VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Teachers’ perceptions regarding the use of manipulatives within the secondary mathematics classroom and a study into the effective provision of initial teacher training in the use of physical based tasks to aid pupil learning.
Keywords: MTED 2020
MTED

Research has shown manipulatives to be a useful tool within the mathematics classroom, enabling pupils to better connect abstract mathematical concepts with a concrete understanding. However, their use varies between school, teacher and stage of learning, with the majority of use occurring in primary schools. Research also implies that many teachers are ill-equipped to use manipulatives effectively, unsure how to facilitate the forming of connections; either using them to little effect or dismissing their use altogether. This study set out to answer three research questions:
· What are teachers’ perceptions of the role of manipulatives in secondary mathematics education?
· In what ways and to what extent are secondary mathematics teachers equipped to use manipulatives within the classroom?
· How can the use of manipulatives be effectively integrated into a secondary initial teacher education course?
The literature review focuses on manipulatives (within teaching and teacher education), concrete to abstract mathematical understanding and teachers’ beliefs, knowledge and growth. Data was collected through a survey (150 participants) and more in-depth semi-structured interviews of 5 mathematics teachers, with the main findings presented under the headings of the three research questions. Findings show teachers to hold predominantly positive beliefs regarding the potential usefulness of manipulatives within secondary schools. However, these belief seem to contradict teachers’ practice. The data suggests teachers to be lacking in confidence and knowledge on how best to use manipulatives, with some feeling obliged to use them but lacking the adequate skills. There is a distinct lack of education in the effective use of manipulatives and most teachers would value further professional development in this area, recognising manipulatives’ potential value. Recommendations are made on the effective embedding of manipulatives into an initial teaching programme, focusing on the barriers to using manipulatives effectively which were most prevalent in the data, and suggestions for further research.
Hydrogen borrowing reactions of amino alcohols and the total synthesis of (–)-γ-lycorane
Keywords: Hydrogen borrowing
Amino acids
Catalysis
GABA
Lycorane

Chapter 1: Introduction
The introduction gives an overview of C–C bond forming reactions, highlighting their applications within the thesis. The historical development of C–C bond forming hydrogen borrowing reactions is then reviewed, with an emphasis on work by the Donohoe group involving Ph* methyl ketone, as well as examples in the chemical literature utilising earth-abundant metal catalysts. Finally, the role of nitrogen-containing compounds within both natural products and pharmaceuticals is discussed.
Chapter 2: Hydrogen Borrowing Reactions of Aziridino Alcohols
The hydrogen borrowing reaction between various aziridino alcohols and Ph* methyl ketone is explored, along with the formation of lactams upon removal of the Ph* group with Br2. A number of N-Boc aziridines are synthesised and converted into their corresponding N-Bn aziridino alcohols via structurally complex aziridino aldehyde dimers. The unexpected reactivity of trisubstituted aziridino alcohols under hydrogen borrowing and Br2 cleavage conditions is also explored.
Chapter 3: Total Synthesis of (–)-γ-Lycorane
Utilising a key C–C bond forming hydrogen borrowing reaction, and a subsequent Br2-mediated Ph* cleavage/lactam formation/ring opening cascade, the total synthesis of (–)-γ-Lycorane is completed in 9 steps, 4% overall yield and in 99:1 er. An alternative pericyclic approach to (–)-γ-Lycorane is also explored, with a number of small and highly functionalised amine and aziridine substituted cyclopentanes being successfully synthesised.
Chapter 4: Hydrogen Borrowing Reactions of Amino Alcohols
The hydrogen borrowing reaction between enantioenriched 1,2-amino alcohols, derived from both natural and unnatural amino acids, and Ph* methyl ketone was investigated. The use of a bulky trityl group was found to be effective in protecting the reaction intermediates against racemisation, leading to the isolation of a large number of 1,4-amino ketone products in good yields and with high levels of enantioenrichment. The use of HCl in HFIP was found to be effective for cleavage of both the Ph* and trityl groups, giving 1,4-amino acid products in excellent yields and with no loss in enantioenrichment.
The use of column chromatography could be entirely avoided by performing the two steps in sequence without intermediate purification.
Chapter 5: Experimental
This chapter contains the experimental procedures and spectroscopic data for all compounds described within the thesis.
Appendix 1: X-Ray Crystallographic Data
The X-ray crystallographic data for compounds 312, 351, 368, 381, 410, 553, 591, 665, and 719 can be found in this appendix.
Appendix 2: Experimental Procedures by Indi Marriott
Experimental data for compounds 411 and 410 prepared by Indi Marriot.
Appendix 3: References
The references cited within the thesis can be found in this appendix.
In what ways can a subject-specific professional development programme support beginning science teachers in their teaching of physics?
Keywords: MTED 2020
MTED

Supporting beginning teachers in the early stages of their career has been acknowledged as an important factor in resolving the current teacher retention crisis as demonstrated by the introduction of the Department for Education Early Career Framework. Given that physics teacher retention is a particular and persistent concern, despite the implementation of numerous initiatives to remedy the problem over decades, this practitioner-led action research project piloted a programme aimed to support the transition between ITT and the NOT year with a series of physics specific interventions. This small-scale study explores beginning teachers’ perceptions about key areas for development in their physics teaching and, given their experience of professional learning, what they perceived to be the most effective strategies to develop their subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. The findings demonstrate that sharing the wisdom of practice of experienced teachers in a research-informed subject specific, six-week online support programme was perceived to increase the SMK and PCK of both specialist and non-specialist beginning teachers, and that translating generic epistemological ideas into physics specific examples for classroom practice was highly valued. The affective domain was also enhanced, and, by applying the analytical lens of self-determination theory, changes in competence, autonomy and relatedness were also noted and explored. Furthermore, the structure of the online course was perceived to be particularly effective in its resonance with the theory of how beginning teachers learn. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of designing a new national programme to support NOT and ROT science teachers who will be teaching KS3 physics in the next academic year.
‘Incorporate into one body torne and scattered limmes’: Recontextualising Principal Navigations within the networks of Richard Hakluyt
Keywords: translation
16th century English literature
Hakluyt
sixteenth century
incorporation
Newfoundland
Principal Navigations
Levant
travel writing
digital humanities
social network analysis
Russia
networks

Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589 and 1598-1600) was an enormously influential work in the development of travel writing and a formative influence on early modern English identity. Hakluyt drew on and developed a previously European mode to create his compendium, and Principal Navigations is now considered the prime source for sixteenth-century English travel writing, often regarded historically as an objective record. By illuminating and reconstructing the politicised textual network of creators and influences which lay behind the text and analysing the effect they had on Hakluyt’s editorial techniques, this thesis offers a new understanding of the intricate and fluid negotiations which shaped English identity and English political and mercantile agency in the early modern period.
The thesis is divided into six chapters, and thematically into two halves. The first three chapters establish the intellectual networks surrounding Hakluyt in order to place him within a wider societal context, connecting research on his personal history with textual analysis of his work. The subsequent three chapters focus more closely on the representation of specific regions in Principal Navigations, taking the Levant, Russia, and Newfoundland as case studies. Each chapter focuses on one of these geographic areas, and through textual and network analysis examines the effect which the community associated with the region had on Hakluyt’s treatment of material in Principal Navigations. These two sections work to place Hakluyt and his work within wider cultural and literary contexts. While scholarship has examined his editorial approach, this has generally been within the context of individual accounts. This thesis will perform the necessary critical step of expanding that analysis to consider the text as a whole, placing both Hakluyt and his work into context.
Transport of plastic pollution by ocean waves
Keywords: Inertial floating objects
Wave-induced transport
Analytical perturbation expansions
Plastic pollution
Wave flume experiments
Ocean waves
Lagrangian transport
Eulerian return flow

Ocean waves are one of the drivers of ocean transport of floating and submerged particles, including microplastics, oil droplets, sediment, and wreckage. This thesis examines the wave-induced transport of purely Lagrangian particles by wave packets and the effect of changing size and density of floating objects on their transport by regular waves. Particle tracking velocimetry is used to examine Lagrangian particle trajectories under deep-water wave packets in a laboratory flume. Particle motions are dominated by Stokes drift near the free surface, and the Eulerian return flow at depth. Close agreement is achieved between experimental measurements and leading-order solutions of the irrotational water wave equations. A multiple-scales solution is derived for Eulerian mean flow under wave packets that applies to all water depths. The solution is validated against experimental data, using particle tracking velocimetry corrected for background and paddle wave generation errors. It is found that the magnitude of the horizontal return flow is enhanced by divergence of the Stokes transport at wave packet scale and the confining effect of the mean setdown underneath the packet. This enhanced return flow has potentially large ramifications for the transport of particles in coastal waters. A combination of analytical, numerical and experimental approaches are used to examine the transport of inertial, spherical objects (representing large marine debris) by Stokes drift in regular waves. It is found that such objects are transported at different rates depending on their size and density, and that larger objects experience increased drift compared with Lagrangian tracers. The mechanism for increased drift comprises the variable submergence and the corresponding dynamic buoyancy force components in the direction perpendicular to the local water surface, which leads to an amplification of Stokes drift when averaged over the wave cycle. Using an expansion in wave steepness, a closed-form approximation is derived for this increased drift, which can be included in ocean-scale models of marine litter transport.
Functional analysis of  cancer/testis antigens in human cancer 
Keywords: heterogeneity of expression
apoptosis
CT antigens
cancer
post-translational regulation

The cancer/testis (CT) antigens are a family of genes that are silenced in the majority of normal human tissues, except for the testes, but are specifically re-expressed in a number of human tumours. Interestingly, their expression is frequently found in only a subpopulation of cells in malignancies, but the reasons for this heterogeneous expression pattern have not yet been investigated. Since little is known about the regulation and the biological significance of the CT antigens, it is not yet clear whether they play an active role in tumourigenesis or whether their expression is a consequence of cancer progression. To address this question, attempts were made to develop an in vitro experimental model that mimics tumours expressing CT antigens. Twenty-one melanoma, small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and multiple myeloma (MM) cell lines were screened for the expression of three CT antigens: NY-ESO-1, its binding partner MAGE-C1, and a molecule that is closely related to MAGE-C1 called MAGE-C2. Intriguingly, some of these cell lines showed heterogeneous expression patterns that resembled those observed in tumour samples. Selected cell lines were treated with MG132, an inhibitor of the proteasome protein degradation pathway, to investigate the post-translational regulation of CT antigens. Insoluble MAGE-C1 and NY-ESO-1 were stabilised upon treatment, moreover MG132 caused accumulation of these two antigens at the centrosome. Interestingly, co-transfection experiments showed that NY-ESO-1 enhances the MG132-induced stabilisation of MAGE-C1 MAGE homology domain (MHD). In addition to proteasome degradation, SUMO-1 conjugation was also identified as a post-translational regulatory mechanism for MAGE-C1. Finally, MAGE-C1 knockdown experiments demonstrated that depletion of this antigen increases cell death in response to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, while reducing the stability of the pro-survival protein Mcl-1. Thus, MAGE-C1 is a novel inhibitor of ER stress-induced apoptosis. As a whole, this study provides new insights into the expression, regulation and function of these CT antigens in cancer cells.
Control of active nematics
Keywords: Biological physics
Soft matter
Active defects
Hydrodynamics
Active nematics
Active matter
Lattice-Boltzmann simulations

Active matter describes systems, such as bacterial suspensions, cellular tissue or cytoskeleton biopolymers, that extract energy from their surroundings at the single-particle level and convert it into mechanical work. The resulting active work can be manifested in the form of self-propulsion and stress generation. The continuous injection of energy or activity may lead to complex, collective flow patterns and, for active materials composed of particles with nematic-like symmetry, this can produce orientational order and topological defects in the orientation field. These materials are commonly described as active nematics. An important theme in active nematic research is active turbulence, a steady-state in which hydrodynamic instabilities result in chaotic collective flows.
Using continuum simulations, we investigate how the surroundings can screen the hydrodynamics, which allows for the control of active nematics. First, by confining an active nematic between planar plates, we observe how point-like topological defects become topological disclination lines that eventually contort due to twist deformations driven by the active forces with increasing plate separation.
Another method to screen the hydrodynamics is through frictional damping of different substrates. We find the emergence of a laning state when the active nematic is subject to anisotropic friction. We show that the flow-aligning parameter, which determines reorientation to the self-generated shear flows, is important for the emergence of this flow state. We investigate the flow-aligning parameter further and uncover regimes where self-propelled defects are mutually bound. We also show that weak defect-defect ordering exists in active turbulence, and we demonstrate that defects can exhibit co-operative defect-defect interactions that span many defect pairs by varying global friction. Finally, we show that we can control the active material's defect, flow and concentration dynamics through position-dependent friction.
The work in this thesis will allow future research to extend knowledge on bulk active nematics to more complex biophysical systems.
Development of novel catalysts for ammonia synthesis and decomposition under mild conditions
Keywords: Catalyst design
ammonia synthesis
ammonia decomposition
nanotechnology
hydrogen storage
green energy utilisation
polar material

Ammonia has recently been regarded as a promising energy vector for on-board hydrogen generation purposes thanks to the breakthrough in renewable powers. The intermittent nature of these energies mean that both the generation and utilisation of ammonia need to be carried out at mild temperatures and pressures to afford frequent ramping. Under such conditions, catalysts are easily prone to hydrogen poisoning where the surface active sites are extensively blocked by H atoms originated from the competitive reaction between dihydrogen and other gaseous reactants. In such context, this thesis explores the use of a metal-doped electrostatically polar refractory oxide catalyst for efficient thermal catalytic ammonia synthesis and decomposition reactions with the primary aim to alleviate hydrogen poisoning. In-depth catalytic activity and kinetic order studies were examined for both the forward and backward N-cycle reaction. A thorough round of surface characterisations combined with a series of spectroscopic, imaging and computational techniques were conducted to investigate the relationship between the activity and the structural and electronic properties of the catalyst.
In the second part of the thesis, the polar oxide catalyst was aptly modified to construct a well-defined frustrated Lewis pair to decipher the elemental pathway for which H atoms are transferred from the metal active site to the catalytic support. Atom probe tomography in conjunction with in-situ x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were employed to reconstruct the 3D environment of the spillover effect and the surface changes were monitored in real-time.
Hydrogen bonding phase-transfer catalysis: a new approach to asymmetric fluorination
Keywords: Organic Chemistry
Organocatalysis
Hydrogen Bonding
Fluorine Chemistry
NMR Spectroscopy

Chapter 1 – Introduction. This chapter aims to highlight the importance of enantioselective fluorination in modern organic chemistry. The peculiar and sometimes contradictory properties of fluorine and fluorinated organic molecules are detailed along with examples of their applications in the life sciences. The origin and the chemistry of fluorinating reagents are also discussed, with a particular emphasis on the fluoride anion’s uses and challenges in organic synthesis. Lastly, a summary of the current methodologies to access enantiopure fluorinated compounds is presented and discussed.
Chapter 2 – Hydrogen Bonding Mediated Asymmetric Nucleophilic Fluorination. The work describes the development of the first protocol for asymmetric nucleophilic fluorination utilising alkali metal fluorides as fluorine source and a newly developed tridentate bis-urea organocatalyst. This novel strategy, named Hydrogen Bonding Phase-Transfer Catalysis (HB PTC), embraces the poor solubility of fluoride salts in organic solvents and their tendency to engage in hydrogen bonding to deliver fluorinated molecules in high enantioselectivity.
Chapter 3 – Structure and Conformation of bis-Urea Catalysts for Hydrogen Bonding Phase- Transfer Catalysis: Insights from NMR Spectroscopy. A detailed NMR spectroscopic investigation is presented herein in order to unveil the mechanistic details of HB PTC. The work investigates the conformational preferences of bis-urea catalysts under relevant reaction conditions and their changes upon binding of fluoride. The characterisation of bis- ureas–TBAF and bis-ureas–CsF complexes, in solution and in the solid state, provides information about the hydrogen bonding network around fluoride. The detection of scalar coupling across hydrogen-bonding, 1hJNH...F–, represents a key parameter to study catalyst- fluoride interactions. NMR data are used to investigate how the structural features of the catalysts influence the outcome of HB PTC fluorinations.
Lafzon ka Guldasta: an exploratory study of Urdu vocabulary development in grades 1-3
Keywords: Urdu
Age of Acquisition
Language development

Urdu is a member of the Indo-European language family. When children understand words and how schools promote children’s vocabulary development has important educational implications both in terms of vocabulary growth, and the inter-connectedness of vocabulary and literacy domains like reading comprehension. This study aimed to explore Urdu vocabulary development by assessing the age of acquisition ratings of words derived from a child-directed print corpus of first to third-grade textbooks. A related aim was investigating the associations between the rated age of acquisition and other psycholinguistic variables, such as frequency, number of letters and syllables, and orthographic transparency. A secondary aim was to analyze activities included in the same first to third-grade Urdu textbooks for their promotion of morphological and orthographic awareness.
A word corpus of 1,968 words was created by digitizing connected text (i.e. poems, stories, etc.) found in nine children’s textbooks. The corpus was annotated for word classes and orthographic transparency. After inter-rater reliability was assessed for these annotations, the frequencies of six word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, and postpositions) in the word corpus were calculated. A word list of 600 words representing the same proportions of word classes as the word corpus was extracted for an online AoA study. Ten teachers responded to three questionnaires on Qualtrics containing 200 words each. The first and third-grade textbooks were analyzed using Vagh & Nag’s (2014) template for South Asian languages after appropriate amendments were made to reflect Urdu’s linguistic properties.
Results reveal that, on average, teachers think children acquire words in the word list between the ages of three and five years. Consensus analysis revealed strong inter-rater reliability for all word classes except conjunctions. According to teachers, conjunctions and nouns are acquired later than other word classes, high frequency content words were acquired earlier than low frequency content words, and vowelized nouns are acquired earlier than semi-vowelized or un-vowelized nouns. The textbook analysis revealed main effects of component skills in the morphological and orthographic domains with a higher proportion of activities coded for vocabulary and letter knowledge than other component skills in the domain. Qualitative analysis suggests a restricted range of activities in both grade levels although the types of activities differ by publisher. Instructional implications for vocabulary development and other component skills are discussed and the need for future experimental research is emphasized.