VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The failure of dissent: opposition to Irish economic policy, 2000-2006

The Irish crash that began in 2008 has been described as one of the most dramatic economic reversals ever experienced by an industrialised country. There is a strong consensus about the economic roots of the crisis: the country experienced a classic asset bubble. Much more difficult to explain however, is how a mature democracy sleep-walked into a crisis that had so much precedent and in retrospect seems to have been so apparent. The policy decisions made in the boom period must shoulder much of the blame, but they were not created in a vacuum. This thesis systematically examines the discourse on the Irish economy from a broad range of commentators in the years prior to the crash, including international and domestic organisations, academics, the newspapers, and politicians. It demonstrates that key mainstream analysts anticipated how the property boom would end on the basis of estimated fundamental house prices and demand levels. This implicitly assumed that these fundamentals would remain strong as the boom abated, and ignored the potential for a market panic. By contrast, the most prescient analysts relied heavily on international precedent, and recognised that property price falls would be closely correlated with the increase observed during the boom. A key dimension of the discourse was therefore how the lessons of financial history were applied or disregarded. The Irish crash that began in 2008 has been described as one of the most dramatic economic reversals ever experienced by an industrialised country. There is a strong consensus about the economic roots of the crisis: the country experienced a classic asset bubble. Much more difficult to explain however, is how a mature democracy sleep-walked into a crisis that had so much precedent and in retrospect seems to have been so apparent. The policy decisions made in the boom period must shoulder much of the blame, but they were not created in a vacuum. This thesis systematically examines the discourse on the Irish economy from a broad range of commentators in the years prior to the crash, including international and domestic organisations, academics, the newspapers, and politicians. It demonstrates that key mainstream analysts anticipated how the property boom would end on the basis of estimated fundamental house prices and demand levels. This implicitly assumed that these fundamentals would remain strong as the boom abated, and ignored the potential for a market panic. By contrast, the most prescient analysts relied heavily on international precedent, and recognised that property price falls would be closely correlated with the increase observed during the boom. A key dimension of the discourse was therefore how the lessons of financial history were applied or disregarded.

Advisor: Foster, R
O'Rourke, K
Conjugate heat transfer in high pressure turbines

In the present thesis the link between aerodynamics and heat transfer in high pressure turbines is investigated through steady numerical calculations. The investigations include the effect of wall temperature on the Heat Transfer coefficient (HTC), aiming to understand whether the conventional assumption of HTC being invariant with the thermal boundary condition does hold in a typical compressible flow, where the aerodynamic and thermal fields are strongly coupled. A novel non-linear three point method is proposed to scale wall heat transfer accounting for the dependence of HTC on wall temperature and local flow history.
The effect of wall boundary condition on external aerodynamics and heat transfer calls for the need of Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) methods as design tools. For this reason CHT capabilities have been developed and integrated in Rolls-Royce Hydra CFD solver. The implemented CHT solver is fully-coupled, allowing for simultaneous solution of the solid and fluid domains. The implemented CHT coupling has been shown to be numerically stable with a good convergence rate for all cases tested. The implemented code has been successfully validated against both experimental, analytical and numerical data.
Conjugate analysis of a double-wall trailing edge cooling design has been performed under matched external Biot conditions. Aim of the investigation has been to quantify the effect of CHT on the cooling discharge characteristics and external aerodynamics in a cooling configuration where coolant and external flow are separated by a lower thermal resistance than in a traditional internal cooling configuration. Detailed CHT results for this case are presented and discussed.

Keywords: HPT
High pressure turbines
Conjugate Heat Transfer
CHT
Advisor: He, L
Topics in additive combinatorics

This thesis deals with four problems in additive combinatorics. After giving a brief introduction to the field and overview of the results in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 we consider the problem of finding the clique number of the Cayley graph on &Fopf;2n generated by a random subset. We prove a number of results, most notably that for n in a set of density 1, the clique number is concentrated on a single value.
In Chapter 3 we prove that a randomly chosen subset of a finite group is a randomness extractor with high probability. More precisely, we prove that for every fixed δ > 0, given a finite group G and A ⊂ G a random subset of density 1/2, we prove that with high probability for all subsets &vert;X&vert; &vert;Y&vert; ≥ log2+δ &vert;G&vert; for ( 1/2 + o(1))&vert;X&vert; &vert;Y&vert; of the pairs (x; y) ∈ X × Y we have xy ∈ A.
In Chapter 4 we give a new probabilistic model for the Paley graph which incorporates some multiplicative structure and as a result captures the Graham-Ringrose phenomenon, namely that the its clique number is sometimes a bit larger than what one might expect when considering the usual random model (random Cayley graph). We prove that if we sample such a random graph independently for every prime, then almost surely (i) for infinitely many primes p the clique number is Ω(log p log log p), whilst (ii) for almost all primes the clique number is (2 + o(1)) log p.
Whereas in the previous chapters we were mostly concerned with generic sets, in Chapter 5 we consider a rather different problem concerning additive properties of a specific set. We prove an asymptotic for the number of additive triples of bijections &lcub;1,...,n&rcub; → &Zopf;=n&Zopf;, that is, the number of pairs of bijections π1; π2: &lcub;1,...,n&rcub; → &Zopf;=n&Zopf; such that the pointwise sum π1 + π2 is also a bijection.

Advisor: Green, B
Microbial oceanography of southern hemisphere seamounts and hydrothermal vents

Microbial biogeography is being increasingly more studied, both in terms of genetic divisions and 'ecotype' variation. This thesis investigates the regional (100-1000s km) and local (10s m) distribution and diversity of microorganisms around hydrothermal vents and seamounts at the East Scotia Ridge and the Southwest Indian Ridge.
Microbial communities were characterized using Illumina dye sequencing to de- termine taxon richness and diversity and flow cytometry to obtain cell counts. In addition I investigated the physicochemical environment (nutrients, organic carbon, salinity and temperature) in which the microorganisms persist.
Typical deep-sea microorganisms were abundant at vents and below the euphotic zone on the seamounts. The surface layer of the seamounts contained typical open-ocean photoautotrophic organisms. Microbial communities were correlated to or- ganic carbon on both hydrothermal vents and seamounts. With microorganisms possi- bly having a large influence on carbon sequestration into the deep-sea from hydrothermal vents.
On a local scale the hydrothermal vents had a relatively higher abundance of chemosynthetic Epsilonproteobacteria and the Gammaproteobacteria family SUP05, which were closely correlated to the redox potential in the vent effluent. This was prominent in both plumes from the East Scotia Ridge and the Southwest Indian Ridge, which also had distinct microbial community structures.
Across the Southwest Indian Ocean the microbial communities were firstly segregated by depth. However, on a regional scale their physical environment primarily divided the microbial communities into three biological regimes the sub-tropical, con- vergence zone and the sub-Antarctic.
The microbial community structure and biogeography is influenced by steep environmental gradients, displaying a distance-decay relationship between sampling locations. With environmental conditions persisting at different scales, from local (10s m) around the hydrothermal vents to regional (100-1000 km) between the seamounts, driving the microbial community patterns. The same horizontal and vertical patterns for microorganisms and metazoans points to fundamental differences throughout all parts of the ecosystem/food web.

Advisor: Rogers, A
Mikalsen, S
Pleasure, suffering and the experience of value

This dissertation explores a number of interrelated metaphysical and epistemological issues regarding pleasure, suffering and their apparent value and disvalue, thematically tied together by the broad idea that pleasant and unpleasant experiences are, respectively, experienced as good and bad.
More specifically, I try, firstly, to advance the debate regarding the nature of pleasure by arguing for what I shall call the "Self-Experiential View" – the view that pleasant experiences are pleasant in virtue of being experienced as good. Secondly, I assess the merits of the "Hedonic-Evaluative Acquaintance Thesis" – the natural conjecture, expressed by a number of authors, that our especially intimate experiential relationship ("acquaintance") with the evaluative features of our hedonic experiences grounds a particularly robust kind of epistemic status enjoyed by our hedonic-evaluative beliefs, which makes them less vulnerable to sceptical doubt.
In chapter 1, I lay some groundwork for the ensuing discussion, by introducing a number of background claims which help to motivate these two theses. Moreover, I isolate two specific important ways of unpacking the Hedonic-Evaluative Acquaintance Thesis and clarify some central concepts which feature prominently in the subsequent chapters.
In chapter 2, I defend the "Self-Experiential View." I proceed by addressing a number of objections which have been levelled against the view in the literature, and locate it in relation to the views which currently dominate the debate regarding the nature of pleasure.
In chapter 3, I assess and ultimately reject the first important version of the Hedonic-Evaluative Acquaintance Thesis singled out in chapter 1, the "Naïve Realist Hedonic-Evaluative Acquaintance Thesis," which states that Naïve Realist acquaintance with pleasure’s evaluative nature grounds a distinctive, especially robust kind of epistemic status enjoyed by our hedonic-evaluative beliefs.
In chapter 4, I assess the "Introspective Hedonic-Evaluative Acquaintance Thesis", the attempt to vindicate the Hedonic-Evaluative Acquaintance Thesis by extending an acquaintance account of phenomenal introspective justification to the hedonic-evaluative case. By carefully unpacking a range of different candidate conceptions of introspective acquaintance, I home in on what I consider the most appealing acquaintance account of phenomenal introspection, and argue that it should not be extended to the hedonic-evaluative case, which means that this proposal also fails.
A brief concluding chapter summarises the key conclusions of the dissertation and highlights some questions raised in the course of my discussion which would seem to warrant further investigation.

Keywords: introspection
value theory
pleasure
value
moral epistemology
hedonism
suffering
goodness
metaethics
utilitarianism
Advisor: Kahane, G
Imagined families: Anglo-American kinship and the formation of Southern identity, 1830-1890

Anglo-American kinship, as a set of historical continuities linking the United States to Great Britain and as a reckoning of relatedness, constituted a valuable cultural resource for Southerners as they contemplated their place within the American nation and outside in the nineteenth century. Like the more conventional calculations of consanguinity and familial belonging it referenced, the Anglo-American kinship was contingent, convoluted, and, not infrequently, contested. Articulated at various times by masters and former slaves, ministers and merchants, plantation mistresses and politicians, this sense of belonging to an imagined transatlantic family transcended the boundaries of gender, race, and class as readily as it traversed national borders. Though grounded in biogenetic factors, the language of Anglo-American kinship encompassed claims of belonging predicated on confessional faith, language, and institutions as well as blood.
This thesis considers the interaction between conceptions of Anglo-American kinship and the formation of Southern national identity, both unionist and separatist, between 1830 and 1890 by examining institutions and social rituals that both inculcated filiopietism and constructed Southerness in the Civil War era and beyond. The subjects under consideration in this study include the role of European travel in forging Southern distinctiveness before the war, ring tournaments and the ethos of medieval chivalry they promoted, the Protestant Episcopal Church and its role in managing the sectional crisis, postbellum immigration societies and their vision of the plantation South remade in the image of British manors, and the role that state historical associations played in reunion and the entrenchment of the Lost Cause mythology as the predominant historical framework for interpreting the American Civil War.

Advisor: Sexton, J
Degradation and processes in lithium batteries

The automotive industry requires rapid advances in battery technology to fulfil the range and price criteria set by its consumer base. Lithium-ion cell chemistries are currently best-suited to this application, but are approaching their maximum practical energy density and have yet to exhibit lifespans that are equivalent to that of the vehicles that they power. Therefore, there is considerable interest in the next-generation lithium-air cell, which promises upwards of a five-fold increase in energy density over today’s lithium-ion cells. However, there are many hurdles to overcome, the most important being limited cycle life.
Two new organic solvents, namely adiponitrile and glutaronitrile, were investigated as possible new electrolytes for non-aqueous lithium-air cells. Both electrolytes were found to be susceptible to nucleophilic attack by the intermediate O2·- radical species, resulting in rapid capacity loss upon cycling and the conversion of the discharge product, Li2O2, to LiOH. As such, these solvents have been ruled out for use in lithium-air applications.
Work then focussed on the parameterisation of lithium-air cells to assist the development of a multiscale model of the lithium-air discharge mechanism that incorporates the simultaneous formation of Li2O2 in solution and as a surface layer for the first time. Numerous analytical techniques were used to obtain the oxygen concentration and diffusion coefficient of multiple electrolytes, as well as details pertaining to the cathode structure of the cell. The model was shown to predict the discharge profile of a lithium-air cell with greater accuracy than previous models at low and medium current densities, and will thus be a useful tool for the rapid screening of new electrolyte solutions and cathode structures.
Finally, a new 3-electrode modification technique was developed for commercial lithium-ion pouch cells that allows potential profiles of each electrode to be obtained in-situ with no impact upon cell performance, as verified by cycling with unmodified cells and cathode/anode half-cells, and by post-mortem analysis. This technique has provided the data required to experimentally verify a parametric open circuit voltage model for lithium-ion cells that can model and predict electrode-specific decomposition mechanisms to within an accuracy of 10 mV RMSE. Ultimately, the model may be used to improve the effectiveness of a vehicular battery management system and extend the lifespan of the traction battery pack.

Keywords: Lithium-ion
Lithium-air
Advisor: Bruce, P
The symbiosis of people and plants

This ethnoecological study of the Makushi Amerindians of Amazonian Guyana explores the place of plants in the indigenous culture and cosmology. The North Rupununi, the homeland of the Makushi people, is a bioculturally diverse mosaic of neotropical savannahs, forests, and wetlands. As subsistence hunters, fishers, and horticulturalists, the Makushi live in a constant and dynamic interaction with their ecologically rich surroundings. Against the human-faunal bias latent in much Amazonian anthropology, I place plants firmly at the centre of analysis, a positioning that mirrors their centrality in the ethnographic context. Human-plant encounters explored herein include swidden agriculture, the cultivation of bitter cassava, the fermentation of cassava drinks using a domesticated fungus, the use of a category of charm plants, and the consumption of plant substances in shamanic ritual. With the Makushi, I emphasise the status of plants as living selves and agents of semiosis, occupying perspectives on the world in and outside of their interactions with human beings. In order to investigate ethno-theories of life, I attempt to understand the constitution of the person – and associated notions of body and soul – in the indigenous cosmology. Makushi ontology can be characterised as animic – though as I argue, it also incorporates naturalistic and analogic elements. Thus, it is poly-ontological.
This study pursues a dual goal: first, to pay heed to the trans-specific domain of living entities revealed in the Makushi ethnoecology, and second, to rethink conventional symbolic frameworks characteristic of anthropological approaches to culture. I explore the application of a more robust approach to sign-flows in nature – Peircian ecosemiotics – that allows for the analysis of plant communication, birdcalls, insect stings, and leaf patterns, as well as human language. In tracing these interspecific webs of signification, conclusions are drawn about the varied ways in which Makushi people engage with and think about their living environment. At the same time, many Makushi multispecies engagements are based on the physical transfer of substances between bodies of different kinds. In order to better account for this pervasive ‘substance logic’, greater attention must be paid to indigenous notions of corporeality and personhood. In doing so, I propose a dual analytical model that takes both the flows of signs and the flows of substances as its combined objective. This approach enables new conclusions to be drawn about multispecies relationality in indigenous Amazonian cosmologies.

Keywords: Ontology
Cassava
Agroecology
Makushi
Amazonia
Shamanism
People-Plant Relations
Fermentation
Multispecies
Environmental Anthropology
Guyana
Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Anthropology
Amazon
Cosmology
Charm plants
Guianas
Ethnobotany
Indigenous
Social Anthropology
Farming
Advisor: Rival, L
Penality, violence and colonial rule in Kenya (c.1930-1952)

Within the research field of colonial violence, scholars focused on wars of conquest or independence and tended to picture counterinsurgency campaigns as an exceptional deployment of state violence in the face of peculiar threats. In colonial Kenya, the British repression of the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s has been the object of extensive and thorough analysis, contrasting with the lack of research on colonial punishment during the preceding decades. Yet the unleashing of state violence during the 1950s actually has a much longer history, lurking in the shadows of the criminal justice system that British powers introduced in the colony in the late nineteenth century. In contrast to previous scholarship, this study shows how ordinary colonial violence—although massively scaled up during the 1950s—was progressively normalised, institutionalised and intensified throughout the colonial experience of the 1930s and 1940s, laying the ground for the deployment of a counterinsurgency campaign against Mau Mau fighters.

Advisor: Deutsch, J
Anderson, D
A new technique for microbubble characterisation and the implications to contrast enhanced ultrasound

The utility of microbubble agents in a variety of diagnostic and therapeutic ultrasound techniques has been widely demonstrated, most notably in Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound (CEUS) imaging. Unfortunately, the underlying mechanisms of their response to ultrasound excitation are poorly understood, restricting the development of promising techniques, such as quantitative perfusion imaging. A significant reason for this is that current microbubble characterisation techniques suffer from one or more of the following limitations: i) large experimental uncertainties, ii) physical restrictions on microbubble response and iii) failure to provide large data sets suitable for statistical analysis. This thesis presents a new technique to overcome these limitations. A co-axial microfluidic device is used to hydrodynamically confine microbubbles through the focal region of a laser and ultrasound field. The magnitude of light scattered by isolated microbubbles during ultrasound excitation is converted to radius using Mie Scattering theory. This technique is capable of obtaining large samples (>103/min) of microbubbles to be efficiently characterised.
The response of a commercial contrast agent, SonoVue®, is first investigated for a range of ultrasound exposure parameters; frequency (2 MHz – 4.5 MHz), peak negative pressure (6 kPa - 400 kPa) and pulse length (3 cycles – 8 cycles). Second the device is used to investigate the effect of composition and fabrication on microbubble response to similar ultrasound conditions. The results demonstrate a very large variability in microbubble response independent of initial size, indicating a significant lack of uniformity of coating properties. This is further supported by quantitative fluorescence imaging and quasi-static pressure chamber measurements.
The implications of the findings for CEUS imaging and the development of microbubble contrast agents are discussed, as well as the limitations and suggested improvements of the characterisation technique.

Keywords: Ultrasound
Microbubbles
Ultrasound Contrast Agents
Characterisation
Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound
Advisor: Stride, E