VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Human-induced lateral excitation of public assembly structures

Excessive human-induced vibrations of assembly structures have been reported more frequently over the past two decades. In the automotive industry, the evaluation of the response of the human body to vibration is an important and active research area due to its significance in design safety. For example, the results of on-going research has led to the establishment of a number of models for predicting the effects of sitting posture, vibration magnitude and direction on the response of the human body when it is exposed to different types of vibration motion. However, research focusing on structural engineering applications remains scarce, leading to inadequate design standards. For example, current structural design guidelines focus on human-induced vertical forces and assume linear structural behaviour, however, the most widely publicized problems have involved horizontal vibrations and many real-life structures are characterized by nonlinear behaviour. Following a brief investigation of vibration perception and comfort for subjects occupying a vibrating rig-structure, this dissertation focuses on human-induced horizontal forces and examines the effect of nonlinear structural behaviour.
Dynamic horizontal loads of individuals performing predefined manoeuvres such as swaying and vertical jumping were measured in a laboratory setting. The fundamental force due to swaying occurred at the activity frequency. By contrast, the fundamental horizontal force due to vertical jumping did not always occur at the activity frequency. Furthermore, tests conducted for swaying were used to establish the relationship between the side-to-side force and the velocity of the subject's centre of mass. A customized footswitch system was also developed to monitor synchronization among individuals performing as a group in order to form a crowd loading model.
Models of analytic forces were derived based on measured data and used to evaluate structural response by focusing on a finite element model of a demountable grandstand characterized by nonlinear structural behaviour. The frequency spectra of displacement and acceleration responses showed clear peaks at the fundamental and the third harmonic of the swaying force, demonstrating the capability of the horizontal force to excite resonance. The resonant frequency decreased at higher levels of excitation, indicating a reduction in the stiffness due to the onset of nonlinear behaviour. Finally, load cases assuming synchronized and perfectly periodic group forces produced a significantly higher response compared to unsynchronized and imperfect group loads.

Keywords: human-induced vibrations
horizontal ground reaction forces
human-structure interaction
lateral swaying
public assembly structure
negative damping
Advisor: Williams, M
Blakeborough, T
Pu Songling and Liaozhai zhiyi

The first chapter of this thesis examines the textual transmission of Pu Songling's collection of tales, Liaozhai zhiyi, and through a study of extant manuscripts and editions concludes that in its original format the work consisted of eight volumes. After a review of evidence for dating the composition of the collection, the two volumes of earliest and latest date are identified and their contents analysed. There is traced a pattern of development from relatively simple supernatural and romantic stories in Pu's early work to more complex character configurations in the later stories, where social criticism also plays a more conspicuous role.
The second chapter focuses on the life and times of Pu Songling and discusses the process by which the social realities of Shandong in the early Qing period - famine, military campaigns, bandit raids - and particular aspects of the author's personal experience — examination failure, observation of administrative abuses, professional activities, and family and personal relations - intrude persistently into his stories. Special attention is paid to Pu's examination career and the institutional factors which impeded his progress; his criticisms of the selection system are shown to be qualified by passive acquiescence.
The third chapter questions conventional definitions of Liaozhai zhiyi's place in literary tradition. After a survey of the Classical tale from l500 to l700, it is demonstrated that Pu's work can be distinguished from the early-Ming story, and should be regarded as a development of existing trends in late-Ming and early-Qing fiction. In its romantic orientation, realistic detail, and prose style, Liaozhai zhiyi has a kinship with its immediate literary forebears. What links it has to vernacular fiction concern thematic and descriptive emphases rather than the occasional use of colloquialisms. Methods of determining the derivation of plots and motifs in Pu's tales are critically examined, and a distinction is drawn between analogues and written sources.

Keywords: textual
zhai
zhi
biographical
Liao
yi
Songling
literary
transmission
antecedents
Pu
Advisor: Dudbridge, G
The moods of modernity: Germany in the age of telegraphy, c.1830 - c.1880

This thesis investigates the origins and impact of electrical telegraphy in Germany between 1830 and 1880, situating them within the context of long-term transformations in the theory and practice of communication. It uses the development of telegraphy as an analytical lens through which to explore the connections between actors at the heart of the socio-economic transformations taking place in Germany during the period. Both as an innovation and as a tool of communication, this thesis argues, the telegraph epitomised the simultaneously growing interdependence and differentiation between people and places which was a defining characteristic of modernity.
By exploring the motivations and interactions of scientists, entrepreneurs, state officials, and ordinary users who engaged with the technology, this thesis highlights the diverse expectations which were placed upon telegraphy, and the many different directions in which its development was pulled. In doing so, it reveals the ties between the ‘modernising’ processes with which the technology has been associated. It challenges linear narratives of technological innovation which focus exclusively upon individual or state actors, emphasising the cooperation and collaboration across society which was necessary to produce the telegraph. It similarly questions triumphalist interpretations of the 'communications revolution' so often attributed to the nineteenth century, emphasising instead the tensions and divisions which it also generated. Revisiting the themes of industrialisation, capitalism, community and bourgeois class-formation in nineteenth-century Germany in this light, this thesis emphasises their intrinsic interdependence, and the inevitable mixture of hopes and anxieties, expectations and frustrations, which it produced.

Keywords: State-building
Communication
Telegraph
Nineteenth century
Germany
Advisor: Zimmer, O
Real-time monitoring of ultrasound and cavitation mediated drug delivery

Drug delivery plays a crucial role in the chemotherapeutic treatment of cancerous solid tumours. A drug, no matter how potent, is only truly effective when it can be delivered to all targeted cells. In recent years it has been recognised that the poor response of tumours to chemotherapy is in part due to inadequate drug delivery. Numerous strategies have been developed to overcome this issue. Of particular interest to the present work is the application of ultrasound and cavitation, which has been shown to be capable of enhancing drug delivery in solid tumours. These enhancements are attributed to the acoustic cavitation of microbubbles and the effects cavitation induces in the surrounding tissue.
To better understand how ultrasound and cavitation can enhance drug delivery, an instrument was developed that is capable of monitoring in real-time and in-situ the effect of ultrasound and cavitation on drugs and drug analogues within flow channel models. The developed instrument was used to investigate the effect of ultrasound and cavitation on drug-eluting beads used for chemoembolisation, the effects of drug loading on microbubble dynamics, the effects produced by different cavitation agents, and the performance of passive acoustic mapping as a means of cavitation monitoring.
The findings of the above investigations include: more physiologically relevant characterisations of drug-eluting beads pharmacokinetics, the possibility of significant changes in microbubble dynamics due to drug loading, a lack of general correlation between detected cavitation activity and induced effects, and the potential of passive acoustic mapping for monitoring cavitation and ultrasound induced effects. These and other findings also demonstrate the utility of the developed instrument for studying the many facets and applications of ultrasound and cavitation mediated drug delivery.

Keywords: PCD
Confocal
Ultrasound
Advisor: Stride, E
Carlisle, R
Spin dynamics in radical pairs

The coherent spin dynamics of radical pairs play a crucial role in their reactions, which consequently cannot be described by a simple kinetic scheme. Instead, simulations of the spin dynamics are required in order to predict the rate and outcome of radical pair reactions, and especially their response to the application of a magnetic field. Unfortunately, the number of spin states of the radical pair increases exponentially with the number of nuclear spins, making deterministic quantum mechanical simulations of realistic radical pairs difficult.
To overcome this difficulty, this thesis begins by presenting an efficient stochastic quantum mechanical method capable of describing a radical pair with as many as 20 nuclear spins, which we use to analyse spin-dependent charge recombination rates along molecular wires. This enables us to identify the mechanism of charge recombination of both the singlet and triplet states of the wire by determining their relative contributions to the overall recombination rate.
We then derive an approximate semiclassical theory which allows to treat the spin dynamics of much larger radical pairs, since the time required for a semiclassical calculation scales linearly with the number of nuclear spins, rather than exponentially. Using this method, we reproduce the results of the first experiments to show that the outcome of a radical pair reaction may be in uenced by an Earthstrength magnetic field, and calculate the anisotropy in the singlet recombination yield of the radical pair thought to be responsible for avian magnetoreception.
We show that our semiclassical theory reduces to the earlier Schulten-Wolynes theory under two additional approximations, and use this simpler theory to reveal that singlet-triplet dephasing plays an important role in the spin dynamics of polaron pairs in the semiconducting polymer layer of organic light emitting diodes. We derive a new expression which relates the magnetic field dependence of the electroluminescence and conductance observed in these materials to the singlet yield of the radical pair recombination reaction, which we confirm produces better agreement with experimental data than the relationships used previously.

Advisor: Manolopoulos, D
Of the soul and emotions: conceptualizing 'the Ottoman individual' through psychology

This thesis examines late Ottoman discourses on the soul and emotions as reflected by a large corpus of psychological literature under the umbrella of ilm-i ahval-i ruh (the science of the states of the soul, psychology) in relation to the rise of the rhetoric concerning the ‘new man’ – an imaginary ‘Ottoman individual’ educated in ‘new schools’ to be in complete harmony with Ottoman modernization. It posits that the ‘new man’ was subjected to a process of design as a producing unit whether in possession of a soul or not, while the conceptual framework of the ‘individual’ was being formulated.
The secondary literature on Ottoman modernization has illustrated intellectual efforts for designing the ‘new man’ in relation to the formation of national identity. In doing so it has focused on the process of indoctrination and the dissemination of normative accounts. Drawing on that literature, this thesis intends to complicate the picture and look beyond the normative accounts. By approaching the debate between materialism and spiritualism as a psychological argument and revolving the story around the metaphors of ‘man as machine’ and ‘man as animal’, it aims to display the influence of the scientific and technological changes that shaped the material as well as the intellectual culture these authors experienced. In an attempt to go beyond what lies beneath the national and religious underpinnings of the imagined ‘new man’, this thesis maintains a tight focus on the psychological writings of four intellectuals - all of whom gave serious thought to the debate about the soul: Abdullah Cevdet, Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi, Baha Tevfik, and Mustafa Şekip Tunç. By shifting the centre of focus of the rhetoric about the ‘new man’ from national or religious identity formation to the pressing concerns about economic and technological progress, it shows an Ottoman entanglement with science and technology and a deeper Ottoman inquiry into the conceptual framework of the individual. Accordingly it argues that the psychological literature on the soul and emotions bears testimony to the acute concern for how to integrate individuals into the frenzy of progressive discourses in the late Ottoman Empire. This concern constituted common ground among intellectuals from different backgrounds. Yet they held different understandings of the notion of progress and often gave different answers to deeper philosophical questions pertaining to the new man’s soul, emotions, will, and relations with collective units. Such complexity demonstrates that multiple trajectories were possible before national identity formation took concrete forms in a much later context, and that transnational patterns of ‘constructing the subjects’ through psychological studies played an equally important role.

Keywords: Late Ottoman modernization
materialism
spiritualism
History of Psychology
Advisor: Mahone, S
Mignon, L
Harrison, M
The role of cortical oscillations in the control and protection of visual working memory

Visual working memory (WM) is the ability to hold information in mind for a short time before acting on it. The capacity of WM is strikingly limited. To make the most of this precious resource, humans exhibit a high degree of cognitive flexibility: We can prioritize information that is relevant to behavior, and inhibit unnecessary distractions. This thesis examines some behavioral and neural correlates of flexibility in WM.
When information is of particular importance, anticipatory attention can be directed to where it will likely appear. Oscillations in visual cortex, in the 10-Hz range, play an important role in regulating excitability of such prioritized locations. Chapter 4 describes how even spontaneous fluctuations in 10-Hz synchronization (measured by electroencephalography, EEG) before encoding influence WM. Chapters 2 and 3 describe how attention can be directed retrospectively to items even if they are already stored in WM. Chapter 3 discusses how retrospective cues change neural synchronization similarly to anticipatory cues. Behavioral and neural measures additionally indicate that the boosting of an item through retrospective cues does not require prolonged deployment of attention: rather, it may be a transient process.
The second half of this thesis additionally examines how items are represented in visual WM. Chapter 5 summarizes a study using pattern analysis of magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and EEG data to decode features of visual templates stored in WM. Decoding appears transiently around the time when potential target stimuli are expected, in line with a flexible reactivation mechanism. Chapter 6 further examines separate cortical networks involved in protecting vs. updating items in WM, and tests whether task relevance changes how well WM contents can be decoded. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the thesis and discusses how attentional flexibility can merge WM with a wider range of sources of behavioral control.

Keywords: Electroencephalography
Selective Attention
Multivariate Pattern Analysis
Working Memory
Magnetoencephalography
Advisor: Nobre, A
Stokes, M
Additive higher representation theory

This thesis is devoted to the study of higher representation theory as introduced in [Rou4]. As this theory is in its early days, it is essential to seek out modules that can rightfully be named building blocks and allow one to express as much of the structure of arbitrary modules as possible in their terms. We contribute towards this undertaking in the case of additive higher representation theory. Inspiration is drawn from Soergel bimodules which categorify the Hecke algebra.
We introduce functorially cyclic modules as well as (strongly) universal cell modules. Examples include the minimal categorifications of [Rou4]. Properties of such modules are discussed and universal properties in terms of representable 2-functors are established. This leads to constructions and classifications in terms of split Frobenius objects, using a new variant of the Barr-Beck theorem for additive categories. Furthermore, we encounter a new class of modules so called coinvariant modules which arise from automorphism group actions. We also construct canonical cofiltrations and demonstrate why the Jordan-Holder theory of [Rou4] does not readily generalise. Throughout, we comment on the succession [MaMi1]-[MaMi5] that tackles the same questions, however arrives at different conclusions.
As applications, we first show that the 2-category of singular Soergel bimodules of [Wi2] arises naturally within the additive higher representation theory of Soergel bimodules. Second, we establish (weak) equivalences between certain associated universal cell modules together with a categorification of cell module homomorphisms of the Hecke algebra. Third, we show that singular Soergel bimodules constructed with a faithful representation categorify the Schur algebroid, generalising the main result of [Li]. Fourth given a group and a subgroup, we recover the additive monoidal category of representations of the subgroup from the corresponding category for the group without invoking Tannakian formalism.

Keywords: Soergel Bimodule
Higher Representation Theory
Jordan-Hölder Theorem
Category Theory
Barr-Beck Theorem
Advisor: Rouquier, R
McGerty, K
Knights and merchants: English cities and the aristocracy 1377-1509

This thesis examines how English towns and townsmen interacted with the aristocracy in the late middle ages. To do so, it compares the experiences and behaviour of four towns and their inhabitants across a ‘long’ fifteenth century running from 1377 until 1509. These four examples – Exeter, Norwich, Salisbury and Southampton – represent a cross-section of important provincial towns, with each providing a different picture because of their differing contexts and circumstances, particularly the contrasting political societies of the counties which surrounded them. The first half of the study considers links between individual townsmen and aristocrats. In particular, it discusses the patterns displayed by both groups’ property ownership as well as their involvement in royal government, before investigating direct connections which existed between them. It concludes that although links did emerge between these groups, most were short-lived and had few political or social implications. The exception was a group on the boundary of gentility, including lawyers, administrators, royal servants and a small number of prosperous townsmen. These men moved relatively easily between town and country and often had interests in both spheres, but their activities rarely combined the ‘aristocratic’ and the ‘urban’. In addition, their low status in landed society meant that they rarely drew wider urban and aristocratic society into contact. The second part of the thesis examines the relationship between aristocrats and town governments. It argues that aristocrats could provide significant benefits to towns, but only if they possessed national influence and local authority. This combination was originally exclusive to regional magnates, but the ‘new monarchy’ empowered progressively minor figures, and towns ultimately preferred to seek the aid of these junior men. It also argues that aristocrats received some benefit to their prestige and worship from helping towns, and that magnates were perhaps even expected to do so by both towns and the king.

Advisor: Watts, J
Investigating the role of scaffolds for rotator cuff repair

Surgical repairs of large-massive rotator cuff tendon tears often fail. Scaffolds can be used to augment tendon repair, but few scaffolds have demonstrated clinical efficacy. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate and compare several different types of commercially available scaffolds. Three important aspects of scaffold performance were studied: mechanical properties, tenocyte response, and macrophage response.
In terms of mechanical properties, synthetic scaffolds had superior macroscale mechanical properties compared to biological scaffolds, but remained significantly weaker than native human supraspinatus tendon. The microscale mechanical properties of biological scaffolds were similar to those of the human supraspinatus tendon, but synthetic scaffolds were significantly stiffer on the microscale. None of the tested scaffolds mimicked the mechanical properties of human supraspinatus tendon on both the macroscale and microscale.
The tenocyte study revealed that more cells initially attached to synthetic scaffolds with aligned fibres. However, over 13 days, the human biological scaffold promoted the greatest tenocyte proliferation. The non-cross-linked porcine biological scaffold stimulated the highest expression of COL1A1 and COL3A1 mRNA.
Human macrophages generated a pro-inflammatory response towards the non-cross-linked porcine biological scaffold tested. The cross-linked porcine biological scaffold prompted a chronic inflammatory response, whereas the human biological and synthetic scaffolds did not induce an overt inflammatory response.
This study highlights significant variation in the properties and performance of different commercially available scaffolds. It also illustrates the inadequacy of many existing scaffolds to successfully augment a surgical rotator cuff repair. Future scaffolds should be specifically designed to meet the mechanical and biological demands of the target tissue. The pipeline of in vitro tests developed in this thesis could be used to screen new scaffolds and help determine which scaffolds to evaluate in animal models and human trials.

Advisor: Carr, A
Dakin, S
Snelling, S
Hakimi, O