VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A mixed-methods study of antibiotics use and prescribing dynamics in Indonesian hospitals: implications for antimicrobial stewardship

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an accelerating public health problem, with antimicrobial agents, including their inappropriate use, being one of the key drivers. In Indonesian hospitals, there is a fragmented picture of antibiotic use and of the drivers of prescribing patterns. This thesis aimed to fill this knowledge gap by assessing patterns and quality indicators of antibiotic prescribing for hospitalised patients, mapping their drivers and dynamics, and exploring the factors influencing the implementation of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programmes.
Using an explanatory sequential mixed-method approach, data collection was conducted in six hospitals in Jakarta, between March 2019 and October 2020.
A quantitative survey found high proportions of hospitalised patients receiving systemic antibiotics, that guideline compliance was poor, use of blood cultures was low, and that prolonged surgical prophylaxis was common.
The qualitative findings revealed multidimensional social-cultural factors influenced antibiotic prescribing, such as disjunctions between drivers of AMR and day-to-day clinical practice, antibiotic prescribing as risk aversion vis-à-vis concerns of poor clinical outcomes, the ‘pull’ of conformity to normative, suboptimal group prescribing practices, and suboptimal operations of microbiology and surgical facilities. Effective AMS programme implementation was challenged by ineffective resourcing and institutional buy-in, cost-prohibitive culture testing, entangled hospital priorities to generate profits, and a non-collegial communication approach to AMS execution.
Three identified areas of improvement are addressing hierarchical cultural norms in the medical profession, encouraging ownership of the AMR problem and solution among all stakeholders, and developing sustainable context-specific AMS strategies. Based on the complex adaptive system (CAS) concept, I formulated four recommendations: 1) identifying the agents of influence; 2) evaluating the problem using a CAS lens; 3) developing health system resilience; and 4) identifying leverage points.
In conclusion, this thesis contributed to the development of a conceptual framework showing how multilevel and multidimensional social-cultural factors interact to influence antibiotic prescribing and AMS implementation.

Keywords: antibiotic use
antimicrobial stewardship
antimicrobial resistance
Advisor: Hamers, R
Broom, A
Two-dimensional conformal field theories: the irrational, the rational and the celestial

The aim of this thesis is to explore the world of two-dimensional Conformal Field Theories via bootstrap techniques. The thesis is divided in three central chapters, where we will study Irrational, Rational and Celestial CFTs.
The holographic dual to a theory of pure higher-spin gravity in AdS3 is an Irrational CFT with WN algebra, where N corresponds to the highest-spin field present in the theory. Our aim in chapter 3 will be to study the spectrum of such a theory of gravity by constructing the density of states via the Poincar ́e and Rademacher constructions, which both exploit the modular invariance of the torus partition function. When studying the densities, we encounter exponentially large amounts of negative-norm states in the near-extremal region, which would render the theory non-unitary. We propose to cure these negativities by adding operators of low twist, which can be interpreted naturally from the gravity perspective as orbifolds with conical defects and can be added without losing unitarity.
The classification of Rational CFTs will occupy our attention in chapter 4. Our goal is to understand the spectral decomposition of the torus partition function of several RCFTs, and see how it can aid in the efforts to explore the space of such theories. We begin by introducing the basics of harmonic analysis on the fundamental domain of the modular group. Afterwards, we study the Rankin-Selberg transform of one-character RCFTs’ partition function and find an interesting relation between different central charges. From there, we start investigating multi-character RCFTs, and make a proposal to build families of multi-character RCFTs from one-character theories via their Rankin-Selberg transforms.
The duality between scattering amplitudes of massless particles in R(2,2) space and the correlation functions of a Celestial CFT living on the celestial torus will be the subject of Chapter 5. The goal of this chapter is to provide a prescription that allows us to go from momentum-space amplitudes to the ambidextrous basis, where the celestial amplitudes take the form of a two-dimensional CFT correlation function, via an improved light transform. We explicitly build 2-, 3- and 4-point amplitudes of massless external particles, and show how the ambidextrous prescription maintains conformal covariance in all scattering channels whilst ridding the amplitude of its distributional factors. We then move onto an explicit tree-level four-gluon, where we will use alpha space decomposition, an inversion formula method specific to SL(2, R) primaries, to obtain data from the Celestial CFT’s spectrum.

Keywords: string theory
holographic correspondence
celestial holography
rational CFTs
quantum gravity
ADS/CFT correspondence
conformal bootstrap
conformal field theories
Advisor: Alday, L
Exploring multiple efficacies through sensory relatedness at Restore, an Oxfordshire mental health charity

This thesis responds to the demand for an anthropological evaluation of the service at Restore. It is an exploration of the multiple efficacies in this community mental health charity. Empirically, I work with archival materials about the hospital and community spaces where Restore was incubated and founded. I also present ethnographic accounts of the gardening, craftwork, and catering work at Restore’s three recovery groups in Oxford and Banbury. I use a diversity of research methods to study these empirical materials, including participant learning and experience, visual archives analysis, spoken discourse analysis, photo-elicitation and semi-structured interviews.
Guided by the approach of Sensory Medical Anthropology, I emphasise the therapeutic efficacies generated through the restoration of the body’s orientation to others, a problem identifiable from the lived experiences of mental illness. I propose that the gardening, craftwork, and catering work at Restore’s recovery groups are intrinsically intercorporeal, and the processes for members (service users) to learn the body techniques and collaborate in groups cultivate vital and productive relations.
Moreover, the transmission of body techniques and the collaboration in groups cultivate care, which enables many members to transit into volunteering roles within Restore. Many members become empotted and emplaced as skilful workers for Restore’s shops and cafes that cater for the local community. Providing the multiple trajectories for a service member to become ‘better’ at Restore, the Oxfordshire Mental Health Parnership (OMHP)’s monitor of the ‘discharges’ of service users into paid employment, which is the most valued outcome that directly informs the statutory funding for Restore, needs to be re-considered. The definition of ‘moving on’ within the charity could also include more diverse possibilities to enable creative and long-term recoveries.

Keywords: medical anthropology
multiple efficacies
treatment evaluation
sensory relatedness
community mental health
Advisor: Hsu, E
Cloud/edge inference for deep neural networks

In the past decade, deep learning has become one of the most dominant data analytic approaches due to its capability to achieve impressively high accuracies on a variety of key computing tasks. Some of these tasks need intensive computation, especially when image and video data captured from cameras are input to the predictive model. In traditional systems like video surveillance, these tasks are offloaded to the cloud server, which automatically process the collected data by employing deep learning algorithms. This solution has limitations, most importantly high latency and network load, impacting the performance of real-time applications. The alternative solution, which consists in directly embedding deep neural networks (DNN) on the edge device (e.g. camera), is greatly limited by the amount of computation and storage resources. Since then, some research has examined approaches which distribute the inference of machine learning algorithms between the edge and the cloud. However, despite some promising results, several fundamental drawbacks still exist in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and applicability to resource-constrained environments.
The work presented in this thesis tackles these shortcomings by proposing a novel partitioning approach for DNN inference between the edge and the cloud. This is the first work to consider simultaneous optimization of both the memory usage at the edge and the size of the data to be transferred over the wireless link. The experiments were performed on two different network architectures, MobileNetV1 and VGG16. The proposed approach makes it possible to execute part of the network on very constrained devices (e.g., microcontrollers), and under poor network conditions (e.g., LoRa) whilst retaining reasonable accuracies.
The second contribution deals with DNN distribution on a cloud/multi-edge execution platform. By including early-exits and bottlenecks in the neural network, the solution we propose makes it possible to distribute computation according to time and accuracy requirements. In scenarios where the communication with the cloud is very limited (e.g. LoRa), it allows a 80% improvement in average latency compared to a traditional cloud solution.
Finally, we deal with power-constrained devices. We propose an energy consumption estimation and optimization approach for DNNs with multiple early exits in a platform composed of several edge devices and a cloud server. The approach utilizes machine learning combined with dynamic linear programming techniques to estimate the energy consumption of different DNN configurations and identify the optimal configuration that minimizes energy consumption while maintaining the desired accuracy level.

Keywords: edge computing
early-exits
deep neural networks
optimisation
artificial intelligence
knowledge distillation
Advisor: Trigoni, A
Markham, A
Changing society in international courts: the complicated roles of NGOs
before the European court of human rights

This thesis examines the role of NGOs before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), drawing on interview data with a variety of stakeholders. It is often assumed that NGOs enhance the function of international courts to solve disputes, process cases efficiently, and foster the development of international law. Above all, NGOs are often said to play a re-distributive role: supporting the comparatively less powerful applicants (typically human rights victims) and thereby advancing social change. Against this backdrop, this thesis makes use of empirical research in an attempt to present a more nuanced picture of the role of NGOs than the above narrative alone may suggest. Taking the ECtHR as a field of research, this thesis explores the gap between the prevailing narratives and the reality of NGOs’ activities before the ECtHR. Deploying the sociological framework suggested by Anthony Giddens, the author focuses on the daily routines of players before the ECtHR, rather than their discourses alone, in an attempt to to understand and reveal hidden social dynamics. The author conducted interviews with a variety of stakeholders, including activists of large NGOs but also activists of smaller NGOs as well as Registry lawyers working at the ECtHR. The empirical data reveals a complicated, interdependent Court-NGO relationship which differs from the expected narrative. The data suggests that Large NGOs, under the pressure from the Court to provide ‘useful’ information and maximise its efficiency, seek an interdependent relationship through third-party interventions, despite the acknowledged unlikelihood of influencing the Court’s jurisprudence, while smaller NGOs lack the resources necessary to build this type of interdependent relationship with the Court and consequentially face a diminished role, to the detriment of the ECtHR’s human rights objectives.

Keywords: European Court of Human Rights
Human Rights NGOs
Law and Society
Application of concentrated solution theory and core potential to ion exchange media

Simple electrolytic systems are studied under the framework of Newman's concentrated-solution theory without making an explicit assumption of electroneutrality. To ensure thermodynamic consistency in non-electroneutral systems, Goyal and Monroe's core-potential theory is incorporated.
Three electrolytic solutions are investigated first in this thesis: (1) the binary electrolyte, (2) the three-ion ionic liquid, and (3) the binary salt in two neutral solvents. Corrections to electrochemical-potential differentials (dμ_i) are derived by combining core-potential theory with the Boltzmann distribution, in accordance with Goyal and Monroe's treatment. The new dμ_i's —which satisfy the fundamental Gibbs–Duhem relation universally— can be directly employed to describe systems and situations in which diffusion takes place, regardless of the charge state of the system.
Using the new dμ_i expressions in practice requires knowing the functional forms of concentration-dependent thermodynamic factors. The liquid-junction potential accessed by the concentration-cell experiment is investigated as the main thermodynamic-factor characterisation technique in this thesis. Thus measured liquid-junction potential for the EMC:EC:LiPF6 electrolyte —a commonly used cosolvent electrolyte in conventional lithium-ion batteries— is parameterised as an illustrative example. This exercise reveals that overpotentials arise from solvent polarisation; thus, it is important to distinguish the two solvents in high-fidelity battery models for an accurate description of long-term battery operation.
The theoretical endeavour so far is then extended to a charged membrane submerged in a binary electrolyte, which shares aspects of the three-ion ionic liquid (having two neutral entities with a shared ion) and the binary salt in two neutral solvents (having four species). Corrections to dμ_i's, as well as thermodynamic-factor expressions, are derived. Furthermore, concentration dependences of two Stefan–Maxwell diffusivities associated with the charged membrane end-group are derived for Nafion 117 in aqueous sulfuric acid. This is done by revisiting Verbrugge and Hill's radio-tracing experiment and the ionic-conductivity measurement. The resulting Stefan–Maxwell diffusivities are then utilised to estimate the macroscopic transport properties, illustrating the usefulness of having access to the full suite of concentration-dependent Stefan–Maxwell diffusivities.

Keywords: core-potential theory
diffusion in non-electroneutral regions
diffusion across membrane
concentrated solution theory
thermodynamic factors
Advisor: Monroe, C
Howey, D
Primary productivity of West African tropical forests

The natural energy on Earth is primarily harnessed through photosynthesis by plants and algae, with a significant portion taking place in tropical forests. The Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) of a forest measures the amount of photosynthate it produces. The field measurement of GPP, which requires extensive fieldwork, has been attempted at Amazonia forests and Southeast Asian forests, but no field measurements have been taken for African forests until now. The thesis presents the first field quantification of GPP in West African forests.
The study also delves into several aspects of GPP, including (1) how plants allocate photosynthate to their own metabolism (autotrophic respiration) versus building plant tissue (biomass production), which is later consumed by other organisms (heterotrophic respiration). (2) Considering that the main environmental variable in West Africa is aridity, how do plant photosynthetic strategies vary from wet to dry sites? (3) The first part of the thesis found that West African forests have higher GPP than Amazonia forests. The study also explores whether global vegetation models, used for climate change projections, can account for this pattern. If not, the thesis seeks to uncover the cause of the deficiency.

Keywords: carbon cycle
primary productivity
tropical forests
African forests
carbon budget
Advisor: Malhi, Y
Oliveras Menor, I
Prentice, I
Circadian regulation of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 replication

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes significant health problems globally, and despite improvements in therapy there remains no cure. Viral replication is reliant on the host and many physiological processes are influenced by endogenous 24 h oscillations, called circadian rhythms. On a cellular level, circadian transcription factors generate daily oscillations in gene expression. As there is an emerging role for clock components in regulating viral replication, we studied the interplay between the circadian clock and HIV-1.
Using a cellular circadian model system, we demonstrate rhythmic HIV-1 replication, which has a period of ~24 hours and is regulated by the cell-intrinsic clock. Pharmacological modulation of circadian transcription factors altered HIV-1 replication across multiple HIV-1 subtypes, indicating pan-genotypic anti-viral potential. Genetic disruption of the circadian activator BMAL1 reduced HIV-1 replication and blunted rhythmicity in transcription. In contrast, knockdown of the circadian repressor REV-ERB enhanced viral replication. We show binding of clock factors to the viral genome and reveal time differential binding of circadian nuclear receptors REV-ERB and ROR, which compete for binding to a ROR response element in the HIV-1 promoter. We demonstrate circadian regulation of HIV-1 host factors, which will influence rhythmic HIV replication. Moreover, we uncover a role for the circadian machinery in regulating latent HIV-1 infection. Bromodomain proteins and salt inducible kinases are both involved in circadian networks, and our findings indicate that they regulate reactivation from latency.
Our work provides novel insights in the circadian regulation of HIV-1 replication by molecular components of the clock. Circadian modifiers with anti-viral properties could uncover novel drug targets, which may augment existing treatments and will help to inform HIV therapy and management.

Keywords: host-pathogen interaction
circadian rhythms
HIV-1
viruses
biological clocks
Advisor: McKeating, J
Vasudevan, S
Exploring metacognitive confidence in categorisation judgements

This thesis explores metacognitive decision confidence in category judgements. It aims to investigate how different types of information affect our confidence in the choices we make about category membership.
Over three experimental chapters, this thesis explores the interplay between the properties and structure of category spaces and subsequent confidence reports. Chapter 1 takes a computational model-based approach to contrast normative Bayesian and heuristic rule-based characterisations of confidence, with ambiguous results. The second experimental chapter, therefore, takes a more direct approach, using an experimental manipulation of category variance to directly contrast the predictions of different models of confidence. The third experimental chapter extends this approach to consider more complex category structures that involve multiple dimensions and differing logical structures to the categories.
In this way, over the course of this thesis, decision-making and decision confidence are investigated in multiple behavioural tasks with different parameters, decision boundaries, and distribution properties. Collectively this research seeks to better understand how information about categories is used or represented by decision-makers, and, in turn, where the cognitive computations of decision confidence may derive from and in what contexts.
Through this combination of behavioural analyses and computational modelling exercises, the sensitivity of confidence to the properties and structure of category distributions and bounds is evidenced. The tension between heuristic and normative Bayesian models of decision confidence is explored and the results suggest that the relationship between confidence and heuristic distance-to-bound models is complex -- with the simplicity of the original theory missing out on the rich signal about the category distribution representations that is conveyed in these data. The theoretical, practical, and methodological implications are discussed.

Keywords: categorisation
metacognition
decision confidence
decision-making
Advisor: Yeung, N
O'Reilly , J
The social criticism of T.S. Eliot: Conservative, Classicist, Catholic, and European
 

This DPhil Thesis provides the first systematic and academic study of T.S. Eliot’s social criticism since the publication ofRoger Kojecký’s 1972 landmark study, T.S. Eliot’s Social Criticism. It provides a comprehensive portrait of T.S. Eliot as a social critic, connecting the political, social, cultural, and religious strains of his thought, while accurately placing him as a thinker within his political, social, cultural, and religious contexts. It challenges many of the prevailing scholarly representations of his work: namely the over- identification of his social criticism with his later or ‘mature’ works (such as The Idea of a Christianity Society and Notes Towards the Definition ofCulture) and the misidentification of them as the direct product of his participation in The Moot discussion group. By contrast, this thesis relocates the primary nexus of Eliot’s social criticism within the influential period of his Criterion editorship, and constructs alternative classifications, chronologies, and genealogies regarding his content and influences. This thesis also disproves many of the false claims and insinuations made about his work, such as its supposedly anti-Semitic and anti-democratic tendencies. What emerges from our comprehensive review is a social criticism animated and dominated by Catholic social thought, conservative anti-statism (tied to a tory respect for ‘Church and state’), classicist-inspired moral and literary standards, and a Eurocentric concern for the cultural and political inheritance of Christendom. To that end the thesis is divided into three chapters with the first providing a biographical study of Eliot as a social critic; the second examining the content of his social criticism during the Criterion period; and the last clarifying the relationship between his later works and The Moot discussion group.

Keywords: Classicist
Conservative
Intellectual history
public moralists
christian social thought
Catholic
European
T.S. Eliot
Social Criticism
anglican moralists
Public intellectual
Advisor: Young, B