VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Research on radiocarbon calibration records, focussing on new measurements from Lake Suigetsu, Japan

Radiocarbon calibration is a fundamental stage of the radiocarbon dating process if meaningful calendar ages are to be derived from samples’ radiocarbon determinations. However, the present limit of direct, non-reservoir-corrected, atmospheric radiocarbon calibration is 12,550 calibrated years before present (Reimer et al. 2009), leaving approximately three quarters of the radiocarbon timescale to be necessarily calibrated via less secure marine records.
The sediment profile of Lake Suigetsu, Honshu Island, central Japan, offers an ideal opportunity from which to derive an extended, ‘wholly terrestrial’ and continuous record of atmospheric radiocarbon back to the limits of radiocarbon detection (circa 60,000 years before present). The presence of well-defined, annually-deposited laminae (varves) throughout this extended time period provides an independent, high resolution chronometer against which radiocarbon measurements, performed upon plant macrofossil samples retrieved from the sediment column, can be directly related. This site was first exploited for radiocarbon calibration purposes by Kitagawa and van der Plicht (1998a, 1998b), however, issues pertaining to the reliability of the calendar age scale of this work precluded the widespread uptake of this dataset.
The work presented in this DPhil thesis represents a significant contribution to the broader, ‘Suigetsu Varves 2006’ project – an international collaboration centring on the re-coring of Lake Suigetsu, which was undertaken in summer 2006 to improve upon the shortcomings of the previous project and, thereby, to fully exploit the site’s potential for both radiocarbon calibration and multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental study (Nakagawa et al. 2011).
This DPhil thesis describes the generation of the revised (‘SG06’) terrestrial radiocarbon calibration dataset from Lake Suigetsu, comprising 647 accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon determinations, and extending across the complete range of the radiocarbon dating method. Furthermore, visual matching of archive SG93 core sections to the continuous SG06 sediment profile was undertaken, allowing the integration of the ≈ 300 radiocarbon determinations from the original Lake Suigetsu project into a higher resolution (≈ 900 radiocarbon measurements), combined Lake Suigetsu radiocarbon calibration dataset, providing a unique reconstruction of atmospheric radiocarbon across the entire radiocarbon dating timescale.
Kitagawa H and van der Plicht J (1998a) Science 279, 1187-1190. Kitagawa H and van der Plicht J (1998b) Radiocarbon 40 (1), 505-515. Nakagawa T et al. (2011) Quaternary Science Reviews, in press.
Reimer PJ et al. (2009) Radiocarbon 51 (4), 1111-1150.

Keywords: radiocarbon
14C
radiocarbon calibration
Lake Suigetsu
varves
Advisor: Bronk Ramsey, C
Nakagawa, T
Numerical modelling of damage to masonry buildings due to tunnelling

Accurate assessment of the damage to buildings due to tunnelling in soft ground becomes an important issue when a tunnel is constructed under historic masonry buildings in urban areas. The current two-stage approach in which settlements estimated from a Gaussian curve are applied to a building does not consider soil-structure interaction and fails to give a correct prediction of the damage. This thesis describes a complete threedimensional finite element model for assessment of the settlement damage to masonry buildings induced by tunnelling in London Clay, and an investigation of the interaction between a masonry building and the ground.
A macroscopic elastic no tension model, which assumes the material has zero tensile strength but infinite compressive strength, is developed to simulate the behaviour of masonry. Numerical techniques are proposed to improve the stability of the calculation.
The comparison of the no tension and elastic models, by applying Gaussian curve settlement troughs to both a plain wall and a facade, shows that the no tension model predicts different behaviour of the masonry building during tunnelling, including different cracking patterns and damage grades.
Two-dimensional finite element analyses combining the building, modelled by the no tension material, and the ground, modelled by a nested yield surface model, give insight into the interaction between the masonry structure and the ground. They suggest the importance of the stresses in the soil prior to the excavation in affecting the ground movements during tunnelling. Thus the weight of the building controls the overall magnitude of the ground movements beneath the building, while the stiffness of the building affects the shape of the trough. A key aspect of the behaviour of the masonry building is the formation of stress arches.
Finally the three-dimensional finite element analyses are described. Both symmetric and unsymmetric cases are analysed. The results show that the three-dimensional analysis gives more realistic modelling of the problem and is likely to be necessary for practical situations, especially when a building is not symmetrically located with respect to the tunnel - a case which cannot be analysed in two-dimensions.
A special tying scheme is proposed for the connection of the nodes belonging to elements of different types, which are defined in their own local co-ordinate systems. Different types of tie elements are formulated and implemented for connection between two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements in various combinations.
Simone de Beauvoir's fiction

Simone de Beauvoir's fiction is still a largely unexplored field. This thesis offers new readings of her whole fictional corpus, using as critical lenses Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis in an ironically polemical move : vehemently anti-Freudian at the beginning of her career, Beauvoir denied the validity of his theories. Revealingly, however, her fiction tells a different tale. It is this untold Beauvoirean story I set out to tell in my study, which unfolds on three levels of critical interpretation.
Firstly, using her own autobiographical admissions I examine her resolute resistance to psychoanalysis and offer possible reasons for her initial violent disavowal of its concepts. Secondly, I trace her explicit engagement with psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline through a chronological examination of her fiction, and, finally, I employ psychoanalytic literary theory as a magnifying optic onto her entire fictional output, thus offering new interpretations of her most underread texts.
My conclusions are as follows : Beauvoir's resistance to psychoanalysis in fact stemmed from her own experience; by denying its value, she could also deny her own vulnerability, since the deep psychological damage caused by her unhappy childhood was still present in the strata of her own unconscious. Secondly, the thematic development of her fiction parallels the gradual acceptance of psychoanalysis as a valid clinical discipline following her self-analysis throughout her autobiographical creations - in her final two works, childhood and madness are laced together in a potent thematic explosion of her own articulated neuroses. And finally, the obsessive textual patternings betray her own repressed fears : throughout every fictional text, Oedipal triangles, fragmented identity and psychological breakdown play against each other against the backdrop of the symbiotic lure of idealised love. I thus hope to prove the relevance psychoanalysis has with regard to Beauvoir, despite her professed resistance to it.
Aspirations, education and inequality in England

The concept of aspiration is central to current policy debates about educational and social inequality in the UK. Although aspirations have long been of interest to social scientists there is still uncertainty about how much aspirations influence outcomes and the factors that shape educational and occupational aspirations. I contribute to this policy debate and area of study by examining in detail the mechanisms that shape aspirations and the meaning that young people attach to them. It is often claimed that disadvantaged young people suffer from 'poverty of aspirations'. Contrary to such claims, my findings show that the vast majority of students hold high aspirations for pursuing further academic qualifications, including those from highly disadvantaged backgrounds. I therefore question the grounds for treating 'poverty of aspirations' as a major social problem that should be tackled through interventions designed to raise them.
In this mixed methods study I draw on both quantitative and qualitative sources of data. The quantitative data is from the Effective Provision Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education project (EPPSE). I examine the factors that are predictive of students holding high aspirations at the age of 14. The qualitative data I draw on is from twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with 16-18 years old from a sixth form college in East London. I contribute to the literature by showing in detail how aspirations are shaped by individual, family, school and neighbourhood level processes. In particular, I also show how important family life is in shaping aspirations and that in order to understand aspirations we should focus on the meaning young people attach to them. My findings suggest that our current models of aspirations are in need of refinement because they underestimate how high the aspirations of young people are and therefore struggle to explain how they are related to students' social backgrounds.

Keywords: inequality
education
aspirations
youth
Advisor: Furlong, J
Word and object in Lucretius: Epicurean linguistics in theory and practice

This thesis combines a philosophical interpretation of Epicurean attitudes to language with literary analysis of the language of DRN. Chapters 1-2 describe Epicurean attitudes to diachronic and synchronic linguistic phenomena. In the first chapter I claim that the Epicurean account of the first stage of the development of language involves pre-rational humans acting under a ‘strong’ form of compulsion. The analogies with which Lucretius describes this process were motivated by a structural similarity between the Epicurean accounts of phylogenetic and ontogenetic psychology. Chapter 2 explores the Epicurean account of word use and recognition, central to which are ‘conceptions’. These are attitudes which express propositions; they are not mental images. Προλήψεις, a special class of conception, are self-evidently true basic beliefs about how objects in the world are categorized which, alongside the non-doxastic criteria of perceptions and feelings, play a foundational role in enquiry. Chapter 3 offers a reconstruction of an Epicurean theory of metaphor. Metaphor, for Epicureans, involves the subordination of additional conceptions to words to create secondary meanings. Secondary meanings are to be understood by referring back to primary meanings. Accordingly, Lucretius’ use of metaphor regularly involves the juxtaposition in the text of primary and secondary uses of terms. An account of conceptual metaphor in DRN is given in which the various conceptual domains from which Lucretius draws his metaphorical language are mapped and explored. Chapter 4 presents a new argument against ‘atomological’ readings of Lucretius’ atoms/letters analogies. Lucretian implicit etymologies involve the illustration, via juxtaposition, of language change across time. This is fully in keeping with the Epicurean account of language development. Chapter 5 describes Lucretius’ reflections on and interactions with the Greek language. I suggest that the study of lexical Hellenisms in DRN must be sensitive to the distinction between lexical borrowing and linguistic code-switching. I then give an account of morphological calquing in the poem, presenting it as a significant but overlooked strategy for Lucretian vocabulary-formation.

Keywords: language theory
Epicurus
Lucretius
Advisor: Reinhardt, T
Money in the Roman Empire from Hadrian to the Severi: A study of attitudes and practice

The present study offers an in-depth examination of the institutional framework within which money operated as an economic agent in the Roman empire. Analyses focus on Classical Roman Law as reflected in the writings of Roman jurists from the second and early-third centuries CE. The legal sources are augmented by documentary materials, which give independent, albeit sporadic, evidence for actual practice. The thesis follows current trends in economic history to adopt approaches advanced by New Institutional Economics (NIE), while generally accepting Keynesian claims for the endogenous nature of money. Its innovative contribution is in suggesting a complexity-oriented approach to modelling the behaviour of money in the Roman empire; seeing money as a complex economic phenomenon, i.e. as a diverse and manifold apparatus which allows for new patterns of activity to be created by individuals, who self-adjust their use of it to the continuously evolving system in which they operate.
The thesis is divided into four parts. The first is introductory. The second concerns the legal institutional framework for economic interaction; with discussions generally organised according to Roman legal categorisation, and considers developments in the role allocated to money in legal definitions for exchange transaction. The third part examines two study-cases of money-related institutions, namely, the instrument of interest, and interest-bearing deposits, demonstrating how money stimulated the interconnected dynamics within and between legal traditions operating under Roman regime. The fourth and last part is dedicated to a more general analysis of the complex nature of Roman money, attempting to model the historical example of Roman money with the help of complexity-oriented visualisations.

Keywords: Roman economy
monetary history
Roman law
new institutional economics
Advisor: Bowman, AK
Understanding vaccine induced protective immunity to Mycobacterium tuberculosis

The current worldwide epidemic of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection is a huge global health problem. Widespread BCG vaccination remains a useful tool in combating this epidemic; however, its variable efficacy requires urgent development of novel vaccines against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Such a candidate vaccine is a serotype 5 adenovirus expressing antigen 85A from M. tuberculosis (Ad85A). In animal models Ad85A confers significant protection when administered intra-nasally. The work in this thesis demonstrates that intra-nasal immunisation with Ad85A results in inhibition of M. tuberculosis growth in the lung early after infection, in contrast to the late inhibition induced by parenterally administered vaccines. Early inhibition correlates with the presence in the lung of a highly activated population of antigen-specific CD8 T cells, maintained for at least 6 months post-immunisation by persistent antigen. For intra-nasal Ad85A to be effective, the vaccine must be delivered into the lower respiratory tract, as immunisation targeting only the nasal-associated lymphoid tissue (NALT) does not result in protection. Following a change of animal facility, the lung immune response to intra-dermal immunisation with Ad85A increased and this route of immunisation now induced protection, though growth of M. tuberculosis was inhibited only late after infection. However, this response and protection can be altered by exposure to environmental mycobacteria. Further experiments showed that simultaneous respiratory and parenteral immunisations (SIM) act additively, where local lung immunity inhibits the growth of M. tuberculosis early after infection and systemic immunity protects later. SIM regimes generate greatly improved protection over either immunisation alone and do not depend on priming and boosting.

Keywords: Vaccine
T cell
Tuberculosis
Lung
Advisor: Beverley, P
Tchilian, E
Sattentau, Q
Child assent to clinical research participation: how to determine a child's ability to assent

Assent, currently defined as “a child’s affirmative agreement”, is a way in which some children are included in the decision-making process regarding their participation in clinical research. Current guidelines for paediatric research do not provide clear directions for how assent should be handled, resulting in confusion among researchers. The goal of this research project was two-fold: to examine the ethical arguments for assent with a view to developing concrete moral justification for its being required, and to develop a framework of significant issues for an investigator to consider when deciding whether to gain assent from an individual child.
After an in-depth analysis, it was determined that the ethical justification for assent arises from the researcher’s dual obligations to the child and his parents. A child’s parents are responsible for determining when and how he will develop his decision-making ability. The researcher has an obligation to engage with the child in a manner that complements their pedagogical style, while also treating the child as a being of moral worth. As a child’s family context has an influence on his participation in medical decision-making, further research on children’s daily decision-making within their families is needed.
To this end, a three-phase research agenda was designed: a qualitative focus group study, a quantitative questionnaire study, and a discussion panel with paediatric experts. The children in these studies clearly desired to make decisions but did not express an interest in having complete control. They expected their parents to provide them with decision-making guidance in most aspects of their lives. Data collected from parents illustrated that they often tried to involve their children in decisions by providing them with limited options from which to choose and encouraging family discussion. Participants in the discussion panel stated that they did not expect children to make an independent decision regarding medical care, but they might attempt to give children smaller decisions, such as the arm used to provide a blood sample.
These results indicate that the definition of assent should be revised, emphasising the child’s involvement in the overall decision making process, without an expectation of an “affirmative agreement”, likely mimicking a familiar decision-making setting from his family context. This could then be documented in the child’s clinical notes through a brief description of all relevant interactions and/or discussions with the child, resulting in an accurate portrayal of the entire assent process.

Keywords: assent
clinical research
paediatrics
consent
bioethics
Advisor: Pollard, A
Fitzpatrick, R
Sheehan, M
The hypothetical method in Plato's middle dialogues

The purpose of this dissertation is to offer an interpretation of Plato's hypothetical method in his middle dialogues. The hypothetical method is given in three accounts, one in the Meno, the Phaedo and the Republic.
These three accounts of the method besides their affinities, seem to present some differences. The first main problem is to see whether we can speak of one single method, or of three different hypothetical method. Plato, in the Meno (86e) says that his method is similar to one which the geometers use and gives as an elucidation of it, an obscure geometrical problem to which I offer a new solution. The second main problem of this dissertation is to examine whether there is any relation (and if there is, of what kind) between Plato's accounts of the hypothetical method and the various methodologies in Greek geometry at that time.
I show In this dissertation that we have one method, in a broad sense, that employs hypotheses and proceeds in two ways: firstly, a way upwards (or backwards) towards the premisses of the argument or towards prior questions and, secondly, a way downwards from the premisses to the desired conclusion. The upward way is a heuristic process, whilst the downward one is deductive. Although we have essentially one method in all three dialogues, it is somewhat differentiated from one dialogue to the next (and in particular between the Phaedo and the Republic). In the three accounts of the hypothetical method, I see three stages of an evolutionary process similar to a corresponding one which took place in the evolution of the method of Indirect proof in geometry. More precisely, I argue that the three accounts of Plato's method reflect three corresponding stages in the evolution of the reductive method of Hippocrates of Chios (apagoge) to the geometrical method of analysis and synthesis.
I argue furthermore, as regards the relation between Plato's philosophy and mathematics, that the axiomatization of geometry had an Impact on Plato's conception of knowledge and upon his conception of dialectic. Moreover, I try to show that we have good reasons to suppose that Plato proposed a programme of reducing the principles of mathematics into the fewest possible and his contribution to this programme was decisive.
There is another problem regarding Plato's hypothetical method. In his middle dialogues, Plato clearly speaks about a new philosophical method of great importance and he gives extensive theoretical accounts of it. The strange thing is that it seems (and here almost all scholars agree) that nowhere does he apply his method (with the exception of a small-scale application of It In the Meno). However, this does not seem very likely. In chapters V and VI, I shall argue that we have extensive applications of the method in both the Phaedo and the Republic.