VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Measurement and fusion of non-invasive vital signs for routine triage of acute paediatric illness

Serious illness in childhood is a rare occurrence, but accounts for 20% of childhood deaths. Early recognition and treatment of serious illness is vital if the child is to recover without long-term disability. It is known that vital signs such as heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, and oxygen saturation can be used to identify children who are at high risk of serious illness.
This thesis presents research into the development of a vital signs monitor, designed for use in the initial assessment of unwell children at their first point of contact with a medical practitioner. Child-friendly monitoring techniques are used to obtain vital signs, which can then be combined using data fusion techniques to assist clinicians in identifying children with serious illness.
Existing normal ranges for heart rate and respiratory rate in childhood vary considerably, and do not appear to be based on clinical evidence. This thesis presents a systematic meta-analysis of heart rate and respiratory rate from birth to 18 years of age, providing evidence-based curves which can be used to assess the degree of abnormality in these important vital signs.
Respiratory rate is particularly difficult to measure in children, but is known to be predictive of serious illness. Current methods of automated measurement can be distressing, or are time-consuming to apply. This thesis therefore presents a novel method for estimating the respiratory rate from an optical finger sensor, the pulse oximeter, which is routinely used in clinical practice.
Information from multiple vital signs can be used to identify children at risk of serious illness. A number of data fusion techniques were tested on data collected from children attending primary and emergency care, and shown to outperform equivalent existing scoring systems when used to identify those with more serious illness.

Keywords: pulse oximetry
primary health care
infant
body temperature
child
reference values
emergency medical services
vital signs
heart rate
early warning
respiratory rate
Advisor: Tarassenko, L
Abstract art and communication in 'Mamluk' architecture

Fourteenth-century Cairo saw a movement towards abstract, geometric art. This movement reflected contemporary intellectual interests and represents the culmination of the ascendancy of Islamic philosophy over the humanist vocabulary of art. The thesis seeks explanations for the positive, i.e. for the forms which art actually took, rather than concentrating on prohibitive mechanisms.
In architecture, the disappearance of stucco vegetal decoration may have been partly due to the effects of an outbreak of plague, but the main influences on contemporary art and architecture came from the esoteric habits of thought induced by sufism, alchemy and hermeticism, and from the dualist concerns of Islamic philosophy.
The thesis discusses the continuity between sufism and Shī'ism, the history of sufism in Cairo as it affected art and architecture, concepts of the microcosm and the macrocosm, and theories of colour, substance and gilding. The thesis examines talismans and other esoteric material. It discusses architectural incorporata, presents a catalogue of Pharaonic material re-used in Islamic architecture, and argues that blocks bearing Pharaonic hieroglyphs represented Hermetic lore and, at entrances to buildings, paralleled the use of Pharaonic references at the beginning of esoteric manuscripts.
The detailed discussion of architecture takes the form of an examination of a religious building, scrutinising the underlying principles of decoration and then moving on to specific elements such as the entrance and the mihrab. The thesis discusses, and dissents from, iconographic interpretations of architectural imagery.
It attempts to evolve a terminology for discussion and concludes that 'mamluk' is inappropriate as a cultural term, since the influence of the individual patron on art and architecture was less innovative than the intellectual background of the period, and the dissociation of the patron from contemporary society has been over-estimated. It comes to the conclusion that 'an art of the bāṭin* would more effectively express the major influence on the art and architecture of fourteenthcentury Cairo.
Nationalism and the birth of modern art in Egypt

This dissertation covers the emergence of a tradition of the fine arts in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century and its relationship to discourses of nationalism. Taking as a starting point the canon of the ‘pioneer’ generation as it is defined in the historiography, I follow the careers of the sculptor Mahmud Mukhtar and the painters Ragheb ‘Ayyad, Muhammad Nagi, and Mahmud Sa‘id, each of whom is treated in a full chapter.
Narratives surrounding the life and work of these artists have tended to emphasize the ways in which the images they created participated in the definition of a single cohesive nation – through the use of Pharaonic imagery, which anchors the nation in a distant past, through rural symbolism, which ties the nation to the land and the Nile, and through a female iconography that links the nation to ideas of virtue and purity – what I term here, following Timothy Mitchell and Homi Bhabha, a pedagogical narrative of the nation. However, I suggest that the process of imagining the nation as a unified whole necessarily involves a negotiation of difference, sometimes that of the peasant or the woman who pose a challenge to the assumption of an unproblematic national collectivity, sometimes that of the artists themselves, who, for reasons of foreign education, religion, or social identity, are unable to fully identify with definitions of the nation that were themselves constantly contested. This negotiation of difference – what Mitchell has termed the performative - and how it appears within works of visual art, constitutes the main subject of this dissertation.

Keywords: non-Western art
modern Egypt
nationalism
modernism
Advisor: Wright, A
Design and application of novel metamaterial elements and configurations

Metamaterials are artificially constructed "materials" which are formed from arrays of engineered elements. By designing individual elements as well as their interactions, the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) waves within the structure can be manipulated, so that new responses can be realised which may not be found in nature.
The subject of this research concerns the study of miniaturised elements with strong EM responses so that the constructed metamaterial can better approximate an ordinary low-loss material. The research involves designing miniaturised magnetic resonators operating in the microwave frequency range. A novel resonator prototypes, so-called “helical resonators”, have been successfully designed and fabricated whose physical sizes can fall below 1% of the free space wavelength at resonance. This contributes to a size reduction of 90% compared with previously published work. In addition, an analytical model has been developed, so that the resonance parameters of a helical resonator have explicit expressions. In particular, a constant optimal metallic fill ratio is demonstrated to exist, which can achieve a minimum resonant frequency and a maximum miniaturisation for any given outmost dimension of the element. The accuracy of the model has been verified by both simulation and experiment. The frequency responses of fabricated helical elements were measured using a vector network analyser and a pair of small loop non- resonant dipole probes, and the parameters were extracted using the phase frequency fit method which proves to have the best accuracy and robustness.
The properties of a regular square array of helical resonators are subsequently investigated, which can be regarded as a two-dimensional metamaterial. A relevant analytical model has been developed, which characterises the array as an equivalent sheet with surface current distributions, rather than an artificial medium with finite thickness. The relation between the macroscopic EM fields and the small scale properties of individual helical resonators are then established. In particular, the helical resonators are observed to be inherently chiral, thus the assembled interlocking array exhibits dichroism. The transmission coefficients for the circular EM waves with two different polarisation states have been derived, which have been verified by simulation and measurement results as well. In addition, it has been theoretically demonstrated that the resonator elements and their spacings can be engineered, so that the circular EM wave with one particular polarisation state can be totally attenuated around the element resonance, while the other state suffers negligible attenuation. A quadratic relation between the optimal array spacing and the elements’ quality factor has been demonstrated.

Keywords: electromagnetics
metamaterial
microwave
artificial materials
Advisor: Stevens, C
Edwards, D
Improving intraperitoneal adenovirus virotherapy for ovarian cancer

The use of intraperitoneal (i.p.) adenovirus virotherapy of ovarian cancer is currently limited by insufficient efficacy and high toxicity. Both factors are associated with adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) in this setting and may be serotype-specific. Low levels of uptake receptors (CAR and αV integrins) on ovarian tumour cells and widespread immunity against Ad5 among patients appear to restrict efficacy and intraperitoneal inflammatory responses against Ad5 were among the reasons for the termination of a phase II/III clinical trial in ovarian cancer. This thesis sought to overcome these obstacles by investigating the alternative adenovirus serotypes Ad3 and Ad11. For these viruses lower pre-existing antiviral immunity and utilisation of different uptake receptors have been reported. Furthermore, virus cloaking with novel polymers which could impart enhanced protection from neutralisation was examined.
In vitro, wild-type Ad3, Ad5 and Ad11 displayed differential oncolytic activity in a panel of ovarian cancer cell lines which partly correlated to uptake receptor expression and virus internalisation. However, some cell lines displayed lysis resistance in a serotype-specific manner. While the inflammatory response six hours after i.p. administration of Ad11 in CD46-transgenic mice did not differ from Ad5, in long-term studies of repeated administration Ad5 induced significantly more severe pathologic effects in the form of adhesions and liver toxicity than Ad11 or mock-treatment. Oncolysis inhibition assays using malignant exudate samples demonstrated greater neutralisation of Ad3 and Ad5 in comparison to Ad11 at low concentrations of samples. Notably, 10-fold less Ad11 than Ad5 was required for oncolytic efficacy at a sample concentration of 10%. In an ex vivo model of ascites from ovarian cancer patients Ad5 modified with novel polymer formulations achieved at least 50% cell kill in six of eight samples, in contrast to two of eight samples for non-modified Ad5.
These data suggest that virotherapy using Ad11 might be advantageous over Ad3 or Ad5. The lack of strong inflammation and the possibility to decrease treatment doses due to less neutralisation of Ad11 might result in considerably improved patient safety. Chemical modification of Ad with novel polymers presents an exciting advancement in overcoming treatment neutralisation in adenovirus virotherapy.

Keywords: adenovirus
ovarian cancer
oncolytic
oncolytic virotherapy
Advisor: Morrison, J
Seymour, L
Defence responses of non-mycorrhizal and mycorrhizal seedlings of Pinus sylvestris L. to fungal pathogens

The defence mechanisms expressed in roots of Pinus sylvestris seedlings challenged with fungal pathogens were investigated, and a comparison was made between the expression of defences in non-mycorrhizal and mycorrhizal seedlings.
Papillae were formed by cortical cells of non-mycorrhizal seedlings infected with Cylindrocarpon destructans. Histochemical evidence was obtained for pectic materials comprising an important polysaccharide component of these structures, and for the deposition of polyphenolic compounds also. Proton induced X-ray emission (PIXE) microanalysis indicated that insoluble calcium levels were elevated in papillae relative to normal cell walls. Although papillae appeared important in protecting cortical cells against penetration by fungal hyphae, a primary role for the wall appositions in the resistance of seedlings of Scots pine against root pathogens could not be proven.
Although phytoalexins were not detected in the roots of Scots pine seedlings following infection with C. destructans, the mean content of an abietic acid fraction (comprising six compounds, of which only dehydroabietic acid could be positively identified), increased from 5.2 to 9.7mg g-1 dry weight. This fraction exhibited some antifungal activity.
-related proteins induced de novo by infection could not be detected, but several constitutive apoplastic proteins, including some with chitinase activity, appeared to increase in the needles of root-infected seedlings.
The formation of ectomycorrhizae with Pisolithus tinctorius, Suillus bovinus and Hebeloma crustuliniforme did not itself induce papilla formation in the roots of P. sylvestris. Evidence was obtained to suggest that the response was suppressed when mycorrhizal seedlings were challenged with C. destructans.
Results highly suggestive of the induction of systemic resistance in P. sylvestris seedlings, consequent upon mycorrhizal infection, were obtained. In seedlings grown in vitro the survival rate of mycorrhizal seedlings challenged aerially with Botrytis cinerea was 37.5% compared with 7.1 in seedlings grown gnotobiotically. However, the physiological mechanisms by which this protection was imparted remain to be determined.

Advisor: Pearce, R
Cation distribution in some amphiboles by spectroscopic methods

A new spectroscopic study of the orthorhombic amphiboles has been undertaken, using Mandouml;ssbauer and infrared spectroscopic techniques to determine site occupancies. The crystal structure of amphiboles is reviewed, and a new approach to the structures of chain silicates is outlined.
Hydroxyl spectra of the specimens are of better quality than in the previous study of the orthoamphiboles (Law, 1969/70) and this allows a hyperfine structure to be seen in spectra of anthophyllites. Spectra are generally more difficult to interpret qualitatively than are spectra of related minerals, because of their complexity or because of low absorption intensities which characterise gedrite spectra. The development of a computer model for investigating the relationship between site occupancies and peak intensities allows, in principle, separate site populations for M1 and M3 sites to be determined from hydroxyl spectra.
The Mandouml;ssbauer spectra, particularly of aluminium-rich gedrites, are too complex to be resolved completely, and this limits the accuracy of the site population information which can be obtained. Site occupancies are presented for the orthoamphiboles, however. A distinction is observed between high- and low-aluminium gedrites, and this empirical distinction is useful in discussing the properties of these amphiboles.
Mothers of Africa

A protean doctrine, claiming cultural pride and demanding self-expression for those who espouse it, nationalism yet casts its defining symbols and reserves its privileges and powers according to gendered criteria. Nationalism, if seen as symbolically constructed, may be interpreted as a gendered discourse in which subjects in history and also in literature are assumed to be male. Especially in the Manichean worlds of colonial and newly post-colonial societies, nationalist narratives - such as those produced at the time of African independence - read as family dramas in which honour and duty are patrilineally bequeathed, and national sons honour iconic mothers. The invisibilities in nationalist discourse, often left obscure in the interests of an ironic 'liberation', may be redressed both through the displacement of dominant subject positions in literature - where 'non-nationals' tell their own fictions - and through the remoulding of inherited tropes and symbolic scenarios. In this way new plots are written into history; nationalist romances give way to literary fictions.
An investigation of the status of nationalism as symbolic language of gender, this thesis concentrates first on the inscription of nationalist icons in post-colonial African literature and on the gendered tropic patterns which govern that inscription. Writers considered include Peter Abrahams, Leopold Senghor, Camara Laye, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The iconic role of artist as nationalist hero is explored in particular in a discussion of essays and plays by Wole Soyinka. In its latter half, the thesis looks at African women's writing - novels by Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Mariama Bâ and Bessie Head - and the work of a second generation of African writers, considering the ways in which this literature has begun to rescript the dramas of nationalism, to redream its visions of wholeness and healing.
The making and unmaking of an Irish woman of letters

Dorothea Herbert was an Irish provincial writer who did not publish during her lifetime. Only three of her manuscripts are now extant: a collection of poetry, Poetical Eccentricities Written by an Oddity (1793), an illustrated memoir, Retrospections of an Outcast (1806) and a Journal which covers the years 1806-7. All three manuscripts were missing for long periods and some doubts as to their existence and authenticity made many scholars reluctant to study her work. There is almost no documented historical evidence of her life and our only access to her is through her writing. The internal evidence of her writing suggests that by 1806 she was suffering from a serious mental illness. Nevertheless, her works reveal a relatively hidden world of literary practice in Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Studied alongside the manuscripts and printed works of a range of contemporary writers, Herbert’s extant manuscripts uncover a complex and informal literary culture. This textual world is dependent on print culture but operates independently of it in a closed system of gift-giving and manuscript circulation. In this thesis I explore the influence of print culture on the writing and reading practices of Herbert and her contemporaries. The thesis is divided into five chapters which examine: the history of Herbert’s manuscripts and those of her contemporaries, their writing as material practice, the cultures in which they read the writing and circulation of manuscripts and the history of the print trade in Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Keywords: 18th century writing
life-writing
Dorothea Herbert
women's writing
Advisor: McDonagh, J
Electrochemical and IR spectroelectrochemical studies of ligand binding to the metal centres of nitrogenase

Nitrogenase is a metalloenzyme that plays a key role in biological nitrogen fixation by catalysing the reduction of dinitrogen to ammonia. Study of nitrogenase is particularly challenging because of its unique electron transfer and catalytic components. This Thesis describes the development of a mediated electron transfer system for the MoFe protein of nitrogenase, in order to overcome the complexity of electron transfer by the native reductant Fe protein coupled to hydrolysis of ATP. A series of redox mediators was employed including EuIII/II-polyaminocarboxylate complexes, which have reduction potentials in a very negative range. In the presence of the redox mediators, the wild type MoFe protein exhibits a catalytic current due to protein-catalysed proton reduction. With this mediated electron transfer method, the potential of proton reduction by nitrogenase was determined for the first time.
The redox mediator system was also applied in an infrared (IR) spectroelectrochemical study of CO binding to the wild type and β-98His variant MoFe protein. The first IR evidence was provided for ATP-independent CO binding to the active site of the MoFe protein, in both the wild type and the variant. The peak wavenumbers and time-dependent changes in intensity found in this study are consistent with the result of previous CO coordination with nitrogenase obtained by electron transfer from the Fe protein driven by ATP. This strongly suggests that this mediated electron transfer approach can deliver low potential electrons into the MoFe protein and reduce the active site FeMoco to the substrate binding level. Moreover, this technique allows electrocatalytic activity of the protein to be monitored and the change in redox activity can be correlated directly to the potential. With the same technique, a study of cyanide binding was performed on different variant MoFe proteins of nitrogenase.
The redox properties of the isolated cofactor of Mo- and V-dependent nitrogenase were investigated in parallel to the study of the protein-bound cofactors. It was found that FeVco, the active site from V-nitrogenase, exhibited different redox properties compared to that of Mo-nitrogenase. This might account for the unexpected activity in CO reduction that was reported previously for V-nitrogenase.

Keywords: nitrogenase
enzyme
electrochemistry
IR spectroscopy
Advisor: Vincent, K