VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Capital and development in social and cultural contexts
Keywords: gender
development
Turkey
female labour force
transport
mobilities
southeastern Anatolia

Non-economic factors like culture and politics, as well as the socio-economic background, matter significantly in directing economic development endeavours towards social wellbeing. Therefore, the current narrow definition of economic development must be extended to include overall wellbeing. As one of the primary forms of physical capital constituting a regional economy, transport investments have played a significant role in development plans. Given that accessibility to social infrastructure is a basic need, certain levels of infrastructure are essential. How these investments have an impact on different groups of individuals has kept many scholars busy for a long time. However, the economic spillover effects of these investments into female labour markets have remained largely unexplored. Situating the implications of development initiatives, including transport investments, for female labour markets in social and cultural contexts requires an integrated view of the regional economy. Although economic geography and existing development theories provide extensive conceptual models to elucidate the links between transport, labour markets and culture, the methodological implications are obscure; hence, the empirical evidence remains weak.
This thesis explores the economic and non-economic dynamics of regional economies to clarify the links between transport infrastructure, labour markets, and social and cultural conditions. In particular, the association between female labour forces and development efforts, in the form of transport infrastructure development, is conceptually and empirically examined. This thesis conducts a case study on Turkey. With the extensive infrastructure investment that has been made since 2002 and the extremely low rates of female labour force participation (around 25%), compared to EU-15 and OECD averages of around 65%, Turkey serves as an illuminating case.
Theoretically, the study shows that the focus of transport economics on the economic growth effect of investments is not consistent with current efforts to extend economic development objectives: transport research requires a broader view to assess its development implications. The study demonstrates how the interactions between the economic, physical, political, cultural and socio-economic attributes of regions significantly affect how individuals benefit from the investments. The overarching policy implications of the study are useful for regional development policy with a gender focus: complementary policy interventions in human capital development and the consideration of social and cultural attitudes should strengthen the positive impacts of physical investments on female labour markets.
The safety, tolerability and biochemical efficacy of extended release niacin and laropiprant in a major randomised clinical trial
Keywords: niacin
safety
lipids
cardiovascular disease

Niacin has been in clinical use for over 50 years and was the first drug shown in a randomized trial to improve outcomes after MI, but substantial uncertainty remains about its efficacy and safety in the context of current standard medical therapy.
This thesis explores the biochemical efficacy, tolerability and safety of extended release (ER) niacin/laropiprant in the large, randomized HPS2-THRIVE trial. Laropiprant is a prostaglandin D₂ receptor (DP1) antagonist which reduces the main adverse effect of niacin, namely “flushing” (an unpleasant cutaneous vasodilation) that makes a large trial of niacin practicable.
ER niacin/laropiprant increases high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and apolipoprotein A1, and reduces low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), apolipoprotein B, triglycerides and lipoprotein (a), consistent with previous studies of ER niacin.
The reasons for stopping ER niacin/laropiprant reflected the known adverse effect profile of ER niacin, although unlike previous trials flushing was not the most frequent reason for stopping. Skin (pruritus and rash), gastrointestinal (nausea, pain and diarrhoea) and diabetes-related (hyperglycaemia) adverse events were the most common reasons for stopping ER niacin/laropiprant during 3.9 years’ follow-up.
The analyses presented here identified three major previously unknown hazards of ER niacin. ER niacin/laropiprant increased the risk of statin-related myopathy almost five-fold, and this effect was greater among participants in China than Europe. ER niacin/laropiprant also increased the risk of bleeding (intracranial, gastrointestinal and other sites) and infection. Compared to placebo there was an absolute excess of 3.1% of serious adverse events (excluding cancer and major vascular events [MVEs]) among participants assigned ER niacin/laropiprant.
ER niacin/laropiprant did not significantly reduce MVEs. These findings suggest that the use of niacin to reduce vascular risk should now be reconsidered.
Fixation of the Oxford unicompartmental knee replacement
Keywords: knee replacement
arthroplasty
fixation

The Oxford Unicompartmental Knee Replacement (UKR) is a commonly performed procedure, with a good clinical outcome at 15 years, however, radiolucent lines are commonly found beneath the tibial tray. With the projected increase in knee arthroplasty, particularly in younger patients, implant longevity is of paramount importance. The aim of this thesis is to understand how fixation is achieved with the Oxford UKR and how it can be improved.
A histological study demonstrated that in the presence of a radiolucent line the tibial bone-cement interface is made up of a combination of direct bony contact, fibrocartilage and fibrous tissue. The radiolucency is more marked when there is more soft tissue. However in all cases there is some direct bony contact.
Cemented and cementless fixation was compared in a randomised controlled study using radiostereometric analysis and fluoroscopic imaging of the interfaces. In the first year the cementless tibial component subsided on average 0.28 mm and had an increased posterior slope of 0.40°, whereas the cemented component only subsided 0.09 mm, with a 0.10° increase in slope. In the second year both components had very little further subsidence (mean<0.05 mm) and no increase in posterior slope. In the second year a single cementless tibial component subsided greater than 0.15 mm, whereas four cemented components, all with radiolucencies, subsided more than 0.15 mm. At two years the cemented components had a significantly higher prevalence of radiolucency (62% v 29%), with 24% having a complete radiolucency, whereas no cementless components had a complete radiolucency.
Two designs of lateral UKR were also compared. These had a flat tibial component that predominantly transmits compressive loading, and a domed component that also transmits shear. There was a lower prevalence of radiolucency in the domed tibia (13% v 60%), even though there was a similar amount of migration as the cemented medial tibial component.
In conclusion radiolucent lines, both partial and complete, are common with cemented components, and may, in part, be a result of compressive loading. They are associated with good long-term results and direct bone cement contact indicating satisfactory fixation. However, they are also associated with increased migration and soft tissue at the interface suggesting that the fixation, although satisfactory, is suboptimal. The cementless components had no complete radiolucencies and low levels of migration in the second year. This suggests that bone ingrowth and secure fixation occurs reliably, and therefore that cementless fixation may be better than cemented for the Oxford UKR.
Jordan, Palestine and the British world system, 1945-57: Glubb Pasha and the Arab Legion
Keywords: Britain and Jordan
King Talal
Arab-Israeli Conflict
Partition of Palestine
King Hussein
1948 War
Anglo-Jordanian Relations
Arab Legion
Jordan
Britain and the Middle East
Glubb Pasha
Suez
King Abdullah
End of Empire

This thesis offers a microcosmic insight into Britain's transition toward a world system without an Empire by exploring the life of the Anglo-Jordan Treaty (1946-57) via the prism of the British financed Jordanian Army, also known as the Arab Legion, and its British commander, Glubb Pasha. In so doing it puts the state of the relationship down to a system of mutual dependence. Britain's withdrawal from Jordan has primarily been linked either to the success of Arab nationalism or the loss of British will. By examining the Treaty relationship from construction to termination this thesis posits that it is imprudent to push any single factor too deeply, but identifies a shift in the balance of mutual dependence, caused by the changing geopolitical climate, as the driving force.
A subsidiary aspect of this thesis concerns the partition of Palestine. The Arab Legion was the most important Arab army during the 1948 War. Based on unprecedented access to Glubb's private papers 'the most significant new documents to emerge since the opening of the official western archives in the late 1970s' this thesis provides the most accurate portrayal of the Arab Legion's conduct yet achievable. In so doing it reconciles inconsistencies within the controversial 'collusion' debate. It negates the revisionist argument that a firm Hashemite-Zionist agreement existed, but corroborates the notion that Britain approved the Arab Legion's use to implement an alternative form of partition to that proposed by the UN. It thus supports the revisionist argument that pre-war negotiations helped shape the 1948 War, but explains the Arab Legion's adherence to this secret scheme by emphasising Glubb's (limited) autonomy. Moreover, it reveals further details concerning the divisions within the Arab coalition, which further debunks the traditional David (Israel) versus Goliath (Arab coalition) portrayal of the conflict.
"We are warp and weft" - nomadic pastoralism and the tradition of weaving in Rupshu (Eastern Ladakh)
Keywords: Rupshu
weaving
pastoralism
Ladakh
textiles
trade
India

This thesis, based on twelve months of fieldwork and archival research undertaken in Ladakh, explores the place of wool and weaving in the life of Rupshu. It attempts to trace the nexus between livestock, fibres, textiles, social and symbolic structures in Rupshu in order to understand the multitude of contexts within which wool-oriented activities exist. The craft of weaving was bestowed upon Rupshu by the gods, and thus all acts related to it have a close connection to the sublime.
Rupshu lies in the easternmost part of Ladakh in North India, in a Restricted Areas Zone, as is accessible only to Indian citizens. Hence, extensive fieldwork has not been carried out in this area. Further, though there is a little documentation on the craft of weaving in Ladakh, none exists on the nomadic tradition of weaving.
The first two chapters introduce the region of Rupshu and explore the historical context. They include a discussion of the origin and development of weaving and textiles in the area, and of the old trade routes in fibres.
The next two chapters examine the connections between livestock, the source of fibres in Rupshu, and the Ladakh pantheon. The relationship between the two is reflected in the manner in which livestock are revered and treated in Rupshu. Further, this affinity is widely expressed in Rupshu, and one such occasion is the harvesting of the fibres.
The next four chapters look specifically at the craft of weaving, and local representations of the tradition. Using examples of particular pieces woven in Rupshu, I examine the gender, spatial, and hierarchical relations that they express and perpetuate.
Not all the fibres harvested in Rupshu are used there, and the final chapter examines their distribution through trade. While woven articles are not traded, specific containers are woven for the transport of fibres and their characteristics are looked at here.
The concluding remarks include a discussion of the future of wool and weaving activities in Rupshu, and address the dangers posed by re-settlement schemes, and a shortage of pasture and over-grazing. These trends would eventually lead to a decrease in the number of livestock, and cause the people of Rupshu to abandon their tradition of nomadic pastoralism.
A novel approach for the development of policies for socio-technical systems
Keywords: environmental policy
policy packaging
walking and cycling
transport policy
policy formulation
community structures
transportation
multiple-criteria decision analysis
network analysis
preference indices
process design
conceptual design
decision support systems
agent-based modelling
emission reduction
complexity science
policy design

The growth in the interdependence and complexity of socio-technical systems requires the development of tools and techniques to aid in the formulation of better policies. The efforts of this research focus towards developing methodologies and support tools for better policy design and formulation. In this thesis, a new framework and a systematic approach for the formulation of policies are proposed. Focus has been directed to the interactions between policy measures, inspired by concepts in process design and network analysis. Furthermore, we have developed an agent-based approach to create a virtual environment for the exploration and analysis of different configurations of policy measures in order to build policy packages and test the effects of changes and uncertainties while formulating policies. By developing systematic approaches for the formulation and analysis of policies it is possible to analyse different configuration alternatives in greater depth, examine more alternatives and decrease the time required for the overall analysis. Moreover, it is possible to provide real-time assessment and feedback to the domain experts on the effect of changes in the configurations. These efforts ultimately help in forming more effective policies with synergistic and reinforcing attributes while avoiding internal contradictions. This research constitutes the first step towards the development of a general family of computer-based systems that support the design of policies. The results from this research also demonstrate the usefulness of computational approaches in addressing the complexity inherent in the formulation of policies. As a proof of concept, the proposed framework and methodologies have been applied to the formulation of policies that deal with transportation issues and emission reduction, but can be extended to other domains.
The players in the fields
Keywords: India
WTO
Trade Policy
Brazil
International Trade

I argue that a country’s preferences in an international trade negotiation ultimately reflect the domestic distribution of power across economic sectors not only in the field of the market, but also in the field of society. Fields correspond to arenas of power. Whereas in the market societal actors have economic capital (EC), their position in society determines their identity capital (IC). The more a sector is associated to the dominant conception of national identity, the higher is its IC. Both types of capital impact a sector’s political power (PP). IC manifests itself in the phase of ratification either instrumentally, when in dispute in the political field, or structurally, if embedded in state institutions. Hence, when IC is instrumentalised, only if the coalition in government espouses a social paradigm to which a sector is mostly associated it will be able to convert its level of IC into PP. As ratification shadows negotiation, constraints in this latter phase tend to be false positives in explaining the formation of the national interest. The hypothesis on the role of IC in shaping the weight of sectors’ preferences in trade negotiations is tested along with a process of theory-building through a multi-method structured-focused comparison. For the comparison, two countries were chosen as their societies are diverse in terms of identity, yet each represents a variety of the effects of IC. Brazil and India have identity-based social cleavages that are expressed in structural and instrumental terms respectively. They are key players in the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) multilateral system of trade, having participated of the Doha Development Round of trade liberalisation. Brazil expressed interest for liberalisation as the mostly racially-diverse sectors had offensive demands. In turn, protectionist demands prevailed in India, as defensive sectors are associated to the dominant secularist paradigm of national identity.
Repairing strings and trees
Keywords: tree automata
XML Schema
Automata theory
repair
strings
trees
edit distance

What do you do if a computational object fails a specification? An obvious approach is to repair it, namely, to modify the object minimally to get something that satisfies the constraints. In this thesis we study foundational problems of repairing regular specifications over strings and trees. Given two regular specifications R and T we aim to understand how difficult it is to transform an object satisfying R into an object satisfying T. The setting is motivated by considering R to be a restriction -- a constraint that the input object is guaranteed to satisfy -- while T is a target -- a constraint that we want to enforce.
We first study which pairs of restriction and target specifications can be repaired with a small'' numbers of changes. We formalize this as the bounded repair problem -- to determine whether one can repair each object satisfying R into T with a uniform number of edits. We provide effective characterizations of the bounded repair problem for regular specifications over strings and trees. These characterizations are based on a good understanding of the cyclic behaviour of finite automata. By exploiting these characterizations, we give optimal algorithms to decide whether two specifications are bounded repairable or not.
We also consider the impact of limitations on the editing process -- what happens when we require the repair to be done sequentially over serialized objects. We study the bounded repair problem over strings and trees restricted to this streaming setting and show that this variant can be characterized in terms of finite games. Furthermore, we use this characterization to decide whether one can repair a pair of specifications in a streaming fashion with bounded cost and how to obtain a streaming repair strategy in this case.
The previous notion asks for a uniform bound on the number of edits, but having this property is a strong requirement. To overcome this limitation, we study how to calculate the maximum number of edits per character needed to repair any object in R into T. We formalize this as the asymptotic cost -- the limit of the number of edits divided by the length of the input in the worst case. Our contribution is an algorithm to compute the asymptotic cost for any pair of regular specifications over strings. We also consider the streaming variant of this cost and we show how to compute it by reducing this problem to mean-payoff games.
Romance and the literature of religious instruction, c.1170—c.1330
Keywords: Middle English
Anglo-Norman
Medieval literature
medieval romance
religious literature
hagiography

This thesis investigates the relations between romance and texts of religious instruction in England between c.1170–c.1330, taking as its principal textual corpus the exceptionally rich literary traditions of insular French romance and religious writing that subsist during this period. It argues that romance is a mode which engages closely with religious and ethical questions from a very early stage, and demonstrates the discourses of opposition in which both kinds of text participate throughout the period. The thesis offers substantial readings of a number of neglected insular French religious texts of the thirteenth century, including Robert Grosseteste's Chasteau d'Amour, John of Howden's Rossignos, and Robert of Gretham's Miroir, alongside new readings of romances such as Gui de Warewic and Ipomedon. This juxtaposition of romance narrative and religious instruction sheds new light onto both kinds of text: romance emerges as a mode with deep-rooted didactic qualities; insular French religious literature is shown to be intensely concerned with the need to compete with romance’s entertaining appeal in literary culture. This oppositional discourse profoundly affects the form of instructional writing and romance alike. The discussion of the interactions between insular French romance and instructional literature presented here also serves as a new pre-history of Middle English romance. The final chapter of the thesis offers several new readings of texts from the Auchinleck manuscript, including the canonical romance Sir Orfeo and the neglected, puzzling Speculum Gy de Warewyk. These readings demonstrate that fourteenthcentury romance intelligently adapts the material it inherits from Francophone literature to a new cultural situation. In these acts of reformation, Middle English romance reveals itself as a discursive space capable of accommodating a wide range of ethical and ideological affiliations; the complex negotiations between romance and instructional literature in the preceding centuries are an important cultural condition for this widening of possibilities.
Editions of a selection of literary, paraliterary, and documentary papyri from Oxyrhynchus.
Keywords: Greek Papyri
Oxyrhynchus

This thesis presents twenty-one unpublished Greek literary and documentary texts from Oxyrhynchus kept in the Sackler Library, Oxford. Each papyrus is identified, transcribed, and edited with a detailed introduction and notes largely in accordance with the conventions and format of presentation of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London 1898–). The literary texts are diverse in content. The item of especial interest is a new fragment from Sophocles’ Tereus, which joins a quotation from Stobaeus’ Anthologium. It provides new information on the play’s dramatis personae and the long vexed question of where the quotation is to be located in the play. Another new text is the remains of an unknown hexameter poem on a mythical subject which refers to the Lapiths and Centaurs. From the known texts, a minute fragment of Polybius’ Historiae, a fragment Plutarch’s Alexander and two fragments of Plato’s Philebus stand out due to the rarity of these texts. The documentary texts illustrate a variety of matters tending on social, economic, fiscal, and legal aspects of life in Roman and late antique Oxyrhynchus. Of the texts from the Roman period, a text dealing with the execution of a testamentary bequest and another text concerning a summons to the prefect’s conventus are notable for the information which they provide on the functioning of testamentary bequests and the practice of litigation respectively. Of the four texts from the Byzantine period, an Oxyrhynchite lease of land is of special importance due to the comparative rarity of documents of this kind from Oxyrhynchus and because it exhibits a number of points of interest, not least that the lessee is a colonus adscripticius. A ‘sale on delivery of wine’ also involves a colonus adscripticius. The other document of special interest is a large private letter which concerns various matters of business from a man who claims to be in a precarious situation.