VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The poetry of Anton Schnack

This thesis is the first academic treatment of the poetry of Anton Schnack (1892-1973): his work is not well known, even in Germany. Methodologically the thesis takes a combined literary, historical and biographical approach, exploring the complex and sometimes deceptive relations between his poetry and the turbulence of his time. The primary aim of the thesis is to show that Tier rang gewaltig mit Tier (1920) is a uniquely innovative volume of war poetry which, to be fully appreciated, needs to be assessed against the background of previous German war poetry and the development of the sonnet cycle. It is placed in the context of Schnack’s other lyrical work, particularly of the three volumes of Expressionist poetry which immediately preceded it and which themselves are analysed as examples of a very powerful kind of Expressionism. Schnack did not publish his next volume of verse until 1936, and three further collections emerged in quick succession between 1947 and 1953. These four collections are examined in detail in the context of Schnack’s decision to stay in southern Germany and to maintain a consistently low profile.
The thesis begins with a general introduction to Schnack’s life and work and makes specific reference to his contemporary and current standing among literary historians and critics. Chapter Two focuses on the three volumes of Expressionist verse and documents the cultural circles which he frequented in Munich and the numerous Expressionist magazines and periodicals to which he contributed. The next three chapters are dedicated to Tier rang gewaltig mit Tier and examine it with reference to its poetic form as a cycle of sonnets and of its merits and status as war poetry. The final chapter pays particular attention to Schnack’s life in the Third Reich, situating the single collection he published during that era among the literary works of Inner Emigration, before analysing his three post-war collections.

Keywords: Post Second World War
German
Poetry
Schnack
Inner Emigration
First World War Poetry
Literature
Advisor: Robertson, R
The long term effects and sustainability of supervised exercise therapy in the treatment of intermittent claudication

Background:
Peripheral arterial disease (PAD), affects 10-20% of people over the age of 70. The causal risk factors include cigarette smoking and diabetes. It is responsible for significant morbidity and mortality and its social and economic implications are staggering. Exercise therapy has been proven to be an effective first line therapy for treating the primary symptom of PAD, Intermittent Claudication (IC). The addition of supervision to this therapy has resulted in superior clinical improvement in the short term. However, the long term clinical and behavioural impact of supervised exercise therapy remains unevaluated.
Methodology:
A systematic review, in accordance with the Cochrane Guidelines, was performed to examine the evidence on the sustained clinical and behavioural effects of supervised exercise therapy (SET) in the treatment of intermittent claudication.
Results:
The review was limited by the quality and the number of studies that met the criteria. Only three small-scaled studies were identified. The evidence suggests that the superior short-term improvements in claudication markers induced by SET are sustained for as long as six months post-trial. There was a paucity of evidence on the long term behavioural as well as the quality of life impact of SET. As a result of the findings of the systematic review, a protocol for a randomized controlled clinical trial “The Get SET Go Study!” was designed to more effectively evaluate the short and long term clinical and behavioural impact SET on patients with IC. A cost effectiveness analysis was integrated within the trial protocol to ensure that SET sustainability was more completely addressed.
Conclusion:
The conclusions of the review were limited by the number and quality of the trials reviewed. The evidence available does suggest that the superior clinical effects of SET appear to be sustained in the long term up until six months following rehabilitation. There was insufficient evidence to conclude on behavioural modifications and improvements, if any in the Quality of Life. The by-product of the review-“The Get SET Go Study!” randomized controlled trial protocol should be implemented to determine the long term value and cost effectiveness of SET in the management of patients with intermittent claudication.

Keywords: exercise therapy
supervised exercise therapy
Peripheral Arterial disease
Intermittent claudication
Advisor: Foster, C
Applications of layered double hydroxides as inorganic adjuvants

The primary aim of this thesis is to explore the immunostimulatory properties of a family of layered, crystalline, inorganic materials known as layered double hydroxides (LDHs).
Chapter One provides an introduction to relevant aspects of the immune system, and the context for investigating the immunostimulatory properties of inorganic materials in terms of vaccine/adjuvant formulations. The possible mechanisms of action of commercial adjuvant materials are also reviewed, and the structure, synthesis methods and applications of LDHs are discussed.
Chapter Two details the controlled synthesis and characterisation of LDHs in specific particle sizes. A series of MgAl-CO3 LDHs with precisely controlled particle sizes ranging from 20 to 10000 nm were successfully synthesised, then the techniques used were extended to other compositions to create a panel of LDHs for use in subsequent Chapters.
In Chapter Three, the responses of monocyte-derived dendritic cells (Mo-DC) to the LDH particle sizes discussed in Chapter Two are assessed in terms of viability, surface molecule expression, and cytokine secretion. A statistical modelling approach using the physicochemical properties of the LDHs as explanatory variables for immune responses was employed to evaluate the validity of the model formulated in the previous work, and to establish if particle size could be used to improve its predictive ability. It was found that strong relationships between LDH particle size and certain Mo-DC responses exist, and that these responses could be predicted with a high degree of accuracy.
Chapter Four is concerned with the investigation of T cell responses to LDH-stimulated allogeneic Mo-DC. Various methods were used for assessing T cell division and proliferation, and a protocol for intracellular cytokine staining was developed to probe T cell polarisation. Five LDHs, which have elicited potentially interesting T cell responses in previous work, were selected for investigation. However, using the assays described, no discernible improvement in proliferation or polarisation was observed with any of the LDHs tested.
Chapter Five presents an initial exploration of the interactions between LDH particles and cells. Experiments have shown that LDH particles both adhere to and are internalised by Mo-DC. Variations in the extent of internalisation with both particle size and composition were highlighted by confocal microscopy studies. Through investigations into interactions between LDH particles and the plasma membrane using protease enzymes, it was revealed that adhesion of LDH particles is partly protein-dependent. Further studies have also demonstrated a pH-dependent element to particle association with Mo-DC.
Details of the experimental procedures employed are included in Chapter Six. Supplementary information referred to in the main thesis may be found in the Appendices.

Keywords: adjuvant
dendritic cell
layered double hydroxide
Advisor: O'Hare, D
Fold recognition and alignment in the ‘twilight zone’

At present, the most accurate approach to predicting protein structure, comparative modelling, builds a model of a target sequence using known protein structures as templates. Comparative modelling becomes markedly less accurate in the ‘twilight zone’, where the target protein shares little sequence identity with all known templates. There are two main causes of this inaccuracy: first, it becomes difficult to identify good structural templates; second, it becomes difficult to determine which amino acids in the template are structurally equivalent to those in the target. These are problems of fold recognition and target-template alignment respectively. In this thesis, new approaches are developed to address both these problems.
The alignment problem is investigated in the special case of membrane proteins. These are key modelling targets as they resist structure determination and are pharmaceutically important. The approach taken here is to use ‘environment specific substitution tables’ (ESSTs)– that is, to alter the alignment scoring system for each local environment of the template structure. We show how ESSTs can be made for membrane proteins, tested for robustness of construction, and used to infer the most important evolutionary pressures acting on protein structure. The incorporation of ESSTs into a multiple sequence alignment method leads to more accurate alignments of membrane proteins, and so to more accurate models.
Recently, algorithms have been developed that predict contacts in protein structures from a multiple sequence alignment of homologous sequences. We explore the potential of these predictions for fold recognition by developing an algorithm that makes no use of amino acid identity, and so should be agnostic to the existence of a ‘twilight zone’. We show that whilst this is not the case, our method is complementary to state-of-the-art approaches.

Keywords: fold recognition
alignment
comparative modelling
correlated substitution
twilight zone
Membrane protein
homology
protein
Advisor: Deane, C
Changes in mathematical culture for post-compulsory mathematics students: the roles of questions and approaches to learning

Since there are insufficient mathematicians to meet economic and educational demands and many well-qualified, successful mathematics students exhibit signs of disaffection, the student experience of undergraduate mathematics is high on the political agenda. Many undergraduates struggle with the school-university transition, which has been associated with students’ prior experiences of mathematics which, at A-level, are regularly criticised for being too easy and too different to undergraduate mathematics. Furthermore, the University of Oxford administers a Mathematics Admissions Test (OxMAT) as a means of identifying those best prepared beyond the limited demands of A-level.
Consequently, a study was conducted into the mathematical enculturation of Oxford undergraduates, specifically in terms of examination questions and students’ approaches to learning. Analysis of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) (Tait et al., 1998) revealed the majority of students to adopt strategic approaches to learning (ATLs) in all four year-groups, though the descriptions given by students in interviews of the nature of their ATL highlighted some shortcomings of the ASSIST as the motivation for memorisation appeared to be an important factor. The MATH taxonomy (Smith et al., 1996), revealed that most A-level questions require routine use of procedures, whereas the OxMAT tested a variety of skills from applying familiar mathematics in new situations to justifying and interpreting information to form proofs. This is more in-line with the requirements of undergraduate assessment, although the MATH taxonomy and student interviews revealed that these still allowed for rote memorisation and strategic methods. Thus, the changing nature of mathematics and questions posed to students at the secondary-tertiary interface appears to affect students’ ATLs, though this is not reflected by the ASSIST data.

Keywords: transition
Oxford
learning
mathematics
assessment
education
Advisor: Watson, A
'The digital is everywhere': negotiating the aesthetics of digital mediation in Montreal's electroacoustic and sound art scenes

In this thesis I argue that the relationship between the increasing ubiquity of digital audio technologies and the transformation of aesthetic hierarchies in electroacoustic and sound art traditions is not deterministic, but negotiated by producers and policy-makers in specific historical and cultural contexts. Interviews, observations, and historical data were gathered during sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Canadian city of Montreal between 2011 and 2012. Research was conducted and analysed in collaboration with a transnational group of researchers on a programme of comparative research that tracked global changes to music and musical practice associated with digital technologies. The introduction presents Montreal as a rich ecology in which to track struggles for aesthetic authority, detailing its history as a key site of electroacoustic and sound art production, and its local positioning as a politically strategic 'hub' for the Canadian culture industry. Core chapters examine the specific role of digital mediation in the negotiation of electroacoustic and sound art aesthetics from multiple interlocking perspectives: the recursive relationship between technological affordances and theories of mediation; the mobilisation of digital technologies in the delineation of cultural, professional and generational territories; the political contestation of digital literacies and pedagogies; the articulation of the digital's opposition with analogue in the construction of instruments and recording formats; and the effects of the digital on the dynamics of genre and genre hierarchies. The concluding chapter offers a critique of the notion that digital mediation has shifted the balance between the normative and the generative dimensions of genrefication in the scenes in question, and closes by suggesting how a better understanding of this shift at an empirical level can inform an ongoing rethinking of the interaction between technology and aesthetics among scholars, policy makers, and musicians.

Keywords: Ethnomusicology
Canada
Montreal
Sound Art
Electroacoustic Music
Advisor: Born, G
Asymmetric syntheses of β- and γ-amino acids

This thesis is concerned with the development of new synthetic routes for the asymmetric syntheses of a range of β- and γ-amino acids.
Chapter 1 introduces the various biological activities displayed by cyclic β-amino acid containing compounds together with their occurrence in pharmaceutical molecules and β-peptides. Some of the most commonly used synthetic strategies for the preparation of carbocyclic β-amino acids are briefly described, with the focus on the formation and functionalisation of a five-membered carbocyclic ring.
Chapter 2 describes a full investigation into a highly diastereoselective Ireland-Claisen rearrangement of stereodefined allyl β-amino esters to access enantiopure α-substituted β-amino acid products. The synthetic utility of this methodology is highlighted by its application in the asymmetric syntheses of five previously inaccessible C(5)-substituted 1,2-anti-1,5-syn-transpentacins.
Chapter 3 delineates investigations into a highly diastereoselective conjugate additionelimination protocol for the preparation of a cyclic β'-amino-α,β-unsaturated ester. Subsequent chemo- and diastereoselective conjugate addition reactions of Grignard reagents and lithium amides to this substrate enabled the asymmetric syntheses of four C(5)-substituted 1,2-anti-1,5-syn-transpentacins and two five-membered β,β'-diamines.
Chapter 4 details the extension of the protocol developed in Chapter 3 for the conjugate addition of Grignard reagents to a range of acyclic γ-(N,N-dibenzylamino)-substituted α,β-unsaturated esters. Elaboration of the β,γ-disubstituted γ-amino ester products culminated in the asymmetric syntheses of six β,γ-disubstituted γ-amino acids.
Chapter 5 chronicles the preparation of an azabicyclic α,β-unsaturated ester, following which attempts towards the asymmetric synthesis of various substituted pyrrolizidines using a conjugate addition protocol are subsequently described.
Chapter 6 contains full experimental procedures and characterisation data for all compounds synthesised in Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Keywords: organic chemistry
asymmetric synthesis
methodology
organic synthesis
amino acid synthesis
synthetic organic chemistry
Advisor: Davies, S
The refuge of the World: Afghanistan and the Muslim imagination 1880-1922

This dissertation is an attempt to solve a puzzle: how and why did the poor, remote and isolated country of Afghanistan become a site of international Muslim aspiration and imagination in the early 20th century? To answer this question, the dissertation focuses on the creation of ‘place’ - of Afghanistan in conceptual and material terms - out of the movement through ‘space’ of Afghan and Muslim travellers, and the inscriptions of such movement in texts. Through such a study, the dissertation argues that Afghanistan’s emergence as imperial counter-space and practical base for Muslims was the product of new physical and intellectual interactions amongst Afghan and Muslim travellers, powered by new technologies of steam and print. Such an argument resituates Afghanistan in connection to larger transformations taking place elsewhere. It thus marks an attempt to write late 19th and early 20th century Afghanistan back into global history.
At the same time as drawing Afghanistan into that larger global story, however, the dissertation stresses the distinctiveness of the ‘Muslim turn’ to Afghanistan: how many of these new physical and intellectual movements relied on older physical or imagined connections with ‘the land of the Afghans’; how other movements offered strikingly original visions of what Afghanistan was and could be; how the Afghan court fostered and encouraged such movements through its particularist policies; how Afghanistan’s seemingly remote location, on the peripheries of the religious heartlands of the Middle East and the political and economic centres of western imperialism, made it such a prominent and attractive focus of Muslim interest and action.
By plotting the inter-connections of Afghan and Muslim travellers over a forty-year period, the dissertation charts how Afghanistan grew to become one of the great hopes of the Muslim world. At the same time, the dissertation charts the growing gap between the idealized representation of Afghanistan and its reality. Finally, it illustrates how the ‘Muslim turn’ to Afghanistan ended in disillusionment and disaster, on Afghanistan’s plains.

Keywords: Afghanistan
Advisor: Herzig, E
Authentic humanity in the theology of Paul Tillich and Karl Barth

This thesis maintains that, in spite of many differences and oppositions between the theologies of Paul Tillich and Karl Barth, so far as the problem of authentic humanity is concerned, the two theologians complement rather than exclude each other. Furthermore, the thesis shows that their understandings of humanity, though deeply rooted in the Christian tradition, can provide a genuine dialogue with non-Christian approaches to the realization of authentic humanity.
The first chapter is a comparative survey of the two theologians' encounters with human inauthenticity during the First World War. After this 'Introductory' part, the following two chapters are concerned with divine intervention as the foundation and beginning of authentic humanity. This consists of a study of Barth's interpretation of the doctrine of reconciliation and of Tillich's interpretation of the doctrine of justification. The study demonstrates that Earth's Christological objectivity and Tillich's existential concern complement each other, so that together they build up a more comprehensive understanding of God's salvific act in Christ and its transforming power in human experience than does either in its own. The next two chapters are concerned with the realization of authentic humanity. Tillich's idea of unambiguous life is studied from an interdisciplinary perspective and compared with Martin Heidegger's philosophy, Abraham H. Maslow's humanistic psychology, Karl Marx's politics and Zen Buddhism. Then Barth's doctrine of the Christian life as the realization of man's ontological determination is studied under the categories of the God-man and man-man relationships. Again we find that Tillich's interdisciplinary concern and Barth's delineation of the Christian life in the presence of a living God and guided by a personal Spirit also complement each other, so that together they constitute a comprehensive picture of authentic humanity, which may be called a 'Christian personalist' view of anthropology.
The standard model to the Planck scale

The lack of direct evidence for physics beyond the SM at the LHC has led some to reevaluate the need for such physics to solve the hierarchy problem. Instead, the notion that the SM, or something like it, is valid up to the Planck scale and that technical naturalness is sufficient for solving the hierarchy problem has been suggested. This thesis examines minimal extensions of the SM that address its phenomenological and theoretical shortcomings while avoiding new physics between the electroweak and Planck scales that introduces a hierarchy problem.
This thesis first studies two issues with the vMSM - an extension of the SM by three right-handed neutrinos - and their possible solutions. The first issue is the tension between dark matter production in the nuMSM and constraints from the Lyman-alpha forest data. To avoid this tension, the vMSM is extended by a Higgs singlet Φ and neutrino dark matter is produced through the decays of Φ rather than through left-right neutrino mixing. It is shown that the hierarchical parameters of this model can arise from symmetries broken at or near the Planck scale for two specific examples: one in which Φ stabilizes the electroweak vacuum and one in which Φ is a light inflaton.
The second issue pertains to Higgs ξ-inflation. In the vMSM, a large non-minimal coupling ξ of the Higgs to gravity gives inflation but leads to a possible violation of perturbative unitarity below the inflationary scale. A study of Higgs ξ-inflation with Mh &simeq; 125-126 GeV, for which the Higgs self-coupling λ runs to small values near the Planck scale, is carried out. It is shown that small λ can significantly reduce ξ required for inflation, but ξ cannot be small enough to address the possible unitarity issue. For small λ, a new region of Higgs ξ-inflation with a large tensor-to-scalar ratio r that is consistent with BICEP2 is discovered.
This thesis then studies the technical naturalness and cosmology of a model that addresses the strong CP problem. It is shown that a classically scale invariant DFSZ invisible aξon model with a Peccei-Quinn scalar S, whose couplings to the SM are ultra-weak, can solve the strong CP problem and generate electroweak symmetry breaking via the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism. The ultra-weak couplings of S are natural due to an underlying approξmate shift symmetry. The model contains a light pseudo-Goldstone dilaton that can be consistent with cosmological bounds while the aξon can be the dark matter of the universe.
Finally, a summary of the thesis is presented and future research topics are suggested.

Keywords: Axion
Neutrinos
Dark matter
Baryon asymmetry
Technical naturalness
Higgs inflation
Symmetries
Scale invariance
Advisor: Sarkar, S