VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The adaptive significance of human language: Function, form and social evolution
Keywords: Intentionality
Language evolution
Mindreading
Evolution of language
Mentalising
Honest signalling theory
Evolutionary psychology

Language is arguably one of the most salient features that distinguish humans from other animal species. However, despite the existence of a large body of relevant theoretical and empirical research, there is currently no consensus as to why language emerged exclusively in the human species or how it evolved its unique communicative structure.
In this thesis, I therefore take a multi-pronged approach to analysing and testing several different hypotheses for the biological function and evolution of language. In Chapter I, I review the evidence and theoretical arguments for each of these proposals and provide, in place, a synthetic perspective which integrates or eliminates each of these ostensibly competing hypotheses for the biological function of language. In Chapter II, I employ the first experimental test of the interdependence hypothesis: the unique proposal offered to explain the emergence and potential coevolution of language and cooperation in the human species. In pursuit of this experiment, I employed a cooperative social foraging task using small and large groups to determine what factors enable individuals to make sense of information from others and converge upon a group consensus. In Chapter III, I take an experimental approach to determine whether aspects of human language can be characterised in terms of honest signalling theory. In this respect, I test several different proposals predicted by the sexual selection and deception hypotheses for human language function.
In Chapter IV, I divert attention away from biological function to focus more closely on language structure. More specifically, I take an experimental approach to the problem of how and indeed whether recursive syntax evolved to be a consistent feature of human language. In pursuit of this experiment, I utilized the Imposing Memory Task (IMT) and a recursive syntax measure, to determine relative performance on each of these cognitive tasks, thereby testing whether recursive syntax may have evolved in tandem with higher-order intentionality (also known as embedded mindreading).
Finally, in Chapter V, I discuss the results and implications of these experiments, and possible suggestions for future studies.
Characterization of the interactions between the H3K4 demethylase JARID1A and the SCL-nucleated oncogenic DNA binding complex
Keywords: JARID1A

Transcriptional regulation is of key importance to cellular processes such as development and differentiation, and it is dependent on the accessibility of DNA in the chromatin. Methylation and demethylation of histones alter properties of nucleosomes, thereby changing the accessibility of DNA. For many years, histone tail methylation was considered to be irreversible but in the last decade two families of histone demethylases were discovered, lysine specific demethylase 1 (LSD1) and Jumonji C (JMJC) demethylases.
The work presented in this thesis focuses on the chromatin remodeling protein JARID1A, belonging to the JARID1 family of JMJC demethylases that demethylates lysine 4 (K4) on the tail of histone H3. Double and triple methylation of K4 on histone H3 are marks traditionally linked to transcriptionally active regions of DNA. Recently, a translocation fusing the third PHD domain (PHD3) of JARID1A to NUP98 (a common leukaemia fusion partner with transactivation activity) was identified in acute myeloid leukaemia patients (AML). Also, PHD3 was previously shown to mediate interactions between JARID1A and the second LIM domain of LMO2. LMO2 operates within the multiprotein DNA binding complex named "SCL complex" (including proteins SCL/TAL1, LDB1, E47, GATA1) that regulates gene expression at different stages of erythropoiesis.
This thesis presents findings of an investigation into relations between JARID1A and the oncogenic multiprotein complex SCL-E47-LMO2-LDB1-GATA1. The study of the endogenous proteins from erythroid cells using techniques such as Co-immunoprecipitation, GST pull-down and Size-exclusion chromatography showed that JARID1A interacts with SCL and GATA1. These interactions were further characterized biochemically using analytical ultracentrifugation which revealed that the second PHD domain of JARID1A is involved in direct interaction with GATA1. Hence, JARID1A could play a role in regulation of erythropoiesis by modulating activities of transcription factors SCL and GATA1.
For the benefit of current and future generations: prospects for intergenerational equity in South Africa
Keywords: South Africa
Water policy
Intergenerational equity
Mining

This thesis examines a crisis of governance in the Republic of South Africa (RSA), a crisis which threatens Constitutionally guaranteed intergenerational rights to water, meaning these rights are unlikely to be upheld. RSA's post-1994 Constitution incorporated a number of historically unparalleled human rights, based on fundamental principles of human dignity and equality. This includes the right to water resources for current and future generations – making RSA one of a few countries to enshrine intergenerational rights in law. Under law, Government acts as fiduciary trustee with duties to protect the water resources for current and future generations of citizens. The thesis asserts that influences of Emmanuel Kant, John Rawls and Edith Brown Weiss are reflected in the Constitution and subsequent laws.
However, historical and on-going impacts from extractive industries in the province of Gauteng are negatively impacting upon intergenerational water rights. Acid mine drainage is an acidic wastewater produced as a by-product of mineral extraction – particularly gold. It is polluting ground- and surface-waters across the province. A lack of effective government response to this issue has meant that AMD is acting as a catalyst accelerating the country's already problematic governance processes to a crisis level. As it has no long-term management plan, the government is neglecting its intergenerational responsibilities and abrogating Constitutional purpose. This situation is exacerbated by multiple, often conflicting, understandings in different sectors of society of the significance of intergenerational equity, further reinforcing the governance crisis.
Due to lack of government response, non-State agents, specifically the mining and financial sectors, are becoming increasingly involved in political decision-making and governance. This has positive short-term effects in ensuring that the rights of communities that were previously affected by water shortages and pollution are upheld. Yet there are potential serious long-term repercussions for democracy in RSA as a result: non-State actors are not best equipped to determine outcomes of governance, and this may result in procedures of deliberative democracy being contravened. Robert Dahl's theories inform this thesis’s understanding of deliberative democracy.
Consequently, although RSA's Constitution guarantees intergenerational equity in theory, it is hard to achieve in practice. This is due to the governance crisis that has been precipitated by acid mine drainage, so that intergenerational rights to water are an unlikely long-term outcome for this developing nation.
The legal ordering of the medieval international
Keywords: Historical international orders
History of international political thought
Medieval international relations

Although International Relations scholars make frequent reference to the Middle Ages, most of our ideas about the period are not based on extensive empirical studies. Instead, they rely on a common imaginary of Medieval Europe as an unspecified and idealised system of overlapping authority and multiple loyalties. This thesis recovers a historical understanding of the late-medieval international order by focusing on the fundamental conceptions of the organization of the social held by medieval international practitioners. In particular, it examines a specific community of practice: lawyers of the ius commune from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries.
In doing so, this thesis makes three contributions to the IR literature. From a theoretical point of view, it adds to both English School and constructivist studies of historical international order by focusing on the process of differentiation through representation, as well as on contestation within it. In doing so, it argues for a move from a static understanding of order to the more dynamic notion of ordering. Secondly, it contributes methodologically to the historical study of ideas by proposing a methodological emphasis on communities of practitioners as a middle-ground between abstract constructivism and narrow Skinnerian analysis that facilitates the historically grounded consideration of the ordering role of language and ideas. Finally, empirically, this thesis demonstrates the analytical leverage gained from these theoretical moves by providing a detailed account of the international order from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, focusing not only on stability, but also on the contentious process of ordering. As a result, this thesis provides a new understanding of late-medieval notions of political authority, community, polity, and identity, while simultaneously highlighting the politics of representation behind them.
The regional law of refugee protection in Africa
Keywords: African Union
International refugee law
Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa
Human rights
African refugee law
Refugee law

This work offers an analysis of the legal regime for refugee protection in Africa, broadly construed as including both refugee law and human rights elements. The regime is addressed in two parts.
Part One analyses the treaty regime, principally comprised of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. The latter two regional instruments are examined in depth. This includes the first fulsome account of the 1969 Convention’s drafting, and original analysis of the relationships of interpretation and the relationships of conflict that arise between the various treaties comprising the regional refugee protection framework. Significant attention in this regard is devoted to various aspects of the relationship between the international and the regional refugee treaties, and to the relationships between African refugee law on the one hand and African human rights law on the other.
Part Two focuses on the institutional architecture supportive of the treaty framework addressed in Part One. The Organization of African Unity is addressed in a historical sense, and the contemporary roles of the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the various African human rights courts are canvassed.
This account of the treaty framework, and the institutional architecture, for refugee protection on the continent is the first broad analytical account of the regional law of refugee protection in Africa.
Unlikely readers: Negotiating the book in colonial South Asia, c. 1857–1914
Keywords: South Asia
History of the Book
Colonialism
History of Reading

This thesis constructs a history of reading for South Asia (1857–1914) through an examination of the eccentric relationships that marginal colonial agents and subjects—soldiers, peasants, office clerks and women—developed with everyday forms of writing. Drawing on the methodologies of the history of the book, and literary and cultural histories, it creates a counterpoint to the dominant view of imperial self-fashioning as built on reading intensively and at length. Instead, it contends that the formation of identities in colonial South Asia, whether compliant or dissenting, was predicated on superficial forms of textual engagement, leaving the documents of empire most likely misread, unread, or simply read in part.
I illustrate this argument through four chapters, each of which brings together extensive archival material and nonliterary texts, as well as both canonical and little-known literary works. The first two discuss the circulation of unread texts in colonial institutions: the army and the government office. I study Garnet Wolseley's pioneering war manual, The Soldier's Pocket-book for Field Service, a book that soldiers refused to read. This is juxtaposed, in the second study, with an examination of the reception of the bureaucratic document in illiterate peasant communities, explored through the colonial archive and ethnographic novels. In the third and fourth chapters, I focus on texts consumed in part. I turn to the Bengali Hindu almanac, a form that made the transition from manuscript to print in this period, and examine how it trained its new-found readership of English-educated office clerks to oscillate smoothly between British-bureaucratic and local forms of time, as well as to read quickly and selectively. I end with a study of The Indian Ladies' Magazine, and suggest that the cosmopolitan form of the periodical and editorial practices of extracting and summarising gave women unprecedented access to a network of global print.
Two million years of environmental change: a case study from Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape, South Africa
Keywords: Stable isotopes
quaternary
Wonderwerk Cave
South Africa

The arid interior of South Africa lacks long, continuous and well-dated climate and environmental proxy records that can be compared with cultural sequences and with broader global climate records. This thesis develops the first substantial terrestrial environmental sequence for the interior of southern Africa at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, spanning two million years of prehistory. Changes in vegetation and humidity over time were investigated by means of carbon and oxygen stable isotope analysis on fossil herbivore enamel and ostrich eggshell, creating two independent proxy datasets. The Holocene record was used as a baseline for comparing the Pleistocene sequence, but required chronological tightening. Therefore, nine new radiocarbon dates were obtained, and calibrated and modelled with existing dates to provide a firmer chronology.
The ostrich eggshell isotope record suggests arid but variable conditions, with distinct phases of increased humidity in the Early Pleistocene and mid-Holocene. Enamel stable isotope results show clear differences in local resource availability between the Early and Mid-Pleistocene, and then between the Pleistocene and Holocene, with an overall trend of increasing aridity. In particular, the onset of dietary specialisation in grazers at 0.8Ma is linked to expanding C4 grasslands. Aridity was not the driver behind the increase in C4 grasses, but changing pCO2 levels at the Mid Pleistocene transition were identified as a possible key factor. The presence of C3 and C4 grasses in the Early Pleistocene, when compared to the domination of C4 grasses today, was fostered by reduced rainfall seasonality. Regional independent developments have to be considered, as other regions in South and East Africa show C4 dominated diets in herbivores at earlier times than at Wonderwerk Cave. In the Holocene, higher temporal resolution indicates phases of environmental change coinciding with changes in the cultural record.
The design and implementation of a 3D-bioprinter
Keywords: 3D Cellular Constructs
Bioprinting
Droplet Interface Bilayers
Cell Patterning
Droplet Networks

3D bioprinting is the additive manufacture of biological materials, such as cells, and has been implemented over the last two decades to print 3D constructs which can mature into functional tissues. Although there are many bioprinting techniques, there are few that are capable of simultaneously printing two or more cell types at high resolutions, high cell densities and high initial cell viabilities. These printing characteristics are required to pattern cells in tissue-like micro-architectures and to quickly mature physiologically relevant tissue. We developed a novel 3D bioprinter and bioprinting methodology, designed to pattern cells without compromising these printing characteristics. Initially a droplet-in-oil 3D printer was created, which assembled mm-scale aqueous droplet networks composed of thousands of picolitre volume micro-compartments. These networks were programmed to show emergent tissue-like properties, mimicking nervous tissue's rapid electrical communication or self-folding in a manner similar to muscle contractions. This printing process was then adapted to pattern HEK-293T cells within droplet networks at high droplet resolution (&Tilde;50-150 μm), high initial cell viability (90±4%) and high droplet cell density (&Tilde;30×106 cells/mL). Capillary-like and layered sheet cell architectures were formed with two printed fluorescent cell populations. These 3D printed constructs were transferred to culture medium with minimal loss in pattern fidelity using a novel phase transfer approach. Patterned HEK-293T cells developed into dense cell organisations which showed, high cell viabilities, high cell numbers (up to &Tilde;18,000) and mitotically active cells, when cultured over 7 days. Specialised tissues were also developed, here, patterned ovine mesenchymal stem cells were differentiated, after printing, into chondrogenic progenitor cells as affirmed by Sox9 expression.
The Church of England and Britain's Cold War, 1937-1948
Keywords: UK-US religious relations
European Politics
Transnational History
Institutionalism
Cold War
Ecumenical Movement
Transnational networks
Church of England
World War (1939-1945)

The thesis deals with Britain’s early Cold War history and the political history of the Church of England. It mainly uses primary sources, and contributes to our growing understanding of the early Cold War, especially in its cultural/religious elements.
It explores how the Church of England dealt with the development of the early Cold War in Britain. It argues that in order to understand better the Church of England’s role, an account of its perspective on issues of state modernisation dating back to at least the 1930s is necessary. It was then, during a decade of authoritarianism, and especially at the Oxford Conference of 1937, that the Church' standpoint towards secularisation was established, while the transnational agenda of the ecumenical movement was also adopted and internalized by Church of England. The thesis also examines the agencies which it built and worked with: in particular the British Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. As the Church is the Established Church, its relationship with specific government agencies, especially the British Foreign Office and the Ministry of Information also became increasingly important.
The thesis reveals the Church of England's lack of autonomy in time of crisis and the importance of key individuals for the institutional leadership of the Church. Its ecumenical agenda had played an important role, but this was under pressure after the War, as a Europe-wide Christian community was increasingly challenged by 'Western Union' plans for a Cold War Western, Christian community and bloc. By 1948 the Church had been enrolled in the Cold War between East and West which was apparent in its alignment with British government policies and its withdrawn role in the ecumenical community.
The thesis adds to our understanding of the Church of England's relationship to the state in these years, and contributes to the cultural dimension of the early Cold War in Britain.
The role of the periaqueductal gray in respiratory control and breathlessness
Keywords: Breathlessness
Periaqueductal gray
Respiratory control

Understanding respiratory control is crucial for improving the management of respiratory disease, and the accompanying breathlessness endured by its sufferers. A body of animal evidence supports the role of the midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG) in modulating ascending and descending respiratory information, with the PAG subdivisions acting within a network that may contribute to the threatening perception of breathlessness.
In this Thesis we used ultra high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 7 Tesla to firstly identify activity within the columns of the PAG during the simple respiratory task of breath holding in humans, matching those previously reported in animals for slowed ventilatory responses. Extending this investigation to the perception of breathlessness, we then used a classical fear-conditioning paradigm to investigate anticipation and response to an aversive inspiratory resistive loading stimulus. We found activity in the lateral PAG (lPAG) during slowed breathing against an inspiratory resistance, and activity in the ventrolateral PAG (vlPAG) during anticipation of resistive loading. These results align with the proposed threat perception model in animals; with the vlPAG involved in passive responses to inescapable stress, while the lPAG is involved in active responses to threat.
Lastly, we investigated the role and connections of the PAG columns within the wider cortical breathlessness network, and any plastic changes evoked by exercise. Functional and connectivity results suggest the PAG column activities in breathlessness are influenced by top-down cortical networks, with the vlPAG involved in the affective emotional dimension of breathlessness, while the lPAG is involved in the sensory component. In a comparison between athlete and sedentary subjects, athletes displayed increased functional activity in the vlPAG and prefrontal cortex during anticipation of breathlessness, indicating possible affective changes in perception rather than a global 'de-sensitisation' to breathlessness.
Therefore, in this Thesis we have identified the columns of the PAG to be intricately involved with respiratory control and perception of breathlessness. It appears the PAG may be a critical point of distinction between aspects of breathlessness perception, with the vlPAG a possible area of adaptation of affective breathlessness in athletes, or conversely (mal)adaptation and a target for treatment in patients with chronic respiratory disease.