom. We appeal to F.W.J. Schelling’s speculative onto-theology to suggest that Sartre’s highly original arguments for the contents of pour soi rest on unstable metaphysical foundations, thereby allowing us to reinvest love with possibility once again. This move situates our turn to Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, which is equally steeped in onto-theology. First, we show that Lacan’s intellectual strategy was to highlight the necessary but impossible dualism found in Sartre’s concept of en soi pour soi. We investigate Lacan’s many formulations of this dualism: knowledge and truth, conscious and unconscious, and Symbolic and Real, to show that these pairs are all different names for a similar dualism Schelling identified at the heart of God, qualified by Sartre as impossible. Therefore, we show how Sartre’s en soi pour soi is a convincing shorthand for Lacan’s central object of study. Second, we present and explain aspects of Lacan’s philosophical project to show how, for Lacan, the subject is marked by various pathologies. For Lacan, as for Sartre and Schelling before him, the subject is ontologically sick, and, by its very structure, the Oedipus complex produces subjects that are prey to a mental collapse at any moment. As a result, for Lacan, the subject has no choice but to identify with their potential madness that is a constitutive aspect of their subjectivity. Finally, in a similar vein, this thesis argues that love in the Lacanian schema is the subject’s mad wish to reunite en soi with pour soi, which is an always impossible yet necessary aspect of subjectivity.
Pierre Bonnard: beyond visual perception
Keywords: Perceptualism
Modern painting
Representation
Pierre Bonnard
Modern art history

This thesis presents a new understanding of modern art history through the French artist Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947). Refuting the prevailing realist understanding of his work, it shows how Bonnard developed original strategies for expanding depiction beyond a transcription of the world as it appears to vision – an aim that was central to artistic innovation in the early twentieth century.
Self in mind: a pluralist account of self-consciousness
Keywords: consciousness
virtual reality
spatial cognition
self-representation
cognitive phenomenology
bodily ownership
self-consciousness
somatoparaphrenia
drug-induced states

This thesis investigates the relationship between consciousness and self-consciousness. I consider two broad claims about this relationship: a constitutive claim, according to which all conscious experiences constitutively involve self-consciousness; and a typicalist claim, according to which ordinary conscious experiences contingently involve self-consciousness. Both of these claims call for elucidation of the relevant notions of consciousness and self-consciousness.
In the first part of the thesis (‘The Myth of Constitutive Self-Consciousness’), I critically examine the constitutive claim. I start by offering an elucidatory account of consciousness, and outlining a number of foundational claims that plausibly follow from it. I subsequently distinguish between two concepts of self-consciousness: consciousness of one’s experience, and consciousness of oneself (as oneself). Each of these concepts yields a distinct variant of the constitutive claim. In turn, each resulting variant of the constitutive claim can be interpreted in two ways: on a ‘minimal’ or deflationary reading, they fall within the scope of foundational claims about consciousness, while on a ‘strong’ or inflationary reading, they point to determinate aspects of phenomenology that are not acknowledged by the foundational claims as being aspects of all conscious mental states. I argue that the deflationary readings of either variant of the constitutive claim are plausible and illuminating, but would ideally be formulated without using a term as polysemous as ‘self-consciousness’; by contrast, the inflationary readings of either variant are not adequately supported.
In the second part of the thesis (‘Self-Consciousness in the Real World’), I focus on the second concept of self-consciousness, or consciousness of oneself as oneself. Drawing upon empirical evidence, I defend a pluralist account of self-consciousness so construed, according to which there are several ways in which one can be conscious of oneself as oneself – through conscious thoughts, bodily experiences and perceptual experiences – that make distinct determinate contributions to one’s phenomenology. This pluralist account provides us with the resources to vindicate the typicalist claim according to which consciousness of oneself as oneself – a sense of self – is pervasive in ordinary conscious experiences, as a matter of contingent empirical fact. It also provides us with the resources to assess the possibility that a subject might be conscious without being conscious of herself as herself in any way.
Enforcing trust in quantum networks
Keywords: Quantum networks
Quantum cryptography
Quantum verification

The phenomenal progress in quantum technologies over the past decades has laid the groundwork for the construction of quantum networks, which will channel the power of quantum theory to guarantee secure and efficient communication, computation, and much more. This thesis studies the notion of trust in quantum networks. In our information age, protecting the security or anonymity of data is a key requirement. We investigate certain protocols that are fundamental to the operation and applications of quantum networks, and propose ways to test and analyse their security, in spite of adversarial intervention. Our focus is on practical methods of verifying the untrusted components, which could be incorporated into realistic networks in the near future.
To begin, we propose a protocol for authenticated communication of quantum messages, by verifying the entanglement required for quantum teleportation in an experimentally feasible way. We model the performance of our scheme in the presence of noise. Furthermore, we explore such an authenticated teleportation in the one-sided device-independent scenario, where some devices used for verification may be corrupted. We derive error-tolerant self- testing bounds and extend our results to a realistic experimental setting, demonstrating the compatibility of our protocol with state-of-the-art technology. We then study anonymity, an essential feature for communication across networks. Combining the power of classical and quantum subroutines, we build a practical protocol for anonymous communication of quantum messages, without the need to trust the players in our network, their computational power, or the entanglement they share. We end by considering the verification of graph states distributed across a network of possibly dishonest players, applying our scheme to specific graph states that are central to quantum communication and computation schemes.
Queer in the prison?: what does it mean to be 'out' inside?
Keywords: Lesbian
Queer
Bisexual
Gay
Transgender
Prison
LGBT
Jail

There is growing criminological interest in marginalised genders and sexualities, and a developing literature exploring the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) prisoners. However, these nascent and interconnected fields of study are notably underdeveloped in the UK. Little is known about gender and sexuality orders in British prisons, and the experiences of LGBT people therein.
This thesis seeks to address these gaps through presenting and analysing rich, qualitative data. It draws on formal interviews with 60 prisoners and staff across one men’s and one women’s establishment, the analysis of relevant documents at these prisons, written correspondence with 67 prisoners, and 7 interviews with related professionals. Methodologically, this thesis provides insights into gathering data and upholding research ethics when researching LGBT inmates, and offers a detailed exploration of LGBT researcher positionality – a topic almost absent from British criminology.
This thesis emphasises the need for British prisons scholars to abandon the idea that men’s establishments hold all, and exclusively, male prisoners, while female establishments hold all, and exclusively, female prisoners. Prisoners with minoritised genders are not always easily discernable, sometimes actively concealing their identities, and at other times hidden by cisnormative assumptions. Likewise, some sexual minorities are more visible than others. Examining how prisoners construct and communicate gender and sexuality, this thesis demonstrates that being in prison can lead to shifts in identity through encountering different labels and entering same-sex relationships for the first time. The nature of romantic and/or sexual relationships, and staff responses to them, are explored in depth. Furthermore, this thesis demonstrates how broader horizontal relationships between prisoners, and vertical relationships with staff, affect how prisoners understand and present their gender and sexuality. It documents staff and prisoners’ support and subjugation of people who identify as, or are presumed to be, LGBT, and the active responses of prisoners to discrimination. Concluding by presenting its limitations, the thesis suggests avenues for much-needed future research.
Equilibrium computation in games and strategic aspects of bitcoin mining
Keywords: Bitcoin
Query Protocol
Equilibrium Computation
Decentralised Consensus
Revealed Preferences
Incentive Compatibility

The focus of this thesis is twofold: on one hand we study the query complexity of equilibrium computation in games, and on the other hand, we use equilibrium concepts from game theory as a tool to understand miner incentives in Bitcoin. In terms of query complexity, we mostly focus on algorithms that have access to utility queries in large games and best response queries in bimatrix games. For the former, we demonstrate query-efficient completely uncoupled dynamics that achieve non-trivial approximate equilibria. For the latter, we reduce the problem of query-efficient approximate equilibrium computation to a natural geometric learning problem: approximately learning partitions of an 𝑛-dimensional simplex into disjoint convex polytopes via membership queries. Given this reduction we show query-efficient algorithms for the geometric problem, and ultimately provide an algorithm for computing ε-well-supported Nash equilibria in 𝑚×𝑛 bimatrix games with a query cost that is polynomial in log(1/ε)and max(𝑚,𝑛) provided that min(𝑚,𝑛) is constant.This leads to a polynomial query complexity algorithm for 2-player games,provided that one of the players has a constant number of strategies. As for incentives in Bitcoin, we shed some light into how robust honest mining protocols are to the presence of strategic agents. Our focus is on the strategic aspects of both solo mining and pool mining in Bitcoin. For the former, we take a multiplayer approach and exhibit specific strategy profiles of multiple strategic miners that outperform honest mining, even if said miners would not be incentivised to be dishonest individually. This effectively renders the Bitcoin protocol less secure than previously thought. As for the latter, we propose a new mining pool protocol that is a randomised variant of the already-ubiquitous pay-per-last-N-shares (PPLNS) mining pool scheme in Bitcoin. Our pool protocol, randomised pay-per-last-N-shares (RPPLNS),enjoys the same desirable properties of PPLNS, but with the added benefit of an exponentially reduced state space required to maintain the protocol. More importantly, this reduced state space also allows us to prove robust guarantees against a richer class of strategic pool mining than before.
The molecular determinants of Polycomb-mediated gene repression
Keywords: chromatin
histone modifications
genome engineering
gene regulation
Polycomb
genomics
epigenetics

Precise spatio-temporal regulation of gene expression is required for development of multicellular organisms. Combinatorial activity of DNA-binding transcription factors has been proposed to drive lineage-specific transcriptional programmes. However, in addition to this, the chromatin template, on which transcription occurs, has emerged as another central player in the control of gene expression. The Polycomb repressive system represents one of the most extensively studied paradigms for chromatin-based gene regulation. It is comprised of two multi-subunit complexes, which catalyse post-translational modifications of histone tails - Polycomb repressive complex 1 (PRC1) mono-ubiquitinates histone H2A at lysine 119 (H2AK119ub1) and PRC2 methylates histone H3 at lysine 27 (H3K27me3). Elucidating the molecular mechanisms of Polycomb-mediated transcriptional silencing has proven challenging, as both PRC1 and PRC2 exist as an array of protein assemblies with distinct targeting modules and regulatory activities. Therefore, the primary determinants that underlie target site selection, Polycomb chromatin domain formation and gene repression by the Polycomb system have until now remained elusive.
Here, I have exploited combinatorial genetic perturbations coupled with quantitative genomic approaches to overcome the multiplicity of Polycomb complexes and uncover the central determinants of Polycomb-mediated gene repression in mouse embryonic stem cells. In contrast to the prevailing dogma in the field, I demonstrated that canonical PRC1, which binds Polycomb target sites in a PRC2-dependent manner and mediates higher-order chromatin structures, contributes little to gene repression. Instead, through systematic interrogation of how H2AK119ub1 is placed and kept in check in the genome, I discovered a remarkable degree of synergy between variant PRC1 complexes, which is central to deposition of H2AK119ub1, Polycomb chromatin domain formation and gene repression. Importantly, my observations suggested that the repressive activity of variant PRC1 complexes may rely on their capacity to catalyse H2AK119ub1. Using a conditional genetic strategy to inactivate PRC1, I directly tested this possibility and discovered that PRC1 catalytic activity is the central molecular determinant of Polycomb-mediated gene repression. In conclusion, through systematic dissection of the Polycomb system, I have provided compelling evidence for a variant PRC1-dependent logic for formation of Polycomb chromatin domains and repression of Polycomb target genes. Together, my findings place PRC1 and its catalytic activity at the forefront of Polycomb-mediated transcriptional silencing, paving the way for a mechanistic understanding of Polycomb system function.
Investigating myoendothelial signalling mechanisms in resistance arteries
Keywords: Myoendothelial signalling
Vascular myography
Vascular smooth muscle
Endothelium
Resistance arteries

The regulation of resistance artery tone is a key determinant of blood pressure and tissue perfusion. It is well-established that endothelial cells (ECs) cause vasodilation by producing nitric oxide (NO) and endothelium-dependent hyperpolarization (EDH) in response to circulating vasoactive factors and flow. However, recent evidence has elucidated an intrinsic signalling mechanism, termed myoendothelial feedback, whereby ECs are activated during contraction independently of direct stimulation. The investigations presented in this thesis aimed to characterise myoendothelial feedback in isolated resistance arteries under isobaric and isometric conditions using pressure and wire myography, respectively. Most significantly, the profile of myoendothelial feedback differed between the two experimental approaches. In arteries studied isometrically, inhibition of NO and EDH production increased sensitivity to contractile agonists. On the other hand, blockade of endothelium-dependent vasodilation in pressurised arteries had no effect on submaximal contraction during sympathetic perivascular nerve stimulation and only augmented the maximum contractile response to agonists. Furthermore, arteries in the pressure myograph were less sensitive to NO, which may reflect pressure-induced smooth muscle Ca2+ sensitization and an abrogated influence of EC-dependent signalling. Additionally, a role for transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 4 (TRPV4) in myoendothelial feedback was probed. However, while promising, this line of investigation was complicated by the observation that TRPV4 inhibition attenuated depolarization- dependent and -independent contraction, as well as endothelium-dependent vasodilation. The findings reported here have significant implications for the study of isolated resistance artery physiology and identify novel avenues of future research.