VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Measurement and fusion of non-invasive vital signs for routine triage of acute paediatric illness
Keywords: pulse oximetry
primary health care
infant
body temperature
child
reference values
emergency medical services
vital signs
heart rate
early warning
respiratory rate

Serious illness in childhood is a rare occurrence, but accounts for 20% of childhood deaths. Early recognition and treatment of serious illness is vital if the child is to recover without long-term disability. It is known that vital signs such as heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, and oxygen saturation can be used to identify children who are at high risk of serious illness.
This thesis presents research into the development of a vital signs monitor, designed for use in the initial assessment of unwell children at their first point of contact with a medical practitioner. Child-friendly monitoring techniques are used to obtain vital signs, which can then be combined using data fusion techniques to assist clinicians in identifying children with serious illness.
Existing normal ranges for heart rate and respiratory rate in childhood vary considerably, and do not appear to be based on clinical evidence. This thesis presents a systematic meta-analysis of heart rate and respiratory rate from birth to 18 years of age, providing evidence-based curves which can be used to assess the degree of abnormality in these important vital signs.
Respiratory rate is particularly difficult to measure in children, but is known to be predictive of serious illness. Current methods of automated measurement can be distressing, or are time-consuming to apply. This thesis therefore presents a novel method for estimating the respiratory rate from an optical finger sensor, the pulse oximeter, which is routinely used in clinical practice.
Information from multiple vital signs can be used to identify children at risk of serious illness. A number of data fusion techniques were tested on data collected from children attending primary and emergency care, and shown to outperform equivalent existing scoring systems when used to identify those with more serious illness.
Nationalism and the birth of modern art in Egypt
Keywords: non-Western art
modern Egypt
nationalism
modernism

This dissertation covers the emergence of a tradition of the fine arts in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century and its relationship to discourses of nationalism. Taking as a starting point the canon of the ‘pioneer’ generation as it is defined in the historiography, I follow the careers of the sculptor Mahmud Mukhtar and the painters Ragheb ‘Ayyad, Muhammad Nagi, and Mahmud Sa‘id, each of whom is treated in a full chapter.
Narratives surrounding the life and work of these artists have tended to emphasize the ways in which the images they created participated in the definition of a single cohesive nation – through the use of Pharaonic imagery, which anchors the nation in a distant past, through rural symbolism, which ties the nation to the land and the Nile, and through a female iconography that links the nation to ideas of virtue and purity – what I term here, following Timothy Mitchell and Homi Bhabha, a pedagogical narrative of the nation. However, I suggest that the process of imagining the nation as a unified whole necessarily involves a negotiation of difference, sometimes that of the peasant or the woman who pose a challenge to the assumption of an unproblematic national collectivity, sometimes that of the artists themselves, who, for reasons of foreign education, religion, or social identity, are unable to fully identify with definitions of the nation that were themselves constantly contested. This negotiation of difference – what Mitchell has termed the performative - and how it appears within works of visual art, constitutes the main subject of this dissertation.
Design and application of novel metamaterial elements and configurations
Keywords: electromagnetics
metamaterial
microwave
artificial materials

Metamaterials are artificially constructed "materials" which are formed from arrays of engineered elements. By designing individual elements as well as their interactions, the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) waves within the structure can be manipulated, so that new responses can be realised which may not be found in nature.
The subject of this research concerns the study of miniaturised elements with strong EM responses so that the constructed metamaterial can better approximate an ordinary low-loss material. The research involves designing miniaturised magnetic resonators operating in the microwave frequency range. A novel resonator prototypes, so-called “helical resonators”, have been successfully designed and fabricated whose physical sizes can fall below 1% of the free space wavelength at resonance. This contributes to a size reduction of 90% compared with previously published work. In addition, an analytical model has been developed, so that the resonance parameters of a helical resonator have explicit expressions. In particular, a constant optimal metallic fill ratio is demonstrated to exist, which can achieve a minimum resonant frequency and a maximum miniaturisation for any given outmost dimension of the element. The accuracy of the model has been verified by both simulation and experiment. The frequency responses of fabricated helical elements were measured using a vector network analyser and a pair of small loop non- resonant dipole probes, and the parameters were extracted using the phase frequency fit method which proves to have the best accuracy and robustness.
The properties of a regular square array of helical resonators are subsequently investigated, which can be regarded as a two-dimensional metamaterial. A relevant analytical model has been developed, which characterises the array as an equivalent sheet with surface current distributions, rather than an artificial medium with finite thickness. The relation between the macroscopic EM fields and the small scale properties of individual helical resonators are then established. In particular, the helical resonators are observed to be inherently chiral, thus the assembled interlocking array exhibits dichroism. The transmission coefficients for the circular EM waves with two different polarisation states have been derived, which have been verified by simulation and measurement results as well. In addition, it has been theoretically demonstrated that the resonator elements and their spacings can be engineered, so that the circular EM wave with one particular polarisation state can be totally attenuated around the element resonance, while the other state suffers negligible attenuation. A quadratic relation between the optimal array spacing and the elements’ quality factor has been demonstrated.
Improving intraperitoneal adenovirus virotherapy for ovarian cancer
Keywords: adenovirus
ovarian cancer
oncolytic
oncolytic virotherapy

The use of intraperitoneal (i.p.) adenovirus virotherapy of ovarian cancer is currently limited by insufficient efficacy and high toxicity. Both factors are associated with adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) in this setting and may be serotype-specific. Low levels of uptake receptors (CAR and αV integrins) on ovarian tumour cells and widespread immunity against Ad5 among patients appear to restrict efficacy and intraperitoneal inflammatory responses against Ad5 were among the reasons for the termination of a phase II/III clinical trial in ovarian cancer. This thesis sought to overcome these obstacles by investigating the alternative adenovirus serotypes Ad3 and Ad11. For these viruses lower pre-existing antiviral immunity and utilisation of different uptake receptors have been reported. Furthermore, virus cloaking with novel polymers which could impart enhanced protection from neutralisation was examined.
In vitro, wild-type Ad3, Ad5 and Ad11 displayed differential oncolytic activity in a panel of ovarian cancer cell lines which partly correlated to uptake receptor expression and virus internalisation. However, some cell lines displayed lysis resistance in a serotype-specific manner. While the inflammatory response six hours after i.p. administration of Ad11 in CD46-transgenic mice did not differ from Ad5, in long-term studies of repeated administration Ad5 induced significantly more severe pathologic effects in the form of adhesions and liver toxicity than Ad11 or mock-treatment. Oncolysis inhibition assays using malignant exudate samples demonstrated greater neutralisation of Ad3 and Ad5 in comparison to Ad11 at low concentrations of samples. Notably, 10-fold less Ad11 than Ad5 was required for oncolytic efficacy at a sample concentration of 10%. In an ex vivo model of ascites from ovarian cancer patients Ad5 modified with novel polymer formulations achieved at least 50% cell kill in six of eight samples, in contrast to two of eight samples for non-modified Ad5.
These data suggest that virotherapy using Ad11 might be advantageous over Ad3 or Ad5. The lack of strong inflammation and the possibility to decrease treatment doses due to less neutralisation of Ad11 might result in considerably improved patient safety. Chemical modification of Ad with novel polymers presents an exciting advancement in overcoming treatment neutralisation in adenovirus virotherapy.
The making and unmaking of an Irish woman of letters
Keywords: 18th century writing
life-writing
Dorothea Herbert
women's writing

Dorothea Herbert was an Irish provincial writer who did not publish during her lifetime. Only three of her manuscripts are now extant: a collection of poetry, Poetical Eccentricities Written by an Oddity (1793), an illustrated memoir, Retrospections of an Outcast (1806) and a Journal which covers the years 1806-7. All three manuscripts were missing for long periods and some doubts as to their existence and authenticity made many scholars reluctant to study her work. There is almost no documented historical evidence of her life and our only access to her is through her writing. The internal evidence of her writing suggests that by 1806 she was suffering from a serious mental illness. Nevertheless, her works reveal a relatively hidden world of literary practice in Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Studied alongside the manuscripts and printed works of a range of contemporary writers, Herbert’s extant manuscripts uncover a complex and informal literary culture. This textual world is dependent on print culture but operates independently of it in a closed system of gift-giving and manuscript circulation. In this thesis I explore the influence of print culture on the writing and reading practices of Herbert and her contemporaries. The thesis is divided into five chapters which examine: the history of Herbert’s manuscripts and those of her contemporaries, their writing as material practice, the cultures in which they read the writing and circulation of manuscripts and the history of the print trade in Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Electrochemical and IR spectroelectrochemical studies of ligand binding to the metal centres of nitrogenase
Keywords: nitrogenase
enzyme
electrochemistry
IR spectroscopy

Nitrogenase is a metalloenzyme that plays a key role in biological nitrogen fixation by catalysing the reduction of dinitrogen to ammonia. Study of nitrogenase is particularly challenging because of its unique electron transfer and catalytic components. This Thesis describes the development of a mediated electron transfer system for the MoFe protein of nitrogenase, in order to overcome the complexity of electron transfer by the native reductant Fe protein coupled to hydrolysis of ATP. A series of redox mediators was employed including EuIII/II-polyaminocarboxylate complexes, which have reduction potentials in a very negative range. In the presence of the redox mediators, the wild type MoFe protein exhibits a catalytic current due to protein-catalysed proton reduction. With this mediated electron transfer method, the potential of proton reduction by nitrogenase was determined for the first time.
The redox mediator system was also applied in an infrared (IR) spectroelectrochemical study of CO binding to the wild type and β-98His variant MoFe protein. The first IR evidence was provided for ATP-independent CO binding to the active site of the MoFe protein, in both the wild type and the variant. The peak wavenumbers and time-dependent changes in intensity found in this study are consistent with the result of previous CO coordination with nitrogenase obtained by electron transfer from the Fe protein driven by ATP. This strongly suggests that this mediated electron transfer approach can deliver low potential electrons into the MoFe protein and reduce the active site FeMoco to the substrate binding level. Moreover, this technique allows electrocatalytic activity of the protein to be monitored and the change in redox activity can be correlated directly to the potential. With the same technique, a study of cyanide binding was performed on different variant MoFe proteins of nitrogenase.
The redox properties of the isolated cofactor of Mo- and V-dependent nitrogenase were investigated in parallel to the study of the protein-bound cofactors. It was found that FeVco, the active site from V-nitrogenase, exhibited different redox properties compared to that of Mo-nitrogenase. This might account for the unexpected activity in CO reduction that was reported previously for V-nitrogenase.
Can phenomenology determine the content of thought?
Keywords: Consciousness
Intentionality
Phenomenology
Philosophy of Mind
Cognition
Thought

This thesis is about consciousness and representation. More specifically, the big picture issue in the background throughout is the relationship between consciousness (or "phenomenology") and representation (or "intentionality") in the life of the mind. Phenomenology and intentionality are inarguably the two central topics in philosophy of mind of the last half-century. The question of phenomenology is, "how can there be something it feels like, from a subjective viewpoint, for a physical being to experience the world?" The question of intentionality is, "how can something physical, such as a brain state, be about, or represent, some other thing out in the world?"
Not too long ago, the majority opinion was that these two questions addressed two essentially independent domains. However, in recent years the views of many philosophers have swung dramatically in the opposite direction. An important theme of analytic philosophy of mind in the last decade or two has been the exploration of the groundbreaking idea that these two domains might be fundamentally linked in previously unrecognized ways. Perhaps phenomenal properties are reducible to certain kinds of intentional properties. Perhaps the mind's non-derivative intentionality is grounded in phenomenology. Perhaps we should think of phenomenology and intentionality as "intertwined, all the way down to the ground" (Chalmers 2004, 32).
This thesis addresses one crucial question within this larger framework: whether, and how, thoughts are phenomenally conscious. Thoughts are an important test case for theories about the relationship between phenomenology and intentionality, because they have long been considered paradigmatic intentional states, in contrast to perceptual and sensory experiences, which are paradigmatic phenomenal states. While there is something it is like, from the inside, for an individual to undergo a perceptual experience such as an olfactory experience of roasted coffee beans, by contrast entertaining a thought might seem to lack such a distinctive qualitative "feel". The thought is clearly intentional: it involves carrying informational content about objects and properties in the world. But is there also something it is like for a subject to experience thinking itself? To answer this question in the affirmative is to accept the existence of a phenomenology of thought, so-called "cognitive phenomenology" (CP).
The literature on this topic so far has focused primarily on the question of whether CP exists. Here I will focus on the subtly different, and largely neglected, question of whether a kind of CP exists that is able to determine thought's intentional content. Many proponents of CP seem to be motivated by the hope that it can, since they believe that in the case of other conscious states, the phenomenology accounts for the intentionality. However, in what follows I argue that this ambitious project is doomed to fail, because CP is not suited to determine the intentional content of thought.
Harmonising metalworking fluid formulations with end-of-life biological treatment
Keywords: sustainable design
metalworking fluid
toxicity immobilisation
reverse engineering
biodegradation

Metalworking fluids (MWFs) are coolants and lubricants, which are widely employed in metal cutting works. They are designed to be a long lasting product. Manufacturers have designed MWFs with lack of awareness of end-of-life disposal by including biocides, which make biological treatment challenging. Here, Syntilo 9913 was used as a case study to develop a cradle-to-grave product that was biologically stable in use but amenable to sustainable hybrid biological treatment at end-of-life. The product was reverse engineered employing factorial design approach based on a priori knowledge of the product components. From the combinatorial work, it was observed that chemical interactions can results in synergistic and antagonistic effects in terms of the toxicity and biodegradability. One of the major components of most MWFs are amines such as Triethanolamine (TEA). TEA does not biodeteriorate in single compound screening, but in combination with many other components TEA was found to cause "softening" of MWF formulations. Octylamine was found to be best for "bio-hardening" but it was not economically sustainable. Hence, the modified biocide-free synthetic MWF, Syntilo 1601, was reformulated with TEA, isononanoic acid, neodecnoic acid, Cobratec TT50S, and pluronic 17R40, which were resistant to biological treatment. Although, no change in the overall oxidation state of the MWF, metabolic activity did occur as breakdown products were observed. This suggested that both raw materials and metabolic breakdown products were recalcitrant. Thus, immobilisation agents were applied to aid further biodegradation by removing toxic bottleneck compounds. It was found that hybrid nano-iron and kaffir lime leaf performed similarly in removing chemical oxygen demand and ammonium from the system. Work in this Thesis demonstrated that the combined use of biological treatment and immobilisation agents effectively overcome the limitations of biological treatment alone by removing bottleneck compounds, which allowed greater COD reduction. This laboratory scale is a proof of principle, which needs to be tested at full scale.
Living under "quiet insecurity": Religion and popular culture in post-genocide Rwanda
Keywords: popular culture
youth
religion
Rwanda

This thesis explores religion and popular culture in post-genocide Rwanda. In particular, I examine the rise of the new Pentecostal churches – the abarokore ("the saved ones") – and the reconstruction of the "modern" music industry after the genocide. I argue that contemporary social life in Rwanda is defined by "quiet insecurity" and "temporal dissonance". I employ these concepts to take seriously how young people in Rwanda create alternative pasts, presents, and futures for themselves within an authoritarian political context. While the government attempts to control the historical narrative and impose a particular developmentalist "vision" of the future onto its citizens, young people articulate and perform their hopes, fears, dreams, and anxieties within the realms of religion and popular culture, creating "unofficial" narratives that both converge with and contest those of the state. Against the prevailing academic consensus of Kigali as silent, I instead reposition the capital as a site of creativity wherein noisy debates take place about Rwandan identity and culture. I examine the new abarokore churches as important affective spaces that allow for healing and the keeping of secrets. Yet the fact that these same churches tend to be mono-ethnic suggests the limits of the born-again project. Conversely, the community imagined within popular culture, particularly through hip hop songs, is more inclusive, with identity forged through the mutual experience of pain and suffering. I pay particular attention to gender, and consider how patriarchal tendencies in the new churches and popular culture undermine the country's "progressive" gender policies. By examining Pentecostal services, conversion testimonies, song lyrics, the Kinyarwanda-language entertainment media, and discourses of musical corruption, I explore how young people respond to a context of quiet insecurity through quiet agency – they actively seek to transform and resolve their life circumstances, however modest or temporary their transformations or resolutions prove to be..
Multi-layered factors influencing the firm's internationalisation strategy: institutions, micro environment, and firm-level capabilities
Keywords: International New Ventures
Internationalisation
institutions
Strategy
Born Global
capabilities

This thesis investigates the factors influencing the internationalization of firms through a multi-layered analysis grounded in international business. It addresses the following questions. First, in what ways does the institutional environment facilitate or hinder the growth of start-ups? And in what ways does institutional diversity across countries affect internationalizing firms? Second, in light of the variety of internationalization patterns, what modifications are necessary to the theories of internationalization? Third, how do rapidly internationalizing firms explore and exploit capabilities? And in what ways does capability development differ between firms that realize early, rapid internationalization and those firms that do not?
Answering the first set of questions involves recasting the comparative institutional analysis of national political economies. This thesis demonstrates that: 1) when national institutions are in transition, business entrepreneurs can bring about institutional change, or else act to avoid or adapt specific institutions for their own use; and 2) international institutional diversity seems to be less influential in determining the expansion pattern of rapidly internationalizing firms. Next, to address the second question, this thesis examines the factors influencing the speed of internationalization. The proposed models point to a larger role of entrepreneurs’ perception and the relevance of the resources factor, and better accommodate a wider variety of internationalization paths. In order to answer the third set of questions, this thesis investigates the early stage development of firm-level capabilities among internationalizing firms. The result points to: 1) the faster transformation of individual capabilities to firm-level routines; 2) a wider variety of routines for exploring external capabilities; and 3) a higher ability to exploit ordinary routines, among more rapidly internationalizing firms. Finally, this thesis discusses how each of the three levels of analysis relates to the other levels. The overall analysis demonstrates the value of multi-layered approach in investigating the firm’s internationalization.