VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Magnesium in cellular energetics

Most cellular magnesium is bound, yet it is the concentration of free magnesium, [Mg2+]free, in red blood cells that is vital in the regulation of enzyme activity and ion transport. It is unknown how changes in total blood magnesium affect the [Mg2+]free within red blood cells or in tissue, because the presence of other cations, especially H+ and potassium, K+ , affects the degree to which Mg2+ is bound. Consequently, this Thesis presents a new 31P NMR spectroscopic method to measure [Mg2+]free in blood, which analyses the changes in the phosphorus chemical shifts of ATP and 2,3-DPG using theoretical equations expressing the observed chemical shift as a function of pH, K+ and [Mg2+]free, over the pH range of 5.75 to 8.5 and [Mg2+]free range 0 to 5 mM. The equations were adjusted for the binding of haemoglobin to ATP and DPG, which required knowledge of the intracellular concentrations of ATP, DPG, K+ and Hb. These equations enabled, for the first time, the simultaneous analyses of the chemical shifts of 3P-DPG and β-ATP to measure both intracellular 04- pH and [Mg2+]free in normal and sickle blood.
To simulate in vivo 100% oxygenated blood, samples were prepared for analysis by equilibration with a mixture of O2 and CO2, adjusted to give a pCO2 of 40 mmHg and pO2 > 150 mmHg. Under these conditions, normal whole blood had an intracellular pH of 7.20 ± 0.02 and a [Mg2+]free of 0.41 ± 0.03 mM (n = 33). Further work determined blood pH and [Mg2+]free for several clinical conditions including sickle cell anaemia, pre-eclampsia, hypoxia, patients with sub-arachnoid haemorrhage and chronic fatigue syndrome. This Thesis has demonstrated the potential of this new technique to evaluate the importance of [Mg2+]free in the regulation of metabolite concentration and metabolic function, and to elucidate some of the properties of magnesium transport across the erythrocyte cell membrane.

Advisor: Clarke, K
The structure of the first forty-five questions of the Summa theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas

The thesis has four main parts. The introduction, "Contemporary Thomism", endeavours to justify a re-examination of the structure of the initial questions of the Summa Theologiae on account of the distortions in the presentation of Thomas inherent in the Leonine revival. The four chapters of Part Two consider first, Lombard's Sentences, second, Anselm's Monologion and Proslogion, third, Boethius' De Trinitate, the De Divinis Nominibus of Dionysius and the De Divisione Naturae of Eriugena, and fourth, the Neoplatonism of Proclus and Porphyry in a search for the origins of Thomas' theological structure. It concludes that for the specific features of his system Thomas reaches back beyond the Sentences to the pagan and Christian adaptations of the opposing traditions of Porphyry and Iamblichus.
The five chapters of Part Three analyze the structure of the questions. The first chapter considers the place of the "five ways"; the other four treat questions 1 - 13; 14 - 26; 27 - 43; and 44 - 45 respectively. The analysis discovers a common circular structure in which there is a gradual development from the divine simplicity toward more inclusive and concrete forms of divine self-relation. It finds also an incompletely resolved tension between simplicity and self-relation which are drawn from the contrary Neoplatonic logics of infinite and finite. The thesis concludes that Thomas is better understood as part of the Neoplatonic development of systematic thought than from existentialist perspectives opposed to this tradition.
Historical argument in the writings of the English deists

This study examines the role of history in the writings of the English deists, a group of heterodox religious controversialists who were active from the last quarter of the seventeenth century until the middle of the eighteenth century. Its main sources are the published works of the deists and their opponents, but it also draws, where possible, on manuscript sources. Not all of the deists were English (one was Irish and another was of Welsh extraction), but the term ‘English Deists’ has been used on the grounds that the majority of deists were English and that they published overwhelmingly in England and in English. It shows that the deists not only disagreed with their orthodox opponents about the content of sacred history, but also about the relationship between religious truth and historical evidence.
Chapter 1 explains the entwining of theology and history in early Christianity, how the connection between them was understood by early modern Christians, and how developments in orthodox learning set the stage for the appearance of deism in the latter decades of the seventeenth century. Each of the following three chapters is devoted to a different line of argument which the deists employed against orthodox belief. Chapter 2 examines the argument that certain propositions were meaningless, and therefore neither true nor false irrespective of any historical evidence which could be marshalled in their support, as it was used by John Toland and Anthony Collins. Chapter 3 traces the argument that the actions ascribed to God in sacred history might be unworthy of his goodness, beginning with Samuel Clarke’s first set of Boyle Lectures and then progressing through the writings of Thomas Chubb, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and William Warburton. Chapter 4 charts the decline of the category of certain knowledge in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the rise of probability theory, and the effect of these developments on the deists’ views about the reliability of historical evidence. Chapter 5 is a case-study, which reads Anthony Collins’s Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724) in light of the findings of the earlier chapters. Finally, a coda provides a conspectus of the state of the debate in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, focusing on the work of four writers: Peter Annet, David Hume, Conyers Middleton, and Edward Gibbon.

Keywords: Heterodoxy
Deists
John Toland
Probability
Divine Attributes
Things Above Reason
William Whiston
Natural Religion
Anthony Collins
Deism
Samuel Clarke
Revealed Religion
Thomas Morgan
Matthew Tindal
Thomas Chubb
Enlightenment
William Warburton
Advisor: Womersley, D
Manuel Estrada Cabrera

This study offers an account of the presidency of Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898-1920), concentrating on the political, social and economic aspects of his regime.
Following the 'Liberal' inheritance of the Justo Rufino Barrios years (1871-1885), Cabrera is a significant figure in the trajectory of autocratic regimes in Guatemala, which, with few interruptions, stretches from Rafael Carrera (1844-1861) to the present day. Cabrera inherited some of the techniques of Guatemalan dictatorship, but he was also an unorthodox and controversial ruler, remarkable for his sustained retention of power and for the methods he used.
The historiography of nineteenth and twentieth-century Guatemala is not generally rich and the Cabrera period is one which has been neglected. Although the United States' and several other diplomatic archives were examined in order to complete this study, it must be stressed that it does not try to explain Guatemalan history through U.S. foreign policy; rather it seeks to focus on the man, and the people who kept him in power for twenty-two years. Diplomats and travellers wrote informative reports which often give frank assessments of character and motive, as well as commenting on internal and external matters in reports which supplement local sources. Secondary sources have also been examined, as well as what remains of Cabrera's private archives, contemporary letters and documents. Furthermore, oral sources added much information.
This dictatorship is intrinsically interesting, given the peculiarities and unusual transformations which Cabrera instituted in his government and in national life so as to retain power. This study of Cabrera hopes to enable the reader to appreciate better how such autocracies have propagated themselves in Guatemala and what strains and pressures they were under, and may even afford some pointers for more recent times.
Nationalism, cosmopolitanism and empire in Britain's American expatriate community, c.1815–1914.

This study examines the coalescence of American expatriate communities in Britain between 1815 and 1914. Blending transnational and post-colonial approaches to US history, this dissertation explores the nuanced roles of Americans in Britain as intermediaries in the consolidation of US independence, the formation of American nationalism, and the emergence of American empire.
Transatlantic economic and cultural connections converged in American communities in Britain. The American communities of London and Liverpool evolved and dissolved around these rapidly transforming interconnections. These communities are recaptured in this study from scattered archives on both side of the Atlantic. The Antebellum American community acted as a conduit between British capital and American nation-building projects and promoted transatlantic rapprochement as the route to effective US independence. The importation of American innovation and manufactured goods into Britain and the Empire, however, followed late nineteenth-century expatriates. As US power surged, Americans in London created a self-identifying American “colony,” which acted as the interface between US economic and cultural expansion and British imperialism.
Throughout the century, Britain’s American communities acted as crucibles in which sectional, national, and racial identifications were contested and reconstructed. Expatriate newspapers, celebrations, and social institutions, provided the venues for Americans in Britain to articulate and reformulate American nationalism. In the context of British power, the contestations and reformulations of these identities were bled through with post- and anti-colonial anxieties. Expatriates therefore acted as avatars for sharpening distinctions between the US and Britain in debates over the form of American national character, culture, and empire – and Britain’s role in all three.
This study reframes these themes around the previously overlooked communities of Americans in Britain. From these communities, which stand at the intersection of US and British Imperial history, a new perspective emerges on the reciprocal dynamics of nationhood and empire in nineteenth century Anglo-American relations.

Keywords: US foreign relations - nineteenth century
transnationalism - history
American communities overseas - Britain
nationalism
Advisor: Sexton, J
Immobilisation and application of bifunctional iminophosphorane organocatalysts

Bifunctional iminophosphoranes, containing a triaryl-substituted iminophosphorane and bis(3,5- trifluoromethyl)phenyl thiourea on a single enantiomer scaffold are novel asymmetric superbase organocatalysts reported by the Dixon group in 2014. This thesis describes our efforts to expand their scope and utility in a variety of challenging chemical transformations.
Chapter 2 describes the development and application of immobilised bifunctional iminophosphorane organocatalysts. We have successfully immobilised bifunctional iminophosphoranes on a crosslinked polystyrene support and applied this sold-supported catalyst to three challenging asymmetric reactions; namely the nitro-Mannich reaction of phosphinoyl ketimines and the conjugate addition of alkylmalonates and N,N-dimethyl β-keto amides to nitrostyrene. Very good yields, enantio- and diasteroselectivities were obtained in all cases. We have also demonstrated their use in a range of conjugate additions of cyclic 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds to nitroalkenes, which suffered from very slow reaction rates under tertiary amine-based bifunctional catalysis. In all cases, the immobilised bifunctional iminophosphoranes performed very well in comparison to their homogeneous counterparts. We have also demonstrated catalyst recycling over 10 cycles and application in a continuous flow system with a productivity of 7.20 mmol producth-1gcatalyst-1.
to the ring-opening polymerisation (ROP) of cyclic esters. We have demonstrated the performance of bifunctional iminophosphorane organocatalysts in the ROP of L-lactide (LA), δ-valerolactone (VL) and ε-caprolactone (CL). The polymerisation of LA and VL proceeded rapidly and was well controlled, while only short lengths (> 100 DP) of poly(CL) could be prepared in a controlled fashion due to hypothesised competing initiation from the catalyst. We have shown that the polymerisation of LA using our catalyst may be considered a living polymerisation. Di-block co-polymers could also be successfully prepared via sequential monomer addition or through the use of macroinitiators. We then investigated the roles of the iminophosphorane and the thiourea component of the catalyst.

Keywords: bifunctional organocatalysis
solid-supported catalysts
Advisor: Dixon, D
Topics in monitoring and planning for embedded real-time systems

The verification of real-time systems has gained much interest in the formal verification community during the past two decades. In this thesis, we investigate two real-time verification problems that benefit from the techniques normally used in untimed verification.
The first part of this thesis is concerned with the monitoring of real-time specifications. We study the expressiveness of metric temporal logics over timed words, a problem that dates back to early 1990s. We show that the logic obtained by extending Metric Temporal Logic (MTL) with two families of new modalities is expressively complete for the Monadic First-Order Logic of Order and Metric (FO[<,+1]) in time-bounded settings. Furthermore, by allowing rational constants, expressive completeness also holds in the general (time-unbounded) setting. Finally, we incorporate several notions and techniques from LTL monitoring to obtain the first trace-length independent monitoring procedure for this logic.
The second part of this thesis concerns a decision problem regarding UAVs: given a set of targets (each ascribed with a relative deadline) and flight times between each pair of targets, is there a way to coordinate a flock of k identical UAVs so that all targets are visited infinitely often and no target is ever left unvisited for a time longer than its relative deadline? We show that the problem is PSPACE-complete even in the single-UAV case, thereby corrects an erroneous claim from the literature. We then complement this result by proposing an efficient antichain-based approach where a delayed simulation is used to prune the state space. Experimental results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

Keywords: antichains
real-time logics
monitoring
computational complexity
expressiveness
UAV
Advisor: Ouaknine, J
Statistical mechanics of surfaces

The equilibrium properties of a spherical drop are investigated using the penetrable-sphere model of a fluid. To estimate the surface tension, a new statistical mechanical formula, the extension of the Triezenberg-Zwanzig result for a planar surface, is derived. The density profiles for use in this are obtained from an integral equation expressing the constancy of chemical potential through the interface. Numerical solutions can be obtained and from these numerical estimates for the surface tension. They are in good agreement with estimates from an independent thermodynamic route. These routes, as well as a further, zero-temperature, exact, analytic one, show that the surface tension of this model increases with decreasing drop size.
The planar surface of the model is also briefly investigated using a well-known integrodifferential equation. Two approximations are made for the direct correlation function, one a systematic improvement on the other. They yield solutions for the density profile of a limited range of temperatures below the critical point. When the direct correlation function of a Lennard-Jones fluid is approximated the resulting equation for the profile resists numerical solution.

Advisor: Rowlinson, J
Behavioural responses to photovoltaic systems in the UK domestic sector

Microgeneration technologies, such as solar photovoltaics (PV), have recently been cited as a potential solution to energy policy challenges such as climate change and security of supply. International evidence suggests that the benefit of a PV installation will depend on both the amount of electricity generated and the technology’s influence on energy consumption behaviour. This study seeks to quantify and explain this ‘double-dividend’ effect by examining photovoltaics in the UK domestic sector.
Questionnaire and interview data were collected from owner-occupier PV households, revealing that the installation of PV increased awareness of electricity generation and consumption in the home. Guided by monitoring devices, an overall electricity saving (~8%) and load-shifting behaviours were observed. Although the installation of PV followed a series of other energy-saving measures, respondents showed an ongoing commitment to environmentally responsible behaviour and further reduction of the carbon footprint of household energy consumption. PV household electricity data and interviews with industry and government found that electricity tariffs, metering and other institutional constraints were important determinants of a household’s behavioural response. As these parts of the domestic PV system are largely still evolving, it is recommended that households and industry work together to develop systems that support sustainable electricity use, for both the early adopting households studied here and future adopters.

Keywords: energy policy
UK
photovoltaics
consumer behaviour
Advisor: Boardman, B
The use of educational programmes to support marriage immigrants in Taiwan: a case study of an Information Communication and Technologies (ICTs) course

There is an increasing flow of marriage migration around the world in the era of globalisation. As a result of moving to a new country, marriage immigrants typically encounter a range of difficulties due to language, cultural and environmental differences. To try to address some of these challenges a number of countries have begun to provide educational programmes for marriage immigrants.
Focusing on the case of Taiwan, which is one of several countries to acknowledge this issue, this study aims to explore what educational needs marriage immigrants have and the extent to which educational programmes can help to support these individuals. Indeed, the Taiwanese government has been making a concerted effort to support marriage immigrants’ educational needs by offering a range of learning programmes. Here, the focus is on developing ICT skills because ICTs form an important part of all aspects of daily life in Taiwan and the skills are believed to facilitate independent and continued learning.
Using a qualitative case study approach, this research investigates one ICT programme specifically targeted at 25 marriage immigrants in an urban district in Taipei and studies the value of the programme in assisting their adaptation to their new lives in Taiwan. This study draws on adult learning theories to examine the motivations of the participants, the barriers to learning that they encounter and the ways these can be overcome, as well as longer-term impacts of the programme and the use of ICTs in their lives.
The marriage immigrants were found to have strong goal-oriented motivations. These goal-oriented motivations can be further subcategorised into those associated with job, life management and parenting. As for overcoming learning barriers for them, the government’s financial support and childcare services offered proved to be important in supporting learning by decreasing both the institutional and situational barriers. Although ICTs were proved to have the capability of reducing situational barriers, they were not the participants’ main concern. There were a number of longer term impacts of the programme. Increasing confidence is one of the most significant which led to further learning motivations. This research contributes to the understandings of the marriage immigrants’ learning needs and the possible ways ICT programmes are supportive of those needs.

Keywords: ICT courses
educational programmes
marriage immigrants
Advisor: Eynon, R
Emotional processing and bipolar disorder

The aetiology of bipolar disorder remains unclear and investigation to date has focussed largely on bipolar patients. Whilst ultimately of huge value, such studies may also be confounded by current mood or experience of repeated illness episodes or current or past medication; using at-risk samples may bypass some of these problems. The current research therefore assessed the efficacy of the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) as a screening tool for vulnerability to bipolar disorder. The MDQ was used with two sets of criteria to identify two sub-groups of medication-naïve young bipolar phenotype subjects who were at risk for bipolar disorder by virtue of experience of mood elevation. Analysis of data from the Student Stress Survey was carried out to characterise the bipolar phenotype. Compared to a control group with no experience of mood elevation, the two bipolar phenotype sub-groups showed a gradient of prevalence of bipolar diagnosis and associated co-morbidity. Behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques were employed to investigate emotional processing, decision-making, and sleep and circadian rhythmicity in bipolar phenotype students. Analyses revealed that positive emotional processing biases, disrupted decision-making, and increased activity during sleep were associated with the bipolar phenotype and, therefore, may represent vulnerability markers for bipolar disorder. Finally, a psychopharmacological investigation of quetiapine, which stabilises mood, was carried out in healthy volunteers. One-week quetiapine administration resulted in biases away from both positive and negative emotional stimuli (i.e. a mood-stabilising effect), reduced discrimination between different magnitudes of gains and losses during risky decision-making (consistent with an antidepressant effect), and increased sleep duration. In sum, this research has developed our understanding of vulnerability markers associated with the bipolar phenotype and provided a first step towards uncovering the psychological mechanisms through which quetiapine’s clinical effects may be mediated.

Keywords: bipolar disorder
quetiapine
mood disorder questionnaire
circadian rhythm
emotion processing
bipolar spectrum
sleep
Advisor: Harmer, C
Goodwin, G