VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Inimica amicitia: friendship and the notion of exclusion in early Christian Latin literature
Keywords: Inclusion
Friendship
Exclusion

This thesis discusses the notion of amicitia in early Christian literature. By examining letters and normative texts ranging from the third to the early fifth century, the study illuminates not only how contemporary authors shaped friendship conceptually but also how these concepts relate to the actual social practice. Typically, scholars confine their reading of Christian friendship to the late antique period. In so doing, they approach amicitia either as a particular kind of relationship performing crucial social functions or as a subject for theorization that followed the example of a longstanding ancient philosophical tradition. Particularly influential has been the view that links amicitia with affection and love. Hence, scholars tend to stress the inclusiveness of friendship. By contrast, my own study focuses on the aspect of exclusion as the necessary by-product of social inclusion processes. Along these lines, amicita is described as existing in a dialectical opposition with its antonym, inimicitia.
This approach yielded a number of insights. First, as the study moves into uncharted territory, the examination of third century texts highlights a tradition of amicitia-related thought that reached further back than has previously been assumed. From this, a more nuanced picture of friendship emerges that is not constrained by scholarly established boundaries between different fields of study. Second, the principle of inclusion and exclusion, dividing the world into amici and inimici, has been revealed as a powerful tool in church politics and religious controversy that established sharp boundaries between competing Christian factions. This view, which posits the truth of faith as the necessary prerequisite for friendship, is set off against other contemporary voices that did not make amicitia dependent on a particular religious group affiliation. Third, while disentangling friendship from the question of love, the character of Christian amicitia is viewed against the backdrop of the divine household. Though the conceptual overlap between friendship and kinship is not unique to the Christian tradition, such thinking ties in with an idea of community that builds on the paternity of God.
These findings have implications for both the study of ancient friendship and the history of the early church. They improve our understanding of the relation between the conceptualization of amicitia and the actual social practice and moreover offer a deep insight into the social dynamics of contemporary religious controversies.
Royalism, religion, and revolution: the gentry of North-East Wales, 1640-1688
Keywords: Royalism
Language
Early modern Wales
Anglicanism
Loyalism
Historical identity

This thesis focuses specifically on the gentry of North-East Wales. It addresses the question of the uniqueness of the region’s gentry in relation to societal organisation, authority, identity, religion, and political culture. The thesis examines the impact of the events of 1640 to 1688 on the conservative culture of the region. It assesses the extent to which the seventeenth-century crises changed that culture. Additionally, it discusses the distinctiveness of the Welsh response to those events.
This thesis offers new arguments, or breaks new ground, in relation to three principal areas of historiography: the questions of Welsh identity, religion, and political culture. Within Welsh historiography this thesis argues for a continuation of Welsh identity and ideals. It uncovers a royalist, loyalist, and Anglican culture that operated using ancient ideals of territorial power and patronage to achieve its ends. In doing so it overturns a lingering idea that the Welsh gentry were anglicised and alienated from the populace. The thesis also interacts with English debates on the same themes. In exploring the unique aspects of the culture of North-East Wales, the assertion of an anglicised monoculture across England and Wales can be disproven. This allows for a more complex picture of British identity, religion, and politics to emerge.
This thesis musters correspondence, material objects, diaries, notebooks, accounts, official documents, and architectural features to aid in its analysis. This breadth of evidence allows for a broad analysis of regional patterns while allowing for depth when required. The first three chapters of the thesis examine the North-East Welsh gentry in relation to the themes of Welsh society and identity; religion; and finally political culture. The final chapter comprises three case studies that explore aspects of the aforementioned themes in further depth.
Adverse events of common psychiatric medications: an umbrella review
Keywords: psychotropic medication
meta review
psychiatric medication
adverse events
umbrella review

BACKGROUND: Psychiatric medications were the second most prescribed therapeutic class in the United States in 2015 with 547 million prescriptions. Adverse events of medications are very common, can be distressing to patients and are often underreported in the primary studies. The purpose of this thesis is to systematically review the scientific literature to estimate the prevalence and burden of adverse events among the most common psychiatric medications.
METHODS: The 23 most commonly prescribed psychiatric medications in the United States as well as eight psychiatric medications from the World Health Organization's Essential Medicine List were included. A systematic and comprehensive search was conducted to retrieve all published and unpublished systematic reviews with meta-analyses to assess adverse events of individual psychiatric medications (this process of collecting secondary publications and not primary studies is called "umbrella review"). Seven databases (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, Embase, Medline, PreMedline, PsycINFO and PubMed) were searched between 1946 and 2016. Prevalence rates and effect estimates were extracted by two independent reviewers and summarised. A quality analysis was performed on included reviews using the AMSTAR (assessing the methodological quality of systematic reviews) tool and all were rated as medium or high quality reviews.
RESULTS: 69 systematic reviews and meta-analyses published were eligible for data extraction, quality appraisal and quantitative synthesis. Antipsychotic medications (60%) accounted for the majority of the findings, followed by antidepressants (16%), stimulants (13%), mood stabilisers (8%) and anxiolytics (3%). The strongest associations were between amitriptyline and sexual dysfunction (N=442, odds ratio [OR] 16.6; 95% Confidence Intervals [CI] 4.6 to 60.6), aripiprazole and somnolence (N=569, OR 25.8; 95% CI 1.3 to 112.3) and olanzapine and weight gain (N=249, OR 32.0; 95% CI 1.7 to 98.4). Overall, neurological adverse events were reported most frequently for antidepressant, antipsychotic and anxiolytic medication classes. Patient characteristics, particularly age and diagnosis, explained differences in adverse events across and within medication classes.
DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION:
To my knowledge, this is the first umbrella review on the tolerability profiles of 31 common psychiatric medications worldwide. Many medications were linked to adverse events through a weak or moderate strength of association and additional factors contributed to the variability in adverse outcome reporting aside from patient characteristics. Findings from this review need to be examined with the efficacy profiles of the medications and the clinical circumstances of the individual patients.
Atypical attention and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) symptoms: Development and interactions with learning and memory
Keywords: ADHD
attention
development
memory
learning
autism

This thesis investigates the nature of atypical attention in relation to autism spectrum disorders (ASD) symptoms, as well as the mechanisms by which it may relate to social impairment. First, does atypical non-social attention predict social impairment over time in the context of ASD, suggestive of a causal relationship? Second, if atypical attention plays a role in social impairments in ASD, what is the mechanism?
With regards to the first question, longitudinal data with children at familial risk for ASD demonstrated a unidirectional relationship between non-social attention and social functioning at the cognitive level: 2-year-old non-social attention predicted 3- year-old face recognition, but there was no relationship between 2-year-old face popout and 3-year-old visual search. Additionally, we examined the relationships between ASD and ADHD symptoms over three years in children at high risk for both—children with fragile X syndrome. This allowed for investigating atypical non-social attention and social impairment at the symptoms level, again revealing a unidirectional relationship with ADHD symptoms predicting ASD symptoms over time but not the reverse. These findings suggest that atypical non-social attention may contribute to social impairment.
With regards to the second question, a novel eye-tracking and visual search paradigm revealed how task irrelevant social stimuli in natural scenes can lead to poorer subsequent explicit spatial contextual memory and altered memory-guided attention orienting—effects that were moderated by autistic traits and social anxiety within a neurotypical population. Further, this research found cross-sectional development, comparing 6-10-year-old children to young adults, and investigated the neural markers of social stimuli's effect on memory. These studies suggest a possible mechanism whereby a reduced social attention bias could lead autistic individuals to learn and remember less about people and the social world and result in social impairment.
Response of temperate forest birds to habitat change in central Chile
Keywords: birds
pine plantations
temperate
Southern hemisphere

Despite the long time since the introduction and spread of pine plantations in southern hemisphere countries there has been no study of the suitability of this exotic and novel type of vegetation on the native avifauna. This thesis aims to add understanding of this habitat replacement and its effects on the forest bird community. This research included a series of studies to assess the quality of mature pine plantations for the forest avifauna in comparison to what is in native forests. The first two studies determine the effects on the forest bird community of the fragmentation and replacement of native forest in a gradient of substitution. The results showed a direct relationship between level of substitution and loss of functional diversity, and that fragmentation predicts the bird assemblage in pine stands. The next two studies used data from an intensive ringing season to assess differences in the condition of populations inhabiting each habitat. Birds, in general, were found in better condition in native fragments than in pine plantations. Moreover, a despotic distribution was determined for a migrant species and a gradient in habitat quality was found in relation to proximity to native forest. The next two studies used information from a nest-box survey set in a gradient of sites with substitution of native forest. The results showed that the type of forest cover and their proportion in the landscape may affect the breeding performance of some species. Finally, in the last study I evaluated the foraging niche of bird species in each habitat. Compared with native forest, niche breath reduced while the niche overlap increased in pine plantations for most species. The results suggest that pine plantations are poor quality habitat for the bird community and that the substitution of native forests increases selective pressure.
Muon spin spectroscopy and high magnetic field studies of novel superconductors and magnetic materials
Keywords: Superconductivity
Spin ice
Magnetism
Muon spin spectroscopy
High magnetic fields

This thesis investigates a number of novel magnetic materials and high temperature superconductors using high-field magnetometry and muon spin spectroscopy (μSR). The main measurement techniques are briefly described and a study of the dimer material [Cu(pyrazine)(glycine)]ClO4 is presented to demonstrate the use of the proximity detector oscillator as a susceptometer in high magnetic fields.
μSR is a highly effective tool for probing magnetic order, spin freezing and spin dynamics. However, in some circumstances its performance may be impaired by the extent to which it perturbs the material under study. Using μSR, density functional theory and crystal field calculations, I identify an experimental situation in the family of candidate quantum spin ices Pr2B2O7 (B = Sn, Zr, and Hf), in which the measured response is dominated by a muon-induced distortion of the local structure. This issue is also addressed in a study of the spin dynamics in the canonical spin ice Ho2Ti2O7. Although computational work indicates a similar muon-induced effect in both Ho2Ti2O7 and Dy2Ti2O7, the μSR data is not dominated by this perturbation.
The remainder of this thesis is concerned with studying the superconducting properties of a number of Fe-based materials, including LiFeP which is found to have an enhanced superfluid stiffness in relation to its transition temperature. Also reported is the effect of structural disorder on the superconducting state in recently discovered Sr0.3(NH2)y(NH3)1-yFe2Se2. Pulsed magnetic field measurements are used to probe the temperature dependence of the upper critical field, giving a maximum value of μ0Hc2(0)≈33(2) T. I also investigate the effect of intercalating additional ammonia, via reversible adsorption and desorption in the related superconductor Lix[(NH2)y(NH3)1-y]zFe2Se2 (z = 1, 2). These reactions were carried out in situ on the muon beamline so that the superfluid stiffness could be measured using transverse-field μSR on a single sample.
Social remembering and children’s historical consciousness
Keywords: social memory
young people
identity
history education
Historical consciousness
ethnographic portraits
First World War

This study explores how young people's engagement with history outside of the classroom shapes the development of their historical consciousness. Drawing on public discourses around the First World War (WW1), I address the implications of this engagement for history teachers and young peoples' learning. Recognising the active and dynamic construction of memory and meaning by young people, I develop the concept of social remembering.
Building on socio-cultural perspectives, I examine the 'lived experience' of young people's memory work. Using WW1 as a context, and adopting an innovative mixed methods approach, the research was conducted over two stages. The first stage of the research used a quiz and survey to explore the extent and nature of young people's social remembering. In the second stage of the study I examined young people's memory work outside the classroom. I worked with several small groups of students to construct their own ethnographic accounts of societal and familial remembering and their emerging historical consciousness, fashioning these into ethnographic portraits.
The research highlights the role that social remembering plays in young people’s identities, including the ways in which they value and use history, attribute historical significance to events and orientate themselves in time. It shows how different forms of social remembering can both include or exclude young people and impact positively or negatively on young people's historical consciousness.
An understanding of social remembering outside the classroom can support history teachers in the development of pedagogies that build on students' meaning making associated with public events such as commemorations. I argue that teachers can use the intersections between social remembering and disciplinary history to engage and support students in their study of history.
Although the study originated within the context of history education, it has wider value, offering a ground breaking methodological approach to exploring young people’s understandings of the past and in contributing to the historiography of historical memory.
Dedicated carbon scaffolds for next generation hydrogenation chemistry and H2 evolution
Keywords: Hydrogen evolution
flow chemistry
Reductive amination
flow hydrogenation
Ketone reduction
Catalyst support
carbon nanotube column
Biotransformations
Carbon nanotube
Metal dichalcogenide

This Thesis is primarily concerned with developing sustainable and cost-efficient methods for applications of hydrogen (H2-driven fine chemical synthesis) and production of hydrogen (hydrogen evolution reaction, HER). Using novel catalysts, immobilising these catalysts, and translating the conventional batch processes to flow processes are the key solutions used for both of these processes.
In the first part of this work enzymes are employed as catalysts in fine chemical synthesis. Enzymes are enantio-, regio- and stereoselective, can be used in mild reaction conditions, and can be easily produced in the laboratory. It is possible to electronically couple a hydrogenase to an NAD+ reductase enzyme via conductive carbon particles for NAD+ to NADH reduction. Thus, enzymes were immobilised on high surface area, porous and electronically conducting commercial carbon particles for H2-driven generation of NADH, an expensive cofactor required by many enzymes to work, in batch. The commercial carbon materials which are conventionally used for metal catalysed hydrogenation reactions were shown to be suitable supports for enzymes used in H2-driven biotransformations in batch. In this work, novel carbon nanotube columns (CNCs) were utilised as enzyme supports and flow devices for a range of H2-driven biotransformations including ketone reduction and reductive amination reactions. This is the first demonstration of H2-driven NADH recycling for selective biotransformations in flow.
The second part of this work focuses on HER catalysis. Here, novel WS2 assemblies were developed as alternatives to expensive and rare platinum catalysts. WS2 nanostructures were directly grown on multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) carpets and CNCs for the first time. Preliminary electrochemical studies showed that these assemblies are suitable to be used as HER catalysts, although they require a significant overpotential. This is a promising proof-of-concept demonstration of WS2-MWCNT assemblies being used in HER catalysis. A possible future extension of this work would involve using these assemblies in flow.
Modelling of extremes
Keywords: Generalized Zipf Distribution
Student Graphical Models
Asymptotic Conditional Independence
Censored Copula
Tree Graphical Models
Gaussian Graphical Models
Discrete Pareto IV Distribution
Multivariate Regular Variation
Discrete Generalized Pareto Distribution

This work focuses on statistical methods to understand how frequently rare events occur and what the magnitude of extreme values such as large losses is. It lies in a field called extreme value analysis whose scope is to provide support for scientific decision making when extreme observations are of particular importance such as in environmental applications, insurance and finance.
In the univariate case, I propose new techniques to model tails of discrete distributions and illustrate them in an application on word frequency and multiple birth data. Suitably rescaled, the limiting tails of some discrete distributions are shown to converge to a discrete generalized Pareto distribution and generalized Zipf distribution respectively.
In the multivariate high-dimensional case, I suggest modeling tail dependence between random variables by a graph such that its nodes correspond to the variables and shocks propagate through the edges. Relying on the ideas of graphical models, I prove that if the variables satisfy a new notion called asymptotic conditional independence, then the density of the joint distribution can be simplified and expressed in terms of lower dimensional functions. This generalizes the Hammersley– Clifford theorem and enables us to infer tail distributions from observations in reduced dimension. As an illustration, extreme river flows are modeled by a tree graphical model whose structure appears to recover almost exactly the actual river network.
A fundamental concept when studying limiting tail distributions is regular variation. I propose a new notion in the multivariate case called one-component regular variation, of which Karamata’s and the representation theorem, two important results in the univariate case, are generalizations.
Eventually, I turn my attention to website visit data and fit a censored copula Gaussian graphical model allowing the visualization of users’ behavior by a graph.
Adiponectin as a regulator of vascular redox state in human atherosclerosis
Keywords: Adiponectin
Adipokines
Oxidative stress
Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death worldwide. Dysregulation of vascular redox state plays a crucial role in the atherosclerotic process. Increased production of vascular superoxide (O2·-) and other reactive oxygen species (ROS) leads to endothelial dysfunction, a key early step in atherogenesis. Adipose tissue is a source of vasoactive, hormone-like molecules which are termed adipokines. One of the most important adipokines is adiponectin. Adiponectin has been shown to have antioxidant, anti-atherosclerotic effects in cell culture studies and animal models. However, its role in human cardiovascular disease has not been extensively investigated. More specifically, its effects on the human vascular wall and the mechanisms regulating its synthesis in adipose tissue have not been studied before in humans. The aim of my thesis is to explore the role of adiponectin in human atherosclerosis. This was achieved through use of the Oxford CABG Bioresource: a well-phenotyped cohort and tissue bank of patients undergoing cardiac surgery. By employing a range of in vivo and ex vivo techniques, I demonstrate for the first time in humans that adiponectin has direct antioxidant effects in the vascular wall, by directly suppressing pro-oxidant vascular enzymes and restoring redox balance. These effects persist in type 2 diabetes, presence of which is linked to reduced circulating adiponectin levels. Indeed, a variety of stimuli affect adiponectin synthesis in human adipose tissue, with brain natriuretic peptide being a major driver of adiponectin synthesis. However, different adipose tissue depots demonstrate diverse responses to stimuli affecting adiponectin synthesis, owing to their functional and morphological differences. Of particular interest is the fact that synthesis of adiponectin in perivascular adipose tissue is driven by the oxidative stress status of the underlying vessel. This observation led me to document for the first time in humans the existence of a reciprocal, two-way interaction between perivascular adipose tissue and the vascular wall: high vascular oxidative stress leads to release of factors with the ability to up-regulate adiponectin expression in perivascular adipose tissue, acting as a local paracrine defence mechanism attempting to restore vascular redox state. My thesis provides proof-of-concept for this novel cross-talk between adipose tissue and the vascular wall. This can have significant impact in designing new therapeutic strategies against atherosclerosis.