VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Reading the transformation: the relationship between literature and territory in contemporary Veneto
Keywords: massimo carlotto
literature and territory
marco paolini
contemporary Italian literature

Reading the Transformation: The Relationship between Literature and Territory in Contemporary Veneto aims at investigating the interrelation between a geographically defined entity and the literary word. Placed in the context of a broader reflection on the dynamics of such relation, this thesis aims at outlining a specific set of theoretical references in order to analyse the case of contemporary Veneto through a close reading of some particularly relevant works by two authors from this region, Massimo Carlotto and Marco Paolini.
Developed from an interest in the literary tradition of Veneto and in the theme of landscape and territory representation in literature, this thesis is comprised of two parts: the first one is dedicated to tracing the theoretical, historical, and literary coordinates that define the scope and frame of reference for the thesis; the second one conducts an in-depth analysis of the context in which the works of Carlotto and Paolini are situated. Drawing on concepts pertaining geography, cultural anthropology, and landscape theory, the premise of this thesis is that territory is a complex geographic, historical, social, economic, and cultural entity of which landscape constitutes the visible stratum. Siding with arguments that sustain the centrality of the role of landscape in the process of formation of people's identity, this thesis adopts such concept and employs it as a key to understand the relation between territory and literature. Through the analysis of La verità dell'Alligatore and Nordest by Carlotto and Il Milione and Bestiario Veneto – Parole mate by Paolini, the objective of this thesis is, on one side, to provide an insight into how the transformation of a territory can shape the formation of a collective identity, on the other side, to shed light on the means through the reflection on territory enters the literary space.
Adeno-associated virus mediated rhodopsin delivery in preventing secondary cone degeneration in rhodopsin knockout mice
Keywords: rhodopsin associated retinitis pigmentosa
adeno-associated virus mediated gene therapy

Rhodopsin-linked retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is the most common form of autosomal dominant RP, an inherited retinal degeneration, in which rod degeneration is followed by secondary cone loss leading to loss of vision and blindness. The overall objective of this work was to develop an optimized gene replacement therapy, delivering the rhodopsin gene for rhodopsin- linked RP and establish whether secondary cone loss can be delayed.
A fast-acting single mutant serotype 8 self-complementary adeno-associated virus vector was produced containing the human rhodopsin promoter and the human rhodopsin coding sequence. In vivo studies in rhodopsin knockout mouse showed that the vector administration led to widespread and robust expression of the transgene.
Subretinal injection of the vector into three-week pups of rhodopsin knockout mice with cones expressing green fluorescent protein showed restoration of rod-derived electroretinogram (ERG) responses, and preservation of cone- driven ERG responses three months after injection. Similarly, the longitudinal follow-up with confocal scanning ophthalmoscopy found preservation of fluorescent cones up to three months after injection. Overall, these data provided evidence that the designed vector resulted in significant benefit to rod photoreceptors as well as in delay in secondary cone degeneration and built a basis for future use of this vector on dominant models of RP.
Britain and Revolutionary Iran 1906-1909 and 1976-1979: a comparative study
Keywords: Iran
Anglo-Iranian relations
Britain

This dissertation is a comparative case study of British policy towards and perceptions of Persia/Iran during the latter's two modern revolutions, 1906-1909 (Constitutional) and 1976-1979 ('Islamic'). The study covers both official perceptions and policy, meaning that of the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service and the perceptions of the press, civil society, Parliament and wider public opinion; thus it is not a traditional exercise in diplomatic history. It explores British views of both the Shah/government and opposition forces during these two periods in detail and presents these views in a comparative perspective. The research paints a broad social and historical picture of how changes in both British and Iranian government, society and global status affected their mutual relations. Key themes relate to how the decline of (Edwardian) Liberalism, the transformation of the Left in the twentieth century and Britain's decline as an imperial power affected its perceptions and policy-making in Iran; how civil society and public opinion exerted a disproportionately strong influence in the earlier period before Britain was even a fully democratic society; how notions of Orientalism and Aryanism shaped official and public perceptions; and how changing geopolitics impacted perceptions, particularly in the case of Tsarist Russia versus the Soviet Union. This study has revealed numerous counter-intuitive points about the foreign relations and perceptions of British government and society vis-à-vis Iran and prompts a reconsideration of the evolution of British public and official attitudes during the twentieth century as manifested in the case of Iran at two critical historical junctures.
Probing the evolution of galaxies since z ~ 1 with the Tully-Fisher relation
Keywords: galaxy evolution
galaxies
galaxy kinematics

In this thesis we use the Tully-Fisher relation (TFR), the correlation between a galaxy's luminosity and its rotation velocity, to probe the luminous and dark matter in galaxies over the last ≈ 8 Gyr. First, we use samples of galaxies spatially resolved in Hα emission with integral field unit observations from the K-band Multi-Object Spectrograph (KMOS) Redshift One Spectroscopic Survey (KROSS) at z ≈ 1 and the Sydney-Australian-Astronomical-Observatory Multi- object Integral-Field Spectrograph (SAMI) Galaxy Survey at z ≈ 0. We match the data quality, analysis methods and sample selection between the two surveys to conduct a direct comparison of the absolute K-band magnitude (MK) and stellar mass (M*) TFRs at z ≈ 1 and z ≈ 0, free of any difference in biases between them. We measure no evolution of the MK TFR zero-point for star- forming disk-like galaxies since z ≈ 1, but an increase by 0.2 ± 0.2 dex of the M* TFR zero-point for the same galaxies over the same period. This implies the total mass-to-stellar mass ratio of those galaxies has decreased by a factor of ≈ 0.4 since z ≈ 1 at fixed rotation velocity, whilst their K-band stellar mass-to- light ratio has increased by a factor of ≈ 1.6. Moderate rates of star formation in galaxies and continued gas accretion since z ≈ 1 can explain these changes. Second, we take a step toward an independent measure of the TFR evolution over the same period using carbon monoxide (CO) emission from galaxies as an alternative kinematic tracer. We present the M* and Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer absolute Band 1 magnitude (MW1) TFRs for galaxies from the CO Legacy Database for the Galex Arecibo SDSS Survey (COLD GASS) as z ≈ 0 benchmarks that are pre-requisites to extend the CO TFR to z &gsim; 1. We find no significant offsets between the COLD GASS TFR zero-points and those of similar z ≈ 0 studies. The slope of the M* COLD GASS TFR agrees with those of similar z ≈ 0 studies, but the MW1 TFR slope is slightly shallower than previous studies at a similar redshift. We attribute this to the fact that the COLD GASS sample comprises galaxies of various (late-type) morphologies. Nevertheless, our work provides a robust reference point with which to compare future CO TFR studies.
Laser diagnostics for spatially resolved thermometry in combustion and flows
Keywords: Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence
PLIF
LIGS
LITGS
Laser Induced Grating Scattering

The development of Laser-Induced Thermal Grating Spectroscopy (LITGS) for diagnostics of combusting and non-combusting flows is described. The first use of LITGS to provide in situ calibration of 2-Dimensional temperature distributions generated using Two-Colour Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence (TC-PLIF) is reported. Time-resolved measurements of temperature distributions in a firing GDI optical engine obtained by TC-PLIF were made during the compression stroke and calibrated to the absolute temperature scale by simultaneous LITGS measurements. The accuracy and precision of the temperatures derived from LITGS data are evaluated using alternative methods of data analysis – Fast Fourier Transform and Fitting to theoretical models of the experimental data. The relative merits of the two methods are examined for analysis of weak LITGS signals obtained under engine conditions of low pressure and high temperature. The combined TC-PLIF and LITGS system was demonstrated by performing repeated single-shot measurements for 1 in every 10 four-stroke cycles showing excellent correlation of the temperatures derived from both techniques. Direct measurement of the effect of 'charge cooling', of order 5 K, for operation with direct injection is reported. Inhomogeneous temperature distributions were observed during the compression stroke for fired operation with Port Fuel Injection (PFI) and also with Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI). The effects of varying the relative concentrations of toluene and iso-octane in the two-component fuel were investigated.
Extension of the LITGS technique to multi-point measurements along a 1-D line is described. By recording signals from 4 points on separate detectors using a fibre-coupled photodiode array the limitations of Streak Cameras used previously for 1-D LITGS measurements were overcome. Demonstration of principle experiments are reported in which simultaneous 4-point measurements were made with 1 mm spatial resolution and a precision of 0.7 % in temperature gradients in gas flows and in boundary layers at surfaces.
Developmental regulators of Kranz anatomy
Keywords: Vein development
C4 photosynthesis
Kranz anatomy
Leaf development

The C4 biochemical pathway is the most efficient form of photosynthesis in warm environments and introducing this system into globally significant, but less efficient, C3 photosynthetic crops could bring major yield increases. The most photosynthetically efficient C4 grass species have a specialised leaf anatomy characterised by high vein density with two distinct cell types radially arranged around the vascular bundles (Kranz anatomy). Although this anatomy was first described in 1882, the genetic regulators controlling Kranz development are still not known. In recent years, transcriptomic analysis has allowed researchers to identify candidate Kranz regulator genes, and a model for Kranz development has been proposed, however, this model has not been experimentally validated.
This study used in situ hybridisation to visualise expression patterns for a set of candidate Kranz regulator genes in maize and the orthologous genes in rice. Further, morphological analysis of rice lines with constitutive expression of the candidate Kranz regulator genes AINTEGUMENTA 1 and DAG-LIKE 1 and 2 were used to characterise protein function during C3 monocot leaf development. The function of maize AINTEGUMENTA in the C3 eudicot arabidopsis was also investigated.
The results of the in situ hybridisation experiments led to the refinement of the Kranz model and identified potential roles for the candidate regulators during leaf development. The constitutive expression experiments highlighted the regulatory differences between eudicot and monocot leaf development and implicated the regulation of auxin-cytokinin homeostatis as a key factor in Kranz development. Ultimately, this work can be used to guide research into Kranz development and has direct implications for engineering C4 photosynthesis into rice.
Hyperbolic volume estimates via train tracks
Keywords: Surfaces
Hyperbolic 3-manifolds
Pants graph
Train tracks

In this thesis we describe how to estimate the distance spanned in the pants graph by a train track splitting sequence on a surface, up to multiplicative and additive constants. If some moderate assumptions on a splitting sequence are satisfied, each vertex set of a train track in it will represent a vertex of a graph which is naturally quasi-isometric to the pants graph; moreover the splitting sequence gives an edge-path in this graph so, more precisely, our distance estimate holds between the extreme points of this path. The present distance estimate is inspired by a result of Masur, Mosher and Schleimer for distances in the marking graph. However, we can apply their line of proof only after some manipulation of the splitting sequence: a rearrangement, changing the order the elementary moves are performed in, so that the ones producing Dehn twists are brought together; and then an untwisting, which suppresses the majority of these latter moves to give a new sequence, which does not end with the same track as before, but does not include any portion that is almost stationary in the pants graph. The required distance is then, up to constants, the number of splits occurring in the untwisted sequence. A consequence of our main theorem together with a result of Brock is that, given a pseudo-Anosov self-diffeomorphism ψ of a surface S, the maximal splitting sequence introduced by Agol gives us an estimate for the hyperbolic volume of the mapping torus built from S and ψ. There are also some interesting consequences for the hyperbolic volume of a solid torus minus a closed braid, via a machinery employed by Dynnikov and Wiest.
Segmentation of magnetic resonance images for assessing neonatal brain maturation
Keywords: Myelination
Brain segmentation
Neonatal brain MRI
Brain atlas
Markov random fields

In this thesis, we aim to investigate the correlation between myelination and the gestational age for preterm infants, with the former being an important developmental process during human brain maturation. Quantification of myelin requires dedicated imaging, but the conventional magnetic resonance images routinely acquired during clinical imaging of neonates carry signatures that are thought to be associated with myelination. This thesis thus focuses on structural segmentation and spatio-temporal modelling of the so-called myelin-like signals on T2-weighted scans for early prognostic evaluation of the preterm brain.
The segmentation part poses the major challenges of this task: insufficient spatial prior information of myelination and the presence of substantial partial volume voxels in clinical data. Specific spatial priors for the developing brain are obtained from either probabilistic atlases or manually annotated training images, but none of them currently include myelin as an individual tissue type. This causes further difficulties in partial volume estimation which depends on the probabilistic atlases of the composing pure tissues.
Our key contribution is the development of an expectation-maximisation framework that incorporates an explicit partial volume class whose locations are configured in relation to the composing pure tissues in a predefined region of interest via second-order Markov random fields. This approach resolves the above challenges without requiring any probabilistic atlas of myelin. We also investigate atlas-based whole brain segmentation that generates the binary mask for the region of interest. We then construct a spatio-temporal growth model for myelin-like signals using logistic regression based on the automatic segmentations of 114 preterm infants aged between 29 and 44 gestational weeks. Lastly, we demonstrate the ability of age estimation using the normal growth model in a leave-one-out procedure.
Political unrest under IMF programmes: labour mobility, fiscal conditionality, and democratic representation
Keywords: Democratic Representation
International Monetary Fund
Protests, Strikes, Riots
Labour mobility

What triggers political unrest under International Monetary Fund (IMF) programmes? Why do we see unrest—protests, strikes, and riots—in some countries under IMF programmes and not in others? This thesis argues that IMF labour conditionality in an immobile labour market compounded by intrusive fiscal conditionality and blocked democratic channels result in unrest. Where labour is immobile in the borrowing country, IMF labour conditionality decentralising the market creates large-scale grievances among the labour groups. Immobile labour groups substantially lose income and benefits under those measures due to high wage differentials and varied labour protection measures across sectors. Moreover, uncertainty and risks increase, while the opportunities to return back to employment or to maintain the existing income and benefits diminish. When the political authority is unable to address the rising grievances due to tight fiscal conditionality and blocked democratic channels, we observe political unrest under IMF programmes. Where labour is mobile, on the other hand, it is easier for workers to switch between sectors and jobs when the economic crisis hits their sector. The labour groups respond to the internal crisis and the external impact by increasing mobility and switching to the sectors that are still growing despite the crisis. Labour conditions do not give rise to a similar degree of uncertainty and risks compared to immobile markets. Hence, programmes are implemented without large-scale unrest. The study tests this theory in a global sample of 117 countries between 1970 and 2013 and investigates the impact of mobility and IMF conditionality on unrest with a data set originally compiled and coded for this study. It then delves into two extreme cases, Greece, 2010 and Turkey, 2001. While Greece had extreme immobility and received intrusive labour and fiscal conditionality in 2010, Turkey is located on the opposite end of the spectrum, with very high levels of mobility, the limited number of labour conditions, and greater fiscal space. We see that while Greece witnessed large-scale unrest in 2010, Turkey implemented the programme smoothly. Finally, the study applies the theory into three shadow cases, Ireland, 2010, Latvia, 2008, and Portugal, 2011 and demonstrates that the varied degrees of mobility and conditionality and fiscal conditionality result in different degrees of unrest.
Modelling the mechanobiological evolution of aneurysms: An integrative in vivo, in vitro and in silico approach
Keywords: Mechanobiology
Aneurysm

In silico models of intracranial aneurysm (IA) evolution aim to reliably represent the mechanical blood flow environment, the biology of the arterial wall and, crucially, the complex link between the two, namely the mechanobiology of healthy and diseased arteries. The ultimate goal is to create diagnostic tools for personalized management and treatment of aneurysm disease. Towards that target, the work presented in this thesis aims to establish a directly interactive link between experimental (in vivo and in vitro) and computational work for biologically and clinically relevant research on aneurysm disease. Mechanobiological hypotheses were firstly investigated in a novel 1D mathematical conceptual model of aneurysm evolution: for the first time these included representations of endothelial heterogeneity and smooth muscle cell (SMC) active stress response and apoptosis. The 1D investigations analysed and assessed the role of wall shear stress (WSS) homeostasis in elastin degradation, and the evolving role of the adventitia as a protective sheath in health and primary load-bearer in disease. The 1D framework was applied to a specific patient’s aneurysm using both imaging and histological data to parameterise the model, calculating a material parameter for the adventitital collagen. The predicted evolution captured aspects of tissue changes measured with time focusing on the remodelled tissue wall thickness consistent with the experimental measurements, and physiological cyclic deformation in order to propose an approach to modelling adventitia’s adaptive role to load bearing. Furthermore, an existing Fluid-Solid-Growth (FSG) computational framework was adapted and calibrated for the same patient-specific case with the help from the experimental data and the analysis from the 1D framework. This FSG model quantifies the arterial mechanical environment and captures the mechanical response of the fibrous arterial constituents. Comparing 1D and 3D investigations to establish consistency for our models, the 3Dmodel tested the hypothesis of WSS homeostasis, additionally introducing the element of spatial heterogeneity in the definition, and a new hypothesis linking cyclic deformation with collagen growth that ensures a physiological mechanical environment in stabilised aneurysms. Moreover, the FSG framework was applied in a specific rabbit aneurysm case and extended to link growth and remodeling to the detailed representation of the pulsatile blood flow mechanical environment. This research illustrates the power of computational modelling when coupled with rich data sets on the physiology, histology and geometry of healthy and diseased vascular tissue. In particular, the integrative modelling framework provides the foundation for establishing mechanobiological links crucial to aneurysm progression, and a basis for further research towards creating reliable aneurysm clinical tools.
Beyond medical expenditure: estimating the impact of health shocks on the welfare and socio-economic outcomes of Chinese households
Keywords: Health shocks
China

Several reviews have shown that health problems are the single most common adverse event experienced by households in many low- and middle-income countries. There is a great deal of research documenting household health expenditure and its impact on poverty. However, evidence on the costs incurred by households outside of the health care system is at best scattered.
The objective of this present study is to document the household response to illness in China using two large-scale panel household surveys and following a ‘health shocks’ approach. Health shocks are used to address endogeneity concerns associated with the use of alternative traditional health measures. In this manuscript, the impact of health shocks on household socio-economic status and welfare is analysed using a framework encompassing household income, medical expenditure, consumption patterns, coping strategies, and labour force supply.
We find that health shocks lead to a significant increase in medical expenditure (significant for all types of shocks), and in the case of a health shock experienced by a household head, to a decrease in income ranging around five per cent of the total household income. This decrease in income is partly explained by a statistically significant reduction in labour force supply (work hours and labour force participation) from individuals who experienced a shock (larger for women and elderly). In addition, for rural-to-urban migrant workers, health shocks are associated with a higher probability of returning. However, spouses also increase their labour force supply in response, which helps avoiding large shortfalls in income. Significant coping strategies include increase in debts and remittances; and in some cases, sale of assets. On consumption, households are mostly able to maintain consumption levels following the occurrence of a health shock (with the exception of food consumption). Nonetheless, we find a significant large negative trailing impact on consumption in subsequent years. This is in line with the literature arguing that households are risk adverse and deploy ineffective coping strategies to avoid immediate shortfalls in consumption, which generate delayed costs in the long run.
The results of the analyses carried out in this thesis highlight some of the potential channels of impoverishment due to health shocks, which might be of interest for policy makers, especially in China where a large-scale health system reform is currently taking place.