VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Seed security, agrobiodiversity and production risk in smallholder agriculture in Eastern Ethiopia
Keywords: Wheat Rust
Risk

This doctoral thesis presents three original research papers investigating aspects of agricultural production in small-farming households in two regions of Ethiopia. While answering specific research questions, the articles are connected and motivated by an interest in essential themes of agricultural development: access to seed, the use and conservation of agrobiodiversity as well as strategies to manage production risk in smallholder agriculture.
The first article analyses patterns of agrobiodiversity in three communities with comparatively favourable farming conditions and good market access in the East Shewa zone of Eastern Ethiopia. Using original panel data of more than 300 households collected in 2011 and 2013, the study shows that the least vulnerable households grow a larger portfolio of food crops and wheat varieties. Based on these findings, the role of agrobiodiversity for ex ante risk management and alternative incentives for portfolio diversification are discussed.
The second article investigates the effects of a fungal crop disease on agricultural production of households in East Shewa using household level panel data during and after an epidemic outbreak of yellow rust in 2010/11. Findings suggest that while varietal diversity in wheat does not increase, roughly thirty percent of households make changes in their varietal portfolio and reduce wheat cultivation in response to the disease. Disease resistant varieties are only available to 16 percent of all households with preferential access to agricultural resources.
The third article presents a mixed methods study of a highly developed informal seed insurance network among subsistence‐oriented small farmers in two communities in the West Hararghe zone of Ethiopia. Based on a survey and interviews with 150 farmers, we find that the vast majority of small farmers actively participate in informal seed assistance by giving or receiving small quantities of seed without compensation. We argue that the seed assistance through gifts is practiced to insure against hunger ex ante and facilitate access to crop genetic resources in a centre of crop origin and diversity.
Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) as a regulator of myocardial redox state and the redox-sensitive regulation of cystathionine γ-lyase (CSE)
Keywords: Oxidative Stress
Hydrogen Sulfide
Cystathionine γ-Lyase
Myocardium

In advanced stages, cardiac disease causes millions of deaths each year. Superoxide anions (O2.-) and their derivative peroxynitrite (ONOO-) contribute to cardiac disease pathogenesis, yet strategies to reduces these reactive oxygen species through antioxidants in large scale clinical trials have largely been unsuccessful. Better understanding of pathways regulating enzymatic sources of O2.- like NADPH oxidases, uncoupled nitric oxide synthases (NOSs) and mitochondrial oxidases are required to regulate myocardial oxidative stress in patients with advanced stages of cardiac disease. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a gaseous signalling molecule generated by transsulfuration pathway enzymes cystathionine γ-lyase (CSE), cystathionine β-synthase (CBS), and 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase (MST). H2S regulates oxidative stress in animal models and shows promise for cardiovascular therapeutic strategy. This thesis investigates whether H2S/CSE biology is related to human myocardial redox state in a cohort of individuals with advanced cardiac disease (Oxford Heart, Fat, Vessels Cohort; Ox-HVF). Individuals with varying levels of myocardial oxidative stress and function were extensively phenotyped for H2S biology. Individuals with high myocardial oxidative stress from NADPH oxidases and NOSs were found to have high expression of myocardial CSE. To examine first the positive association with NADPH oxidase activity, CSE expression was examined after myocardial oxidative injury and CSE was found to be redox-sensitive. Furthermore, direct effects of two exogenous H2S donors (NaHS and GYY4137) demonstrated a direct regulation of O2.- from NOSs in myocardium from individuals with advanced cardiac disease, further supporting H2S’s direct role in the regulation of NOS biology. Finally, identification of a SNP in CSE further demonstrated CSE’s causal role in the regulation of O2.- generation from mitochondrial oxidases. Taken together, we demonstrate for the first time that H2S and CSE biology are linked to human myocardial redox state and have a causal role in redox regulation in the human heart. These findings suggest H2S/CSE biology are important endogenous regulators of myocardial redox state in humans and continued exploration of these pathways may develop novel therapeutic strategies against myocardial oxidative stress in cardiac disease.
Ketone synthesis via rhodium-catalyzed traceless chelation-controlled hydroacylation reactions
Keywords: asymmetric catalysis
cascade reaction
rhodium catalyst

This thesis documents the development of rhodium-catalyzed traceless chelation-controlled hydroacylation reactions for the synthesis of a variety of ketone products.
Chapter 1 provides an overview of rhodium-catalyzed hydroacylation chemistry, focusing on the origin of chelation-controlled strategies and the benefits thereof.
Chapter 2 describes a sequential reaction involving alkene hydroacylation, sulfide elimination and boronic acid conjugate addition, which affords products with the initial sulfide coordinating group replaced by a stereochemically defined aryl group.
Chapter 3 demonstrates a sequential process involving alkyne hydroacylation, boronic acid conjugate addition and sulfide elimination, which provides enantioenriched β’-arylα,β-unsaturated ketones in a highly efficient and selective manner.
Chapter 4 illustrates a versatile chelating group, triazene, for hydroacylation reactions. Subsequent functionalization of aromatic C-H bonds, promoted by the same chelating unit, offers highly substituted phenyl ketone products.
Chapter 5 documents experimental procedures and data.
Canopy of everlasting joy: an early source in Tibetan historiography and the history of West Tibet
Keywords: Tibet
Tibetan Studies
West Tibet
Kingship
Orality
Historiography

A more descriptive title for the dissertation might be "Early historiography in Pu rang - Gu ge and its relationship between orality, kingship, and Tibetan identity: a close study of a recently uncovered 12th century historical manuscript from Tholing monastery in West Tibet." The present study is therefore a close textual analysis of all the outer and inner features of the Tholing Manuscript. When reading the text, there is the gradual realization that the archaic peculiarities in script, binding, spelling, vocabulary, prose, and narrative twists, all highlight the work as a wholly rare and different version from those early histories typically found in Central Tibet. The key difference lies primarily in the focal point of the narrative. Whereas most similar narratives from the time of the phyi dar (11th - 13th centuries) onwards place at the core of their structure the history of Buddhism in Tibet, the Tholing text puts as its central focus kingship and the history of kings in Tibet. For this reason, while Buddhism plays an essential and integral part of the story as a whole, the text can be viewed as a more secular work then any comparable monastic history of the period.
The narrative structure of the manuscript, with its heavy use of rhythmical prose, similes, archaic topoi and motifs, is hauntingly familiar to those parallel passages found among Old Tibetan Documents and is emblematic of the liminal period in which the text was written. At this time, histories were transitioning from disperse and possibly oral transmissions to predominantly formal organized written traditions. The poetic nature of the text, together with its unusual physical features, raises questions relating to its purpose and function, with the possibility of its use as a ritual manuscript for royal legitimization. Through a close study of the text, I offer some insights on the formative nature of early Tibetan historiography in establishing the sacred and political power of the kings of West Tibet.
Christian stucco decoration in southern Mesopotamia and the Persian gulf region, sixth to ninth centuries
Keywords: stucco
Christian art
architectural decoration
Middle East

Christian archaeology and art of the region under the jurisdiction of the Church of the East in the Late Antique and early Islamic period is an underresearched field of studies, which exists in between more developed disciplines such as Byzantine and Syriac studies as well as Early Christian, Sasanian and Islamic archaeology and art history. However, archaeological excavations of the last century, especially in southern Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf region, now allow research to be conducted on the most important medium of artistic expression of the region – stucco. Considered from the technological, stylistic and iconographic point of view and within the aforementioned cultural contexts, it reveals that the Christian stucco production of the region was shaped by Sasanian traditions and contemporary Byzantine and Islamic influences, but also that it developed an innovative and highly creative vocabulary of forms and motifs. It was especially among the Gulf communities of Sir Bani Yas, al-Qusur and other sites that this transformative approach towards traditional and contemporary artistic models manifested itself within a short period between the late seventh and the early ninth centuries. Slightly more conservative is the character of Christian art of southern Mesopotamia in the eighth and early ninth centuries. An interesting exception is a relief found at a church in Koke in the region of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, in which the Sasanian technique of deep relief is combined with the Byzantine dress of the person represented. This fusion of culturally divergent elements testifies to the double identity of the Christians living under the Sasanians – and later, in the early Islamic caliphate – who were recognized as a part of society but distinctive for their religion.
Foes, ghosts, and faces in the water: self-reflexivity in postwar fiction
Keywords: Philip Roth
Postcolonial Literature
American Literature
J. M. Coetzee
Literary Theory
Janet Frame
Metafiction
New Zealand Literature
South African Literature

This thesis examines the nature and value of metafictional practices in the careers of postwar novelists. Discussions of metafiction have been central to accounts of postwar literature. Where debates in the 1980s and 1990s about metafiction tended to make claims about its distinctive political and theoretical power, recent work in the study of institutions has folded metafiction into the routine operation of the literary field, and attacked previous claims to distinctive value. In this thesis I both historicize self-reflexive literary practices in the literary field, an element largely absent from the earlier scholarship, and present historically determinate claims about the value of these practices, an element I suggest is missing from the more recent work. To do so, I turn to the study of autobiography, specifically Philippe Lejeune’s concept of 'autobiographical space.' In the first chapter, I explore how J. M. Coetzee develops academic literary criticism in his fiction. In the second chapter, I examine how Janet Frame responds to both the demands of a national literature and biographical inquiry into her life. In the third chapter, I address how Philip Roth handles the relationship between the politics of identity and the postwar novel. Self-reflexive practices, I show throughout, are ways of writing that were encouraged by particular formations in the literary field and were handled by writers through more or less explicit treatments of autobiographical space. I argue, though, that while these practices can be remarkably inventive, they carry no guarantees for political, theoretical, or aesthetic value.
‘Christianity personified’: Perceval and Pittism
Keywords: Pittism
Religious History
British History
Political History
Spencer Perceval
Nineteenth-Century History
History

Pittite politics between the premierships of Pitt and Liverpool has been overshadowed by those long eras of government and by the concurrent Napoleonic Wars. This has particularly caused the neglect of one leading Pittite, the prime minister Spencer Perceval, which is especially surprising given recent scholarly interest in the role of religion in politics and in conservative ideas. He is known either as the 'assassinated Prime Minister', or stereotyped as the 'Evangelical Prime Minister'. This thesis contends that Perceval was a significant, if sometimes unusual, figure in Pittite politics in 1807-12, that this era saw important policies pursued in areas such as church reform, and that Perceval is better understood as an 'Anglican Prime Minister' dedicated to upholding the established Church. Recovering Perceval helps us better understand the Pittites in general. He operated amongst a circle of like-minded politicians who supported church reform and opposed Catholic Emancipation. Each chapter duly recovers a topic which demonstrates the continuities between war-time and peace-time Pittite policies, underpinning the thesis's argument that post-1815 policies need to be understood in relation to the war-time experiences and actions of this generation of Pittites.
These arguments are advanced through five chapters. The first chapter shows how Perceval's theological beliefs, contemporary descriptions, and his church patronage emphasise his transcendent Anglicanism. The second chapter stresses Perceval's and his coterie’s role in strengthening and expanding the established Churches in England and Ireland. The third chapter highlights the twin importance of theological beliefs and the necessity of upholding the established Church in shaping Perceval's attitude towards Catholics, tithes, and nonconformists. The fourth chapter highlights the pragmatic approach the Pittites took to economic questions, and contrasts Perceval with the later 'liberal Tories' Canning and Huskisson. The fifth chapter illuminates Pittite policies that promoted Christianity in India and suppressed the slave trade.
Rethinking torture in international law
Keywords: Human Rights
Torture
International law

This thesis seeks to identify the moral wrong of torture, and to trace the relationship between that wrong and the definition of torture in international law. Because understanding a concept's modern manifestation requires an understanding of its history, the thesis begins by tracing the historical trajectory of legal prohibitions of different forms of ill-treatment beginning with the English Bill of Rights in 1689, subsequently articulated in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that 'no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment'. This prohibition, almost universally accepted by States, has come to be interpreted as embodying a hierarchy with torture at the apex. The shift towards a hierarchical interpretation of the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment in international law was remarkable, both for its decisiveness and for its surprisingly recent occurrence. The reasons for that shift are examined, before turning to a consideration of the competing accounts of what it is that makes torture wrong.
Two predominant accounts of the moral wrong of torture are identified, described here as the ‘dignitarian’ and the 'defencelessness' accounts. Although most international instruments and judicial decisions on torture implicitly reflect the dignitarian account, the thesis argues that this account is open to challenge on normative grounds. Instead, it argues that the preferable account of the moral wrong of torture is a modified form of the defencelessness account, according to which torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering in the context of a profoundly asymmetric power relation. Finally, the thesis turns to a consideration of the definitions of torture in international law. It contends that there are distinct conceptions of torture operating in the criminal paradigm, and in the human rights paradigm, respectively. While both conceptions of torture at present reflect the dignitarian account, the thesis argues that there is scope in the human rights paradigm for a more expansive 'defencelessness' conception of torture to be adopted.
Categorical quantum dynamics
Keywords: Quantum Symmetries
Categorical Quantum Mechanics
Quantum Algorithms
Device-independent Security
Quantum Dynamics
Non-locality

Since their original introduction, strongly complementary observables have been a fundamental ingredient of the ZX calculus, one of the most successful fragments of Categorical Quantum Mechanics (CQM). In this thesis, we show that strong complementarity plays a vastly greater role in quantum theory.
Firstly, we use strong complementarity to introduce dynamics and symmetries within the framework of CQM, which we also extend to infinite-dimensional separable Hilbert spaces: these were long-missing features, which open the way to a wealth of new applications. The coherent treatment presented in this work also provides a variety of novel insights into the dynamics and symmetries of quantum systems: examples include the extremely simple characterisation of symmetry-observable duality, the connection of strong complementarity with the Weyl Canonical Commutation Relations, the generalisations of Feynman's clock construction, the existence of time observables and the emergence of quantum clocks.
Secondly, we show that strong complementarity is a key resource for quantum algorithms and protocols. We provide the first fully diagrammatic, theory-independent proof of correctness for the quantum algorithm solving the Hidden Subgroup Problem, and show that strong complementarity is the feature providing the quantum advantage. In quantum foundations, we use strong complementarity to derive the exact conditions relating non-locality to the structure of phase groups, within the context of Mermin-type non-locality arguments. Our non-locality results find further application to quantum cryptography, where we use them to define a quantum-classical secret sharing scheme with provable device-independent security guarantees.
All in all, we argue that strong complementarity is a truly powerful and versatile building block for quantum theory and its applications, and one that should draw a lot more attention in the future.
Infra-red laser applications in the reproductive sciences: improving safety for assisted reproductive technology and developing novel research tools
Keywords: Assisted reproductive technology
Preimplantation embryo
Infertility
Infra-red laser
Mouse embryo
Mesoporous silica nanoparticle

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) has been rapidly expanding since the birth of Louise Brown, the first test tube baby, in 1978. Although an increasingly complex array of laboratory skills and procedures have been developed for infertility treatments, the success rate of ART remains low. In an attempt to make ART safer and more efficient, international medical practice is trending towards single embryo transfers and the use of innovative, sophisticated technologies to identify promising gametes and embryos with the highest potential to generate a pregnancy. Laser technology is increasingly being used to accomplish these aims. The application of lasers for ART has been successfully employed in clinical practice for some time now and is continually the subject of investigative research in order to generate new methods to improve operations. Moreover, lasers serve as a powerful tool at the forefront of investigative research in the reproductive sciences, assisting in broadening our understanding of reproductive and developmental biology. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of literature pertaining to the safe standardisation of such laser procedures with evidence at the molecular level. The primary aim of this thesis was to optimise applications of laser technology for clinical ART and research applications in the reproductive sciences. This thesis utilised the mouse embryo model to investigate potential deleterious effects of different laser treatment applications, both by the operator and hardware manufacturer. Safe and unsafe laser operator parameters were elucidated by assessing deleterious effects to the plasma membrane integrity, blastocyst survival rate, DNA fragmentation levels, and changes in gene expression of key developmental genes. The effect of altering the laser hardware to lower the power output was evaluated and it was determined that if a lower power laser is used to deliver a set amount of energy over a longer period of time, a smaller amount of damage is incurred. Work in this thesis also established a new method in which laser technology can be used as a research tool for the reproductive sciences, by creating a novel stimuli-responsive laser-activated nanoparticle delivery system with spatial control and increased efficiency in a mammalian cell model. The field of reproductive science continues to benefit greatly from laser application clinically to improve infertility treatments, and in research, to elucidate mechanisms underlying infertility, with a hope of increasing our understanding and eventually developing new treatment options.
Quantum electrodynamics of semiconducting nanomaterials in optical microcavities
Keywords: Optical microcavities
Two-dimensional materials
Nanomaterials

Semiconducting nanocrystals in open-access microcavities are promising systems in which enhanced light-matter interactions lead to quantum effects such as the modulation of the spontaneous emission process and exciton-polariton formation. In this thesis I present improvements of the open cavity platform which serves to confine the electromagnetic field with mode volumes down to the λ3 regime and demonstrate results in both the weak and strong coupling regimes of cavity quantum electrodynamics with a range of different low-dimensional materials. I report cavity fabrication details allowing a peak finesse of 5 × 104 and advanced photonic structures such as coupled cavities in the open cavity geometry.
By incorporating two-dimensional materials and nanoplatelets in the cavity I demonstrate the strong coupling regime of light-matter interaction with the formation of exciton-polaritons, quasi-particles composed of both photon and exciton, at room temperature. In the perturbative weak coupling regime I show pronounced modulation of the single-photon emission from CdSe/ZnS quantum dots and the two-dimensional material WSe2 and demonstrate Purcell enhancement of the spontaneous emission rate by factors of 2 at room temperature and 8 at low temperature. The findings presented in this thesis pave the way to establish open microcavities as a platform for a wide range of applications in nanophotonics and quantum information technologies.