VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Sumatran mesocarnivores: small-medium sized wild felids of the Kerinci Seblat landscape
Keywords: core area
corridor
Bayesian SECR
marbled cat
Asiatic golden cat
Bayesian occupancy
Sumatran clouded leopard
UNICOR
Sumatra
Kerinci Seblat
temporal overlap
leopard cat
least cost path
Single Season Single Species Occupancy

The study of mesopredators, their guilds, and conservation has had little attention in the tropics of Southeast Asia. A particularly interesting group, from the point of view of their ecological community and because of their generally threatened status, is the Felidae. This thesis reports an intensive camera-trapping study of small-medium sized wild felids in the Kerinci Seblat landscape in west-central Sumatra. Samples were drawn from seven study areas across a diversity of habitats occupied by clouded leopard, golden cat, marbled cat, leopard cat, and their prey. The papers comprising this thesis report on the ecology, behaviour, population status and trends, core areas and habitat connectivity of this predator- prey community, and prioritizing conservation in a multi-species management approach. Specifically, this thesis has five main results: (i) revealed spatial and temporal interactions between clouded leopard, golden cat, and their respective prey through performing Bayesian two species occupancy modelling and temporal overlap analyses; (ii) estimated population densities of clouded leopard, in the context of human activities, by implementing Bayesian Spatially Explicit Capture Recapture (SECR) and identified and quantified illegal human activities detected by camera traps; (iii) estimated occupancy states as an indicator of clouded leopard and golden cat population dynamics from consecutive surveys in 2009-11 and 2014-16 and anthropogenic pressures from deforestation in the surrounding areas; and (iv) identified high priority areas within and outside protected area networks through estimating multi-species habitat use and least cost path and kernel density estimate analyses for defining core areas and corridor networks. Integrating these four research themes, this thesis contributes to absent information on the felid mesocarnivores of Sumatra, and offers analytical methodologies for assessing their ecology, behaviour, conservation, and management that can be applied throughout the tropics.
Understanding the formation and evolution of asteroids through analysis of carbonaceous chondrites
Keywords: Asteroids
Spectroscopy
Meteorites

The transport and evolution of volatiles (e.g. water, organics) during the formation of the inner terrestrial planets of our Solar System is relatively poorly constrained. A number of dynamical mechanisms have been proposed that transport volatile rich material from the outer Solar System (i.e. from beyond the snow-line, currently 5 AU), and primitive, volatile-rich asteroids may provide clues as to these processes. Observations demonstrate that these asteroids have similar infrared spectra to CI, CM and CY carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Thus, by studying the composition and alteration histories of these families of meteorites it can potentially provide insights into the physical processes that occurred or are occurring on these asteroids.
In this thesis I link trends in the spectra of both aqueously altered and aqueously and thermally altered CI, CM and CY chondrites with meteorite mineralogy. I demonstrate how these trends may be applied to remote asteroid spectra to examine their surface mineralogy and processing history. I describe how trends in the near- (NIR) and mid-infrared (MIR) spectra of aqueously altered meteorites can reflect the phyllosilicate composition and therefore degree of aqueous alteration. I also report that trends in aqueously and thermally altered meteorite NIR and MIR spectra reflect a combination of phyllosilicate and olivine compositions and abundances. Furthermore, I describe and assess differences between the MIR reflectance spectra typically collected in laboratories, and emissivity spectra acquired under asteroid environmental conditions that more accurately replicate the spectral flux received when observing a remote airless body. I then use the spectra collected to aid in the interpretation of spectra of a range of potentially volatile-rich objects including NEOs visited by Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, main-belt asteroids and Jupiter Trojans. The spectra will also be a valuable aid in analysis of future remote telescopic observations of and spacecraft missions to small bodies.
Modelling removal of sulphur dioxide from flue gas in purification devices
Keywords: sulphur dioxide
asymptotic analysis
filtration
homogenisation
porous media
fluid dynamics

Many chemical filters contain reactive components where harmful substances are removed or transformed. In this thesis, we consider the problem of removal of sulphur dioxide from flue gas using filters made from a porous catalytic medium. This is inspired by a filter, designed by W. L. Gore and Associates, Inc., which converts gaseous sulphur dioxide into liquid sulphuric acid via a chemical reaction that occurs on the surface of microscopic catalytic pellets. During the device operation, the liquid sulphuric acid accumulates within the filter and reduces its efficiency. We derive a series of mathematical models that explore various aspects of this problem and ultimately serve to predict the performance of the device. We begin by considering a fundamental fluid dynamics problem of spreading of a thin film under surface tension with liquid injection due to the chemical reaction. We then formulate a microscale model for the gas and liquid transport within the porous filter material and, separately, present a radially symmetric model for a single catalytic pellet, which we use to estimate the unknown reaction rate constant based on real observations. Although we do not explicitly account for the porous scaffold of the filter, the model set-up is appropriate for the case of hydrophobic material. We move on to upscale the microscale equations to a set of device-scale equations using homogenisation techniques. We obtain numerical solutions and asymptotic predictions for various limits that compare well, and also explore the effect of changing the system parameters, such as the gas speed, on the effective cleansing of flue gas. In addition, we develop a model for two neighbouring pellets, one of which is completely submerged by sulphuric acid, which is useful to understand the long-term behaviour of the system once a continuous layer of liquid forms near the surface of the filter sheets. We also study a simplified problem where the filter is made from hydrophilic material and identify the key differences in the resulting liquid transport. Finally, we present a model for the hygroscopy of sulphuric acid, which helps evaluate the effect of water absorption on the liquid growth within the filter. All the models we develop retain generality and can be applied to other physical and industrial processes.
Improving acquisition speed and efficiency of advanced arterial spin labelling MRI
Keywords: Imaging
ASL
Non-linear image reconstruction
Compressed sensing
Image reconstruction
Accelerated imaging
MRI

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a notoriously slow imaging method compared with other imaging modalities, for example computed tomography. It can, however, produce contrasts and attain biophysical information that is unattainable by other methods and is thus a valuable clinical tool.
In recent years, image acquisition times have been reduced through image reconstruction methods that require less data than traditional methods. In this thesis, these kinds of methods are used and extended upon for improved acquisition speed of an MRI method that is particularly slow due to requiring multiple encoded acquisitions to produce a single composite image: arterial spin labelling (ASL).
In conventional ASL, two encodings are used; one with "labelled" blood and one without "labelling", such that subtracting one from the other gives an image of just the blood signal. Angiography can be used to visualise blood flow through the arteries, and perfusion imaging to assess oxygen and nutrient supply to the tissue. Some advanced ASL methods require even more encodings that can be decoded to reveal more information about the cerebral haemodynamics. An example of such an advanced ASL method is vessel-encoded ASL, which allows for generation of separate images of blood originating from different arteries.
In this thesis, modern MRI sampling and reconstruction methods are optimised for vessel-encoded ASL and other ASL variants, with the aim of bringing these modalities towards clinically feasible scan times, which would eventually allow for more information-rich assessments of the cerebrovasculature and the perfusion state of the brain in, for example, patients suffering from stroke, dementia, and arteriovenous malformations.
By careful joint consideration of the multi-dimensional data, the data acquisition, and the reconstruction, very high acceleration factors can be achieved. This is demonstrated, first for vessel-encoded ASL angiography in 2D and 3D, then in similar advanced ASL methods (time-encoded ASL angiography, and combined angiography and perfusion imaging). A new radial sampling scheme is also presented and assessed on ASL angiographic data, that could have impact on imaging methods beyond ASL, in particular other dynamic MRI modalities.
Quasi-phase-matched high-harmonic generation in gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibre
Keywords: Photonic-Crystal-Fibre
HHG

High-order harmonic generation (HHG) provides a promising tabletop source of coherent short wavelength radiation. However, the low generation efficiency limits the mean photon flux of HHG sources when driven with low average power, kHz repetition rate lasers. The HHG flux could be increased by employing MHz repetition rate driving lasers. However, the low pulse energy necessitates tight focusing, which limits the effective interaction volume. Generating harmonics in a gas-filled photonic crystal fiber (PCF) mitigates this problem, but for both free focus and PCF targets, the HHG conversion efficiency is optimized at technologically challenging multi-bar gas pressures. In this thesis, HHG is performed with µJ-level driving pulses in hollow-core PCFs. Dramatic 160-fold enhancement of the HHG flux through a novel, time-multiplexed multi-modal quasi-phasematching technique is observed at low gas-pressures. Non-phase-matched generation of high-harmonic photon energies up to 61.6 eV with continuous spectral tunability made possible by controlled ionization-induced blue-shifting of the driving laser is presented and fully phase-matched HHG in an argon-filled PCF is explored.
Synthesized, multi-colour ultrashort pulses of light open the door to a new class of interesting experiments in atomic, molecular and optical science. Characterization of these pulses is not possible using established pulse characterization techniques, if the spectrum of the synthesized pulse exhibits extended intensity nulls, since the relative spectral phase of different spectral regions cannot be determined. In this thesis, a spectral-gap-immune pulse characterization technique is demonstrated. Two mutually coherent ultrafast pulses are derived from a Ti:Sapphire laser. An extended spectral gap is introduced into the spectrum of one pulse using an amplitude-only pulse shaper. The pulse is then spectrally sheared and subsequently interfered with the other uncharacterised pulse. By using the MICE technique, the spectral intensities and phases of the two fields are retrieved from a series of interferograms. The experimental results presented in this thesis show that SPICE is capable of reconstructing the spectral phase across an extended spectral gap enabling temporal characterization of multi-colour light pulses.
Political development in Kuwait : continuity and change in an Arab independent Gulf state
Keywords: government
politics
development
change
Political
continuity
state
Gulf
Arab
Kuwait
independent

This thesis is primarily concerned with political development in Kuwait since the 1961 Treaty with Britain. It provides a substantial historical introduction in the first two chapters and then examines the drafting of a constitution and the creation of a legislative assembly, the composition and work of the assembly and its committees, relations with the government, and the impact of the assembly on its powers. It discusses the suspension of the National Assembly in 1976 and the elections to the new Assembly of 1981. The argument of the thesis is that in spite of the impact of oil wealth (whose impact on government and society is discussed) political behaviour in Kuwait can only be understood in the context of the continuity of development from the earliest days, particularly in the position of the ruling family within Kuwaiti society, the tradition of shūrā (consultation)and the degree of practical independence which were established before 1961 and have been modified but not abandoned since then. It has therefore been the intention of this thesis to avoid the general preoccupations of 'political modernization', and to examine political development in Kuwait in terms of the existing relations among the main social groups comprising Kuwaiti society. It is thus an examination of how a merchant-city-state has been transformed into a modern constitutional monarchy, and the way in which its main social groups have continued to operate within a new constitutional framework.
Slaughter or sacrifice? : the religious rhetoric of blood sacrifice in the British and German armies, 1914-1919
Keywords: Britain
War
rhetoric
slaughter
World
army
history
blood
British
religious
Germany
German
sacrifice
armies

In 1914 the language of sacrifice and redemption was everywhere. This thesis compares the responses of English Anglican and German Protestant military chaplains to the Great War (1914-1918). Instead of reconstructing their relationship with combatants, it reconstructs their mental worlds. Examining their diaries, sermons, letters, articles, and meditations,it traces their religious ideals of redemption through blood. It argues that chaplains on both sides of the front shared a moral language of redemptive sacrifice,articulating different permutations of the same idea. That moral language initially comprehended the war as an episode of salvation, correcting a crisis of modernity through sacred violence. War was interpreted as the culmination of the ‘social question,’the climax of the churches’ quest for community, social cohesion, the healing of class antagonism, the reclamation of the sacred. They proclaimed the war as a sacrament, a rite of purification that would purge modernity of its disorders, restore morality and renew piety. They commonly presumed a fallen, hedonistic and profane industrialised world, its social cohesion threatened by godless materialism, and its need for redemption. By blood the dead would purchase a cleansed, uplifted and redeemed society. Witnessing catastrophic bloodshed, the central moral problem for most chaplains was not high casualties alone. It was the threat that mass death would not morally and spiritually transform their societies. As the conflict escalated into attrition and stalemate, chaplains’ increasingly doubted whether war could be intrinsically redemptive, redefining the ideal as a duty of civilians to repay their blood-debt to the dead and justify the sacrifices of their compatriots. Because chaplains were implicated in mass death by virtue of their office,the ideal of redemption through war became more an obligation than perception, an ideal that must be pursued lest the sacrifices of soldier-martyrs be cheapened. Divergences and nuanced differences emerged that distinguished Anglican and Protestant perceptions of the moral and spiritual impact of the war. Intraconfessional divergences emerged, in England over the relationship with French Catholic iconography and patri-passionism, in Germany over the meaning of defeat and the legitimacy of the new political order it replaced the Wilhelmine constitution. However, the common moral language of redemptive sacrifice outweighs the confessional and national differences in their responses to mechanised slaughter.
Muslim politics in the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent, 1858-1916
Keywords: political
politics
Islam
Muslim
sub-continent
activity
Indo-Pakistan
India
state

The decline of Muslim power in India became complete with the abolition of the sovereignty of the King of Delhi after the 1857 Mutiny. In the succeeding years far reaching changes took place in the economic and political condition of the Muslims. As is explained by Hunter in his Indian Musalmans, owing to the unfavourable educational and administrative policy of the Government, within fourteen years of the Mutiny the number of Muslims in Government departments and in respectable professions in Bengal had decreased to a negligible proportion. Conditions in other parts of the country were almost as depressing as in Bengal.
The impoverishment of the Muslims had not wholly resulted from the events following the Mutiny. In fact, it had continued side by side with the decline of their power in India.
The first reaction to this development appeared in the form of the Faraizi and the Wahhabi movements of the early nineteenth century. The Wahhabi movement, started by Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi, aimed at the re-establishment of Muslim rule in India by resorting to a holy war first against the Sikhs and after that against the British. He started the Jihad against the Sikhsin 1826 on the North-West Frontier and continued it with some success till 1831 when he was killed in a battle at Balakot. His followers appear to have remained active on the Frontier till the 1860s.
The most influential Muslim in the post-Mutiny period was Sayyid Ahmad Khan. He believed that the Muslim regeneration in India was possible only after the establishment of cordial relations between them and their rulers. Both by his pen and word he endeavoured to prove that the Muslims were not disloyal to British rule. His efforts helped a great deal in bringing about a reconciliation between the Muslims and the British.
An analysis of grass-roots co-operative economic development in Nova Scotia and Caribbean missions (1930-1960) : case studies in the light of Catholic social teaching and social capital theory
Keywords: Catholic
Social
Church
Scotia
capital
Sociology
Caribbean
Missions
Nova
Community
development

In contrast to research studies, which approach Catholic social teaching (CST) as a theoretical complex, abstracted from situations in which it was applied, this thesis deliberately adapts an inductive method. Through this contextual approach attention devoted to specific co-operative projects exemplifies the extent of CST’s influence. Missionary pioneers created new socioeconomic practices and mutual-aid (voluntary) associations; consequently, these democratic, co-operative practices not only enhanced social capital formation from below but also implicitly challenged a top-down formulation of the social teaching. Thus, this thesis not only analyses specific examples of grass-roots development but also intentionally approaches CST via these specific exemplifications rather than vice versa. These co-operative development projects through self-help, communitarian practices within a social capital-social justice nexus privileged the acting person over dominant collective action, offering an alternative for economic development in tension with both nationalist socialism and liberal capitalism.
Five empirical cases, primarily analysing original archival sources, demonstrate an historical interplay between formation of social capital practices and an enactment of CST principles for social justice within co-operative movements. Major findings indicate that social capital, although varied in each case, significantly contributed toward organisational capacities in sustaining grass-roots co-operative practices. Enacting social justice principles, however, proved much more complex in actuality due to divergence, tension, or conflict between multiple government, private and religious-sponsored co-operative sectors.
From J.G. Fichte's "the closed commercial state" to "socialism in one country": intellectual origins of Stalinism and Stalinist utopia 
Keywords: isolationism
Soviet economic policies
socialism in one country
Closed commercial state
foreign trade monopoly
currency exchange monopoly
Stalinism
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Soviet history
German social democracy
Georg von Vollmar

This thesis examines the intellectual origins of the ideological system underlying the political practices of the Stalinist state. The Stalinist state is understood here as the regime which had superseded the earlier, transitional, Bolshevist state born as a result of the 1917 October revolution. The latter lasted for slightly over ten years. Its successor emerged in the course of a second transitional period which started sometime around late 1927 — early 1928 and came to a close four years later. Each of these two phases of the Soviet project had its own set of distinctive features, and the differences between the two can be observed in all areas of life. While the transition from the Bolshevist to the Stalinist state is well researched, it is, at the same time, insufficiently conceptualized, except in the field of cultural studies, within which this work was done, first and foremost, by Vladimir Paperny and Boris Groys. However, the change was all-embracing and was not limited to matters of culture. It was also sweeping: the revolutionary Marxist ideology, the very ideological foundation of the Bolshevist state, was replaced by something far different. The cornerstone of Stalinist state ideology was the concept of “socialism in one country”, which is known to have been first proposed by the German social democrat Georg von Vollmar in 1870. This thesis argues that this core Stalinist idea goes back to more remote times and originates in the political economy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, as found in his 1800 treatise “The Closed Commercial State”. The thesis traces the route Fichte's ideas travelled through the 19th century: first, from Fichte to Ferdinand Lassalle, then along the perplexed trajectory of the German Social‐Democratic Party’s ideological evolution, to the Second International and finally, to post-revolutionary Russia. It was established in the course of research that, contrary to what was previously thought, Stalin was familiar with the abridged Russian translation of Georg von Vollmar’s 1880 pamphlet on the “Isolated Socialist State”: the copy of this text with numerous marks was found in Stalin’s archive. The copy dates from December 1926, when the concept of “Socialism in one country” was already being widely discussed. However, close reading of Vollmar’s treatise and Lenin’s 1915 article “On the Slogan for a United States of Europe” suggests that while Stalin was drawing upon the sole relevant paragraph from Lenin’s article, this paragraph in turn, originates directly from Vollmar. Moreover, close scrutiny of Stalin’s marks points to the serious possibility that Vollmar’s ideas had a long-term impact on the principles of the Soviet pre-war foreign policy and the relationship between the USSR and the Comintern.