VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Sedimentation studies in the silurian rocks of north-west Galway, Eire

The Silurian rocks of north-west Galway are a clastic sequence at least 2700 m thick resting unconformably on Connemara Schist (Dalradian) in the south and on Ordovlcian rocks in the north-east. The full thickness of Silurian is not seen, as in the west it is aver thrust by Ordoviclan strata, and in the east the younger beds have been removed by erosion.
The earliest Silurian rocks (Upper Llandoverian) were probably deposited under terrestrial and deltaic conditions, and were followed by a transgression during which fossiliferous shallow marine sediments accumulated. The overlying Wenlockian succession consists of basal boulder beds and a great thickness (approximately 1500 m) of graded sandstones, passing up into shallow marine fossiliferous siltstone and sandstone. The youngest beds are sparsely-fossiliferous red siltstones and mudstones.
The present study is limited to the Wenlockian rocks of the Killary Harbour area, i.e., those above the lowermost terrestrial and shallow marine deposits. The stratigraphy is revised, and new subdivisions proposed. The name Upper Owenduff Group (McKerrow and Campbell, 1960) is retained, but the upper limit of the group is redefined to exclude the upper fossiliferous shallow marine sediments and is divided into two new formations, the Lettergesh and the Glencraff, consisting dominantly of graded sandstones. A new group name, the Killary Harbour Group, is proposed for the uppermost shallow marine portions of the Wenlockian. It comprises the newly-defined fossiliferous Lough Muck Formation, and the Sal rock Formation, with its characteristic red beds ... [see pdf file for full abstract].
The development of the factor distribution of income and profitability in West Germany, 1945-1973

This study seeks to explain why the West German economy, one of the most successful industrialized economies in the post-war period, exhibited a trend decline in the share and rate of profit.
The contribution of three theories to the analysis of profitability is assessed. Neoclassical theory, especially the vintage production model, is used to analyse the adjustment of the structure of production to a slowdown in the growth rate of the labour force. Neo-Keynesian theory contributes by drawing attention to the authorities' aggregate demand management stance. The Kaleckian model focuses on the role of changes in oligopolistic price-setting behaviour and union bargaining power. This model is extended to an open economy and the effect on distribution of exchange rate changes is analyzed.
Series for profit shares and rates are constructed from the German national accounts. Conceptual problems in relating accounting data to economic concepts of factor shares and rates of return are investigated. New measures of the "warranted" real wage increase are developed.
An examination of the reconstruction of the German economy after 1945 shows how profitability was restored. Kornai's concept of "vegetative control" is used to throw new light on the functioning of the economy up to the Currency Reform.
The subsequent pattern of development of the German economy is traced. Interpretations of trends in profitability in the course of policy discussions by the Bundesbank, government, Council of Economic Experts, unions and business associations are analyzed.
A synthetic hypothesis is constructed to account for the pattern of manufacturing profitability. The explanatory role of labour shortage, growing openness, union bargaining power and exchange rate changes is confirmed. Set in the context of institutional and policy changes, these factors provide a more satisfying description of the determinants of profitability than previous, frequently monocausal, explanations.
The influence of emotional stimuli on cognitive processing during transient induced mood states

Selective attention is a mechanism used to allocate resources to information processing. Both mood states and emotionally salient stimuli can influence which information is selectively attended. This information is subsequently processed in a more elaborative manner and affects task performance. The experiments presented in this thesis explore the influence of mood and emotional stimuli on selective attention and consequently task performance.
Mood induction procedures were used to induce transient neutral, sad, and happy mood states in healthy volunteers. A systematic review and meta-analysis of 41 studies using sad mood induction procedures showed cognitive impairments in performance in the context of task neutral stimuli. In contrast biases in attention towards mood-congruent negative stimuli led to improved task performance.
A series of three behavioural experiments with 197 participants demonstrated that participants made decisions on the basis of less information when that information was preceded by emotional but not neutral stimuli. Induced mood state did not affect performance.
The behavioural and neural correlates of visual attentional processing to emotional stimuli were explored using magnetoencephalography in 24 healthy participants following sad, happy, and neutral mood induction procedures. The M300, a component associated with selective attention, had greater amplitude following presentation of negative compared with positive stimuli, which was associated with improved task performance. Reduced M300 amplitude and impairments in performance occurred following sad mood induction procedures.
The experiments presented in this thesis demonstrate prioritized processing of emotional information and provide some evidence for impaired performance following sad mood induction procedures.

Keywords: reasoning
mood induction
magnetoencephalography
attention
emotion
memory
depression
Advisor: Ebmeier, K
Braeutigam, S
Women and the framed-novelle sequence in eighteenth-century England: clothing instruction with delight

English women writers of the eighteenth century manifested enthusiasm for a form best described as a framed-novelle sequence, that is, a form in which conversations between characters/narrators are interspersed with embedded narratives. This thesis argues that the framed-novelle, with its distinctive juxtaposition of narrative and critical conversation facilitated feminine intervention in the period’s political, social, and literary debates. It demonstrates that Delarivier Manley, Jane Barker, Eliza Haywood, Sarah Scott, Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier used the framed-novelle sequence to develop a feminine but nonetheless authoritative socio-critical voice which allowed them not only to intervene in contemporary literary debates about the risks and rewards of reading fictions (especially with regards to the wider significance of the feminocentric and apparently trivial matter of amatory, romantic tales)but also to construct timely argument about the effect of fictional exemplarity on readers. Consideration of the literary and cultural contexts of the framed-novelle’s production, specifically its relation to other forms of narrative sequences such as the oriental tale and the fairy tale collection and to the period’s ideals of sociable conversation and critical practice also allows this thesis to identify the framed-novelle’s importance within the larger field of eighteenth-century literary development. Through close readings in each main chapter of an earlier and later framed-novelle by each author, this thesis explores the distinctiveness and internal cohesion of the framed-novelle as a subgenre, while also recognizing the particularity of each writer’s protofeminist perspective on their accumulation of feminocentric tales.

Keywords: tale sequences
women
Advisor: Ballaster, R
Some problems in the theory &amp; application of graphical models

A graphical model is simply a representation of the results of an analysis of relationships between sets of variables. It can include the study of the dependence of one variable, or a set of variables on another variable or sets of variables, and can be extended to include variables which could be considered as intermediate to the others. This leads to the concept of representing these chains of relationships by means of a graph; where variables are represented by vertices, and relationships between the variables are represented by edges. These edges can be either directed or undirected, depending upon the type of relationship being represented.
The thesis investigates a number of outstanding problems in the area of statistical modelling, with particular emphasis on representing the results in terms of a graph. The thesis will study models for multivariate discrete data and in the case of binary responses, some theoretical results are given on the relationship between two common models. In the more general setting of multivariate discrete responses, a general class of models is studied and an approximation to the maximum likelihood estimates in these models is proposed.
This thesis also addresses the problem of measurement errors. An investigation into the effect that measurement error has on sample size calculations is given with respect to a general measurement error specification in both linear and binary regression models.
Finally, the thesis presents, in terms of a graphical model, a re-analysis of a set of childhood growth data, collected in South Wales during the 1970s. Within this analysis, a new technique is proposed that allows the calculation of derived variables under the assumption that the joint relationships between the variables are constant at each of the time points.

Keywords: predictors of longitudinal childhood growth
measurement error models
multivariate discrete data models
applied statistics
conditional independence models
graphical models
Advisor: Cox, D
Assessing proportionality in capital cases: a case study of Ohio

When the United States Supreme Court approved the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, it did so based on the promise of new safeguards against comparative excessiveness and relative disproportionality resulting from jury sentencing in capital cases. As Justice Stevens noted in 2008, one of these safeguards – meaningful appellate review of death sentences – is, in practice, non-existent.
This thesis examines the use of this purported safeguard by the Ohio Supreme Court, in the form of comparative proportionality review, to determine the degree to which Ohio capital cases are ‘relatively proportionate’ in the time period after the state adopted life without parole as a sentencing option in 1996. Specifically, this thesis employs two approaches to identifying ‘similar’ cases – the overall aggravation approach (through logistic regression analysis) and the fact specific approach – and then compares each death sentence to its group of ‘similar’ cases to determine whether it is relatively proportionate, given the death sentencing ratio of its comparable group.
After establishing that at least forty per cent of Ohio cases were relatively disproportionate, the thesis argues that Ohio’s current approach violates the requirements of the Eighth Amendment. In particular, the Court’s failure to examine cases sentenced to life as part of its proportionality review and its use of the precedent-seeking approach has the outcome of ignoring death sentences that are comparatively excessive.
Finally, the thesis concludes by offering a normative model by which Ohio can improve its administration of comparative proportionality review. The thesis advocates the use of a ‘purposive’ approach, defining ‘similarity’ on the basis of the intended purpose of punishment, and suggesting that just deserts retribution provides the best approach for determining ‘similarity’.

Keywords: capital punishment
proportionality review
Ohio
death penalty
Advisor: Hoyle, C
The role of the CtIP gene as a genetic susceptibility factor for radiation leukaemogenesis

Exposure to ionising radiation increases the risk of cancer, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML), which is the most common myeloid leukaemia. The C-terminal binding protein (CtBP)-interacting protein (CtIP), which is essential for embryonic development and possibly functions as a tumour suppressor, has been identified as a strong candidate for susceptibility to radiation-induced AML (rAML).

Keywords: radiobiology
leukaemia
cancer
Advisor: O'Neill, P
Badie, C
Inflation, large-scale structure and inhomogeneous cosmologies

Determining cosmological parameters from current observational data requires knowledge of the primordial density perturbations generated during inflation. We begin by examining a model of inflation along a flat direction of the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) and the power spectrum of perturbations it can produce. We consider the fine-tuning issues associated with this model and discuss a modification of the potential to include a hybrid transition that reduces the fine-tuning, without affecting the viability of the model. However, supersymmetric flat directions might play a role in other models of inflation as well. In particular, they may cause a feature in the primordial power spectrum of perturbations, unlike the scale-free spectrum assumed in the standard Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) cosmological model. We then show that in the presence of such a feature, an alternative cosmological model with a large local void and no dark energy provides a good fit to both Type Ia supernovae and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from the WMAP satellite. Constraints from the locally measured Hubble parameter, baryon acoustic oscillations and primordial nucleosynthesis are also satisfied. This degeneracy motivates a search for other independent observational tests of LCDM. The integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) imprint of large-scale structure on the CMB is one such test. The ISW imprint of superstructures of size ~100 Mpc/h at redshift z~0.5 has been detected with >4 sigma significance, however it has been noted that the signal is much larger than expected. We revisit the calculation using linear theory predictions in a LCDM cosmology and find the theoretical prediction is inconsistent by >3 sigma with the observation. If the observed signal is indeed due to the ISW effect then huge, extremely underdense voids are far more common in the observed universe than predicted by LCDM.

Keywords: cosmology
Advisor: Sarkar, S
Computational studies of ligand-water mediated interactions in ionotropic glutamate receptors

Careful treatment of water molecules in ligand-protein interactions is required in many cases if the correct binding pose is to be identified for molecular docking. Water can form complex bridging networks and can play a critical role in dictating the binding mode of ligands. A particularly striking example of this can be found in the ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs), a family of ligand gated ion channels that are responsible for a majority of the fast synaptic neurotransmission in the central nervous system that are thought to be essential in memory and learning. Thus, pharmacological intervention at these neuronal receptors is a valuable therapeutic strategy. This thesis relies on various computational studies and X-ray crystallography to investigate the role of ligand-water mediated interactions in iGluRs bound to glutamate and α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4- isoxazole-propionic acid (AMPA).
Comparative molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of each subtype of iGluRs bound to glutamate revealed that crystal water positions were reproduced and that all but one water molecule, W5, in the binding site can be rearranged or replaced with water molecules from the bulk. Further density functional theory calculations (DFT) have been used to confirm the MD results and characterize the energetics of W5 and another water molecule implicated in influencing the dynamics of a proposed switch in these receptors. Additional comparative studies on the AMPA subtypes of iGluRs show that each step of the calculation must be considered carefully if the results are to be meaningful.
Crystal structures of two ligands, glutamate and AMPA revealed two distinct modes of binding when bound to an AMPA subtype of iGluRs, GluA2. The difference is related to the position of water molecules within the binding pocket. DFT calculations investigated the interaction energies and polarisation effects resulting in a prediction of the correct binding mode for glutamate. For AMPA alternative modes of binding have similar interaction energies as a result of a higher internal energy than glutamate.
A combined MD and X-ray crystallographic study investigated the binding of the ligand AMPA in the AMPA receptor subtypes. Analysis of the binding pocket show that AMPA is not preserved in the crystal bound mode and can instead adopt an alternative mode of binding. This involves a displacement of a key water molecule followed by AMPA adopting the pose seen by glutamate.
Thus, this thesis makes use of various studies to assess the energetics and dynamics of water molecules in iGluRs. The resulting data provides additional information on the importance of water molecules in mediating ligand interactions as well as identifying key water molecules that can be useful in the de novo design of new selective drugs against iGluRs.

Keywords: computational
drug-design
Density Functional Theory
Ionotropic glutamate receptor
ligand binding
ab initio
X-ray crystallography
conserved waters
Advisor: Biggin, P
Southeast Asia in the ancient Indian Ocean world: 

This thesis casts a new light on the role of Southeast Asia in the ancient Indian Ocean World. It brings together data and approaches from archaeology and historical linguistics to examine cultural and language contact between Southeast Asia and South Asia, East Africa and the Middle East. The interdisciplinary approach employed in this study reveals that insular Southeast Asian seafarers, traders and settlers had impacted on these parts of the world in pre-modern times through the transmission of numerous biological and cultural items. It is further demonstrated that the words used for these commodities often contain clues about the precise ethno-linguistic communities involved in their transoceanic dispersal.
The Methodology chapter introduces some common linguistic strategies to examine language contact and lexical borrowing, to determine the directionality of loanwords and to circumvent the main caveats of such an approach. The study then proceeds to delve deeper into the socio-cultural background of interethnic contact in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean as a whole, focusing on the oft-neglected Southeast Asian contributions to the cultural landscape of this region and addressing the nature of pre-modern contact between Southeast Asia and the different parts of the Indian Ocean Word. Following from that, the last three chapters look in-depth at the dispersal of respectively Southeast Asian plants, spices and maritime technology into the wider Indian Ocean World. Although concepts and their names do not always neatly travel together across ethno-linguistic boundaries, these chapters demonstrate how a closer examination of lexical data offers supportive evidence and new perspectives on events of cultural contact not otherwise documented.
Cumulatively, this study underlines that the analysis of lexical data is a strong tool to examine interethnic contact, particularly in pre-literate societies. Throughout the Indian Ocean World, Southeast Asian products and concepts were mainly dispersed by Malay-speaking communities, although others played a role as well.

Keywords: historical linguistics
Southeast Asia
archaeology
cultural contact
India
Advisor: Boivin, N
Gosden, C
Modelling Alternative Energy in the Electricity Market

In this thesis, we try to analyse the consequences to the electricity market when we try to introduce wind farms. We start by following [1], considering a large number of fuel-fired power plants bidding according to a Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process and building a bid-stack curve from these. To introduce wind power generation, we model the wind speed at each location by a similar process and extract the total power generated by wind farms from it. We then consider the implications this power has on the bid-stack curve, and we try to anticipate how the market might evolve and adapt.
Numerical linear approximation involving radial basis functions

This thesis aims to acquire, deepen and promote understanding of computing techniques for high dimensional scattered data approximation with radial basis functions. The main contributions of this thesis include sufficient conditions for the sovability of compactly supported radial basis functions with different shapes, near points preconditioning techniques for high dimensional interpolation systems with compactly supported radial basis functions, a heterogeneous hierarchical radial basis function interpolation scheme, which allows compactly supported radial basis functions of different shapes at the same level, an O(N) algorithm for constructing hierarchical scattered data set andan O(N) algorithm for sparse kernel summation on Cartesian grids. Besides the main contributions, we also investigate the eigenvalue distribution of interpolation matrices related to radial basis functions, and propose a concept of smoothness matching. We look at the problem from different perspectives, giving a systematic and concise description of other relevant theoretical results and numerical techniques. These results are interesting in themselves and become more interesting when placed in the context of the bigger picture. Finally, we solve several real-world problems. Presented applications include 3D implicit surface reconstruction, terrain modelling, high dimensional meteorological data approximation on the earth and scattered spatial environmental data approximation.

Keywords: numerical linear algebra
radial basis functions
Advisor: Wathen, A