VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Jokes for women: suffrage and the sense of humour on the stage

This thesis investigates the works of the London-based suffrage theatre group, the Actresses' Franchise League (AFL). Examining the period between 1907 and 1914, it considers the immediate influences on its foundation in 1908 up to the start of the First World War, when the League changed its focus from that of women's enfranchisement to the entertainment of troops. It analyses in particular the influence of the contemporary debate concerning the sense of humour, and women’s supposed lack thereof, on the focus and style of the playwrights' work. In contextualising the AFL's negotiations with ideas of women’s sense of humour, this thesis represents a shift from the prevailing critical caution shown towards the politicisation of literary humour and laughter. I challenge distinctions between offstage political activity and laughter in the theatre, as well as definitions of radical suffrage action and the privileging of the tragic or violent within feminist discourse. The League displayed a sensitive and, sometimes, angry understanding of the impact of anti-suffrage humour. In a politically motivated move, playwrights consciously rejected the narrative of the tragic and bitter woman both to emulate and defiantly invert such jokes, in order to assert the strength of women's humour. Not without debate within the League’s own circles, the AFL and the wider movement's various politics are manifested in this construction of women’s sense of humour. These theatrical negotiations impacted on the internal strength of the suffrage community and on its political reception.
In uncovering suffrage humour as a critical area in its own right, this thesis reinvigorates the categories by which this theatre has been defined and challenges the demotion of its political contribution. Bringing together little known, unpublished, and formerly lost plays into dialogue with each other, it also contributes to the ongoing recuperation of suffrage theatre, such as Cecil Armstrong’s staging of jujitsu. Setting this in conversation with more established playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw and with suffrage playwrights who have already received considerable attention, such as Cicely Hamilton, this thesis actively resists the isolation of suffrage theatre within critical discourse. In addition, its reconsideration of Shaw's relationship with the suffrage movement challenges prevalent deprecation of his playwriting contribution that invites further re-evaluation of his literary politics, while the survey and application of humour theory contributes to the evolving and exciting area of literary humour studies. Overall, through the close documentation of the AFL's alliances with offstage debate, a fuller conception of this political theatre is detailed in ways that also capture the variety of its membership, as indeed of its humour too.

Keywords: women's suffrage
theatre
Advisor: Shepherd-Barr, K
Early identification and prediction of multiple organ failure following major trauma

INTRODUCTION Trauma is the main cause of death in working-age adults in the UK. Multiple organ failure (MOF) is associated with a high proportion of late trauma deaths, and MOF survivors have poor long-term outcomes. Early prediction of patients at risk of MOF would assist treatment decisions and allow targeted interventions.
METHODS A cohort of major trauma patients requiring intensive care unit (ICU) treatment at the John Radcliffe Hospital was identified. Data were obtained from the two national databases of the Trauma Audit Research Network and the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre, and from a local ICU database with hourly data recording.
Literature review and questionnaire analysis of trauma clinicians identified candidate predictors of MOF, grouped into patient, injury, physiological, laboratory and management variables. MOF scoring systems were reviewed to determine the most appropriate for use in trauma patients. Prediction models of post-trauma MOF were developed using logistic regression at a range of times from 0 to 48 hours after injury. Models were internally validated using bootstrapping.
RESULTS 517 adult trauma patients were identified from 2003-2011. Overall mortality was 14.9%, with 491 patients surviving more than 48 hours, and therefore being at risk of MOF development. For these 491 patients, MOF incidence depended on the definition, and ranged from 23% (Denver score) to 58% (SOFA score). MOF was associated with mortality, time to ICU admission, and length of ICU and hospital stay. MOF could be predicted with an accuracy of up to 81.3% at 2 hours post-injury, and 84.2% at 12 hours post-injury using small numbers of clinical variables. Age, head injury, abdominal injury, maximum heart rate and the need for vasopressors were strong predictors of all definitions of MOF.
CONCLUSIONS Post-trauma MOF can be predicted early after injury using combinations of clinical variables. Further validation of the identified variables on external populations would allow development of a clinical score to assist clinicians in trauma management.

Keywords: Trauma
multiple organ failure
predictive model
Advisor: Watkinson, P
Young, J
Willett, K
The philosophy of language in Gadādhara's Śaktivāda

This thesis is a study of the theory of meaning developed by the seventeenth century Indian Naiyāyika philosopher Gadādhara Bhaṭṭācārya. It has four chapters and an appendix. In chapter 1, I highlight some of the problems about meaning and reference thematised by the Indian philosophical tradition during its 'classical' period (third century B.C.E. to seventh century C.E). The work of the earliest grammarians proved very influential We tend to associate the name of the grammarian Vyddi with the origins of the study of singular reference in classical India, and I look at his theory, the problems it faced, and the innovations of early Nyāya, Mimāṃsā and grammarian authors. In the second chapter, I discuss Gadādhara's analysis of the semantics of nominal stems, his construction of a 'two-component' theory of meaning, and his criticisms of the work of earlier Navya-Naiyāyikas, especially Vardhamāna and Raghunātha. The main theme of this debate concerns the failure of a realist or referential theory of meaning to serve as a complete theory of meaning, one which recognises both the intensional and the context-invariant elements in the meaning of nominal expressions. The third chapter deals with Gadādhara's theory of anaphoric pronouns. I argue in particular that Gadādhara's use of a two-component meaning theory enables him to construct a theory ofpronouns which significantly improves on the proposals of earlier Navya-Nyāya authors. In the fourth chapter, I discuss the epistemological dimension to the Nyāya conception of language; the Nyāya doctrine that linguistic competence consists in the knowledge of a compositional meaning theory; the role of convention in the Nyāya theory, and their thesis that conventions are grounded in the authority of the name-giver. I have added an appendix in which I examine the technical language by means of which Gadādhara is able to give his arguments great precision. I show that this language can be translated into a certain fragment of quantified first-order predicate logic.
Organosilicon reagents in carbon-carbon bond forming reactions: towards the total synthesis of incednine

This thesis investigates a total synthesis of the incednine aglycon by utilising alkenylsilane reagents to assemble the pentaenyl and tetraenyl systems through cross-coupling reactions. The early chapters develop methodology to access both cyclic alkenylsiloxanes and functionalised (E)-alkenylsilanes by the controlled hydrogenation of alkynylsiloxanes and silylolefination of aldehydes, respectively, and culminate in the synthesis of a C6-C13 bis(alkenylsilane)incednine fragment (Scheme 1).
The C1-C5 and C14-C23 coupling partners are synthesised in three and ten steps from propargyl alcohol and L-alanine methyl ester through phosphorous-based olefination strategies. In the final chapter we describe our first generation approach to incednine which entails orthogonal cross-couplings to construct the C5-C6 and C13-C14 bonds (Scheme 2).

Keywords: Incednine
Cross-coupling
Organosilicon
Advisor: Anderson, E
Tolerating the terrible: censorship, speech, and foreseeable harm

Many liberals believe in an interesting asymmetry. Generally, X does not have a right to pay Y to wrongfully harm Z. But X does have a right to persuade Y to wrongfully harm Z (at least if Y acts through a political process) What, if anything, justifies this belief?
Though this is a central question of free speech, an adequate answer has not been given. I criticize a variety of accounts which focus on the interests served by speaking. I then criticize some accounts which focus on the proper division and use of power, along the way to offering a novel account of my own. I claim that restrictions of persuasion that could be justified only by their prevention of bad policies undermine social equality. In order for two people to stand as equal co-citizens, each one must have an equal say about the terms of the civic relationship and about what they do together, as citizens. Fully appreciating that other citizens are entitled to an equal say requires taking their impact upon the course of the civic relationship as no reason to prevent them from making it.

Keywords: rights
Freedom of speech
equality
social equality
Advisor: Sinclair, T
Calabi-Yau threefolds and heterotic string compactification

This thesis is concerned with Calabi-Yau threefolds and vector bundles upon them, which are the basic mathematical objects at the centre of smooth supersymmetric compactifications of heterotic string theory. We begin by explaining how these objects arise in physics, and give a brief review of the techniques of algebraic geometry which are used to construct and study them. We then turn to studying multiply-connected Calabi-Yau threefolds, which are of particular importance for realistic string compactifications. We construct a large number of new examples via free group actions on complete intersection Calabi-Yau manifolds (CICY's). For special values of the parameters, these group actions develop fixed points, and we show that, on the quotient spaces, this leads to a particular class of singularities, which are quotients of the conifold. We demonstrate that, in many cases at least, such a singularity can be resolved to yield another smooth Calabi-Yau threefold, with different Hodge numbers and fundamental group. This is a new example of the interconnectedness of the moduli spaces of distinct Calabi-Yau threefolds. In the second part of the thesis we turn to a study of two new `three-generation' manifolds, constructed as quotients of a particular CICY, which can also be represented as a hypersurface in dP6 x dP6, where dP6 is the del Pezzo surface of degree six. After describing the geometry of this manifold, and especially its non-Abelian quotient, in detail, we show how to construct on the quotient manifolds vector bundles which lead to four-dimensional heterotic models with the standard model gauge group and three generations of particles. The example described in detail has the spectrum of the minimal supersymmetric standard model plus a single vector-like pair of colour triplets.

Keywords: String theory
Calabi-Yau manifolds
Advisor: Lukas, A
de la Ossa, X
An economic analysis of land titling in Honduras

In 1982 the governments of Honduras and the United States signed a contract that established the Proyecto de Titulación de Tierras, or land titling project. This project was initiated primarily to provide titles to small coffee farmers on State-owned land. Among the expected consequences of the project were increased access to resources, especially credit, for small farmers and increased on-farm investment due to this access to credit and increased security. It was hoped that a greater use of credit and investment would increase farm production and therefore the income and well-being of the farmers involved. In this dissertation, the land titling project is placed within the context of the history of agrarian reform in Honduras.
The titling project called for a baseline study and final evaluation. These were carried out in 1983 and 1988, respectively. The author was able to obtain these data and re-interview the same farmers in 1993. These farmers are from two regions, one of which was titled and another which was not. The interviews gathered data on production, credit, use of inputs, investments, income and general socio-economic indicators. These data are used to determine the extent to which the goals of the tiding project have been met.
A stochastic frontier production function is used to estimate farm-level technical efficiency. Following this, these technical efficiency scores are regressed on various factors such as education, credit and technical assistance to estimate their possible effects on technical efficiency. Finally, simultaneous equations are used to estimate the relationships among these variables. In general, ten years after the start of the project, the original goals have not been achieved. This analysis found that titling does not affect technical efficiency, access to credit, or the use of inputs. Education and technical assistance are the two factors that are consistently the most significant in meeting the project's stated goals. This analysis suggests that basic education and technical assistance, rather than expensive land titling projects, should be promoted to enhance access to credit, the use of inputs and increased technical efficiency.
Growth of Galton-Watson trees with lifetimes, immigrations and mutations

In this work, we are interested in Growth of Galton-Watson trees under two different models: (1) Galton-Watson (GW) forests with lifetimes and/or immigrants, and (2) Galton-Watson forests with mutation, which we call Galton-Watson-Clone-Mutant forests, or GWCMforests. Under each model, we study certain consistent families (Fλ)λ≥0 of GW/GWCM forests and associated decompositions that include backbone decomposition as studied by many authors. Specifically, consistency here refers to the property that for each μ ≤ λ, the forest Fμ has the same distribution as the subforest of Fλ spanned by the blue leaves in a Bernoulli leaf colouring, where each leaf of Fλ is coloured in blue independently with probability μ/λ.
In the first model, the case of exponentially distributed lifetimes and no immigration was studied by Duquesne and Winkel and related to the genealogy of Markovian continuous-state branching processes (CSBP). We characterise here such families in the framework of arbitrary lifetime distributions and immigration according to a renewal process, and show convergence to Sagitov’s (non-Markovian) generalisation of continuous-state branching renewal processes, and related processes with immigration.
In the second model, we characterise such families in terms of certain bivariate CSBP with branching mechanisms studied previously by Watanabe and show associated convergence results. This is related to, but more general than Bertoin’s study of GWCM trees, and also ties in with work by Abraham and Delmas, who study directly some of the limiting processes.

Keywords: Galton-Watson process
continuous-state branching process
geometric infinite divisibility
neutral mutation
age-dependent branching
immigration
random tree
backbone decomposition
Advisor: Winkel, M
Electrochemical studies in room temperature ionic liquids

The work presented in this thesis involves the application of room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) as solvents for use in electrochemical experiments. Initially, the fundamentals of electrochemistry is presented, followed by a comprehensive overview of RTILs in terms of their properties, applications and their behaviour as electrochemical solvents compared to conventional aprotic solvents. The results of 8 original studies are then presented as follows:
X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy is used to quantify the concentration of bromide ions in an ionic liquid, and is independently confirmed by potential-step chronoamperometry
The reaction mechanisms and kinetics for the electrochemical reduction of some aromatic nitro compounds (namely nitrobenzene and 4-nitrophenol) are determined
The electrochemistry of phosphorus trichloride and phosphorus oxychloride is studied in detail for the first time, due to the unusual stability of these highly reactive compounds in RTILs
The reductions and oxidations of sodium and potassium nitrate are studied, giving rise to 'melt'-like behaviour. The electrodeposition of sodium oxide on platinum is also demonstrated
The electrochemical oxidation of nitrite and the oxidation and reduction of the toxic gas, nitrogen dioxide, is presented
The oxidation of hydrogen gas is studied in ten RTILs with a range of different cations and anions, and contrasting interactions with the RTIL anions are seen
The electrochemical oxidation of ammonia gas is studied in five RTILs with different anions and a general reaction mechanism is suggested
The reduction of benzoic acid is studied in six RTILs, and the kinetics of the dissociation step are found to be very fast
The first five studies are all carried out in one particular ionic liquid, and the reactions and mechanisms are compared to that observed in conventional aprotic solvents. The last three studies employ several RTILs with different cations and anions to look at the contrasting interaction of protons with the RTIL cation/anion and ultimately help to understand the pH properties of the solvent. The overall findings from the work in this thesis are that some reactions and mechanisms (e.g bromide, nitro derivatives and ammonia) are generally the same in RTILs as in conventional aprotic solvents, but other species (e.g. nitrates, phosphorus derivatives) show remarkably different behaviour. It has also been demonstrated that RTILs are suitable media for the detection of nitrogen dioxide, hydrogen and ammonia gases. This suggests that RTILs could potentially offer many advantages when employed as solvents in electrochemical reactions and in amperometric gas sensors.

Advisor: Compton, R
Eastern Han (AD 25-220) tombs in Sichuan

This thesis concerns the factors underlying the popularity of the cliff tomb, a local burial form in the Sichuan Basin in China in the Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25-220). The development of the cliff tomb was held in a complex set of connections to the development of the burial forms, and existed through links to many other contemporary burial forms, the brick chamber tomb, the stone chamber tomb, and the princely rock-cut tomb. These connections and links formed to a large extent through the incorporation of the Sichuan area into the empire which began in the fourth century BC. It was in this context, a series of factors contributed to the formation and popularity of the cliff tombs in Sichuan. The hilly topography and the soft sandstone, easy to cut, provided the natural condition for the development of the cliff tombs. The decision to make use of this natural condition was affected by many factors rooted in the social background. The inherent nature of the cliff tomb structure was fully explored, which was then followed by a series of corresponding innovations on the pictorial carvings and the burial objects. The meaning of a continuous family embedded in the cliff tomb structure was explored, as the construction of the tomb was the result of the continuous endeavours from many generations of the family, and the physical form of the cliff tomb was a metaphor for a prosperous family. Following this intention of the tomb occupants underlying the design of the cliff tomb structure, the pictorial carvings and the burial objects in the cliff tomb made adaptations to make the cliff tomb an embodiment of relations between different family members and different generations.

Keywords: burial
art
archaeology
Sichuan
tomb
Han China
Advisor: Rawson, J
On secularisation - structural, institutional and cultural determinants shaping individual secularisation

This thesis deals with the determinants and mechanisms of individual secularisation processes in a cross-national perspective. In this ‘collected volume’ of six stand-alone articles, I examine religious beliefs and behaviours as well as attitudes towards religion and politics, whereby the validity of the main theories of religious change (classical secularisation theory, existential security hypothesis, supply-side explanations, historical/cultural approaches and conflict theories) are put to an empirical test. The main conclusion is that the fundamental mechanisms suggested by secularisation theories are valid and that we can identify main determinants of religiosity worldwide. However, only a combination of existing approaches is capable of explaining a broad range of the phenomena observed.
Chapter 1 (co-authored with Nan Dirk de Graaf and Peter Schmidt) deals with the fundamental mechanisms that facilitate the socialisation of religious beliefs. Under conditions of high inequality, religion acts as a source of social capital that benefits the religious socialisation of individuals outside of the family context. If levels of inequality fall, this ‘social value of religion’ is diminished and religious socialisation depends more strongly on parental efforts, thereby gradually leading to intergenerational secularisation. In Chapter 2 (co-authored with Anja Neundorf) we show that the state in Eastern Europe played a crucial role in de-establishing as well as re-establishing religious plausibility structures, which explains lower levels of religious belief in Cold War cohorts as well as the religious revival after the end of the Cold War. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the topic of religion and politics and the mechanisms behind the support for the 9/11 attacks in the Muslim world. Levels of existential security and income inequality have a strong impact on the preferences for religious politicians in a cross-sectional as well as in a longitudinal perspective. Moreover, religiosity and altruistic behaviour run the risk of being converted into pro-terrorist support under conditions of high levels of inequality and low development levels. The final two chapters show that –in a world-wide comparison development levels, inequality and the Socialist history of countries explain 75% of the variation in religiosity between countries. Furthermore, future developments in religious change will also be subject to changes in fertility. The main drivers of secularisation processes can be identified, but for the majority of the world population these conditions are not met at present, nor will they be met in the near future.

Keywords: inequality
secularization
international comparison
sociology of religion
modernization
Advisor: de Graaf, N