VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Political unrest under IMF programmes: labour mobility, fiscal conditionality, and democratic representation

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.

Keywords: Democratic Representation
International Monetary Fund
Protests, Strikes, Riots
Labour mobility
Advisor: Doyle, D
Anastasakis, O
Computational insights into the architecture and operation of the rat head direction cell system

Head direction (HD) cells signal HD in the horizontal plane in a body-external (allothetic) frame of reference, and are a critical neural component of spatial cognition. This thesis uses computational modelling to investigate their properties. HD cell preferred firing directions are influenced depending on the discrepancy between sources of directional information, with allothetic information dominating up to a critical discrepancy and body-internal (idiothetic) information dominating after this. A computational mechanism is outlined which is capable of replicating these discrepancy-dependent changes in preferred firing direction. This mechanism depends on dynamic changes in HD cell responses to allothetic information and is shown to be affected by salience, defined as the degree to which a landmark has been previously experienced as a stable source of directional information. This model is then built on by providing a mechanism explaining how the preferred firing directions of any two given HD cells maintain their angular separation following idiothetic-allothetic discrepancies, a property known as isomapping. The accuracy of HD system updating solely via idiothetic information (path integration) in examined a model system. Two major limiting factors are found: the time neurons take to respond to stimulation, and the presence of direct reciprocal connectivity between HD cells. Finally a neural network model, based on known physiology, which does not incorporate direct HD to HD connectivity is proposed. This model is demonstrated to be capable of extremely accurate path integration.

Advisor: Stringer, S
Modelling the mechanobiological evolution of aneurysms: An integrative in vivo, in vitro and in silico approach

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.

Keywords: Mechanobiology
Aneurysm
Advisor: Watton, P
Thompson, M
Beyond medical expenditure: estimating the impact of health shocks on the welfare and socio-economic outcomes of Chinese households

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.

Keywords: Health shocks
China
Advisor: Yip, W
Giuntella, O
Adjudication and discretion

This thesis is mainly a critical examination of Professor R.M. Dworkin's recent attack upon the theory of judicial discretion. Dworkin is concerned to attack the theory in all of its forms, but he uses Professor H.L.A. Hart's version as his principal target. The examination therefore concentrates on Dworkin's attack upon Hart.
Following a short Introduction, Hart's theory of adjudication andits constituent theory of judicial discretion are investigated in chapter two. In the remaining four chapters Dworkin's response to hart's views is considered. Chapter three isolates four main themes around which Dworkin centres his attack: that hart's theory (a) fails to distinguish weak and strong discretion, (b) is morally and politically unattractive, (c) is not true to the facts of the Anglo-American adjudicative process, and (d) is the consequence of an inadequate conception of law -- the model of rules. An attempt is made in chapter three to refute (b) and (c), and to determine the exact meaning of 'strong discretion'. An important distinction between having discretion and exercising discretion or discretionary judgment is also noted. Chapter four contains an analysis of Dworkin's theories about rules, principles and policies, and chapter five attempts to refute Dworkin's claim that Hart's theories of law and adjudication must restrict binding law to valid rules. In chapter six Dworkin's alternative theories are considered. It is argued that judges would inevitably have (strong) discretion and would inevitably be led to exercise (strong) discretionary judgment, even if the law included all that Dworkin says it does, and even if judges decided cases in the way in which Dworkin says they do. From this it is concluded that Dworkin has failed in his bid to refute the theory of judicial discretion.
Utpaladeva's doctrine of recognition

Much has been written on the connections between philosophy and religion in ancient India. Most has been written on the connection between orthodox Hindu religion and orthodox Hindu philosophy, or Buddhist religious practice and Buddhist philosophy.
But the religious tradition of which Utpaladeva was a member was not orthodox and its sacred scriptures, the non—dualist &Sacute;aivite Tantras, were taught only in secret initiatory sects. And Utpaladeva is one of the very few Tantric philosophers who does not propound his views in the form of a commentary upon one of the Tantras themselves.
Utpaladeva's philosophy is not intended solely for members of his own esoteric cult, it is written "for the benefit of mankind", to convince those of differing religions and philosophical persuasion that the world view expounded in the non—dualist &Sacute;aivite Tantras is the only correct one. Thus although Utpaladeva quotes from the Tantras in his Ῑ&sacute;varapratyabhij&ncaron;&amacr;k&amacr;rik&amacr;s, he attempts to establish the identity of the self with &Sacute;iva by independent philosophical argument (tarka).
The principal philosophical view which Utpaladeva is concerned with refuting is that of the Buddhist Dharmakīrti. Dharmakīrti's views were expounded in Kashmir c.800 A.D. by Dharmottara, who founded the "Kashmir School" of Buddhist commentary. Even the orthodox brahmin Ānanandavardhana, author of the Dhvanyāloka treatise on poetics, wrote a commentary on Dharmottara's Pram&amacr;ṇavini&sacute;cayaṭīka.
The other important expositor of Dharmakīrti's views in Kashmir was &Sacute;aṅkaranandana, also a brahmin, who is said (by the Buddhists) to have been converted to Buddhism by Dharmakīrti's brilliant logic. Abhinavagupta refers to &Sacute;aṅkaranandana several times in his commentaries on Utpaladeva's work, accepting &Sacute;aṅkaranandana's refutation of the philosophical views of the other schools.
From Introduction - continued in thesis ...

Keywords: doctrine
recognition
Utpaladeva
Perturbed molecular pathways in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is the most common movement disorder and second most common neurodegenerative disorder, affecting 1 in every 100 people over the age of 60. It is a heterogeneous disorder whose pathology and causes remain incompletely understood. Identification of genetic risk factors can provide valuable understanding of the disease process and pave the way for the development of novel treatment.
Firstly, eQTLs were identified that affected the expression of functionally related PD-linked gene pairs and were within PD associated genomic regions. This was achieved by integrating multiple data sources into a network tailored to PD, then interrogating this in tandem with genome-wide association study and eQTL data. Four eQTLs were identified, two affecting LRRK2. The genotype conferring greatest additive increase in LRRK2 expression was significantly over-represented among two independent case populations but not among controls.
Secondly, Copy Number Variants were classified by their functional annotations to identify common molecular pathways on which PD-linked variation converged. Seven pathways were enriched among PD patients, two of which remained so after independently significant variation within PARK2 was removed. However this was not replicated in an independent cohort.
Thirdly genome-wide association studies were carried out first comparing PD case and control and second comparing phenotypic subtypes among PD cases. Enrichment analysis identified two pathways significantly associated with disease onset and implicated a subset of one with a specific phenotypic subgroup.
Finally, continuous phenotypic variation was analysed. Phenotypic axes were identified each representing multiple co-varying phenotypes. Genome-wide genetic analyses of these identified 10 genomic regions significantly affecting the severity of specific measured phenotypes.
This work implicates genetic variation in mediating both PD onset and phenotypic progression and yields insight into the common molecular pathways that may be involved. A novel method of quantifying patient phenotype was also developed that should facilitate future analysis.

Advisor: Webber, C
Davies, K
Characteristics of religious diversity in mid-nineteenth century Warwickshire: a study of the 1851 religious census

The Census of Religious Worship of 1851 was a unique attempt to collect information about the nation’s religious practice in the middle of a century of great social, economic and political upheaval. By 1851, a period of intense urbanisation had resulted in the country’s urban population exceeding that in rural areas. Warwickshire can be considered as a microcosm of England as a whole, with its mixture of rural and urban landscapes and agricultural and industrial employment. This study attempts to investigate how far the Religious Census helps to illustrate the nature and extent of religious diversity.
From the survey of the extensive literature emerge a number of significant questions about the reliability of the Census. This study is rooted in the geographical, socio-economic and religious contexts of Warwickshire in the middle of the nineteenth century, drawing original raw material from transcriptions of the Warwickshire returns of the Religious Census. The spatial distribution of these differences is analysed through a comparison of distribution maps.
It is possible to observe the results of the attempts of the Church of England as it struggled to maintain its position as the Established Church, as well as responding to criticisms. There is evidence that the Church of England in Birmingham was faring much better than in other urban-industrial centres, while in rural Warwickshire, clerical abuses such as pluralism and nepotism were being addressed. We can also see the rapidly developing diversity of religious provision in the proliferation of Nonconformist sects and denominations during the first half of the nineteenth century. The results of the Census reveal the variety of provision of accommodation for worship, including Sunday Schools, variations in attendance and worship provided and also demonstrate clearly the variety of religious experience in rural and urban areas in the county which the different denominations offered.

Advisor: Smith, M
Social marketisation and policy change in China

What kinds of social organisations (SOs) are more likely to succeed in promoting policy change? How and why can some SOs promote policy change in China?
This thesis argues that the emerging tendency of social marketisation - social entrepreneurship and government purchase of services from SOs - can empower social organisations to facilitate policy change from the government. Based on three survey databases, this research shows that when social organisations become social enterprises or obtained government contracts for purchasing services, their likelihoods of success in promoting policy change increased and their influence on government policy making improved, after controlling for other resource and institutional factors.
This research subsequently draws upon two in-depth case studies on Nonprofit Incubator (NPI) and China Foundation Centre (CFC) to demonstrate how social organisations can use entrepreneurial and marketised strategies to promote the emergence and spread of five new government policies in China. The underlying mechanism of their successes is the formation of social organisation chains (SOCs), which consist of infrastructure, financial, support, and operational organisations. The formation of SOCs created positive social change. Positive social change facilitated policy change. This study further applies the perspective of SOCs to examine how the three local states (Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen) re-regulate the social organisation sector, and reveals a wider applicability of SOCs at the city level. Finally, this thesis has discussed the relations between social marketisation and other significant theoretical and practical issues.
The contribution of this thesis is that it finds a positive relationship between social marketisation and policy change in China, and reveals the process and the underlying mechanism.

Keywords: Social Marketisation
China
Social Organisation
Policy Change
Advisor: Kariya, T
Necropolis:  yellow fever, immunity, and capitalism in the Deep South, 1800-1860

This thesis is a social history of disease and mortality in the American Deep South before the Civil War. Yellow fever attacked the region at epidemic levels every two or three years between 1800 and 1860, killing about eight percent of the urban population, and as many as 20 or 30 percent of recent migrants from Europe. With little epidemiological understanding of mosquito-borne viruses—and almost no public health infrastructure to ameliorate disease—the only real protection from this scourge was to "get acclimated": fall sick with, and survive, yellow fever. About half of all people would die in the acclimating process. By placing the Deep South within an Atlantic disease diaspora uncontained by continental boundaries, the project shifts the fault-lines of the Southern past from North-South political conflicts onto similarly formative but overlooked ecological processes in the Greater Caribbean.
Yellow fever and mass mortality are largely absent from the recent historiography on the cotton kingdom and "slave racial capitalism." But as well as being a “slave society,” this thesis suggests the Deep South was also a "disease society": Deep Southerners discussed yellow fever obsessively, worked according to its seasonal schedule, and judged others based on their perceived vulnerability to the disease. Yellow fever, and immunity to it, profoundly shaped the asymmetrical hierarchies of Deep Southern society, with acclimated "immunocapitalist" creoles on top, and unacclimated "foreigners" below. Slavers and their allies argued only intellectually-inferior but naturally-resistant black people could perform the arduous labour of sugar and cotton cultivation in the Deep South, as whites too frequently died. This became the region's chief argument for permanent racial slavery. However, almost every slave revolt in Louisiana coincided with a particularly bad epidemic, suggesting slaves found disease politically intriguing and understood that yellow fever left white society chaotic and vulnerable to attack.

Keywords: Immunocapital
Acclimation
Yellow Fever
Disease
Unacclimated
Slavery
Advisor: Goldman, L
Hämäläinen, P
Causal mechanisms of choice architecture interventions in alcohol consumption

This thesis attempts to answer the research question: What are the causal mechanisms for behaviour change undergirding choice architecture (CA) interventions in alcohol use? This thesis is organised along two dimensions: conceptual and empirical. At the conceptual level, this project discusses the application of CA to public policy; the lack of consensus regarding the theory of change underpinning the relationship between CA intervention stimuli and modified behaviour; and the need for clearer understandings of the CA intervention components in relation to other behavioural interventions. At the empirical level, this project systematically reviews available CA interventions intended to reduce alcohol consumption in public drink settings and suggests new alcohol-related CA intervention strategies.

Keywords: Behavioral insights
Nudge
Choice architecture
Advisor: Gardner, F
Humphreys, D