VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
High hopes, low odds: factors impacting the higher education considerations of disadvantaged students

The primary purpose of this study was to explore the factors that influence disadvantaged secondary students’ higher education considerations. A secondary purpose was to investigate if the reported importance of these factors differed significantly on the basis of race, gender, high school performance, socio-economic status, or first-generation status. This study attempts to increase the collective understanding of student choice by approaching the matter through a lens of access and equity, keeping in mind how disadvantaged students have historically been distributed across institutional sectors in the highly diverse and competitive American system.
Student participants were recruited from within Upward Bound programs associated with public universities throughout a single state located in the Western United States. Upward Bound, one of eight federally-funded TRIO programs, is a pre-collegiate bridge program that seeks to increase higher education attainment amongst students from disadvantaged backgrounds. As per program regulations, disadvantaged students are defined as those from low-income backgrounds and/or households where neither parent/guardian has earned a bachelor’s degree.
Through a newly constructed electronic questionnaire, participants provided demographic information and rated the importance of 25 influential items. Exploratory factor analysis revealed five central factors that impact disadvantaged participants’ considerations: Social Factors, Familial Factors, Flexibility Factors, Future Impact Factors, and Reputational Factors. These findings indicate that the sample conceptualizes higher education influences much differently than anticipated, deviating from both empirical and expert conceptualizations. Statistically significant differences in the importance of these factors existed between the demographic groups, indicating that the groups value these factors differently.
The question of exclusion in Rawlsian contractualism

This thesis focuses on what I call the question of exclusion. This question, I argue, is one that poses serious challenges to social contract approaches to justice and political legitimacy. In an intuitive way, the exclusion of some individuals seems to be a corollary of the social contractualist approach, which ascribes justice or legitimacy to a social arrangement insofar as it can be regarded as the product of the (actual – expressed or tacit – or hypothetical) consent of specified parties. Consequently, this approach excludes those whose consent is not required in order to view an arrangement as legitimate or just.
Given the enormous and continuing influence of John Rawls’s social contract theory, I take the Rawlsian view as my primary focus, concentrating on the way in which the question of exclusion raises challenges for Rawlsian contractualism. According to Rawls’s theory, those who participate in the hypothetical contract and to whom political power ought to be justifiable are reasonable and rational. They are reasonable in the sense that they understand and are willing to comply with the requirements of justice and they are rational in that they have the capacity to form, revise, and pursue a conception of the good. This gives rise to two categories of exclusion. In the first part of the thesis, I examine the exclusion of those who will develop the two moral powers sufficiently only if those who are represented in the social contract act (or refrain from acting) in certain ways. This category includes children, foetuses, and unreasonable citizens. Intuitively, justice issues in requirements in at least some of these cases, but it is hard to make sense of this on the Rawlsian approach. In the second part of the thesis, I address the question of exclusion regarding those who will never develop the two moral powers to the requisite degree, such as individuals with severe cognitive disabilities and non-human animals. Again, intuitively, justice issues in requirements here, but their justification is not clear on the contractualist approach. My conclusion is threefold. First, I argue that the problems the question of exclusion poses cannot be addressed by a single solution. Second, I safeguard Rawlsian contractualism by showing how each problem can be resolved. Third, I offer policy-prescriptions on a number of issues, such as education, abortion, and the criminal justice system.

Advisor: Sinclair, T
Wilkinson, D
Chemical modifications for spectral tuning of fluorogenic RNA aptamers

Fluorogenic RNA aptamers such as Spinach, Corn, and Mango have provided a practical method for imaging RNAs. While much work has gone into developing different aptamer-ligand systems to expand the current toolbox of fluorogenic RNA aptamers, the potential of synthetic modifications has remained largely unexplored. To address this gap, I have investigated a range of canonical mutations, naturally occurring noncanonical modifications, and artificial nucleotide labels to study the effects of these synthetic modifications on the spectral properties of fluorogenic RNA aptamers. To access naturally occurring, noncanonical RNA modifications, I have synthesized novel phosphoramidites for tRNA modifications PreQ0 (2-amino-5-cyano-7-β-D-ribofuranosyl-7H-pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidin-4-one) and wyosine (3,4-dihydro-4,6-dimethyl-3-β-D-ribofuranosyl-9H-imidazo[1,2-a]purin-9-one) for incorporation into an RNA aptamer using solid-phase oligonucleotide synthesis. Guided by the crystal structure of the Spinach aptamer, I developed a Split Baby Spinach aptamer which is accessible via solid-phase oligonucleotide synthesis. I then explored the effects of modifications such as PreQ0 and wyosine, as well as fluorescent nucleotide analogues 2-aminopurine and pyrrolocytosine, on the fluorogenic aptamer when bound to different fluorophore-ligands. While most mutations had a negligible effect on the fluorescent properties of the aptamer-fluorophore complex, one wyosine mutation near the ligand binding pocket exhibited enhanced fluorescence turn-on. Finally, guided by the crystal structure of iMango-III, I have also individually introduced the fluorescent dyes, fluorescein and rhodamine, into five positions surrounding the iMango-III ligand binding site. These modifications create an internal FRET system, providing a simple method for tuning the excitation or emissions wavelength of the RNA aptamer to those of the introduced fluorophores. These synthetic modifications demonstrate the potential of noncanonical nucleotides for fluorescence modulation enhancement.

Advisor: Brown, T
Ferré-D’Amaré, A
Palestinian evangelicals and global evangelicalism

The major concern of this thesis lies in the role of power in the negotiation of evangelical ‘orthodoxy’ in theology and practice within global evangelicalism. To investigate this question, I examine how the minority of Palestinian evangelicals in Israel-Palestine make sense of both their belonging to a ‘global’ evangelical faith community, as well as to the Israeli State, which the majority of evangelicals support uncritically. Palestinian evangelicals are an anomaly in a context in which many dispensationalist and Christian Zionist evangelicals understand the State of Israel as being divinely ordained for the ‘Jewish people’. The data which this thesis draws on was collected over nine months of immersive ethnographic fieldwork in Israel-Palestine, with a focus on Nazareth (between 2015 and 2016), as well as two years of textual research. The analysis focuses on the dynamics of encounters across difference (physical, and in media and text) between Palestinian evangelicals and predominantly North American and European evangelical visitors in Israel-Palestine, paying attention to processes of adaptation, mimicry, representation, curation, and resistance. The thesis explores the diverse subject-making of Palestinian evangelicals in light of dominant theological ideas and practices concerning Israel, as well as the context of Israel-Palestine itself. It examines how dominant evangelical theologies of Israel are curated and performed, for example in a living history museum of the first century, and the role of Palestinian evangelicals in these performances. It further explores how dominant theologies are resisted as cultural hegemony. Considering ‘Israel’ as both evangelical imagination as well as everyday reality for Palestinian evangelicals, the thesis discusses how the dimensions of ‘local’ and ‘global’ are imagined, co-produced, and circulated within global evangelicalism. Finally, the thesis demonstrates the unequal access to shaping ‘global’ evangelicalism between differently resourced evangelicals.

Keywords: Israel-Palestine
Transnational Religion
Religious Networks
short term mission
Palestinian Christianity
Power
Christian Zionism
ethnographic portraits
Ethnography
Ethnography of Encounter
Pilgrimage
Hillsong
Theologically engaged Anthropology
Middle East
Tourism
Nazareth
Talal Asad
Global Christianity
Evangelicalism
Arab Israeli
Middle Eastern Christianity
Religion
Christianity
Globalisation
Advisor: Keith, M
Clarke, M
Anderson, B
The agricultural economies of early urban systems in the northern Fertile Crescent

Archaeobotanical investigation of Neolithic-Bronze Age sites in the northern Fertile Crescent has mostly focussed on the Neolithic-Chalcolithic and also on the Euphrates valley. The aim of this study is instead the Bronze Age, especially the later Bronze Age of the second millennium BC. The three sites studied, Tell Mohammed ‘Arab, Tell Brak and Tell Atchana, are distributed across the northern Fertile Crescent, in the Tigris, Khabur and Orontes valleys, respectively, and offer assemblages mostly dating to the Late Bronze Age. In conjunction with synthesis of previously published archaeobotanical data from the second millennium BC, this study contributes to a comprehensive overview of agriculture across the region, including its relationship with social complexity and climate change. The new data on crop spectra and associated arable weed/wild taxa is analysed using multivariate statistical approaches, ethnoarchaeological models, functional weed ecology and crop stable isotope analysis. The results reveal the major crop types used at each site, as well as pronounced regional variation in staple taxa; crop processing activities; and arable land management strategies. Overall, a strong correlation is observed among these different dimensions of agricultural activity, urbanisation cycles and scales and environmental settings.

Advisor: Bogaard, A
Charles, M
Empirical and theoretical approaches for assessing the local radiocarbon Marine Reservoir Effect

The radiocarbon activity of a reservoir is a function of both intra- and inter-reservoir phenomena. In general, any process removing 14C from a reservoir (or equivalently introducing pre-aged carbon) without its replenishment by a counteracting process will cause a reservoir effect. First defined in 1986, the 14C marine reservoir effect (MRE) still puzzles researchers worldwide. Its quantification is paramount for the application of the radiocarbon dating tool in marine environments, bearing important consequences for the chronology of coastal archaeological sites. Unfortunately, a significant lack of MRE data has hindered chronometric studies in regions such as the coast of Brazil, where thousands of prehistoric shell mounds remain poorly investigated.
The geographic and temporal fluctuations of the MRE have led me to employ a two-pronged approach, using known-age and archaeological samples, in an effort to understand this variability for the Brazilian coast. In this kind of study, the importance of contextualization cannot be overstated and, therefore, my methodology has involved a range of accessory techniques (e.g., anthracology, stable isotopes and X-ray diffraction analyses) to ensure the suitability of samples for MRE quantification and thus to enhance the accuracy of the results. The pre-bomb local components of the MRE - i.e., ∆R values - are mostly within the range from -100 to 100 14C yr, but record the influence of phenomena such as upwelling and limestone dissolution at specific locations on the coast. The archaeological ∆R value of -102 ± 74 14C yr, in turn, was derived from the Late Holocene shell mound Sambaqui da Cabeçuda, a massive coastal site in Southern Brazil, where the archaeological evidence suggests a funerary function. The highly negative ∆R value is likely caused by the input of recently formed carbon species in the system and I discuss different Bayesian models for the calculation of this offset, as well as a series of complications for MRE studies in Brazilian shell mounds.
In order to disentangle the complex relationships between archaeology and the environment, I have used stable isotopes of N and C together with Bayesian analysis to assess the diet of 5 humans from Cabeçuda. The quantification of the high proportion of marine diet (up to 80%) allowed me to calibrate bone 14C ages with an appropriate mixed curve. Despite various obstacles, the current practice of using ∆R and a global calibration curve remains the best available approach for marine calibration. Nonetheless, by acknowledging that discussion of other possibilities is paramount for the progress of radiocarbon research, I present a method for the achievement of local marine calibration curves. The advantages and limitations of this method are discussed at the end of the thesis. Overall, this research uses interdisciplinary techniques to tackle questions of archaeological and environmental significance and provides useful methodological insights for future studies.

Advisor: Ramsey, B
Macario, K
Die Komposition der poetischen Welt

The Composition of the Poetic World: An Analysis of the Spatial Configurations in the Late Medieval Prose Novels Pontus und Sidonia, Magelone and Clamades. Supplemented with a German Edition of the Clamades Fragment
This thesis demonstrates the productivity of spatial configurations within the three late medieval prose novels Pontus und Sidonia, Magelone and Clamades. The Clamades fragment (ca. 1496; stored in the Burgerbibliothek of Berne), which has survived as a mere four-page manuscript due to its complex transmission process, is the starting point for this project. Despite its shortness, it exhibits idiosyncracies such as a conspicuous concentration of toponyms. In order to take account of this particularity and to contextualise the fragment, an alternative methodological approach was established here. This new method focuses on the spatial composition of the poetical world to fill the gaps in the fragmentary transmission.
In order to reconstruct the lost manuscript pages of the Clamades fragment (cf. chapters 6 and 7) two other late medieval prose novels from the second half of the fifteenth century have been added to the study’s corpus and have been analysed in the same manner: Pontus und Sidonia (cf. chapters 2 and 3) and Magelone (cf. chapters 4 and 5). Even though both novels have already been discussed individually by scholars, this doctoral thesis offers a valuable new contribution to the research field by comparing them with each other and with the underresearched Clamandes through a spatial and comparative lens (interlingual: French–German / intermedial: manuscript–print). Indeed, each spatial analysis is followed by a comparative discussion of the French source text and its German target text, since all three prose novels are based on French models (cf. chapters 3, 5 and 6). With that in mind, theses prose novels have been reassessed as complex and independent redactions of literary writings at the end of the Middle Ages.

Keywords: ms. fr. 12561
f. 1v-74v
Bodleian Libr.
Mss.h.h.VII.81
Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne
London
Ms. 4
Landesbibl.
Jena
Ponthus et Sidoine
Berne
Pontus und Sidonia
Krakau
Oxford
Burgerbibl.
Early Modern Prose Novel
Paris
L’histoire du noble Clamades
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Ms. Lyell 48
Coburg
Magelone
Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibl.
Berol. mgq 157
Rés-Y2-151
Ms. Jena El. f. 99
Cleomadés
British Libr.
Bibl. Jagiellońska
Space
Cleomades
Comparative Studies
Bern
f. 44r-120r
Medieval German
Ms. El. f. 97
G. 10504
Ms. Jena El. f. 98
Translation French German
Advisor: Suerbaum, A
Collective twitching motility in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and its evolutionary consequences

From schools of ﬁsh to ﬂocks of birds and herds of wildebeest, the movements of many organisms are characterised by emergent phenomena known as collective movements. These complex group-level behaviours result from simple interactions between individuals. To the naked eye, bacterial colonies appear to be static structures. It might be hard to believe then that collective movements could have any relevance for microbial life. Yet at the microscopic level, many of the same collective phenomena also emerge within microbial systems. In this thesis, I study the collective movements of the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa in growing colonies. P. aeruginosa crawls over surfaces by employing twitching motility, utilizing hair-like ﬁlaments known as Type-IV Pili to pull itself forwards. Through a combination of novel experimental and theoretical approaches, as well as a novel cell-tracking package called FAST, I demonstrate that cells at the edge of P. aeruginosa colonies form an active nematic. This class of active matter is characterised by higher-order structures known as topological defects, points where cells with diﬀering orientations meet one another. Two types of defect exist in active nematics: comets and trefoils.
Characterisation of a mutant that lacks the pilH gene, a key regulator of twitching motility, reveals that it moves much more quickly than the wild-type. Intuitively, it might be expected that this faster single-cell movement would translate into an increased rate of migration into new territory by the ∆pilH cell type. However, experiments reveal that the wild-type is able to collectively migrate much more quickly than ∆pilH, allowing it to outcompete the mutant in mixed colonies. This disconnect between single-cell and collective behaviours is shown to be caused by a mechanism related to the system’s status as an active nematic. In the ﬁrst stage, topological defects organise the segregation of the two populations, with wild-type cells accumulating at trefoil defects and ∆pilH cells accumulating at comet defects. Collisions between the ∆pilH-enriched comets then cause the cells inside to rotate vertically, trapping them in place and preventing their migration to the colony edge. Wild-type cells avoid this phenomenon by moving slowly and prudently, allowing them to collectively migrate at a much faster rate than ∆pilH. Together, these results demonstrate the intimate interplay between collective motility and evolutionary dynamics in bacterial communities.

Keywords: Cell tracking
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Active nematics
Collective motility
Genetic stability and costs of engineered biological constructs

Synthetic Biology applies engineering principles to biology in order to formalise and facilitate the design of biological systems. Current applications of Synthetic Biology include agriculture, tissue engineering, chemical sensors, drug discovery and manufac- turing. One of the field’s primary foci is the construction of complex biological entities with predictable behaviours from sets of standardised components. However, the inser- tion of engineered biological entities causes fitness costs to their host which engenders a disadvantageous selection pressure and favours loss of function mutations. This is a key challenge to the robust engineering of biology as it reduces the construct’s genetic stability and functional lifetime. Moreover, many end goals of Synthetic Biology are applications which involve close contact with humans, other living organisms and the environment as a whole. As such, system designs need to be trusted as operating faith- fully to specification. Previous work has focussed on enhancing construct stability and lifetime by reducing the mutational frequency of engineered DNA sequences. This thesis focuses on burden and costs in order to improve the stability of engineered functions. To this aim a variety of methods are investigated, ranging from deterministic models of cellular resource allocation to stochastic evolutionary models for engineered constructs. A design model is presented for predicting and identifying burden due to unfavourable design ratios between transcription initiation rates, translation initiation and elongation efficiency. This was tested against high-throughput data from an automated experimen- tal protocol, which identified a need for improved quantification methods of burden. A dynamic resource allocation model was formulated to investigate how burden manifests during growth-phase transitions. When tested against growth data this model identified three new parameters for burden from engineered constructs: delayed signal response to a new environment; peak ribosome expression levels during growth-phase transitions; and the rate of ribosome loss during adverse growth conditions. Lastly, a stochastic evolutionary model was developed for how hosts can adapt to accommodate engineered constructs, i.e. to reduce the fitness cost while preventing function loss. The adaptive model was used to inform time cycles, population sizes and colony picking protocols that enhanced such accommodation. Favourable conditions were found to be dependent on the culture environment and engineered construct parameters.
Understanding social policy as a tool of foreign policy

Adopting an exploratory approach, this thesis seeks to understand social policy as a tool of foreign policy by addressing the following two research questions: ‘What explains the relationship between social policy and foreign policy post-WWII?’; and ‘Is there a relationship between welfare state type and the social sector foreign aid of donors?’. The thesis argues that social policy has not only a substantial, but also a relational foundation; therefore, the exercise of social policy is context specific. Through quantitative exploratory analysis and the construction of historical narratives examining this relationship in the cases of the British Empire and the United States, this thesis finds that the relationship between social policy and foreign policy is neither mechanical nor deterministic. Together, these cases illustrate the importance of understanding foreign aid in the social sector not only in relation to domestic politics and policy, but also within the geopolitical relationships underpinning the use of this instrument. These findings contribute to broader efforts to understand welfare state regimes in global context and to understand social policymaking in transnational relief, with implications for global social governance.

Advisor: Seeleib-Kaiser, M