VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Royal responsibility in post-conquest invasion narratives

Much has been written about twelfth-century chroniclers in England, but satisfactory reasons for their approaches to historical explanation have not yet been advanced. This thesis investigates how and why historians in England retold accounts of England's eleventh-century invasions: the Danish Conquest of 1016 and the Norman Conquest of 1066. The object is to illuminate the consistent historical agendas of three historians: William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon and John of Worcester. I argue that they share a view of royal responsibility independent both of their sources (primarily the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and of any political agenda that placed English and Norman allegiances in opposition. Although the accounts diverge widely in the interpretation of character, all three are concerned more with the effectiveness of England's kings than with their origins.
Part One outlines trends in early insular narratives and examines each of the three historians' background, prose style and view of English history to provide the necessary context for understanding how and why they rewrote narratives of kings and conquest. Part Two analyzes narratives of defending kings Æthelred and Harold; Part Three conducts a parallel analysis of conquering kings Cnut and William. These sections argue that all three writers add a significant and new degree of causal and moral responsibility to English kings in their invasion narratives.
Part Four discusses the implications and significance of the thesis's findings. It argues that the historians' invasion narratives follow consistent patterns in service of their projects of redeeming the English past. It contends that modern understanding of the eleventh-century conquests of England continues to be shaped by what historians wrote years later, in the twelfth. In departing from prior modes of explanation by collective sin, the three historians' invasion narratives reflect a renaissance of ancient ideas about rule.

Keywords: William of Normandy
political thought
medieval
Henry of Huntingdon
John of Worcester
William the Conqueror
historiography
Cnut of Denmark
cultural history
Anglo-Saxon history
twelfth century
Harold Godwineson
Æthelred II
intellectual history
William of Malmesbury
Advisor: Wickham, C
The strategic opinion leader

Opinion leaders are important political players who bridge the gap between the political elite and the general public. Traditionally opinion leaders use social pressure and social support via interpersonal communication to personally influence the opinions, attitudes and behaviours of their everyday associates (who make up the general public). However, in a hybrid media system opinion leaders have access to added channels which mean they can communicate with audiences beyond their everyday associates and/or engage in non-interpersonal interactions, potentially setting the stage for opinion leaders to become more influential since they can access more members of the general public. Conversely, since the ability of opinion leaders to influence others traditionally relies on strong social bonds, even if audiences are accessible for information transfer, the lack of social connection could mean influence does not flow. As such, opinion leaders' channel choice in a hybrid media system is potentially very important.
To investigate the patterns of channel use as well as motivations for, and impacts of, channel choices by opinion leaders, a two phase mixed-methods study is employed. Phase one includes online social network analysis of the &num;CDNpoli (Canadian politics) hashtag on Twitter and an online survey. Phase two investigates the communication practices of 21 specific digitally enabled opinion leaders drawn from the &num;CDNpoli network. Two hour in-depth interviews are paired with visualizations of the participants trace data. Telephone interviews with associates (alters) of the primary interviewee were conducted (N=27). This design is therefore responsive to the multi-channel reality of a hybrid media system and improves upon large scale and single channel studies which are most common in this line of research.
Now strategic and, at times, impersonal, a fundamental shift in how influence is derived challenges theories of social influence and information dissemination. Two types of strategic opinion leaders emerge: enthusiasts and champions. Their strategies contribute to a wider trend - a "just-in-time" informed citizenry - where those who do not opt in to receiving messages from the political elite only get information at the last possible minute, such as during a scandal or an election. Future research and communication strategy must be sensitive to the varied aims and tactics of digitally enabled opinion leaders as well as the subsequent inconsistent relationship between the uninformed and their political system.

Keywords: personal influence
social network analysis
political chat
social media
Advisor: Bright, J
Meyer, E
Further education college quality systems: a framework of design principles for the development of teaching quality improvement processes

This research is a case study of the quality improvement process in an English further education college. It examines the way that staff involved in the design and operation of the quality system shape the process in a part of the education sector that struggles with issues of performance. The case is placed into the context of an unstable policy environment, where further education colleges have been subjected to frequent bouts of government intervention and a funding regime that is unfavourable when compared to secondary schools and universities.
The contribution to knowledge of this thesis is that it addresses an under-researched area of further education by viewing the quality process from the perspective of the governors, managers and professional staff responsible for its design and operation. As such it addresses a problem where a lot of attention has been given to teaching staff who experience the quality process or to macro studies where the focus is on outputs in the sector. However, less attention has been paid to the governors, senior staff and quality teams who assess teaching and learning in colleges. The data for the case study were gathered over a two-year period between 2010-2012 and include interviews with college staff, senior staff from OFSTED and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and staff from a second college, used to help verify the findings. In addition to this, documentation for the quality system was gathered including inspection documents and policy documents. The data were analysed in order to surface traits of social and organisational practice that address the problem of operating a quality system in an environment that is highly resistant to systemisation and predictability.
The findings are presented as 'fuzzy' generalisations supplemented by guidance in the form of design principles. The thesis provides an empirically grounded description of key elements of the relationships and the surrounding sociotechnical system that were found in the case. The design principles augment the case study and provide guidance on how a combination of trust relationships, resilience of processes to disruption and flexibility of application provide a background for the quality improvement process at Stretchford College, which was rated as 'Outstanding' at the time of the research.

Keywords: Quality Systems
Sociotechnical design
Design Ethnography
Further Education
Human Centred Computing
Advisor: Davies, C
Jirotka, M
Justifying claims based on unauthorised substitution

This thesis examines the doctrinal justification for the contingency of certain private law claims on tracing in English law. It argues that, contrary to the currently dominant model of tracing as an evidential process, aimed at resolving factual uncertainties, the tracing rules are best understood as normative in function. They strike a balance between preserving the autonomy of the defendant, while preventing her from exploiting the claimant's legally mandated vulnerability to the defendant's decisions to deprive him of rights. The rules distinguish among the different legal capacities of a person acquiring a right, and permit a stranger to the transaction to assert an entitlement to its product only in cases where the product is separable from the person of the defendant and where its acquisition involved the exercise of a legal power to deprive the claimant. On this basis, the thesis argues that claims contingent on tracing are better described as claims based on 'unauthorised substitution'. An unauthorised substitution occurs where A acquires a right in consideration for the valid exercise of a private legal power affecting B, in breach of a duty owed to B. Such an exercise of power can only take place in the context of a prior relationship of 'stewardship of assets', whereby A has a legal power to vary the legal rights of B with respect to some assignable right, owes B a duty in respect of the exercise of that power, and is able to validly exercise the legal power in breach of that duty. These relationships overlap with the categories of 'fiduciary duties' or 'property rights', but share additional and distinctive characteristics that justify the law’s particular response to unauthorised substitution.

Keywords: Common law
Tracing
Equity
Advisor: Swadling, W
All dielectric composites for metamaterial applications

This thesis describes my work on manufacturing of all dielectric polymer/ceramic composites for electromagnetic property customisation at microwave frequencies. Electromagnetic wave manipulation can be achieved with the help of transformation optics concept and metamaterials with desired permittivity and permeability properties. The use of all-dielectric metamaterials, in particular, offers a novel solution to broadband, low loss microwave devices.
In this work, polymer/ceramic composites were studied to provide materials with a wide range of permittivity that can be customised precisely by optimised manufacturing routes. Thermoplastic perfluoroalkoxy (PFA) and thermoset epoxy were mainly used as polymer matrices and ferroelectric powders such as barium titanate used as ceramic fillers. Different composite types were fabricated by spraying, casting and 3D printing, with each manufacturing method carefully studied to produce stable and uniform composite quality. The microstrcutures of these composites were examined by microtomy and SEM and the dielectric properties were assessed by impedance and waveguide measurements for difference microwave frequency ranges.
Controllable dielectric constants from 3 to 18 with high accuracy in epoxy/BT composites were achieved at 12 - 18 GHz. These composites were then used to fabricate advanced microwave devices such as the power divider lens to demonstrate my capability of permittivity customisation. Simulations for these advanced applications were done in Comsol Multiphysics and were compared to the experimental results.

Advisor: Grovenor, C
Grant, P
Diasterodivergent synthesis of fused ring systems

Introduction
We envisioned using phase transfer catalysis (PTC) to develop asymmetric carba-6π- electrocyclisations. We believed that the configurational lability of 6π systems could be reduced by constraining them within a ring system.
Results and Discussion
En route to the synthesis of a starting material for the transannular electrocyclisation reaction, we noticed that a 5-5-3 fused ring system had formed, in one step, from a linear precursor and as a single diastereomer. We synthesised both geometric isomers of the starting materials, and unexpectedly, the E or Z isomers cyclised to form different products under different reaction conditions. We further investigated the 5-5-3 system, generating substrate scope and computationally and experimentally exploring the mechanism.
Conclusion
In one step we have constructed three carbon-carbon bonds, up to five contiguous stereogenic centres and all as a single diastereomer. We have synthesised 15 examples and have probed the mechanism experimentally and computationally. We have also investigated asymmetric examples of this reaction.

Advisor: Smith, M
Inference of recombination properties in bacteria from whole genomes

The concept of species in bacteria is a matter of contention. The current definition is based on DNA-DNA hybridisation and does not account for evolutionary forces that are important in demarcating species. In this thesis we investigate two evolutionary forces that are important in speciation in bacteria, propose novel statistical models for them and infer parameters of interest.
We present the first attempt at inferring the bias in the recombination process from whole bacterial genomes. Despite empirical evidence that recombination is biased and theoretical results that this bias is important in speciation, it is usually ignored. We propose a coalescent based model that accounts for the bias in the recombination process. We use approximate Bayesian computation for inference and describe an efficient method for simulating from the model. We show that our method performs well on simulated datasets and is robust to slight misspecification of the history of the samples. Application of our method to a Bacillus cereus dataset shows that it contain evidence that the recombination process depends on the evolutionary distance between donors and recipients. We demonstrate that the rate of bias in the recombination process for this dataset is far lower than what theoretical studies require for the spontaneous generation of populations that can be called species under neutral model.
Next we propose a model for occurrence of adaptive events on a phylogenetic tree. We use the model to infer the boundaries of clusters on a phylogenetic tree that correspond to ecologically distinct lineages. we characterise our method using simulated datasets and show that it is conservative in estimating the number of adaptive events. Finally we apply our method to two bacterial datasets of Salmonella enterica and Vibrionaceae. We show that there is decisive evidence that isolates in these datasets partition into numerous ecologically distinct lineages and use our method to delineate the boundaries of these lineages.

Keywords: Bacterial recombination
Bacterial speciation
Gene-conversion recombination
Coalescent theory
Advisor: Didelot, X
Bowden, R
Improving oral drug delivery: computational studies of proton dependent oligopeptide transporters

Proton dependent oligopeptide transporters (POTs) play a central role in nitrogen homeostasis by coupling the uptake of dipeptides and tripeptides to the proton electrochemical gradient across the plasma membrane. In human, members of this transporter family, PepT1 and PepT2, are critical modulators of drug pharmacokinetics as they facilitate the uptake and retention of numerous orally administered drugs including the β-lactam antibiotics. Rationally designing drugs to target these transporters is therefore an attractive approach to improving bioavailability. To this end, the binding of peptides to a bacterial homolog, PepTSt, was modelled based on recently determined crystal structures. A range of computational methods to predict the free energy of binding were evaluated and a hybrid approach, where the end-point methods were used to classify peptides into strong and poor binders and a theoretically exact method for refinement, was able to accurately predict ligand affinities. This approach was utilised to investigate the substrate preference of PepTSt and the results were validated using in vitro transport assays. To extend this study to the human peptide transporters, homology models of PepT1 and PepT2 were built using the crystal structures of PepTSo and mouse and rat extracellular domains (ECDs) as the templates. Essential residues as proposed by various mutational studies align well with the binding cavity, suggesting that the models are structurally sound. Applying the free energy methods to predict the affinities of peptides and drugs to the homology model of PepT1, however, resulted in discrepancies with experimental data, highlighting the importance of a high-resolution crystal structure in binding affinity predictions. Based on the results for PepTSt, a binding model for peptide prodrugs and β-lactam antibiotics to the human PepT1 was proposed. Overall, this thesis provides a framework for future computational studies using free energy methods to understand drug interactions with pharmaceutically relevant transporters.

Keywords: Scoring functions
Linear interaction energy
Drugs design
MMPBSA
Major facilitator superfamily
Molecular dynamics simulation
Oral bioavailability
Homology modelling
Thermodynamic integration
Free energy methods
Beta lactam antibiotics
Peptide transporter
Advisor: Fowler, P
Sansom, M
Using the controlled human malaria infection model to study immunity to malaria

Controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) studies, where healthy volunteers are infected with Plasmodium falciparum have become a vital tool to accelerate vaccine and drug development. As CHMI trials are carried out in a controlled environment, they allow unprecedented, detailed evaluation of parasite growth dynamics and immunological responses to infection. Though commonly performed in malaria-naïve populations, CHMI trials have rarely been conducted in malaria-endemic regions and to date, have not been used to investigate naturally acquired immunity (NAI) to P. falciparum infection.
This thesis describes the first CHMI study in Kenya and the first attempt to use the modern CHMI model to explore the dynamics and mechanisms of NAI. Using samples collected post-CHMI from both UK volunteers and Kenyan subjects with varying prior exposure to P. falciparum, this work reports and compares the findings of key in vitro assays including GIA, ADRB activity and changes in gene expression in order to understand the effect of NAI on these measures.

Advisor: Draper, S
Marsh, K
Surface passivation for silicon solar cells

Passivation of silicon surfaces remains a critical factor in achieving high conversion efficiency in solar cells, particularly in future generations of rear contact cells –the best performing cell geometry to date. In this thesis, passivation is characterised as either intrinsic or extrinsic, depending on the origin of the chemical and field effect passivation components in dielectric layers. Extrinsic passivation, obtained after film deposition or growth, has been shown to improve significantly the passivation quality of dielectric films.
Record passivation has been achieved leading to surface recombination velocities below 1.5 cm/s for 1 Ωcm n-type silicon covered with thermal oxide, and 0.15 cm/s in the same material covered with a thermal SiO2/PECVD SiNx double layer. Extrinsic field effect passivation, achieved by means of corona charge and/or ionic species, has been shown to decrease by 3 to 10 times the amount of carrier recombination at a silicon surface.
A new parametrisation of interface charge, and electron and hole recombination velocities in a Shockley-Read-Hall extended formalism has been used to model accurately silicon surface recombination without the need to incorporate a term relating to space-charge or surface damage recombination. Such a term is unrealistic in the case of an oxide/silicon interface.
A new method to produce extrinsic field effect passivation has been developed in which charge is introduced into dielectric films at high temperature and then permanently quenched in place by cooling to room temperature. This approach was investigated using charge due to one or more of the following species: ions produced by corona discharge, Na+, K+, Cs+, Mg2+ and Ca2+. It was implemented on both single SiO2 and double SiO2/SiNx dielectric layers which were then measured for periods of up to two years. The decay of the passivation was very slow and time constants of the order of 10,000 days were inferred for two systems: 1) corona-charge-embedded into oxide grown on textured FZ-Si, and 2) potassium ions driven into an oxide on planar FZ-Si. The extrinsic field effect passivation methods developed in this work allow more flexibility in the combined optimisation of the optical properties and the chemical passivation properties of dielectric films on semiconductors.
Increases in cell Voc, Jsc and η parameters have been observed in simulations and obtained experimentally when extrinsic field effect passivation is applied to the front surface of silicon solar cells. The extrinsic passivation reported here thus represents a major advancement in controlled and stable passivation of silicon surfaces, and shows great potential as a scalable and cost effective passivation technology for solar cells.

Keywords: Solar cell
Photovoltaics
Silicon
Solar energy
Antireflection coating
Passivation
Dielectric
Advisor: Wilshaw, P
Synthesis and atomic resolution AC-TEM characterisation of graphene edges

My primary goal was to perform an in depth characterisation of the atomic structure of graphene edges, which was fulfilled through the use of an aberration corrected transmission electron microscope (AC-TEM) – OJ2200 MCO that was enhanced with a double Wien slit monochromator to improve its spatial resolution to &Tilde; 80pm. The chemical vapour deposition grown graphene was characterised by various techniques, including the use of Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Raman spectroscopy to respectively determine the homogeneity and number of layers, and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) to distinguish the size of single crystal region. With this set up, I obtained images of graphene edges at atomic resolution that allowed bond length determination. Based on the acquired information and the application of the density functional theory, it was possible to correlate structural information with the bonding nature of graphene edges; allowing me to further determine the hydrogenation states of graphene with a single AC-TEM frame. Imaging with electron beam monochromation also allowed me to discover the theoretically predicted extended Klein edge structure, which is included as the fourth inherent periodic structure of graphene edges.
With the aid of an in situ heating holder, the temperature dependence of graphene edges were investigated over 350 frames: zig-zag edges are found to dominate at ≤ 400°C; and at temperatures above 600°C, the proportion of armchair and reconstructed 5-7 edges increase dramatically. This is because low temperatures allow contamination, which result in edges becoming etched at a more rapid rate that favours the formation of intrinsic zig-zag edges. The predominance of armchair and reconstructed zig-zag edges at high temperatures could be attributed to the evaporation of surface adsorbates, which resulted from higher thermodynamic stability.
Finally, the in situ growth of a second layer graphene was investigated. Extra layers of graphene was found to heterogeneously nucleate around gold nanoparticles and continuous to grow at 600°C. This study shed light on the growth mechanism of CVD. By bridging the dangling bonds from the edges of two layers of graphene, this structure was extended to form a closed edge graphene nanopore with diameter ranging from 1.4 – 7.4 nm, The closed edge nanopores in bilayer graphene are robust to back-filling even after exposure to atmospheric conditions for days - this opens new possibilities of nanopore fabrication routes for applications such as graphene sensors and DNA sequencing technology.

Keywords: in-situ heating
Atomic Resolution
edges
HRTEM
Graphene
Advisor: Warner, J