VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Good but not good enough: the limitations of a social assistance program for children in South Africa –the case of the child support grant

Background: In recent years cash transfer programs have increasingly become the strategy of choice for poverty alleviation in middle and low income countries. Several child cash transfer programs have been implemented in middle and low-income regions such as Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and many of them have been found to be effective in improving child outcomes.
South Africa‘s child support grant (CSG) constitutes the largest cash transfer programme in the country and the continent. Even though evidence exists which shows that the CSG is associated with improved child outcomes,less research has gone into examining how the different aspects of the grant all work together to facilitate or limit it as a policy instrument for child poverty reduction. Such evidence is important in facilitating an understanding of the capacity of the CSG as a poverty alleviation strategy in a developing country context.
Methods: This dissertation utilises a mixed-methods approach to explore: 1) barriers to CSG take up; 2) the adequacy of the CSG in supporting its recipients; 3) participants’ views on current topical issues surrounding the CSG.
Results: Despite evidence that the CSG is important in tackling child poverty, this dissertation found that the grant is not without its shortcomings as a poverty alleviation instrument. The limitations of the grant are influenced by the policy environment, operations, institutions working alongside the CSG, and the social context in which the grant is implemented.
Conclusion: The findings raise important questions about the capacity of cash transfers to make a significant difference in the lives of poor children and their families if they are neither substantial nor linked to other poverty measures in developing country contexts. The policy recommendations that have been made can strengthen theChild Support Grant’s potential to lift children out of poverty in South Africa.

Keywords: cash transfers
child support grant
south africa
child poverty
Advisor: Surender, R
Noble, M
Rethinking joint forest management: the role of self-interest and altruism in shaping environmental and socio-economic outcomes in Kenya

Participatory approaches such as Joint forest management (JFM) have been used to anchor payment for ecosystems services frameworks such as REDD+. A qualitative research conducted in Arabuko Sokoke Forest (ASF), Kenya, hopes to contribute to that discussion, by drawing on 23 key informants and participant observation. The study investigates the extent at which JFM has shaped forest conservation, benefit sharing, community empowerment and intrinsic motivation. It adds a twist – role of self-interest and altruism in shaping JFM outcomes. The results reveal that ASF is perceived to be degraded, there is no formal benefit sharing mechanism, communities haven’t been fully empowered and JFM hasn’t crowded out the intrinsic motivation of local communities to conserve. These environmental and socio-economic outcomes have been shaped by the nature of the symbiotic relationship in JFM, which has been plagued by self-interest being pursued by all major stakeholders at the expense of trading altruistic acts.

Advisor: McDermott, C
“The foundations of the national glory are in the homes of the people”: the Addison Act, the First World War, and British housing policy

This thesis examines the relationship between the First World War and housing conditions in Britain. The Housing, Town Planning, &c.; Act, 1919 – passed immediately after the war following years of investigation and formulation by Christopher Addison and the Ministry of Reconstruction – completely changed the face of British state housing policy. The importance of the war in engendering the first major foray of the state in to the provision of dwellings for the working classes is widely acknowledged, yet the importance of the specific conditions which engendered the policy has not previously been explored.
This thesis enriches our scholarly understandings of both the Addison Act and state housing in Britain more widely by closely examining the reciprocal relationship between housing and the First World War in Britain. It builds a more comprehensive picture of the deterioration of housing conditions during the war, and tracks the specific impact they had both on war policy and the plans for reconstruction; in particular, it demonstrates that the Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act, 1915, was the single most important element in determining the scale of the post-war housing programme. In doing so, it elucidates the myriad challenges the Addison Act faced, and highlights the approaches the Ministry of Reconstruction considered and implemented in an attempt to address them. It draws attention to the hitherto neglected importance of women in the creation of the post-war programme and highlights the influence of pronatalism and the ideas of a healthier future nation on the planning process. Furthermore, closer investigation highlights that for policy-makers in the Ministry of Reconstruction, the housing programme was a ‘silver bullet’: not only did they seek to repair a market irreparably broken by the 1915 Rent Act, but they saw the post-war housing programme as an opportunity through which to fix a wide number of societal problems.

Keywords: homes fit for heroes
addison act
housing
homes
addison
Advisor: Gregory, A
Development of novel aluminium matrix nanocomposites

Novel Al matrix nanocomposites have been produced and studied based on a high strength nanoquasicsytalline (NQX) Al93Fe3Cr2Nb2 (at%) alloy. Two types of metallic materials including pure metals (such as Nb or Ti) and amorphous Ti50Cu25Ni25 (at%) alloy ribbons have been used as reinforcements. The constituent materials, extruded alloy/composites bars have been characterised using various techniques including electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, and X-ray computed tomography. The mechanical properties of the extruded alloy/composites bars have been studied by Vicker’s hardness tests, compression tests at room temperature and elevated temperature, and split Hopkinson pressure bar tests.
The microstructure of the alloy/composites contains i-phase particles embedded in α-Al, mostly with diameters under 1µm, along with some possible intermetallic precipitates. NQX/Ribbons composite also contains amorphous phase and a crystalline Ti2(Cu, Ni) phase.
Compression strength of the alloy/composites at room temperature and elevated temperature are superior to conventional high strength Al alloys and corresponding Al matrix composites. The elastic (non-plastic) reinforcements (the melt-spun amorphous Ti-based alloy ribbons) contributes to an increase of the strength but a reduced ductility, which leads to a lower toughness material respect to the alloy matrix. However, the elastic-plastic reinforcements (pure Nb or pure Ti) contributes to an increased strength and maintain the ductility, which leads to a higher toughness material respect to the alloy matrix.
From the tomography results of the NQX/Ribbons composite and Al-QC/Nb composite, their plastic deformation has been visualised and localised strain at the shear stress plane has been identified.
The strength of NQX alloy have been attributed to grain boundary and Orowan’s strengthening mechanisms, while solid solution and dislocation strengthening have also contributed to the strength in a minor fraction. Strengthening from the reinforcements in the composites have been explained by composite models such as Rule of Mixture and Shear Lag model which fit well with the experimental results.

Advisor: Galano, M
Audebert, F
Control of intestinal progenitor cell fate by the microenvironment

The conventional model of intestinal epithelial architecture describes a unidirectional tissue organisational hierarchy with stem cells situated at the crypt base and daughter cells proliferating and terminally differentiating as they progress along the vertical (crypt-luminal) axis. In this model, the fate of a cell that has left the niche is determined and its lifespan limited. I look at evidence to suggest that stem cell control and daughter cell fate determination is not solely an intrinsic, cell autonomous property but is heavily influenced by the microenvironment. Selective pressures that disrupt the homeostatic balance, such as intestinal inflammation or morphogen dysregulation, can cause committed progenitor cells and even some differentiated cells to regain stem cell properties. Disruption of cell fate determination can lead to somatic mutation and neoplastic transformation of cells situated outside the crypt base stem cell niche. The Wnt, BMP and Hedgehog pathways are explored in terms of epithelial and mesenchymal compartmentalisation and cross-talk, both in homeostasis and inflammation. Interactions between BMP and Hedgehog pathways are studied in vivo and in vitro. The BMP antagonist GREM1 is discussed, and the effect of a compartmental switch in its expression in humans (Hereditary Mixed Polyposis Syndrome) and in mouse models. This leads to ectopic crypts with supposed stem cell activity, and evidence for stem cell activity is interrogated using lineage tracing models and organoid cultures. The functionality of Sox9, a marker of ectopic crypts, is explored. An epithelial Sox9 knockout model is studied in terms of its effect on ectopic crypt formation. The role of Sox9 in intestinal restitution is also examined by using a chemical colitis model and a biopsy wounding model.

Keywords: Stem cell biology
Advisor: Leedham, S
Tomlinson, I
Exciton dynamics in π-conjugated polymer systems

Experimentally, it is observed that upon photoexcitation, conjugated polymers undergo sub-picosecond coupled exciton-phonon dynamics, in which the nuclei distort to stabilise the new electronic state. Previously, such relaxation dynamics of highly excited electronic states of poly(p-phenylenevinylene) have been modelled using Ehrenfest dynamics. Rather than the system relaxing onto a single emissive chromophore as physically expected, the dynamics were seen to bifurcate into a quantum superposition of chromophore states.
In this thesis, the dynamics are instead modelled using a quantum mechanical treatment for the nuclei. In accordance with previous work, the excited electronic states of a polymer are described by a single Frenkel exciton and exciton-phonon coupling is explicitly included using the Frenkel-Holstein model. The time evolution of the system is then described by a Lindblad master equation, which includes damping of the internal nuclear degrees of freedom by the environment.
Firstly, the associated equations of motion are solved using the quantum jump trajectory and time evolving block decimation techniques. Within such a framework, we find that the unphysical bifurcation behaviour is corrected for and the dynamics reproduce the &lsim;50 fs time scale observed in experiment. Processes such as exciton-polaron formation, exciton decoherence and exciton density localisation are also present within the model dynamics.
Secondly, the steady state solution associated with the dynamics is calculated using a Lindblad perturbation theory. Within this approach, the limited functional space (LFS) method is used to obtain numerical results for the steady state. These results confirm that our model dynamics do proceed into a 'chromophore like' steady state, with associated short-ranged exciton-phonon, exciton coherence and exciton localisation lengths.
Finally, we introduce two techniques designed to efficiently describe the time evolution of 'classical' torsional modes. These modes are thought to give rise to the ~100 fs time scale observed in experiments, which is currently absent from our model.

Advisor: Barford, W
Quantitative studies of gas porosity in cast aluminium &amp; the determination of melt quality

Gas porosity is one of the major defects that forms during solidification in cast aluminium alloys. Hydrogen, oxide films, and TiB2 based grain refiner are all known to play a role in the formation of gas porosity, however their individual influences are not fully understood, necessitating further investigation.
In this work, metallography and low resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography (XCT), i.e. macro-CT, have been employed to study the effects of hydrogen, oxide films, and TiB2 grain refiner on the structure of porosity formed in Al-7Si samples that were cast using the Reduced Pressure Test (RPT). Porosity in the centres of castings that were solidified under atmospheric pressure is also examined using high resolution XCT, i.e. micro-CT.
The studies of the structure of the porosity provided insight into the respective effects that the aforementioned factors play in the nucleation and growth of bubbles in the material during solidification. The results suggested that hydrogen provides the impetus for gas porosity formation, and the fuel for the expansion of the nucleated bubbles, while oxide films, and TiB2 grain refiner particles probably TiB2 clusters act as bubble nuclei, and provide a means for the hydrogen to come out of solution and form the bubble. The higher the oxide film content of a melt, the greater the fraction of hydrogen that may be released from solution. Another finding was that Premetz and PoDFA analysis proved unreliable for measuring the oxide film content of a melt; it was concluded that this due to their insensitivity to small oxide films. SEM microanalysis or the use of the RPT are therefore needed in order to measure melt oxide film content.
The results provided new insight into the RPT and how it may be used as a measure of melt quality. In line with the current wisdom, the volume fraction of porosity was shown to indicate the combined hydrogen and oxide film content of the melt, while the pore number density was shown to be indicative of the oxide film content in the material.

Advisor: O'Reilly, K
Novel methods of measuring and modifying perception of and satisfaction with body size: a clinical translational approach

Body dissatisfaction is a risk factor for subsequent eating disorders, weight gain and low mood. It is resistant to treatment and, untreated, predicts relapse to eating disorders. Measurement of its perceptual and cognitive components currently relies predominantly on self-report questionnaires.
This thesis describes the development and testing of a novel brief intervention designed to change perception of and satisfaction with own body size. Three studies demonstrate and replicate the finding that whether one-off, or repeated over the course of a week, exposure to over- or normal- weight images leads to participants subsequently perceiving others’ bodies as smaller, in comparison to those shown underweight bodies. One-off exposure to images of overweight, compared to normal or underweight, women also leads to participants viewing their own bodies as smaller, and being more satisfied with their body size; however, repeated exposure over the course of a week does not have this effect, and in fact leads to women perceiving their own bodies as larger. Such repeated exposure to over- rather than underweight bodies does however increase women’s ideal body size.
The thesis also describes two studies concerning the development and testing of novel measures of body size and satisfaction with body size in healthy women and those with an eating disorder. Using an Avatar to demonstrate real and ideal body size, and a novel behavioural measure of body satisfaction using outfits, both correlated well with existing measures of body size and satisfaction, and there were differences on these measures between individuals with and without eating disorders. The novel implicit tasks (Implicit Association Tasks and a Lexical Decision Task) also correlated with existing measures of body size and satisfaction, however, there were no differences on these measures between individuals with and without eating disorders.
The findings suggest that exposure to images of women of different sizes is effective in changing perception of what constitutes a normal weight, but has less predictable effects in relation to perception of and satisfaction with own size. Implicit measures of body size and satisfaction do not appear to be useful in distinguishing between women with and without eating disorders, but a novel behavioural measure using outfits, and using Avatars to demonstrate perceived own size, does show promise.

Keywords: eating disorder
bulimia nervosa
anorexia nervosa
body dissatisfaction
Advisor: Harmer, C
Broome, M
Park, R
Descent methods and torsion on Jacobians of higher genus curves

In this thesis we accomplish four main results related to Jacobians of curves.
Firstly, we find a large number of hyperelliptic curves of genus 2, 3 and 4 whose Jacobians have torsion points of large order. The genus 2 case is particularly well-studied in the literature, and we provide a new example of a geometrically simple Jacobian of a genus 2 curve with a point of order 25, an order which was not previously known. For geometrically simple Jacobians of curves of genus 3 and 4, we extend the known orders of points, increasing the largest known order in both cases to 91 and 88, respectively.
Secondly, we find an explicit embedding of the Kummer variety of a genus 3 superelliptic curve into projective space. This is a natural extension of the embeddings that are already known for the Kummer varieties of hyperelliptic curves of genus 2 and 3.
Thirdly, we classify the genus 2 curves whose Jacobians admit a (4,4)- isogeny. We find an infinite family of genus 2 curves for which the elements of the kernel of the (4,4)-isogeny are defined over the ground field, and make partial progress on classifying the genus 2 curves with this property. We also extend Flynn’s example of a genus 2 curve whose Jacobian admits a (5, 5)-isogeny to infinitely many geometrically nonisomorphic curves.
Finally, we extend Schaefer’s algorithm for computing the Selmer group of a Jacobian to carry out a (4, 4)-descent on Jacobians of curves that admit a (4, 4)-isogeny.

Keywords: Hyperelliptic curve
Torsion
Jacobian
Descent
Advisor: Flynn, V
First measurements of inclusive muon neutrino charged current differential cross sections on argon at 0.8 GeV average neutrino energy with the MicroBooNE detector

Current and next-generation precision neutrino oscillation experiments aim to determine the neutrino mass ordering, to measure the extent of CP violation in the lepton sector and to probe beyond Standard Model physics, such as sterile neutrinos. These experiments rely on models for neutrino interactions with matter that are complicated by nuclear effects and final state interactions. To date, these effects cannot be modelled precisely, especially for heavy target nuclei, typically used in modern neutrino experiments. Many future experiments will employ detectors based on the liquid argon time projection chamber technology. As a consequence, neutrino-argon cross-section measurements are of the outmost importance, especially given the relative scarcity of neutrino-argon data, due to the novelty of the technology.
This thesis presents the first measurement of muon-neutrino charged-current inclusive cross section on argon at a mean neutrino energy of 0.8 GeV. Data were collected using the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber in the Fermilab Booster neutrino beam during a period of six months, corresponding to an exposure of 1.6 x 1020 protons on target. The measured cross section is presented as a function of the outgoing muon momentum, using multiple Coulomb scattering as a measurement technique, as well as the muon angle with respect to the beam direction. A comparison of the measured cross section obtained with two different configurations of the Genie neutrino event generator is performed, and better agreement is found when using nuclear-effect modelling in the theoretical calculations. Additionally, the total flux integrated cross section is measured to be 0.693 ± 0.010 (stat.) ± 0.165 (syst.) x 10-38 cm2.

Keywords: neutrino
liquid argon time projection chamber
microboone
cross section
particle physics
Advisor: Guenette, R
Barr, G
Use and applications of sulfur dioxide surrogates in the synthesis of sulfonyl derivatives

This thesis presents the development of novel methodologies toward the synthesis of a range of sulfonyl derivative compounds. These processes employ easy-to-handle sulfur dioxide surrogate DABSO (vide infra) and exploit the ability of the sulfonyl functional group to react on both the sulfur atom and the oxygen atom to deliver compounds such as sulfoxides, sulfonate esters and sulfinate esters.
Chapter 1 is a literature review of the synthesis and applications of sulfonyl-containing compounds and the organic chemistry of sulfur dioxide. The discovery and established used of the various kind of sulfur dioxide surrogates with organometallic reagents, metalcatalysts, and metal-free conditions for the synthesis of sulfonyl-containing compounds is also described.
Chapter 2 describes the development of a one-pot process for the synthesis of unsymmetrical sulfoxides and sulfinamides using organometallic nucleophiles, DABSO, and trimethylsilyl chloride.1 Reacting sulfur dioxide with an organometallic reagent provides a metal-sulfinate intermediate. In situ conversion of the sulfinate to a sulfinate silyl ester, using TMS-Cl, generates an electrophilic species, which enables the addition of a second nucleophile (an organometallic reagent or a metal-amide complex) for the synthesis of the desired sulfoxide or sulfinamide products.
Chapter 3 details the synthesis of pentafluorophenyl sulfonate esters based on a novel copper-catalysed oxidative transformation of in situ generated aryl and heteroaryl sulfinates to the corresponding sulfonate esters. The sulfinate intermediates are synthesised from boronic acids and DABSO, under the action of a palladium catalyst. The use of aryl bromides as suitable substrates for the synthesis of sulfinate ester was also established.
Chapter 4 documents various catalysed processes employed to promote enantioselective ring-opening of epoxides with sulfinic acid as nucleophile. Firstly, the use of metal-salen complexes is reported and shows the formation of the corresponding b-hydroxy sulfonate ester products. Secondly, the unexpected reactivity of sulfinic acid with epoxides under the control of phosphoric acid provides a simple and attractive route to useful b-hydroxy sulfinate species.
Chapter 5 presents a summary of the research and the potential future work.
Chapter 6 provides experimental details and data.

Advisor: Willis, M
Catalytic divergent synthesis of quinazolinone alkaloids

The general goal of this thesis was to implement a new, catalytic, enantioselective isocyanoacetate ketone aldol reaction into a challenging total synthesis plan, in order to achieve a catalyst controlled stereoselective total synthesis of a specific subset of quinazolinone alkaloids - tryptoquivalines and chaetominine.
Chapter 1 firstly introduces the panorama of quinazolinone alkaloids and pioneering synthetic achievements on tryptoquivalines and chaetominines. Subsequently, previous crucial development of isocyanoacetate ester aldol/Mannich reactions were concisely reviewed.
Chapter 2 demonstrates our first-generation catalytic divergent synthetic approach towards both tryptoquivaline F and chaetominine.
Chapter 3 mainly illustrates the second-generation total synthetic approach towards tryptoquivaline F.
Chapter 4 shows our total synthesis work on a naturally occurring pentacyclic quinazolinone natural product and core of tryptoquivalines, followed with homologations towards tryptoquivaline F.

Advisor: Dixon, D