VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Chemical Composition, Thermodynamics, and Recycling: The Beginnings of Predictive Behavioral Modeling for Ancient Copper-based Systems
Keywords: Volatility
Thermodynamic Modeling
Equilibrium
Oxidation
Activity

In their attempts to understand the unwritten past of human technology and progression, archaeologists have borrowed aspects of the natural sciences to answer big questions. In one such pursuit, fundamental aspects of the sciences have been employed towards the chemical compositional analysis of copper-based artifacts, often to simply classify which is bronze, brass, or pure copper, and to explain why they are significant in limited space and time. This thesis takes the variety of identified metal types and compositions from these analyses and builds the beginnings of an ambitious thermodynamic model based on the accepted premise of consistent and widespread recycling of ancient metals over time. Following the laws of thermodynamics, in systems at equilibrium, the model predicts the outcome of metal losses over the course of ancient pyrometallurgical processes from molten systems through both volatilization and oxidation using rigorous and established mathematics and theory. Elemental loss likelihoods are modeled for all binary copper-based metals, using activity coefficients, and ternary copper and zinc-based systems, with the excess Gibbs free energy, respectively. The calculations are performed using custom-written software designed to account for hundreds of thousands of compositional permutations after the method described by Redlich and Kister (1948). The results of these calculations are given as activity (binary) and isoactivity (ternary) contour lines. Quantified tables for the oxidation and volatilization of elements from a copper melt at 1200 ºC and 1 atm are also given as rough indicators of element loss in ancient pyrometallurgical systems. A proof of concept of the models viability is also provided for binary Cu-M and ternary Cu-M-Zn (M = Ag, As, Au, Bi, Co, Fe, Ni, Pb, Sb, Sn, Zn), Cu-Sn-Pb, and Cu-Sb-As systems from the Late Bronze Age to post-medieval periods in Britain, which is based on several substantial artifact chemical datasets. For each ternary system, the interaction parameters used for higher-order calculations from the fitted behavior of each contributing binary systems are provided. Comparison of the calculated models to available experimental system assessments, and to published archaeological chemical datasets, show that in both respects the proposed modeling of ancient copper-based metal losses works. And given the near ubiquity of ancient metal use around the world, the consistency in metal production and recycling technology, and the chemical analyses available, this preliminary model can be applied virtually anywhere the technology for smelting and recycling existed. In addition to loss modeling, this thesis has the additional offshoots of predicting ancient furnace conditions based on the calculated behavior of interacting metals, and of the controlling thermodynamic factors in the ancient calamine process.
Experimental phonetics in Britain, 1890-1940
Keywords: Speech research
Phonetics laboratory
Phonetics
Experimental phonetics
Instrumental phonetics

This study provides the first critical history of British developments in phonetic science from 1890 to the beginning of the Second World War. It draws on both published and unpublished documentary evidence, and on original digital analyses of contemporary images, experimental data, and sound recordings.
Experimental phonetics had diverse origins embracing medicine, physics and philology. A survey of the nineteenth century background shows that by 1890 significant British contributions in all three fields could have furnished the makings of a native approach to phonetics as an experimental science, but they failed to come together for a variety of bureaucratic, professional and personal reasons. Experimental phonetics—an academic fashion as much as a scientific specialism—was instead imported from Germany and France, and it had little continuity with British antecedents.
The study details the earliest British phonetics laboratories, their personnel, equipment, and research programmes, providing the first extensive account of the UCL laboratory, and bringing to light a forgotten 1930s laboratory in Newcastle. The major methods of empirical investigation of the period are scrutinised, rehabilitating long-neglected British origins.
The early work of Daniel Jones is extensively re-evaluated, establishing his scientific credentials, and the career of Stephen Jones, the first academic in Britain to earn a salary as an experimental phonetician, receives detailed treatment.
New light is thrown on many neglected figures, including W. A. Aikin, E. R. Edwards, John G. McKendrick, and Wilfred Perrett, while a detailed investigation of the work of Sir Richard Paget reveals the astonishing accuracy of his auditory analyses.
The study concludes with an account of the career of Robert Curry, the first recognisably modern and professional speech scientist to emerge in Britain.
Understanding the plasma and improving extraction of the ISIS Penning H- ions source
Keywords: Plasma
Accelerator
Spectroscopy
Cesium
Caesium
Ion beam
Ion source
Extraction
Einzel
H-minus
Negative hydrogen

A Penning-type surface-plasma negative hydrogen (H-) ion source has been delivering beam at the ISIS pulsed spallation neutron and muon facility for over thirty years. It is one of the most powerful and well-renowned H- sources in the world. Although long-term experience has allowed the source to be operated reliably and set up in a repeatable way, it is treated as something of a 'black box': the detailed plasma physics of why it works has always been unclear.
A vacuum Vessel for Extraction and Source Plasma Analyses (VESPA) has been developed to understand the ISIS ion source plasma and improve the beam extracted from it. The VESPA ion source is operated in a completely new regime whereby the analysing sector dipole magnet housed inside a refrigerated 'cold box', presently used on ISIS, is replaced by an on-axis extraction system. The new extraction system incorporates a novel einzel lens with an elliptical aperture. This is the first demonstration of an elliptical einzel being used to focus an asymmetric H- ion beam.
With the dipole magnet removed, the ion source has been shown to produce 85 mA of H- beam current at normal settings; of which 80 mA is transported through the new einzel lens system, with a normalised RMS emittance of 0.2 π mm mrad. Optical emission spectroscopy measurements have shown a plasma density of 1019 m–3, an H2 dissociation rate of 70%, an almost constant electron temperature of 3.5 eV and an atomic temperature which linearly increases above the electron temperature.
In support of these principal measurements, rigorous particle tracking, electrostatic and thermal simulations were performed. In addition, a suite of new equipment was manufactured by the author. This includes a fast pressure gauge, a temperature controller, a high voltage einzel lens circuit, a fast beam chopper and a caesium detection system.
Persian petroleum and the British Empire: from the D'Arcy concession to the First World War
Keywords: Iran
Persia
Oil
Middle East
Gentlemanly Capitalism
British Empire

This thesis has used public and private archives, as well as newly discovered private papers, to provide new interpretations and new analytical insights regarding the early history of a British investment in Persia. This has given rise to broad questions regarding the interaction of economic and political power within the British empire and the interaction of foreign economic forces with domestic political forces in Persia. Within those overarching themes, the role of intermediation, the Anglo-Russian rivalry over Persia, British naval developments, differing legal cultures and Persian political developments have been examined in detail. Investigating the extent of official British intervention in the venture’s affairs and the effects of the Persian Constitutional Revolution, in particular, have advanced the current understanding of the company’s early history. In-depth archival research has thus allowed this thesis to demonstrate the shortcomings of the existing literature and provide the most complete account of the Persian oil venture’s early developments to date.
Poverty, remoteness and social mobility of the indigenous population in Mexico
Keywords: Indigenous population
Multidimensional poverty
Mexico
Social mobility
Remoteness

The thesis seeks to understand the differences between the indigenous and the non-indigenous populations in Mexico in terms of poverty and to analyse what explains these differences. The thesis departs from the official multidimensional poverty measure that has been adopted in Mexico. The thesis distinguishes from the official results in at least four areas: 1) the main poverty indicator and how it is estimated; 2) a deeper understanding of the indigenous and non-indigenous; 3) the analysis of robustness and redundancy across dimensions and; 4) the use of standard errors to compare groups and across time.
This dissertation then focuses on remoteness, since a high percentage of the indigenous population live in small isolated rural communities, and there is a relationship between the locality size and the standard of living. In order to quantify the remoteness, and to be able to compare indigenous and non-indigenous populations, a measure of remoteness is proposed.
Then also explores how different the social mobility for the indigenous is, compared to non-indigenous. While there are studies that allow comparisons of indigenous and non-indigenous in relation to social mobility, this thesis suggests a measure of absolute social mobility that uses the framework of the Alkire-Foster methodology for multidimensional poverty. Finally, this thesis explores the role of ethnic discrimination using the Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions. Also, an innovative method to study discrimination is also presented, based on the propensity score match techniques.
At the end, this dissertation argues there is a vicious cycle of indigenous poverty in Mexico. In a nutshell, the fact that the indigenous are poorer means they rely more on state intervention while being discriminated against in the labour markets. Discrimination is an incentive to remain geographically isolated and lowers their intergenerational social mobility. As a result, the indigenous live in remote rural localities, where harder and more expensive for the state to reach. Thus, the indigenous have less access to state support.
The thesis follows a mixed-methods approach, that combines quantitative analysis based on information at national level with analysis of data collected during fieldwork in 2011.
Factors influencing the dispersal of Pseudomonas fluorescens NZI7 by Caenorhabditis elegans
Keywords: Cellular automaton
Pseudomonas fluorescens
Behaviour
Nematode
Defence against predators

Caenorhabditis elegans is a natural predator of the mushroom pathogen Pseudomonas fluorescens NZI7. The bacterial mechanisms for reducing predation by the nematode through the secretion of secondary metabolites have been described, but not yet fully explored. The behaviour of nematodes is influenced by the different factors produced by the pseudomonads.
In this thesis we develop a range of assays to link the behaviour of C. elegans to these factors to identify their role in bacteria–nematode interactions. We show that these factors play two distinct roles: they may either repel nematodes, or harm them. This permits the classification of mutants of P. fl. NZI7 lacking these factors as either attractive, edible or both.
Many studies of C. elegans behaviour have demonstrated that the nematode can distinguish between different food sources. Our results show two distinct types of response: chemotaxis drives the response to attractive or repellent stimuli, and nematodes also show a choice behaviour that is independent of chemotaxis. This choice behaviour is determined by bacterial edibility and requires nematodes to come into contact with the bacteria. This contact is the foundation of the bacterial dispersal by nematodes. By making use of the luminescence property of the available bacterial mutants, we demonstrate an intimate link between the behaviour of C. elegans and the success with which bacteria are disseminated: if nematodes are induced to regularly leave a bacterial colony, whether through their genotype or the low edibility of the food, then they will spread bacteria effectively.
Throughout this thesis, we use computational simulations based on a hybrid cellular automaton model to represent the nematode–bacteria interactions. These simulations recreate the observed behaviour of the system, thus they help to confirm our hypotheses and establish the fundamental aspects of the interactions between the two species.
Ontario's empire: liberalism and 'Britannic' nationalism in Laurier's Canada, 1887-1919
Keywords: Wilfrid Laurier
Ontario
Liberalism
Nationalism
Imperialism
British Empire
Canada

This thesis examines the nexus of politics, ideology, and identity among Anglo-Canadian liberal intellectuals during Wilfrid Laurier's leadership of the Canadian Liberal party from 1887 to 1919. This 'Laurier era' was characterised by explosive demographic and economic expansion, the consolidation of Canada's political and constitutional order, and its rising international stature within British Empire. But it also witnessed divisive disputes over the nature and development of the new Confederation. These debates over 'Dominion nation-building' were central to Canadian political and intellectual life, shaping the evolution of liberal ideology and the growth of national and imperial sentiment. In particular, the thesis focuses on a group of liberal intellectuals and politicians who resided in or originated from the province of Ontario and associated with Laurier during his reign as Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition. It reinterprets their debates in global and local contexts, specifically through the lens of a 'Greater Ontario' - a virtual province of Canada and the British world comprised of 'Old' Ontario, with its metropolis at Toronto, and the 'neo-Ontarian' settler empire of the Prairie West. Its argument is threefold. First, it argues these liberals envisaged Canada, with 'Greater Ontario' at its heart, as a 'British nation' rooted in North America. Their growing sense of Canadian nationalism was distinctly 'Britannic' - indeed, 'British-American' - and drew upon civic as well as racial ideas of 'Britishness.' Second, it maintains that the political, ideological, and regional fault lines within Ontario's liberal tradition consequently shaped their competing visions of the Dominion, the British Empire, and the wider Anglo-world. And third, it contends that these debates illuminate the rise and subsequent disintegration of Wilfrid Laurier's Liberal party in 'Greater Ontario.' The thesis thus contributes a new perspective to the political and intellectual history of Canada and the British world.
North Koreans in South Korea: humanitarian subjects and neoliberal governance
Keywords: North Korean defectors
refugees
migration
narrative
resettlement

This thesis uses the narratives of North Koreans living in South Korea (t'albungmin) to understand how they make sense of their positioning in South Korean society. Based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Seoul, this study attempts to illuminate the contradictory nature of citizenship for young t'albungmin living under the dictates of neoliberal humanitarian governance in contemporary South Korea. As a result of the specific geopolitical configuration of the Korean peninsula, there are contradictory perceptions of North Koreans as compatriots, victims, and enemies: perceptions both affecting and affected by the role of t'albungmin in South Korea's political economy. I consider citizenship a site of negotiation, influenced by South Korean modes of neoliberal humanitarian governance, which encourage t'albungmin to become autonomous, self-managed subjects at the same time as subjecting them to humanitarian reason which, conversely, rewards passivity and compliance. There is a further contradiction between their automatic entitlement to South Korean citizenship and the neoliberal imperative to demonstrate productivity and deservingness. In light of these contradictory imperatives, perceptions and discourses surrounding issues such as accent, deservingness, and responsibility come to take on significant explanatory power in the lives of young t'albungmin. In this context, South Korean policies and NGOs both discursively and practically construct t'albungmin as different and naturalise them as dependent, with this sense of unequal relations structuring their subsequent relations with South Koreans. I argue that this sense of differentiation reflects a particular mode of governance, which in turn illuminates the workings of citizenship in the South Korean context. I also consider the implications for t'albungmin when supporting them is conceptualised as a humanitarian act. While South Koreans portray their society as a 'community of value' in which t'albungmin are constructed as humanitarian subjects, this thesis illustrates how the narratives of t'albungmin contest this interpretation.
Fbxl13 regulates centrosome homeostasis and migration through ubiquitin mediated proteolysis
Keywords: proteolysis
ubiquitin
centrosomes
F-box

Fbxl13 (F-box and leucine-rich repeat protein 13) is an orphan F-box protein. Fbox proteins are a family of substrate-targeting specificity factors for the SCF superfamily of E3 ubiquitin ligases. Since their discovery, many F-box proteins have been shown to have oncogenic and tumour suppressive roles. The importance of Fbxl13 itself in tumourigenesis is reflected in several genome-wide shRNA screens. Fbxl13 depletion in human cancer cells correlates with increased ionising radiation sensitivity and increased genomic instability. Furthermore, Fbxl13 depletion reduces proliferation in mouse embryonic epidermis. Conversely, Fbxl13 amplification is frequently observed in several cancer patient cohorts. However, the main function of Fbxl13 is unknown and its biochemical mechanism of action remains uncharacterised. The aim of this study was to identify the interactors, substrates, and functions of Fbxl13, in order to elucidate its role in tumourigenesis. In this study, I identify and validate Fbxl13 interactors Centrin-2, Centrin-3, Cep152, and Cep192. I show that Fbxl13 is enriched at the centrosome, and present evidence that Fbxl13 targets Cep192-3 for ubiquitin mediated proteolysis. In line with this, Fbxl13 overexpression downregulated centrosomal Cep192 and γ-tubulin, and disrupted the microtubule nucleation activity at the centrosome. Finally, Fbxl13 amplification in U2OS cells is associated with increased cell motility. Thus, we propose that Fbxl13 is a novel regulator of centrosome microtubule nucleation activity.
Anisotropy and spin relaxation in the condensed phase
Keywords: radical pair

Chapter 1 introduces the concept of spin, how spins interact, and how the spin state in a radical pair can affect the outcome of a chemical reaction between the unpaired electrons. The computational methodology for simulating such radical pairs is also discussed.
Chapter 2 discusses anisotropy in the singlet recombination yield of a radical pair in a carotenoid-porphyrin-fullerene triad, containing many hyperfine couplings. The singlet yield was calculated as a function of the direction of an applied mag- netic field, using symmetry in the molecule to reduce the size of the problem. The symmetry reduction was partially successful, however it was not possible to include all the hyperfine couplings in the molecule.
Chapter 3 introduces a radical pair located on a flavin ligand and a tryptophan residue in the protein cryptochrome, and discusses the spin-relaxation mechanism of singlet-triplet dephasing. Magnetic field effect curves, describing the formation of a secondary radical pair as a function of applied magnetic field, were found to be broader in longer-lived radical pairs, due to dephasing caused by spin-selective recombination to the singlet ground state. Additional singlet-triplet dephasing may occur due to hopping of one of the unpaired electrons, between a zone of strong exchange interaction and a zone of negligible exchange interaction, although this is an incomplete description of the spin-relaxation.
Chapter 4 discusses the effect of rotational tumbling on spin-relaxation in the flavin-tryptophan radical pair in cryptochrome. Simulations indicated that the resulting modulation of anisotropic hyperfine couplings contributed modestly to spin-relaxation during transient absorption measurements, but was insufficient to explain the lack of an experimental low-field effect, or to explain the width of the experimental magnetic field effect curves as a function of magnetic field strength.
Chapter 5 discusses magnetic field effects on the mutual annihilation of a pair of triplet excitons in tetracene and anthracene crystals. The experimental singlet recombination yield was found, for the first time, to be modulated as a function of the direction of a applied magnetic field as weak as 2 mT. Simulations indicated that this anisotropy arose due to the zero field splitting of the electronic state in each triplet exciton. The direction of the external magnetic field altered the singlet component of the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian, and therefore altered the time-average of the singlet probability of a triplet exciton pair. This is different to the already established mechanism under a strong magnetic field, where the anisotropy arises from level crossings of eigenstates.
Conductivity studies of the size-induced metal-insulator transition (SIMIT) in silver nanoparticles
Keywords: Microwave Cavity Resonator
Silver Nanoparticles
Electrical Properties
Size-Induced Metal-Insulator Transition

In his tenth decade, Professor Sir Nevill Mott, in a letter to Professor Peter P. Edwards, reminiscenced about the fundamental difference between metals and non-metals; thus he wrote of the situation at the absolute zero of temperature (T = 0 K) '...there a metal conducts, and a non-metal doesn't'. This simple but amazingly powerful commentary stands as a powerful abiding description of the challenge of the fascinating question as to what makes a metal conduct. Many years of experimental studies of metals and nonmetals, targeted at the experimental verification in divided-metal systems ranging from transition mesoscopic metal compounds to microscopic colloidal metals, the occurrence of the electronic transition between these two canonical states of matter have always an enduring fascination where the possibility of a Size-Induced Metal-Insulator Transition (SIMIT) within a small particle of a bulk metal is accessed. In contrast to the situation of a discontinuous Metal-to-Insulator Transition (MIT) in macroscopic systems containing huge numbers of interacting particles and electrons (i.e. a doped semiconductor), the onset of the SIMIT in a single, isolated microscopic particle of a metallic element of the Periodic Table is expected to be a continuous metal-insulator transition.
Here, we report an experimental study on the microwave electrical conductivity across the possible SIMIT in particles of the most conductive of all metals in Periodic Table - silver (Ag). Particular emphasis has been placed on the development and application of a non-intrusive microwave measurement technique, taken across a broad range microwave frequencies. The aim is to look for, and interrogate the nature of the SIMIT in such ultra-fine Ag particles. We have attempted to develop a coherent description of the different dielectric responses that yield electrical conductivity over a wide range of mesoscopic and microscopic Ag particles, from which the SIMIT is identified and rationalised. We find that, at 294 K, the mesoscopic Ag particles approximately 5 nm exhibit an 'effective' microwave conductivities which is reduced by some two orders-of-magnitude below that of bulk metallic Ag.