VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The role of cognitive biases in adolescent social anxiety

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental health disorders. It is characterized by persistent and impairing fear of negative evaluation and avoidance of social encounters. Age-of-onset data suggests that SAD symptoms are often first experienced at the adolescent juncture (Kessler et al., 2005a).
Cognitive models of SAD derived from adult literature highlight the importance of systematic biases in information processing in maintaining anxious responses to social situations. There is little work to date on the role of these biases in youth populations. In this thesis, I extend the work on the role of cognitive biases in social anxiety to adolescent populations with a particular focus on the role of biases in the interpretation of social ambiguity.
In a first study, a cross-lagged design, interpretation bias predicted anxiety levels six months later and vice versa. I further found a link between stress, anxiety and interpretation bias such that interpretation bias mediated the effects of stress. In a second study, I developed a novel tool to probe interpretation biases using complex social scenes. In a third study, I employed this new paradigm in conjunction with eye- tracking to investigate attentional deployment alongside the interpretative process in relation to social anxiety levels. While levels of social anxiety were not themselves related to viewing patterns, the relationship was moderated by attentional control such that youths with increased social anxiety levels and high levels of attentional control spent more time on social emotional cues. The final study explored evidence for social transmission of social anxiety and interpretation biases in peer relationships. Using a novel social network approach, I examined whether adolescents were similar in social anxiety level or in interpretation bias to their close friends. Gender emerged as a strong predictor of friendship ties: adolescents were more likely to nominate a peer of the same sex as a friend. However, I did not find evidence for a link between social anxiety or interpretation bias level and friendship ties in this peer network.
Further investigations using this multi-method approach, incorporating cognitive, attentional and network methods, may be the way forward to gain insight in the complexities of interactions in this at-risk population. Understanding whether and how adolescent social anxiety is unique in its phenotype and risk correlates is crucial for the development of novel, developmentally suitable psychological interventions.

Advisor: Lau, J
Kadosh, K
Scerif, G
Understanding the large-scale dynamics of the interstellar medium in barred galaxies

We study the large-scale dynamics of the interstellar medium in barred galaxies. The interest in doing this is two-fold. On the one hand, the hydrodynamic flow is the source of many interesting physical phenomena, such as shocks and spiral arms. On the other hand, it is a powerful tool to constrain the characteristics of individual galaxies.
Approximately half of this thesis is devoted to understanding the general characteristics of the gas dynamics. There are two key ingredients. The first is ballistic closed orbits. We investigate the connection between closed orbits and the full hydrodynamic flow. We show how they also form the basis to explain bar-driven spiral arms. The second key ingredient is shocks. These can arise at the transition between different families of closed orbits, or when the spiral arms become too strong. Under certain conditions, shocks become hydrodynamically unstable and produce density fluctuations that may have an observational counterpart in the form of asymmetries in the Milky Way molecular gas distribution. We also explore systematically how the gas flow is affected by a change in the parameters that characterise the bar, such as its length, strength and pattern speed.
Through the study of the gas dynamics, inferences can be made about the structure of galaxies. We have compared our models with observations of the Milky Way. First, we revisit and refine the Binney et al (1991) model, one of the most successful models for the gas flow in the Galaxy. Then, we present new models that while preserving the good properties of the previous model can also correct its main shortcomings. These models can qualitatively account for most of the observational signatures of the Galactic bar and allow us to constrain its characteristics, such as its pattern speed, length and strength. However, we show that is difficult to find a model that accounts for all the important observational features simultaneously due to the high dimensionality of parameter space involved. We argue that automatic fitting method are necessary. To this end, we develop a new quantitative method to fit Milky Way longitude-velocity diagrams that is based on feature matching.

Keywords: Barred galaxies
Gas dynamics
Spiral galaxies
Interstellar Medium: Kinematics &amp; Dynamics
Advisor: Magorrian, J
Justice for strangers: culture and communication in the Singapore war crimes trials 1946-1948

This dissertation, entitled Justice for Strangers, is an in-depth historical and socio-legal analysis of 131 war crimes trials conducted by the British military in Singapore after the Second World War (the Singapore Trials). These trials involved diverse participants who spoke different languages and hailed from different legal systems and cultures: British and Allied judges and prosecutors; Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean accused; Japanese defence counsel; and hundreds of Asian witnesses from as far afield as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean.
My dissertation is based on under-explored archival material and is also the first comprehensive study of the Singapore Trials, trials that are important because of their regional scope. After the war, Singapore served as the hub for British war crimes investigations in Asia. Allied judges and lawyers from Australia, the U.S. and the Netherlands participated in the Singapore Trials. Defendants were prosecuted for war crimes committed not only in Singapore but throughout the region. The Singapore Trials thus reveal much about British and Allied war crimes policy in Asia.
This study is organised around three questions: (a) How did the cultural difference between trial participants give rise to problems of language, participation, and argumentation; (b) How did judges respond to these problems and why did they choose to do so in particular ways; (c) What could have been done better in the Singapore Trials and what lessons do these trials hold for present-day war crimes trials. Among others, my findings confirm that participants need to share a certain amount of shared cultural knowledge for effective communication at trial. Cultural learning is nevertheless possible, and judicial intervention can minimise the impact of culturally related communication problems.

Advisor: Kurkchiyan, M
Nanostructure, self-assembly and friction in confined liquids

The work presented in this thesis uses a custom-built surface force balance with extreme sensitivity and resolution to understand at the molecular level how the structure of confined liquid films relates to their frictional and lubricating properties. The experiments involve shearing two identical and atomically smooth mica surfaces past one another with sub-nanometer control of the film thickness and ultrasensitive force resolution. With this, molecular mechanistic details relevant to boundary lubrication are uncovered for several systems.
Friction modifiers are commonly used in engine oil formulations and adsorb as monolayers to surfaces, preventing surface contact and reducing friction between the surfaces. Here it is shown that the shape of additive surfactant molecules affects both the confined film structure and the lubricating behavior, with more upright monolayers exhibiting lower friction. Interestingly, mixing different surfactant molecules can give rise to friction much higher than for either molecule. This result is significant given that lubricant formulations typically contain many different types of additive molecules with different functions.
Measurements made with ionic liquids of varying alkyl chain length reveal a dramatic cross-over in the interfacial layering structure, from alternating cation- and anion-enriched monolayers for ionic liquids with short alkyl chains, to bilayer formation for more amphiphilic ions. Their structural and dynamic properties in confinement are pertinent to applications ranging from electrolytes in nanoporous electrodes to specialist lubricants in extreme environments. The ionic liquids show clear evidence for ‘quantized friction’, where multiple friction-load regimes with different friction coefficients are measured for different numbers of confined ion layers for the same ionic liquid. Most significantly, the results of these experiments allow elucidation of shear mechanisms and sliding interfaces for monolayer and bilayer-forming ionic liquids which differ markedly to those of molecular liquids.

Advisor: Perkin, S
Foreign language learning in the age of the internet: A comparison of informal acquirers and traditional classroom learners in central Brazil

Several recent studies (e.g., Benson and Chik, 2010; Sockett, 2014) suggest that as a result of changes in technology and the concomitant emergence of a globalized culture, highly effective out-of-class, informal English acquisition is becoming more common.
The present study compared high-level, well-motivated Central Brazilian classroom-trained learners (CTLs) with fully autonomous self-instructed learners (FASILs) of similar backgrounds. Using linguistic tests, a questionnaire and a structured interview, the study analysed group differences as well as individual differences in language proficiency, learner histories, behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes.
The key research question asked whether there existed, in more than rare circumstances, FASILs who attained levels of proficiency at least as high as highly-motivated, well-trained CTLs? Furthermore, if the knowledge and skills of FASILs were, in some respects, superior to those of CTLs, what variables accounted for the advantage?
FASILs significantly outperformed CTLs across a battery of linguistic tests measuring a range of knowledge and skills. Test results indicated that while CTLs tended to plateau at upper intermediate levels, FASILs generally improved through advanced levels, often achieving native-like levels of knowledge and use. The strongest contributing factor to proficiency was found to be self-determined motivation driven by a personalized relationship with English often marked by a transnational identity. The evidence suggests this type of motivation, significantly more associated with FASILs than CTLs, led users to engage deeply with the linguistic details of informal sources.
The findings challenge dominant paradigms in several fields of SLA which prioritize expert regulation over independent discovery and controlled, collaborative environments over real-world contexts of use entered into for personal reasons.
A hoped for consequence of this study is that SLA research and teaching practice will begin to recognize and promote rather than regulate or dismiss the unique learning arcs that more and more English learners experience in their everyday lives.

Keywords: out-of-classroom learning
Advisor: Vanderplank, R
Towards a phonology of Hrusso Aka

This thesis is a preliminary study of the phonology of Hrusso Aka, a minority language of Northeast India. Since Hrusso Aka is an understudied language, this general and broad study of Hrusso Aka phonology is aimed more at raising questions than providing answers, because it is not yet known what the questions are. The thesis has six chapters. In the first chapter I give general information on the Hrusso Aka language and discuss the data and the methodology. The second chapter will introduce the sound system of Hrusso Aka to the reader. I will be using the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon (FUL) model for the feature analysis of Hrusso Aka. In the third chapter I introduce this model and apply it to Hrusso Aka. The fourth chapter is dedicated to introducing some salient morpho-phonological processes such as high vowel devoicing, vowel harmony and vowel sequence constraints. The fifth chapter is on the Hrusso Aka syllable. There is also a brief excursus on stress, paving the way for further research on the Hrusso Aka prosody. The sixth chapter is on the Hrusso Aka consonant sequences. In this chapter I distinguish between various types of consonant sequences, discuss their phonological behaviour and raise pertinent issues for further research.

Keywords: Hrusso Aka syllable structure
FUL model, Aditi Lahiri
Arunachali Languages
Endangered languages of India
Aka (Hruso)
Languages of Arunachal Pradesh
Hruso Aka
North-East Indian Languages
High Vowel Devoicing
Tone in Hrusso Aka
Hrusso Aka
Featurally Underspecified Lexicon
vowel devoicing
Sino-Tibetan Languages
Aka (Hrusso)
High vowel deletion
Tibeto-Burman Linguistics
syllable games
Advisor: Dalrymple, M
Investigation of fretting fatigue in turbine fir tree blade to disc joints at high temperature

Fretting fatigue is the phenomenon of combined contact and fatigue loads which may accelerate crack initiation and reduce the operational life of components. One of the most relevant problems of fretting fatigue occurs in the blade to disc assemblies, particularly those in the hot stages of gas turbines. The 'fir-tree' blade to disc assemblies in gas turbines operate at extreme conditions of loading and temperature, and the presence of multiple frictional contact points, often interacting with other stress concentrators, makes it an extremely challenging problems in solid mechanics. This thesis focus on two aspects of the problem found in 'fir-tree' assemblies: i) what is the impact of using single-crystal blades on the contact tractions and fretting fatigue behaviour; and ii) what is the effect of edge rounding on the contact tractions between the blade and disc?

Advisor: Nowell, D
Hills, D
The adaptive significance of human language: Function, form and social evolution

Language is arguably one of the most salient features that distinguish humans from other animal species. However, despite the existence of a large body of relevant theoretical and empirical research, there is currently no consensus as to why language emerged exclusively in the human species or how it evolved its unique communicative structure.
In this thesis, I therefore take a multi-pronged approach to analysing and testing several different hypotheses for the biological function and evolution of language. In Chapter I, I review the evidence and theoretical arguments for each of these proposals and provide, in place, a synthetic perspective which integrates or eliminates each of these ostensibly competing hypotheses for the biological function of language. In Chapter II, I employ the first experimental test of the interdependence hypothesis: the unique proposal offered to explain the emergence and potential coevolution of language and cooperation in the human species. In pursuit of this experiment, I employed a cooperative social foraging task using small and large groups to determine what factors enable individuals to make sense of information from others and converge upon a group consensus. In Chapter III, I take an experimental approach to determine whether aspects of human language can be characterised in terms of honest signalling theory. In this respect, I test several different proposals predicted by the sexual selection and deception hypotheses for human language function.
In Chapter IV, I divert attention away from biological function to focus more closely on language structure. More specifically, I take an experimental approach to the problem of how and indeed whether recursive syntax evolved to be a consistent feature of human language. In pursuit of this experiment, I utilized the Imposing Memory Task (IMT) and a recursive syntax measure, to determine relative performance on each of these cognitive tasks, thereby testing whether recursive syntax may have evolved in tandem with higher-order intentionality (also known as embedded mindreading).
Finally, in Chapter V, I discuss the results and implications of these experiments, and possible suggestions for future studies.

Keywords: Intentionality
Language evolution
Mindreading
Evolution of language
Mentalising
Honest signalling theory
Evolutionary psychology
Advisor: Dunbar, R
Characterization of the interactions between the H3K4 demethylase JARID1A and the SCL-nucleated oncogenic DNA binding complex

Transcriptional regulation is of key importance to cellular processes such as development and differentiation, and it is dependent on the accessibility of DNA in the chromatin. Methylation and demethylation of histones alter properties of nucleosomes, thereby changing the accessibility of DNA. For many years, histone tail methylation was considered to be irreversible but in the last decade two families of histone demethylases were discovered, lysine specific demethylase 1 (LSD1) and Jumonji C (JMJC) demethylases.
The work presented in this thesis focuses on the chromatin remodeling protein JARID1A, belonging to the JARID1 family of JMJC demethylases that demethylates lysine 4 (K4) on the tail of histone H3. Double and triple methylation of K4 on histone H3 are marks traditionally linked to transcriptionally active regions of DNA. Recently, a translocation fusing the third PHD domain (PHD3) of JARID1A to NUP98 (a common leukaemia fusion partner with transactivation activity) was identified in acute myeloid leukaemia patients (AML). Also, PHD3 was previously shown to mediate interactions between JARID1A and the second LIM domain of LMO2. LMO2 operates within the multiprotein DNA binding complex named "SCL complex" (including proteins SCL/TAL1, LDB1, E47, GATA1) that regulates gene expression at different stages of erythropoiesis.
This thesis presents findings of an investigation into relations between JARID1A and the oncogenic multiprotein complex SCL-E47-LMO2-LDB1-GATA1. The study of the endogenous proteins from erythroid cells using techniques such as Co-immunoprecipitation, GST pull-down and Size-exclusion chromatography showed that JARID1A interacts with SCL and GATA1. These interactions were further characterized biochemically using analytical ultracentrifugation which revealed that the second PHD domain of JARID1A is involved in direct interaction with GATA1. Hence, JARID1A could play a role in regulation of erythropoiesis by modulating activities of transcription factors SCL and GATA1.

Keywords: JARID1A
Advisor: Porcher, C
Mancini, E
For the benefit of current and future generations: prospects for intergenerational equity in South Africa

This thesis examines a crisis of governance in the Republic of South Africa (RSA), a crisis which threatens Constitutionally guaranteed intergenerational rights to water, meaning these rights are unlikely to be upheld. RSA's post-1994 Constitution incorporated a number of historically unparalleled human rights, based on fundamental principles of human dignity and equality. This includes the right to water resources for current and future generations – making RSA one of a few countries to enshrine intergenerational rights in law. Under law, Government acts as fiduciary trustee with duties to protect the water resources for current and future generations of citizens. The thesis asserts that influences of Emmanuel Kant, John Rawls and Edith Brown Weiss are reflected in the Constitution and subsequent laws.
However, historical and on-going impacts from extractive industries in the province of Gauteng are negatively impacting upon intergenerational water rights. Acid mine drainage is an acidic wastewater produced as a by-product of mineral extraction – particularly gold. It is polluting ground- and surface-waters across the province. A lack of effective government response to this issue has meant that AMD is acting as a catalyst accelerating the country's already problematic governance processes to a crisis level. As it has no long-term management plan, the government is neglecting its intergenerational responsibilities and abrogating Constitutional purpose. This situation is exacerbated by multiple, often conflicting, understandings in different sectors of society of the significance of intergenerational equity, further reinforcing the governance crisis.
Due to lack of government response, non-State agents, specifically the mining and financial sectors, are becoming increasingly involved in political decision-making and governance. This has positive short-term effects in ensuring that the rights of communities that were previously affected by water shortages and pollution are upheld. Yet there are potential serious long-term repercussions for democracy in RSA as a result: non-State actors are not best equipped to determine outcomes of governance, and this may result in procedures of deliberative democracy being contravened. Robert Dahl's theories inform this thesis’s understanding of deliberative democracy.
Consequently, although RSA's Constitution guarantees intergenerational equity in theory, it is hard to achieve in practice. This is due to the governance crisis that has been precipitated by acid mine drainage, so that intergenerational rights to water are an unlikely long-term outcome for this developing nation.

Keywords: South Africa
Water policy
Intergenerational equity
Mining
Advisor: Clark, G
The legal ordering of the medieval international

Although International Relations scholars make frequent reference to the Middle Ages, most of our ideas about the period are not based on extensive empirical studies. Instead, they rely on a common imaginary of Medieval Europe as an unspecified and idealised system of overlapping authority and multiple loyalties. This thesis recovers a historical understanding of the late-medieval international order by focusing on the fundamental conceptions of the organization of the social held by medieval international practitioners. In particular, it examines a specific community of practice: lawyers of the ius commune from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries.
In doing so, this thesis makes three contributions to the IR literature. From a theoretical point of view, it adds to both English School and constructivist studies of historical international order by focusing on the process of differentiation through representation, as well as on contestation within it. In doing so, it argues for a move from a static understanding of order to the more dynamic notion of ordering. Secondly, it contributes methodologically to the historical study of ideas by proposing a methodological emphasis on communities of practitioners as a middle-ground between abstract constructivism and narrow Skinnerian analysis that facilitates the historically grounded consideration of the ordering role of language and ideas. Finally, empirically, this thesis demonstrates the analytical leverage gained from these theoretical moves by providing a detailed account of the international order from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, focusing not only on stability, but also on the contentious process of ordering. As a result, this thesis provides a new understanding of late-medieval notions of political authority, community, polity, and identity, while simultaneously highlighting the politics of representation behind them.

Keywords: Historical international orders
History of international political thought
Medieval international relations
Advisor: Keene, E