VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
To redistribute or not to redistribute? The effects of inequality, development, absolute and relative income, and party polarisation on preferences for redistribution
Keywords: inequality
income
polarization
redistribution
development

When do people want redistribution? Income inequality has been on the rise in recent decades, especially in advanced democracies. Since redistribution is the main tool that governments have at their disposal to ameliorate income disparities, and government policies are (at least partly) influenced by public opinion, abating income inequality will largely depend on whether people want redistribution. Therefore, this has brought renewed importance to understanding the determinants of support for redistribution.
Redistributive preferences are commonly viewed as being driven by self-interest, implying that support for redistribution is monotonically determined by how much a person can expect to gain or lose from it. However, empirical evidence has not always been consistent with this framework, and findings have varied due to data availability as well as differences in methodology and the operationalisation of key variables.
This dissertation consists of three papers that make use of the World Values Survey and the European Values Study to analyse the determinants of respondents’ support for redistribution. The first paper focuses on the effects of inequality and development on public support for and division over redistribution. The results show that support is higher in countries that are rich and unequal, and division is lower in countries that are poor and equal. The second paper focuses on how people perceive the utility of redistribution in absolute or relative terms depending on whether they can expect to gain or lose from it. The results show that people below the mean income base their preferences on their absolute distance from the mean, whereas for people above the mean it is based on their relative distance from the mean. The third paper focuses on the role that political parties play in (de-)activating self-interest, using the Comparative Manifesto Project to measure party polarisation on economic issues. The results show that people, particularly the poor, are more self-interested when parties are more polarised in their economic positions.
Overall, the findings indicate that inequality drives support for redistribution more in rich countries because the poor have more to gain, and the rich are willing to pay more to ameliorate disparities. This suggests that public opinion in advanced democracies is unlikely to tolerate protracted rises in inequality.
Defining the dynamic relationship between interferon-gamma and CD8+T cell dysfunction in melanoma
Keywords: CD8+ T cells
T cell dysfunction
melanoma
stem-like T cells

CD8+ T cells or cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) are crucial to anti-tumour responses, as they kill cancer cells. However, CD8+ T cells are becoming dysfunctional over time in tumours leading to tumour escape. The concept of T cell exhaustion linking the CTL dysfunction with the upregulation of inhibitory molecules known as immune checkpoints only partly explains their dysfunction, as immunotherapies targeting immune checkpoints showed very limited success. This underlines that there is a critical need to decipher other mechanisms involved in CTL dysfunction in cancer. CTL efficacy notably relies on their interferon-gamma (IFNγ) production for cytotoxic cytokine release. IFNγ is a major immune mediator with strong anti-tumour functions but also concomitant pro-tumour effects. Because IFNγ is inherently linked to tumour immunity efficacy, it is critical to fully understand how it can also simultaneously impede it. CTLs are the main IFNγ producers in tumours but how the chronic IFNγ presence affects their anti-tumour function has not been properly assessed yet. To address whether IFNγ sensing is directly involved in CTL dysfunction we used a mouse model where the interferon-gamma receptor (IFNγR) is specifically ablated in CD8+ T cells (CD8-IFNγR1KO) rendering them unable to sense the cytokine. Depleting the IFNγR1 in CD8+ T cells is sufficient to restore immunity towards B16F10 melanoma with better tumour control, although it does not substantially enhance CTL functions. The characterisation of intra-tumoral CD8+ T cells revealed that IFNγ preferentially affects a particular CD8+ T cell subset of precursor cells: the stem-like T cells. Indeed, stem-like T cells that do not sense IFNγ originate a greater T cell expansion through greater CD8+ T cell proliferation in tumours, reducing the exhaustion level of IFNγR1KO CD8+ T cells. Mechanistically, IFNγ restricts their active maintenance, preventing the steady generation of early-exhausted CD8+ T cells in tumours. Besides, while control CD8+ T cells are excluded from the tumour core, IFNγR1KO CD8+ T cells infiltrate better the tumour core. Altogether, our data show that IFNγ drives a negative feedback loop whereby IFNγ depletes stem-like T cells in the tumour restricting the CTL anti-tumour potential. Targeting this pathway might offer an alternative strategy to enhance the efficacy and longevity of adoptive T cell therapies.
Getting your money's worth: how fees affect students' approaches to employability and university
Keywords: tuition fees
employability
student attitudes
higher education

The last three decades have seen significant changes in the higher education (HE) sector in England. Alongside a shift towards a market-based approach to HE and the implementation—and subsequent raising of—tuition fees, there has been a growing focus on employability and getting “value for money”, together with a growing concern about the growing prevalence of the so-called “student-consumer”. Even today, university funding continues to be a shifting and divisive issue, with tuition fees at the forefront of debates around students returning to universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. By contrast, Scotland has retained a system-based approach to HE and free tuition for both Scottish nationals and EU students.
Though much research has looked at the possible impact of tuition fees on university applications, little has been done to explore what tuition fees might do to the way that students experience and approach university. This study therefore aims to fill an important gap in our knowledge about how students are reacting to the differing funding arrangements in England and Scotland. It asks, specifically: how do different university funding systems influence undergraduates’ approaches to employability and university?
To address this, the study employed a mixed methodology consisting of three phases: a scale development phase, a quantitative phase (involving surveying 700 students at six universities in England and Scotland), and a qualitative phase (involving interviews with a subset of over 30 students). Key findings showed that the relationship between university funding and how students approach university is complex and impacted by social background: while being from a lower socio-economic background was related to a higher consumer orientation, students who self-identified as working-class were shown to be more learner-oriented when paying tuition fees than not, while middle-class students were less learner-oriented when paying tuition fees than not. On the other hand, though social background did not appear to affect approach to employability, and there was no significant relationship between fee-paying and approach to employability, university country played a significant role: students in Scotland appeared to be more employability-savvy than their peers in England. These and other important findings have significant implications, both in terms of the two nations’ HE/labour market policies and the discourse around the student- as-consumer.
Stories theology lives by: a narrative and phronetic theology of liberation
Keywords: Balthasar
symbolic violence
Ricoeur
sociology
Yale School
Hauerwas
phronesis
theology
H. Richard Niebuhr
love
cognitive science
Lindbeck
Pierre Bourdieu
constructive
Frei
epistemology
liberation
narrative
Gutiérrez
biblical interpretation

What if, far from being a centre or force of liberation, academic theology itself needs liberation? Considering this requires theological reflexivity concerning theology’s purpose and praxis and sociological reflexivity concerning how the field of theology functions as a system. Pierre Bourdieu’s method of sociological analysis is especially suited to facilitating this reflexivity. Employing a pioneering Bourdieusien analysis through a case study of the Yale School of Narrative Theology, this interdisciplinary thesis explores how in allowing a set of reductive and non-inclusive epistemic assumptions to control the mode theologising, the field of theology has perpetuated symbolic violence, namely a legitimation of the status quo of theological mode. In this analysis, those from marginalised communities suffer most, either by being forced to theologise according to the dictates of the dominant or by being disregarded in or disenfranchised from participation. However, the assumption of an abstractionist discursive mode for theological epistemology also renders it epistemically reductive: both of the modes of theological production and knowledge and of the sociological dimensions of doing theology. So, building upon our Bourdieusien analysis and synthesis of the Yale School’s theological insights, we construct a truly productive narrative and phronetic theology of liberation through love that removes symbolic violence from theology without resorting to it. Through dialogue with Gustavo Gutiérrez, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Bourdieu, Cognitive Science of Narrative, and Christian Scripture we construct a dialectic and phronetic epistemology of love in which one loves in order to know. This removes symbolic violence from academic theological epistemology by embracing creative dialectical subjectivity and objectivity in knowing through love. Inseparable from this, we uncover the fundamentally existential origins of symbolic violence and narrate an alternative to legitimation-through-power in Christ incarnate and crucified expressing a radical embodied solidarity with God and humanity in love.
Understanding & incentivising innovation for a climate compatible future
Keywords: feed-in tariffs
solar energy
R&amp;D tax credits
knowledge spillovers
innovation policy
energy policy
risk reduction
directed technical change
environmental policy

Net-zero emissions are needed to stabilise mean global temperatures. This is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. Innovation will play a fundamental role in ensuring economic activity becomes “climate-compatible”. Yet, robust empirical evidence on how to best incentivise investment and innovation in low-carbon technologies is limited. This thesis explores this question using rich datasets related to energy generators, firms, and patents. It is divided into three papers which respectively seek to understand (i) the role of price and risk-mitigation policies, such as feed-in-tariffs, in bringing breakthrough clean technologies to market, (ii) the joint impact of different policies on firms’ incentives to undertake clean innovation, and (iii) patterns of learning and knowledge diffusion across clean and dirty technologies. This thesis deploys tools from modern econometrics, causal inference, and network analysis to study these questions. It finds that risk reduction policies alongside subsidies are important in bringing nascent clean technologies to market, that environmental and innovation policy, if not well-coordinated, can lead to un-intended impacts, and that, on aggregate, knowledge embedded in clean inventions is intellectually distant to that embedded in dirty inventions, despite a few areas of close proximity. Collectively, the papers demonstrate the importance of understanding innovation processes and policies for the net-zero transition.
Transcriptional regulation of endothelial KLF2 in vascular development
Keywords: KLF4
transcriptional regulation
vascular endothelium
KLF2
vascular development
shear stress

The development of a functional vascular system is critically dependent on shear stress, a hemodynamic force exerted onto the vascular endothelium by flowing blood. Krüppel-like factor 2 (KLF2) is the central transcriptional regulator of the endothelial shear stress response, yet the mechanisms by which shear stress signalling controls KLF2 expression remain controversial. Activation of KLF2 by shear stress was previously hypothesised to occur through a MEK5-ERK5-MEF2 pathway directly interacting with the KLF2 promoter, thereby inducing KLF2 expression. However, KLF2 is expressed in many different cell types in response to a variety of different upstream signals, suggesting cell type-specific KLF2 expression might be regulated by yet undescribed distal enhancers. Further, MEF2 factors not only control differentiation of many non-endothelial cell types, but also regulate the expression of endothelial genes independent of shear stress signalling, suggesting additional transcriptional regulators must interact with MEF2 to induce context-specific KLF2 expression. In this thesis, I identify and characterise two KLF2 enhancers able to drive reporter gene expression specifically in endothelial cells (ECs) and endocardial cushions (ECCs) independently of the KLF2 promoter, which is by itself unable to drive any reporter expression in development. Pharmacological inhibition of cardiac contractions during development resulted in a reduction of reporter expression driven by both enhancers, suggesting they might be regulated by shear stress-responsive transcription factors (TFs). Validated phylogenetic foot-printing combined with mutational analysis of both KLF2 enhancers implicated roles for MEF2 binding alongside a number of other TFs. Crucially, a previously unidentified MEF2-HBOX double motif was found to be required for the endothelial activity of both KLF2 enhancers, and was sufficient to identify a novel EC-specific enhancer for KLF4, a gene that compensates for KLF2 in vivo. This work demonstrates previously unappreciated complexity in the transcriptional regulation of KLF2, and provides an opportunity to better understand transcriptional dynamics at the locus of this disease-relevant gene.
Workhouse ecologies: Hampshire case studies, c. 1776-1845
Keywords: workhouse ecologies

While the historiography of the workhouse in England has largely followed a vertical line, namely taking a top-down or bottom-up approach, this thesis aims to extend the boundary of workhouse research horizontally by integrating multifaceted socio-economic factors, which have been overlooked or considered just in passing in previous discussions, in order to analyse often highly localised patterns of workhouse provision and regime. The term ‘ecologies’ recurring throughout this research is chosen to crystallise my holistic approach.
For this purpose, neither a national nor a parish-based study is appropriate because the former tends to generalise findings and the latter to seek peculiarity. This project focuses on a county, Hampshire, and does not just establish that there were intra-county variations in workhouse ecologies but goes further to compare and classify them using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Drawing on statistical analyses, it demonstrates that various factors, such as demographic characteristics, transport infrastructure, and socioeconomic structure possibly affected regional variations in workhouse provision under the Old Poor Law. Using parochial administrative records, we then examine how workhouse ecologies in the different divisions formed by differing combinations of socio-economic factors produced difference in practical terms.
Moreover, unlike most existing research that usually ends or begins in 1834, the year of the passage of the New Poor Law, this thesis covers both the Old and New Poor Laws to explore changes and continuities through the transitional period. A structural transformation in poor relief administration was brought about by the new act, but to varying degrees within the county, in ways affected by past regional patterns. Regional patterns surviving from the Old Poor Law made it unfeasible to impose the intended uniformity on poor law administration and workhouse practices.
Novel hybrid multipolar RF cavities for transverse beam manipulations
Keywords: accelerator physics
RF cavities
multipole expansion
electromagnetic fields

This thesis describes the development and application of a method for tailoring the profile of electromagnetic fields in RF cavities for use in particle accelerators. This so-called azimuthal modulation method (AMM) is underpinned by an analytic expression of the basis of the electromagnetic modes in closed RF cavities whose cross-sections vary with the azimuth. This basis is derived and the notation {M}ηp is introduced to describe the azimuthal, radial and longitudinal form of the modes.
The scope of the AMM for designing realisable cavities is explored. The underlying reasons for the limitations on the range of magnitudes and orientations of multipoles that can be supported by azimuthally modulated cavities are derived and discussed.
This understanding provides the foundation for the latter half of the thesis where numerous applications of the AMM are presented. First, the AMM is used to construct a prototype cavity that supports a 3 GHz mode which could be used for the simultaneous acceleration and focusing of a particle beam. Experimental testing supported the multipolar content of the mode being as designed. Second, the AMM is applied to create RF cavities which support modes free from unwanted multipoles generated by power couplers and tuning pins. An example design of an RF structure which incorporates a single-slot power coupler and supports an accelerating mode free from dipole, quadrupole, sextupole and octupole components is analysed. Third, the AMM is used to design RF cavities that support modes tailored for the off-axis traversal of particle beams. An example optimisation of an accelerating field that remains as flat as possible along the horizontal is presented. Finally, the AMM also finds application in the creation of musical drums. This concept inspired an outreach workshop that was designed and delivered to showcase this research to 11-14 year-old school students.
Viral modulation of the anti-glioblastoma immune response: rewiring host immunity to recognize & kill brain cancer
Keywords: cancer immunology
virology
meningitis
glioblastoma

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a universally fatal solid malignancy of the central nervous system (CNS), hallmarked by a high mitotic index, intercellular heterogeneity, and low neo-antigen burden. Standard of care including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy has failed to improve life expectancy beyond 15 months. The utility of local therapies is limited by the in-vasive nature of GBM, its protection behind the blood-brain barrier (BBB), and the absence of a single, druggable pathway. Advancing GBM therapies will likely require immune-based strategies given the ability of immune cells to traverse the BBB and evolve with the changing mutational landscape of the tumor. To this end, we employed a syngeneic murine GBM model, SB28, that recapitulates the highly inflamed environment observed in the brain fol-lowing surgical resection and that enables tracking by intravital two-photon (2P) microscopy. We uncovered that absent any additional immune stimulus, a negligible amount of tumor an-tigen is drained to the nodes and virtually no tumor-specific immune response is mounted. To stimulate anti-tumor immunity, we administered a noncytopathic arenavirus (lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus) into circulation that expressed the tumor antigen, Ovalbumin. This infection profoundly altered the tumor immune landscape, led to antigen drainage, tumor-specific lymphocyte expansion in the nodes and trafficking to the tumor milieu, resulting in significant extension on survival.
Deep learning applications in structure-based drug discovery
Keywords: drug design
structure based drug design
neural networks
convolutional neural networks
drug discovery
deep learning
sbdd
machine learning

In recent years, machine learning and deep learning applications have permeated all fields of science thanks to rapid algorithmic advances and computer hardware developments. A very active area of research is the use of deep learning in structure-based drug design, where the goal is to design effective drugs against a pharmacological target of interest.
In this work, we explored the use of deep learning in the early stages of drug discovery. In particular, we focussed on structure-based virtual screening, binding affinity prediction, and de novo drug design.
First, we enabled docking with flexible residues within Gnina, a state-of-the- art docking software based on convolutional neural networks, and we performed a large-scale cross-docking study of such methodology, outlining its strengths and weaknesses.
Second, we extracted the convolutional neural network scoring function from the docking software into a standalone package for fast prototyping. With the new software at hand, we explored different annotations for supervised learning to improve the convolutional neural network scoring function for docking with flexible residues.
Third, we developed a novel scoring function for binding affinity prediction based on a successful deep learning architecture used to develop machine learning force fields.
Finally, we carefully evaluate a generative model for de novo design for the application in industrial drug discovery pipelines. We outline the weaknesses of the method and the problems with current evaluations of generative models.