VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Ecological responses of a Philippine Dipterocarp rainforest to late Holocene climatic changes

Tropical rainforests comprise the world’s oldest and most biodiverse biome, covering over 10% of Earth surface and providing livelihoods for over 300 million people. The upcoming consequences of anthropogenic climate change on tropical rainforests remain poorly understood. This is particularly true of the lowland tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, aka Dipterocarp rainforests, in relation to the projected changes in El Niño/Southern Oscillation dynamics (ENSO). To address this important knowledge gap, this thesis aims to elucidate the ecological responses of Dipterocarp rainforests to past ENSO changes using a sediment-based multiproxy palaeoecological approach.
A suite of fossil proxies (e.g. lipid biomarkers, pollen, charcoal) from a Philippine lacustrine sequence spanning the last 1,400 years were used to generate records of precipitation, fire, nutrient availability and plant dynamics. These records were used to explore the effects of major environmental drivers on the structure and functioning of Dipterocarp rainforests, specifically their dominant tree family, Dipterocarpaceae, and their pioneer plant taxa.
The results suggest that Dipterocarp rainforests have been exposed to a prolonged period of enhanced ENSO regime during the second half of the Little Ice Age (~AD 1650-1900), yet there was no apparent effect of this climatic variability on the biomass of Dipterocarp trees. In contrast, the findings indicate that major fluctuations in phosphorus availability at the study site have had a significant influence on the biomass of Dipterocarp trees, though it remains uncertain which aspect of their biomass was primarily affected. Finally, my results propose that changes in ENSO conditions can significantly affect the abundance of pioneer taxa, with the nature and magnitude of that effect depending heavily on the level of fire activity.
This thesis examined for the first time the vegetation responses of Dipterocarp rainforests to large-scale climatic changes in the past. The findings presented here provide new insights into the likely structure and functioning of this globally important ecosystem in a warming world, and provide a context for understanding its resilience to current and future environmental change.

Advisor: Willis, K
Essays on cross-border banking flows, monetary policy, and the business cycle

This thesis examines the influences of global banking flows and its implication on the monetary policy regimes and economic fluctuations in the recipient economies. This work is based on the view that monetary policy shocks in core countries could be transmitted to the recipient EMEs via cross-border banking flows.
Chapter 1 investigates influences of internal transactions within Asia-headquartered global banking group on the monetary policy effectiveness in selected Asian countries. It has been argued that global banks, when facing financial stress, reallocate their internal funds from their foreign affiliates in support of the parent banks. This action might help the parent banks to better protect their bank lending. In this spirit, the chapter investigates evidences suggestive of the operation of the channel for the Asian global banks.
In Chapter 2, the US monetary policy shock identified from narrative sources is applied to measure the responses of banking flows and US global banks that in­termediate cross-border interbank funding. The results suggest that the responses of US global banks and the magnitude in banking outflows are much larger than previously thought.
Chapter 3 examines an interaction between exchange rate regimes and financial crisis in EMEs triggered by a US monetary policy shock. First, an empirical evidence on the magnitude in banking outflows in EMEs in response to a US monetary policy shock is suggested. Then, an open economy model equipped with a banking sector is estimated and analyzed. The model predicts the well-known wisdom in the literature on sudden stops episodes: countries in the position of having to defend an exchange rate peg are more likely to suffer severe Sudden Stops and financial distress.

Advisor: Bowdler, C
Ferrero, A
Characterisation in contemporary opera and music theatre

This doctoral research comprises a practitioner-based reflective enquiry to bridge the gap between theory and practice and enhance my compositional output. In tandem with the composition of my chamber opera, The Exile, I have undertaken research into characterisation within the context of opera and musical theatre, with a focus on both the delineation of individual characters and the context in which they appear. Parameters of the work are discussed in comparison with canonic works of both opera and music theatre. Contemporary uses of leitmotif, representation of speech and folk music within operatic works are acknowledged and their influence on the composition is presented along with musical examples. The conventional composer-librettist partnership is discussed, along with suggestions for how respective roles for composer and librettist have evolved in recent times. An insight into the collaborative compositional process is presented in the final chapter, as my work with librettist Gillian Pencavel is discussed. The Exile is an original work informed by this research and is a contribution to the repertoire as well as an investigation into many compositional techniques presented in this thesis.

Advisor: Harry, M
Real space study of pattern formation in freezing colloidal suspensions

We investigate the interaction of colloidal particles with ice-water interfaces. To this end, the experimental setup we use consists of a directional solidification stage, a light microscope, and thin sample cells, which allows for the possibility of particles to be viewed at the single particle level, and thermally in two dimensions (2D). First, the interaction of single particles with a moving ice-water interface is studied. We show that speed, ice growth facets and grain boundaries are important parameters in determining the way in which particles are incorporated into the ice. Secondly, once a particle is trapped, as along as it is not too cold, it is still free to move. This is due to the presence of premelted liquid trapped within the ice, surrounding the particles in a thin layer. Particle movement is measured by use of tracking algorithms, and related to theoretical predictions, which use a balance between a thermomolecular and a viscous force to describe the motion. The extracted premelted layer thickness and its dependence on the undercooling implies that for the particle--ice system, non--retarded van der Waals interactions dominate. However, we find that the forces in the model should be modified for particles trapped in grain boundaries, and along cellular instabilities, or if impurities are present. Thirdly, the thermomolecular motion is also key to understanding how segregated ice, ice which is devoid of particles, can form in concentrated suspensions of particles, where the pore space between particles can also stay liquid below the bulk melting temperature. We study segregated ice growth both at the macroscopic scale and at the particle level. Regular ice lenses form in a regime defined by the temperature gradient and cooling rate, and these formations cause large structural changes in freezing colloidal suspensions. We explore how changing conditions such as the packing, size, shape and polydispersity of the particles, and the impurity concentration affect this process. Finally, due to the confinement of the system, the particles are in quasi 2D, whereas the ice--water system is in 3D. Consequently, we investigate the ice-water meniscus in 3D, both theoretically and experimentally using laser scanning confocal microscopy. The capillary length we measure is of the order of a colloidal particle.

Advisor: Aarts, D
Dullens, R
Between accommodationism and separatism: Kurds, Ottomans and the politics of nationality (1839-1914)

This dissertation examines the origins and development of ethno-national mobilisation amongst the Kurds of the Ottoman Empire in the decades leading up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It argues that, like other elements of Ottoman community, over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the idea that the Kurds constituted a 'nation' gradually proliferated amongst Kurdish intellectual and political leaders. This nascent 'national consciousness' found concrete expression in the establishment of a series of newspapers, journals and organisations claiming to represent the views and interests of the Ottoman Kurdish community. However, while a growing number of Kurds began to see themselves as part of a 'Kurdish nation', the political implications of Kurdish ‘nationhood’ remained controversial. Indeed, from its inception the Kurdish movement contained within it a number of factions which held very different opinions on what precisely constituted the Kurds' national interests. This included some who attempted to secure the advancement and development of their people within the framework of the empire (accommodationists) and others who sought national independence (separatists). This study seeks to highlight the diversity within the Kurdish movement and, more importantly, shed light on the reasons behind it. In doing so, it will become possible to create a more nuanced historical narrative of the origins and nature of the Kurdish question, a question which remained a major political issue facing Middle Eastern leaders and statesmen today.

Keywords: Kurds
Nationalism
Ottomans
Advisor: Rogan, E
Kerslake, C
Nanoelectrochemistry in room temperature ionic liquids

The work presented in this thesis concerns the use of Room Temperature Ionic Liquids in nanoelectrochemistry. This thesis is presented in Parts, with the Introduction being presented in Part I, the General Experimental Section in Part II, the Results and Discussion being presented in Part III and IV, and the Conclusions in Part V.
Part III is concerned with the critical comparison of electron transfer theories in RTILs - namely Butler-Volmer (BV), Symmetric Marcus-Hush (SMH), and Asymmetric Marcus Hush (AMH) theories and contains three chapters.
Part IV is concerned with analysis of the electrochemistry of silver nanoparticles in RTILs, and contains three chapters.
Overall, this thesis uses theories of electron transfer and the oxidation of Ag NPs to gain insight into redox processes in RTILs at a nano-scale, and reports on the detection of NPs in ionic solvents for the first time.

Keywords: Ionic Liquids
Electrochemistry
Nanoparticles
Advisor: Compton, R
The core chapters of the Yi Zhou shu

In this thesis, I discuss a group of compositionally related “core” chapters within the Yi Zhou shu 逸周書, a collection of 59 texts from ancient China that has received very limited attention in scholarship. The texts in this collection are difficult to read and interpret because of their poor preservation and the lack of concise commentaries. I develop a methodological strategy for the identification of philologically related texts within the collection, which allows me to single out a group of texts related by compositional structures, rhetorical patterns and characteristic formulaic expressions. I call such chapters “kingly consultations”, considering that most of such texts are presented as speeches involving sage rulers of the Western Zhou 西周 (mid. 11th century – 771 BC), in which they share the fundamental wisdoms of kingship. I argue that these texts are remnants of an important ritualised textual practice, which has left traces not only in the Yi Zhou shu, but also in other collections, such as the Liu tao 六韜 (Six Bow Cases), which is commonly classified among “military” texts. I reconstruct elements of the socio-political context of the kingly consultations using comparative insight. I examine the numerical lists used for systematisation of knowledge against similar lists in the Pāli canon. I also explain the significance of the expressions that emphasise the secretive transmission of texts against better known esoteric textual communities in China and Japan. Such comparison allows me to preliminarily identify the communities behind the kingly consultations as based on strict knowledge-based hierarchy, but prone to segmentation. Finally, I position the kingly consultations within the broader context of the practice of treasure texts. This practice is an important development in ancient China that led to the emergence of a new type of textual authority by “detaching” earlier epigraphic texts from their precious material carriers and introducing them into novel environment of manuscript culture.

Keywords: Pali canon
Yi Zhou shu
kingly consultations
Liu tao
textual structure
Shang shu
Advisor: Meyer, D
Quantitative analysis of TMA images using computer vision and machine learning approaches

In the research of cancer biomarker and cell signaling pathways, multiple immunofluorescence labelled tissue microarrays (TMAs) are often examined by pathologists. By looking at TMAs under microscopy, the pathologists can score the images visually. In order to improve the accuracy and reliability of the image scoring, an automatic quantification of TMA image is in high demand.
This thesis presents the development and the validation of several key components of image analysis in order to automatically quantify TMA images. The first component is preprocessing of the image, the uneven illumination in fluorescent confocal microscopic images are corrected using a retrospective method and it is validated on this dataset.
The second component is the design and validation of an original cell segmentation algorithm. This algorithm automatically segments cell nuclei and cell cytoplasm from the images. The validation of this algorithm shows more than 90% of accuracy subject to tissue images with good qualities. The quality of tissue images refers to the problems such as, clumpy and overlaping nuclei, DNA degradation, stromal cells and etc. As the tissue quality varies, the texture of tissue changes. The texture of tissue with different quality was analyzed and a classification model is built to classify the textures.
The third component is an automatic tissue quality assessment algorithm for TMA images. In addition, an original framework is designed to assess the quality of TMA by automatically recognize different tissue types and produce the proportion of each type. This proportion of tissue types provides a quality metric for an image and it is shown in the study that this metric is useful for classify the tissue image quality.
In conclusion, this thesis presents an original the pipeline including the three components, to analyze tissue microarray images. The validation of each method has shown good performance.

Advisor: Noble, JA
The impact of Hubert Henry Harrison on black radicalism, 1909-1927

This thesis focuses on Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927), a Caribbean-born journalist, educator, and community organizer whose historical restoration requires us to expand the frame of Black radicalism in the twentieth century. Harrison was the first Black leader of the Socialist Party of America to articulate a historical materialist analysis of the "Negro question", to organise a Black-led Marxist formation, and to systematically and publicly challenge the party's racial prejudices. In a time of urbanization, migration, lynching, and segregation, he subsequently developed the World War I-era New Negro movement by spearheading its first organisation, newspaper, nation-wide congress, and political party.
Harrison pioneered a new form of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, coloured internationalism. He also inaugurated the socio-cultural tradition of street corner speaking in Harlem, which formed the institutional basis for developing a wide-ranging, working-class, community-based, Black modernist intellectual culture. His people-centred and mass-movement-oriented model of leadership catalysed the rise to prominence of Marcus Garvey and the Garvey movement. Meanwhile, Harrison's African identity and epistemology positioned him to establish an African-centred street scholar tradition in Harlem that endures to this day.
Despite Harrison's wide-ranging influence on a whole generation of Black leaders from W.E.B. Du Bois to A. Philip Randolph, his impact and legacy have been largely forgotten. As a result, unearthing and recovering Harrison requires us to rethink multiple histories—the white left, the New Negro movement, Garveyism, the "Harlem Renaissance"—which have marginalized him. Harrison figured centrally in all of these social movements, so restoring his angle of vision demonstrates previously invisible connections, conjunctures, and continuities between disparate and often segregated currents of intellectual and political history. It also broadens the spectrum of Black emancipatory possibilities by restoring an example that retains much of its relevance today.

Keywords: New Negro
radicalism
Harlem
Marxism
Black
white supremacy
Freethought
atheism
race
colonialism
social movements
Eurocentrism
capitalism
African
racism
Garvey
imperialism
class
Garveyism
oppression
Advisor: Tuck, S
How, and to what extent do Geographical Information Systems (GIS) contribute to student engagement with Service Learning project?

This case study investigates the potential use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) as a means to increase students’ engagement with Service Learning projects. Two enquiry projects were developed using constructivist pedagogy in the local area. They were introduced to a Year 12 Service Learning group within the Geography Department that met weekly. Group A analysed survey results to propose new developments for the local neighbourhood plan, without GIS. For Group B, the GIS-based enquiry focused on mapping crime in the local area. Findings suggest that GIS helped to contribute to student engagement with the Service Learning project; however, it was not the most important factor. Setting clear aims, group dynamics and the involvement of external staff all played key roles in fostering student engagement. GIS helped to develop spatial thinking skills and enabled students to work with real-world data. However, the case study identified shortcomings in GIS, highlighting the importance of instructing students how to use GIS. Overall, GIS has real potential as a tool to support student engagement with Service Learning by using local data and applying it in a real-world setting.

Keywords: MLT
Geography
MLT2016
GIS
Pharmaceutical applications of layered double hydroxides

The principle aims of this thesis are to investigate the synthesis of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) for use as drug delivery systems, and to explore the potential of these compounds to provide solutions to typical pharmaceutical problems.
In Chapter 1, background information on pharmaceutics and drug delivery is given. LDHs are introduced and their structure, synthesis and general applications described. The biomedical and pharmaceutical applications of LDHs are reviewed.
Chapter 2 presents the intercalation of the GABAergic drugs gabapentin and pregabalin into an LDH using the coassembly method. The optimum conditions for the restacking process are investigated, an improved method of anhydrous restacking in ethanol at reduced temperatures is described, and a mechanism is suggested. The stabilising effect of LDH intercalation on the drug ions is measured.
Chapter 3 explores the potential for LDHs to stabilise and deliver catecholamine drugs levodopa, carbidopa and methyldopa. The ability of a range of LDHs to intercalate and stabilise these drugs against racemisation and oxidative decomposition across a variety of conditions is reported.
In Chapter 4, the potential for LDHs to deliver neutral hydrophobic and cationic drugs through the intercalation of cyclodextrin–drug inclusion complexes is investi- gated. A range of partially substituted anionic cyclodextrins are synthesised and intercalated into an LDH. Cyclodextrin–drug inclusion complexes are intercalated, their interlayer orientation is suggested and drug release measured.
In Chapter 5, the potential of polymer–LDH composites for drug delivery is explored. A selection of drug intercalated LDHs from Chapters 2 and 3 are encapsulated in several enteric polymers typically used for drug delivery. The release profiles and stabilising effects of the composites are measured.
Chapter 6 details the experimental procedures and analytical instruments used throughout this thesis. The Appendices contain supplementary characterisation and analytical data that are referred to in the main text.

Advisor: O'Hare, D
Optimal motion cueing for race-car simulators

This thesis is a study of motion cueing algorithms in race-car simulators. Motion cues are accelerations that are used by a driver to infer particular vehicle behaviours. Motion cueing algorithms use vehicle accelerations to generate simulator accelerations. Typically, these algorithms aim to produce motion cues that indicate the vehicle accleration and behaviour, without reproducing exactly the vehicle motion. The cueing algorithms also prevent the simulator motions from hitting the hardware kinematic and dynamic limits.
Existing simulator platforms and cueing algorithms, most of which have been developed for passenger car simulators, are discussed to determine how these can be applied to race-cars. In the process, the distinguishing features of the race-car application are identified. The large accelerations and high-frequency motions are a challenging combination to render in a power and workspace limited simulator.
Furthermore, the driver is required to operate the vehicle on the performance limit, which is a difficult control task requiring particular vehicle information. The study of fundamental vehicle stability and handling across the range of operating conditions is conducted to understand better the vehicle motion cues required by the simulator driver to perform the race-driving task.
With a knowledge of the driver cueing requirements, passenger car cueing strategies are modified and implemented in a Formula 1 simulator. Alternative cueing methods are also developed that address the racing cueing problem. Tests are conducted and on the basis of the driver feedback the algorithms are retuned to develop a cueing system that enables the drivers to execute their tasks successfully.
The implemented cueing algorithms do not consider explicitly the optimal usage of simulator workspace. The final element of this thesis is the use of numerical optimal control to determine the optimal platform workspace exploitation, while minimising cueing acceleration and velocity errors. The solutions of open-loop optimal control calculations are used as a baseline against which to compare the tested cueing techniques. The limitations of, and areas in which to improve the implemented methods are identified.

Advisor: Limebeer, D