VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The perception of depth, rotation and shearing in motion parallax surfaces

Motion parallax is often considered to be an inherently ambiguous cue to depth. Despite the theoretical ambiguity associated with the pattern of retinal image motion, motion parallax generally evokes compelling three-dimensional (3-D) percepts and for this reason is regarded as an important source of 3-D information. Certain studies have indicated, however, that a parallax surface that contains a given amount of simulated depth is often perceived to rotate, rather than simply remain stationary, as the observer moves. This thesis provides an experimental investigation of the factors which influence perceived rotation and shearing in motion parallax surfaces.
In a series of psychophysical experiments, the cue of self-produced motion parallax was manipulated in order to provide insights into the mechanisms underlying the perception of 3-D surfaces. Since larger parallax motions often produce the impression of rotation, the "transition point" between stationarity and rotation was measured as a function of several factors. The maximum motion gradient was shown to be the principal determinant of this transition point surfaces with a steep motion gradient were perceived to rotate at lower relative motion amplitudes than surfaces with shallow motion gradients. Vertical perspective information played a smaller role. The transition point also fell with increasing viewing distance. At even higher amplitudes, parallax surfaces can appear nonrigid or even lacking in all 3-D structure, and the experiments reported have measured the transition points between each of the different perceptual zones.
A model was introduced in order to determine whether the perceived magnitudes of depth and rotation of sinusoidal parallax surfaces were in accordance with geometric constraints. Qualitative support was found for a trade-off between depth and rotation when corrugation frequency or stimulus size was manipulated. Results were less conclusive when a dynamic vertical perspective cue was varied. A similar model was applied to the perceived magnitudes of depth and shearing in square wave surfaces. The relationship between these attributes was less clear-cut. The perceived rotation of sinusoidal surfaces increased with increasing viewing distance; possibly due to a decreasing propensity of the observer, with increasing viewing distance, to attribute the vertical perspective changes to self-motion.
In sum, these experiments demonstrate the importance of motion gradients and vertical perspective information in the perception of motion parallax surfaces, and suggest that the surfaces are generally perceived in qualitative accord with the totality of visual information present (Helmholtz, 1909).
“Missionary zeal of recent converts”: norms and norm entrepreneurs in the foreign policy of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia 1989-2011

The following dissertation discusses the role of norms and norm entrepreneurs in the foreign policy-making of the Czech Republic, Poland and Bratislava after the downfall of communism. In at attempt to unpack the mechanics and appliance of “soft power” in foreign policy practice in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, it identifies conditions and analyzes processes via which norms come to play the role of intermediary variable in the articulation and enactment of national interest. Capitalizing on the agency-oriented strand of norm diffusion theory in international relations and discursive institutionalism scholarship in comparative politics, the dissertation argues that normative frameworks advocated by value-bound networks of so-called norm entrepreneurs can play a regulative function in foreign policy-making by setting boundaries for discourse and sustaining logics of appropriateness that constrain the pool of available foreign policy choices at critical junctures.
In the first part, “the mission and conversion” (1989-1999), the dissertation focuses on the early stages of norm emergence and habituation in the three states in the 1990s, asserting that ideational influence incurred by American “missionaries” on Czech, Polish and Slovak “converts” to democracy via a range of socialization processes related to NATO enlargement and Western democracy promotion efforts in the region gave rise to norm entrepreneur groups bound by a shared commitment to a normative framework dubbed “dissident geopolitics”.
In part two, “the zeal”, the dissertation concentrates on the later stages of norm internalisation, demonstrated by norm enforcement in foreign policy. Using case studies of Czech, Polish and Slovak foreign policy during the Iraq War (2002-2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004-2005) and the Russia Reset (2009-2011), the dissertation shows how sustained advocacy by norm entrepreneurs with or without structural power, who skillfully use framing to push their normative agendas in discursive competition with other norm entrepreneurs, factors “dissident geopolitics” in the decision-making process that produces activist and value-laden foreign policy outcomes that might not have been expected of “weak” states. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that dominant norms and norm entrepreneur networks can thrive in transition settings when they are less disputed, but they tend to lose coherence and unity, respectively, as the foreign policy landscape diversifies upon completion of democratic consolidation.

Keywords: norms
transition
Central Europe
Foreign policy
norm entrepreneurs
Advisor: Sasse, G
Spaces of trust and mistrust : Congolese refugees, institutions and protection in Kampala, Uganda

The spatiality of refugee protection has been a key issue for humanitarian practitioners and policy-makers, and it has become of increasing concern in academic studies. This study interrogates the policy and practice-oriented concept of ‘protection space’ in regard to the experiences of the Congolese refugees in the city of Kampala, Uganda. My analysis of ‘protection space’ uses the geographical concepts of the ‘right to the city’ and ‘sense of place’ to emphasise the physical, imagined, lived and relational understandings of urban space. I also investigate the conceptual links between ‘protection’, ‘space’ and ‘trust’. I apply a qualitative case-study approach in this study and collected primary data from individual Congolese refugees, refugee communities and officers of the protection institutions. The data-collection methods included a combination of semi-structured interviews, observation and focus group discussions, supported by visual methods. I rely on aspects of discourse analysis to analyse my textual and visual data.
I conclude that the Congolese refugees informing this study conceptualised ‘protection’ not only legally, physically and relationally, but also spiritually. The geographical levels of protection and insecurity that refugees experienced varied: their ‘sense of place’ in relation to the city of exile depended on their micro-, meso-, and macro-scale experiences and perceptions of protection. Given the prevalence of generalised and particularised social mistrust and institutional mistrust – two matters that were intertwined in refugees’ discourses of their everyday urban life – it is concluded that the distinction between protection and insecurity was at times unclear. Refugees, however, found a sense of protection from various ‘communities of trust’, even though their community life was also characterised by struggles over their ‘right to the city’ and inter-community mistrust.

Keywords: space
trust
communities
protection
institutions
Urban refugees
Advisor: Daley, P
Zetter, R
Cation-controlled diastereo- and enantioselective synthesis of indolines: an autocatalytic process

Asymmetric phase-transfer catalysis is a powerful technique that enables a wide range of transformations under mild conditions, often using inexpensive and environmentally benign reagents. By extending the applications of phase-transfer catalysis we have developed a highly diastereo- and enantioselective synthesis of functionalized indolines bearing two contiguous stereocentres, one of which is quaternary and all carbon, in a single synthetic step. The reaction proceeds with complete diastereoselectivity and with high levels of enantioselectivity (up to 99% ee).
Despite the development of phase-transfer catalysis as a primary synthetic tool in organic synthesis, the mechanistic understanding of these reactions still remains a challenge, due mainly to the difficulty of studying the complex multi-phase systems. Therefore, a further aim of this project was to understand the reaction mechanism of our phase-transfer catalysed transformation. Investigations into the mechanism of our phase-transfer catalysed reaction have been carried out by studying the reaction kinetics. These have shown that the reaction follows a sigmoidal curve with an induction period present. A detailed kinetic investigation was carried out which demonstrated that an autocatalytic mechanism is operational.

Keywords: PTC
Advisor: Smith, M
InSAR measurements of volcano deformation on the Central American Volcanic Arc

Satellite measurements of volcano deformation have the potential to illuminate a wide range of volcanic processes and have provided us with the first opportunity to investigate volcano deformation as an arc-scale process. This thesis presents the results of an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) survey of the Central American Volcanic Arc between 2007 and 2010. My measurements confirm a statistically significant absence of magmatic deformation in Central America relative to other well-studied volcanic arcs. I estimate a minimum detection threshold for deformation at 20 of the arc’s 26 active volcanoes using time series analysis of interferometric phase. I find that the majority (∼80%) of literature measurements of volcano deformation made at other arcs would have been possible with the average magnitude of noise in Central American volcanoes. The absence of measurable magmatic deformation in Central America may therefore be due to factors that limit the geodetic expression of magma movement, including the deep pooling of basalts and high parental melt volatile content. The quantification of measurement uncertainty also allows me to use the lack of deformation at specific erupting volcanoes to make order of magnitude estimations of the minimum depth for magma storage that would not result in measurable deformation. I present measurements and interpretation of non-magmatic deformation associated with edifice development at two Central American volcanoes: Arenal, Costa Rica and Santiaguito, Guatemala. At Arenal, I measure apparently steady slip (∼7 cm/yr) on the volcano’s western flanks, which I attribute to gravity-driven slip on the boundary between lavas emplaced over the past 50 years and older tephras and paleosols. At Santiaguito, I demonstrate the measurement of large-scale (∼10-200 m) topographic change from a small set of large baseline interferograms. Measurements of post-2000 lava fields allow me to estimate extrusion rate, map changes to flow morphology and make simultaneous measurements of lava flow thickness and subsidence rate.

Keywords: satellite remote sensing
volcano
Advisor: Mather, T
Biggs, J
Grainger, D
Irony, dialogue, and the reader in the novels of Nathalie Sarraute

This thesis explores the concept of dialogue, and of reading as a dialogue, in relation to Sarraute's novels. Its view of dialogue draws on various theories of (spoken and written) communication which see dialogue as transcending the limits of linguistic expression (Ch.l). This transcendence of language through language is epitomised by the ironic exchange, where communication succeeds in spite of the utterance which is openly recognised to be defective. Full participation in dialogue entails ironically recognising the inadequacy of one's discourse; if the subject's language constitutes his identity, then engaging in dialogue further involves acknowledging one's lack of authority as a subject.
However, reading Sarraute complicates this idealistic notion of dialogue: despite her writing's formal dialogism, it not only represents but also enacts aspects of communication which oppose rather than promote consensus. The way the authorial voice inevitably reasserts an initially renounced unitary identity (something her fiction condemns), demonstrates how speaking always unifies the subject despite itself, reaffirming that authority which the aspiration to dialogue should reject (Chs.3 and4).
Secondly, reading as a form of dialogue raises the question of the relationship of writing to speech: their structural identity means that spoken communication cannot offer mutual presence but always involves alienation (Ch.2). Thus Sarraute's attempt to counter the alienation of writing by simulating speech cannot succeed, and so she replays a conversational strategy of her characters to control the distant reader's response she defines him (as passive and assenting) in her address. But the mediation of writing preserves the reader from this definition, and so Sarraute finally rejects this uncontrollable other (Ch.5).
However, spoken dialogue also illuminates the text-reader exchange: its reciprocity, which counters the alienation of writing, indicates how the text too can "answer" the reader by resisting his interpretation and making him revise it. Some text-reader communication is possible, for the text's language exceeds both its author's intention and its reader's interpretation, uniting them in the symbolic universe within which they define themselves (Ch.6). But their linguistic selfdefinition means that their dialogue around the text will always be oppositional as well as consensual.
Design of a hyper-environment for tracing object-oriented requirements

Change is inevitable and unending in developing large, complex systems. Changes to requirements arise not only from changes in the social context of the system, but also from improved understanding of constraints and tradeoffs as system development proceeds. How to trace software requirements is the problem addressed by this thesis. We present a solution for requirements tracing in the context of object-oriented software development. Our solution consists of a traceability model and a tool to automate the tracing.
TOOR, the tool to implement the model, uses a project specification written in FOOPS, a general purpose object-oriented language with specification capabilities, to set up the environment in which a project is carried out. The project specification defines the trace units and traces as objects and relations, respectively. The evolution of objects from requirements sources to requirements to design to code, and generally to any object taking part in the process is dealt with in a uniform way in TOOR: classes are declared for each kind of object we wish to control, and relations are defined between them.
TOOR uses regular expressions to provide a selective tracing mode: the actual configuration of objects and relations is considered as a text and regular expressions are used to retrieve parts of the configuration matching the pattern described by them. TOOR enhances the flexibility of regular expressions by extending the pattern matching procedure by providing different ways of specifying how an object or relation is to be matched. Other modes of tracing in TOOR are the interactive tracing through modules and the non-guided tracing through several browsing mechanisms. TOOR modules are used to structure projects by providing hierarchical scopes for objects used in a project development. The tracing mechanisms of TOOR can use the project structure to order searches or to provide boundaries for searching. Browsing objects provides additional flexibility in situations where little information of what has to be traced is possessed and hyper-media features address the need to re-interpret data usually encoded in different formats.
The user-definable features of a project specification provides much of the flexibility necessary for effective use of a software tracing tool. Also, the integration of regular expression tracing with other forms of tracing such as browsing and interactive tracing makes TOOK an extremely versatile tool. The user can select the more appropriate form of tracing depending on context and can switch from one form to another as convenient.
Carbon cycling in a Bornean tropical forest 

The tropical forests on the island of Borneo are among of the richest in the world in terms of tree diversity, and their capacity to store a large reservoir of carbon. The Southeast Asian forests are fundamentally different from Neotropical and African forests, with their single-family dominance by dipterocarp trees, and with inherently greater stature and biomass. The carbon productivity and allocation in Asian tropical forests is still poorly quantified, and their responses to environmental drivers are still poorly understood. Almost all recent advances in tropical forest carbon cycling research have occurred in the Neotropics, with very few studies in Asia. The principal aim of this thesis is to quantify the carbon budget of a lowland dipterocarp forest in the Lambir Hills National Park, Miri, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. I examined and explored the productivity and carbon cycling processes and their responses to environmental factors across two major and contrasting soil types, in particular the clay and sandy loam soils. I recorded and analysed the Net Primary Productivity (NPP) and respiration for the above- and below-ground components, and observed the responses to seasonal variation and environmental drivers.
Total soil respiration was relatively high and contributed a great deal to ecosystem respiration. Variation in soil respiration rates appeared closely related to soil moisture content. I found a strong diurnal cycle in soil respiration. On the basis of the first soil carbon dioxide (CO2) efflux partitioning study undertaken in a tropical forest, the diurnal cycle in total soil respiration appeared to be entirely driven by the diurnal cycle in litter respiration, and in turn litter is strongly controlled by moisture.
There was little seasonal variation in allocation of net primary productivity (NPP), but there was evidence showing potential inter-annual variability for several components of NPP. Further, the allocation of NPP showed a strong seasonal shift between the forest plots on clay and sandy loam soils. Combining all the data measured and obtained in this D.Phil. thesis, the overall carbon budget assessed in this lowland dipterocarp forest showed a high level of agreement with other studies in Asia using micrometeorological techniques and the situation appears to be comparable to tropical forests in Amazonia. The key difference is that the aboveground NPP is higher and is the largest component contributing to the overall carbon budget, with relatively higher carbon use efficiency (CUE). The lowland dipterocarp forest in Lambir shows higher allocation in the above-ground NPP, and there were also differences in NPP and its allocation between sandy and clay-rich plots.

Keywords: above- and below-ground biomass
net primary productivity
soil respiration
Carbon cycling
Borneo
tropical forest
Advisor: Malhi, Y
Aragão, L
'Irish by descent': Marianne Moore, Irish writers and the American-Irish Inheritance'

Despite having a rather weak family connection to Ireland, the American modernist poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972) described herself in a letter to Ezra Pound in 1919 as ‘Irish by descent’. This thesis relates Moore’s claim of Irish descent to her career as a publisher, poet and playwright, and argues that her decision to shape an Irish inheritance for herself was linked with her self-identification as an American poet. Chapter 1 discusses Moore’s self-confessed susceptibility to ‘Irish magic’ in relation to the increase in contributions from Irish writers during her editorship of The Dial magazine from 1925 to 1929. Moore’s 1915 poems to the Irish writers George Moore, W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw, which reveal a paradoxical desire for affiliation to, and disassociation from, Irish literary traditions, are scrutinized in Chapter 2. Chapters 3a and b discuss Moore’s ‘Irish’ poems ‘Sojourn in the Whale’ (1917) and ‘Spenser’s Ireland’ (1941). In both poems political events in Ireland – the ‘Easter Rising’ of 1916 and Ireland’s policy of neutrality during World War II – become a backdrop for Moore’s personal anxieties as an American poet of ‘Irish’ descent coming to terms with her political and cultural inheritance. Expanding upon previous chapters’ discussion of the interrelation of poetics and politics, Chapter 4 shows how Moore’s use of Irish sources in ‘Spenser’s Ireland’ and other poems including ‘Silence’ and the ‘Student’ reflects her quixotic attitude to Irish culture as alternately an inspiration and a tool for manipulation. The final chapter discusses Moore’s adaptation of the Anglo-Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth’s 1812 novel The Absentee as a play in 1954. Through this last piece of ‘Irish’ writing, Moore adopts a sentimentality that befits the later stages of her career and illustrates how Irish literature, rather than Irish politics, has emerged as her ultimate source of inspiration.

Keywords: American modernism
culture and politics
Irish literature
Marianne Moore
modernist poetry
transatlantic identities
syllabic poetry
Advisor: O'Donoghue, B
Templated interlocked host structures for the recognition and sensing of charged substrates

This thesis describes the synthesis of acyclic, macrocyclic and, in particular, interlocked anion and ion-pair receptors and sensors.
Chapter One will introduce the field of supramolecular chemistry with particular emphasis on areas which are pertinent to this thesis, including anion receptor design and templated synthesis of interlocked structures.
Chapter Two focuses on the synthesis of new heteroditopic macrocycles functionalised with both cation and anion recognition sites and their incorporation into interlocked architectures. The affinity for a range of anions and ion-pairs is explored via 1H NMR and UV-visible spectroscopy as well as by X-ray crystallography.
Chapter Three details the incorporation of d- and f-metal luminescent reporter groups into an isophthalamide motif in order to construct acyclic, macrocyclic and [2]rotaxane receptors.
Chapter Four investigates the synthesis of complex higher-order interlocked structures through post-synthetic modification of lower-order interlocked structures.
Chapter Five explores the potential for fluorescent gold nanoparticle conjugates to act as luminescent and colourimetric sensors for chemical warfare agents (CWAs) by employing a fluorescent displacement assay technique.

Keywords: rotaxane
anion
sensing
catenane
Advisor: Beer, P