VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
British Unitarians and the crisis of American slavery, 1833-1865

The British Unitarians, a "sect everywhere spoken against" said Joseph Priestley, were a small, highly educated, financially respectable, politically aggressive and articulate denomination, which exerted an influence far beyond what their numbers ordinarily would command. They possessed an unbounded enthusiasm for reform and took part in almost every movement for social justice, one of which was particularly attractive to them the antislavery movement. Sadly, much of what they wrote and tried to accomplish has been ignored by scholars. This study is the story of their involvement in the thirty years war against the "master sin of the world" andndash; American slavery.
In eight chapters, the thesis focuses on the antislavery writings opinions, and contributions of the British Unitarians, particularly a group of abolitionist stalwarts called Garrisonians. It also describes their racial views as revealed in their writings and in their conduct towards black people; and it describes their attitudes towards the American Civil War. The thesis is based on extensive manuscript, pamphlet, and periodical material, much of which has not been previously utilized in historical and religious monographs.
The thesis makes several observations. The British Unitarians in their antislavery activity were devoted to the common welfare of the human race, to racial tolerance, and to participation in reform as an ecumenical endeavor. Their motivations for antislavery reform in particular, and reform in general, arose out of a liberal theology which sought to prove its moral superiority; a minority status and consciousness which sought acceptance; a strange and surprising evangelical warmth (typical of only some Unitarians and alien to the denomination as a body) that fired an emotive drive against social evils; a capitalist ideology that believed in a liberating progress; a political philosophy that favored freedom, honesty, and benevolence in government; a nationalism within an internationalism that proclaimed England's manifest destiny to be the protection and encouragement of human liberty at home and abroad; and a familial attachment to the members of their faith and reformers of their persuasion that was mutually supportive and rewarding. This study seeks to prove that the nineteenth century Unitarians are worthy of scholarly investigation and analysis, and suggests that the study of their motivation, commitment, vitality, and perseverance in the fight against American slavery can enhance our understanding of the role of religion in reform.
Out of harm's way: understanding kidnapping in Mexico City 

This dissertation analyses the survival strategies that wealthy people in Mexico City have designed and implemented to protect themselves from kidnapping with special focus on household employment relationships. This particular crime has demonstrated a particular evolution in the last 20 years that deserves analysis. Once a political crime, it became an economic crime that at first only targeted wealthy individuals and then over time began targeting working class victims. Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork in Mexico City which included a year in the field, 78 interviews with employers, employees, kidnapping victims and members of the police forces and justice system and the creation of a news reports database this thesis presents a detailed history of the evolution of kidnapping in the period 1968-2009. This is followed by an in depth analysis of the strategies elites use to protect themselves from this crime. Special attention is focused on the hiring process of household employees, namely drivers, as evidence suggests that most kidnappings are organized or facilitated in some way by a close collaborator of the victim. The hiring process is approached as a problem of trust. Signaling theory is the main framework used for the solving of this problem, as well as some ideas found in transaction cost economics, namely vertical integration. The results point towards strategic behavior from the actors involved that seeks to minimize the risk of being kidnapped for the employer. Signaling helps us uncover the specific mechanisms by which employer establish their prospective employees’ trustworthiness. The use of informal social networks made up of strong ties is one of the most salient mechanisms used to guarantee honest employees and this, together with a composite set of properties is signaled throughout. This thesis contributes to the literature on crime in Latin America as well as to the sociological literature on signaling, a branch of analytical sociology.

Keywords: rule of law
trust
kidnapping
signaling
Mexico
sociology
Mexico City
crime
Advisor: Hamill, H
Early to middle Jurassic stratigraphic development, vegetation and climate change in north-western Europe

The aim of work presented in this thesis was to explore the inter-relationships of cyclic sedimentation, relative sea-level change, and palaeoclimate as inferred from plant megafossils. To this end, the investigation focused on the classic plant-bearing Middle Jurassic succession of Yorkshire.
The Middle Jurassic (Aalenian-Bathonian) Ravenscar Group of the Cleveland Basin (Yorkshire) comprises a predominantly fluvio-deltaic succession intercalated between thinner, laterally persistent marine units. There is a pronounced lateral facies change across the basin, from mainly alluvial sediments in the north to more marine deposits in the south. Although variable in character, the facies composing the sequence are described by four principal environments of deposition: alluvial, estuarine, lagoonal and marine. In an attempt to achieve a more accurate stratigraphic control on the succession, sequence-stratigraphic concepts are applied to outcrop exposures and subsurface cores. The identification of 'key surfaces' in the sequence resolves a series of lithological cycles which reflect relative sea-level fluctuations. Using this approach the Aalenian-Bathonian sequence can be subdivided into two large-scale (second-order) transgressive-regressive cycles onto which six medium-scale (thirdorder) cycles of transgression and regression are superimposed. The potential for correlating these lithological cycles regionally has been assessed by comparing coeval sections from southern Scandinavia. Plant-bearing fluvio-deltaic sequences from Bornholm and Scania were chosen as a means for appraising the lateral continuity of the cycles, and assessing what factors might have controlled their development.
Study of floral remains from the Ravenscar Group within the context of this stratigraphic framework yields valuable palaeoclimatic information. Growth-ring analysis of fossil wood of Late Pliensbachian to Late Bathonian age indicates a distinctly seasonal climate with low to moderate interseasonal variation in tree growth. Significant intraseasonal influences on wood production are implicit in the abundance of false rings. Consideration of these results within a stratigraphic context suggests that conditions during the Bathonian were comparatively hostile: a finding which is interpreted to be due to more frequent and extended water shortages associated with a drier climate. These palaeoclimatic inferences are substantiated by evidence obtained from the examination of the flora using Correspondence Analysis (CA). This approach verifies the presence of a temporal fluctuation in the flora found by previous investigations and, furthermore, highlights physiognomic trends in the flora with time. The results from CA also indicate adverse growing conditions during the Bathonian, emphasized by the prevalence of xeromorphic taxa.
The role of HER4 in relation to trastuzumab resistance and prognosis in HER2 positive breast cancer

Background
Trastuzumab resistance imposes a major limitation to the successful treatment of HER2 positive breast cancer. The expression of HER4 and its prognostic value is controversial in breast cancer. Furthermore, its role in trastuzumab treatment and resistance in HER2 positive breast cancer has not been reported.
Methods
The effects of trastuzumab on HER4 cleavage and its localisation were studied in both parental and trastuzumab-resistant SKBR3 and BT474 cells using western blot, RT-PCR, nuclear fractionation and confocal microscopy. Tissue microarrays consisting of a cohort of HER2 positive breast cancer patients were stained for HER4 by immunohistochemistry and the results were correlated with patients’ outcome. This study also assessed HER4 expression in the tumor samples from a window study of trastuzumab alone or in combination with neoadjuvant chemotherapy in HER2 positive breast cancer patients.
Results
Trastuzumab treatment upregulated HER4 mRNA, and increased expression of both 80 and 180 kDa HER4 protein isoforms, and induced nuclear translocation of 80kDa HER4 protein isoforms, which the results similar to heregulin stimulation. This was also seen in trastuzumab resistant cells although HER480kDa and nuclear HER4 decreased upon overnight withdrawal of trastuzumab in resistant cell lines. In addition, knockdown of HER4 protein expression by specific siRNAs increased trastuzumab sensitivity and reversed trastuzumab resistance in SKBR3 and BT474 cells, confirming the importance of HER4 in trastuzumab response. This study also showed that trastuzumab-induced HER4 nuclear translocation is due to HER4 activation and cleavage since γ-secretase inhibitor (GSi) and neratinib prevented the process when combined with trastuzumab treatment, correlating with an increased apoptosis and decreased cell viability. There was also increased nuclear HER4 expression in tumors from both BT474 xenografts and from patients with breast cancer treated with trastuzumab monotherapy. Furthermore, nuclear HER4 predicted poor clinical response to trastuzumab monotherapy in patients undergoing a window study and was a poor prognostic factor in HER2 positive breast cancer.
Conclusions
This study suggests HER4 activation, cleavage and nuclear translocation play a key role in trastuzumab resistance in HER2 positive breast cancer. Nuclear HER4 could be a novel predictive and prognostic biomarker in HER2 positive breast cancer patients.

Keywords: nuclear HER4
HER2 positive
trastuzumab resistance
breast cancer
Advisor: Kong, A
Ioannis, R
A study of B→DK and D0 production using D0→K+pi-pi+pi- decays at LHCb

A study of B(→)DK and D0 production using D0(→)K+pi-pi+pi- decays at LHCb
A precision measurement of the CKM angle γ from tree-level processes is one of the principal goals of the LHCb experiment. Two important channels for the extraction of γ are B±→D0K± and B±→D̅ 0K±; a first study of these modes is presented using an integrated luminosity of Lint=35.6 ± 3.6pb−1 at a pp centre-of-mass collision energy of √—s=7TeV. A measurement is made of the ratio of branching fractions BDK/BDπ= Γ(B±→DK±)/Γ(B±→Dπ±)= 0.057 ± 0.007 ± 0.004 using B±→(K±π∓π±π∓)DK± and B±→(K±π∓π±π∓)Dπ± four-body D decay modes. This has an uncertainty competitive with the previous world average of (7.6 ± 0.6)%. A measurement is also made of the rate asymmetry between B−→(K−π+π−π+)DK− and B+→(K+π−π+π−)DK+ decays,
Ac K3π
fav
=    Γ(B−→(K−π+π−π+)DK−)−Γ(B+→(K+π−π+π−)DK+)
Γ(B−→(K−π+π−π+)DK−)+Γ(B+→(K+π−π+π−)DK+)   = 0.01 ± 0.11 ± 0.06.
As expected, this result is consistent with zero within statistical and systematic uncertainties.
The D0/D̅ 0 production cross-section in bins oftransverse momentum and rapidity from prompt D0→K−π+π−π+ decays (and its charge conjugate) is presented, usingLint= 14.96 ± 0.52nb-1 of √—s=7TeV LHCb pp collision data. This measurement is important for testing predictions of QCD theoretical models, and determining LHCb's sensitivity to measurements of CPviolation, mixing measurements and rare decays of charmed hadrons. The results are compared to predictions from two different theoretical models and from the default LHCb tuning of the PYTHIA Monte Carlo event generator, and the results shown to be in good agreement. The cross-section results are also compared to an independent LHCb measurement in the D0→K−π+ decay channel.
LHCb analyses rely on the ability to identify kaons and pions with a high efficiency and low mis-identification rate, achieved by two Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detectors. To ensure optimal performanceof the RICH detectors, the time alignment of the Level-0 (L0) front-end electronics modules has been optimised using a combination of a pulsed laser system installed in the LHCb cavern and pp collision data. After the time-alignment procedure, the L0 modules have been time-aligned to within approximately ±1ns across both detectors.

Keywords: flavor physics
RICH
flavour physics
charm production
LHCb
Advisor: Harnew, N
‘Better active today than radioactive tomorrow!’ : transnational opposition to nuclear energy in France and West Germany, 1968-1981

This thesis examines the opposition to civil nuclear energy in France and West Germany during the 1970s, arguing that small-scale interactions among its diverse participants led to broad changes in their personal lives and political environments. Drawing extensively on oral history interviews with former activists as well as police reports, media coverage and protest ephemera, this thesis shows how individuals at the grassroots built up a movement that transcended national (and social) borders.
They were able to do so in part because nuclear power was such a multivalent symbol at the time. Residents of towns near planned power stations felt that nuclear technology represented an intervention in their community by state and industry, a potential threat to their health, wealth and way of life. In the decade after 1968, concerns like these coalesced with criticisms of capitalism, the state, militarism and consumer society that were being made by a more politicised constituency. This made the anti-nuclear movement both broad-based and highly fragmented. Activist networks linked people across existing national, political and social boundaries, but the social world of activism was subject to its own divisions (such as between locals and outsiders or between militant and non-violent activists).
By analysing both the transnational dimensions and internal divisions of the anti-nuclear movement, this thesis revises the homogenising concepts of social movements that are prevalent in much of the existing sociological and political science literature. At the same time, it situates the anti-nuclear movement historically within the decade of upheaval that was the 1970s, while moving individual activists from the margins to the centre of protest history.

Keywords: transnational
1968
1970s
nuclear power
social movements
Europe
West Germany
nuclear energy
protest
France
Advisor: Gildea, R
Caplan, J
The evolutionary economic geography of climate change

The evolutionary economic geography of climate change is concerned with the processes by which the landscapes of greenhouse gas emissions and vulnerability to climate change are transformed from within over time. Unlike neoclassical economics, evolutionary economic geography is interested in how economic change is driven by innovation and shaped by structural, historical, and contextual factors at different scales. This thesis articulates an evolutionary economic geography perspective on three debates: (1) What factors influence human systems’ capacity to adapt to climate change, and how can these factors be assessed? (2) What forces drive and inhibit economic change towards low-carbon economies, and how should governments induce and manage such shifts? (3) What role should climate finance play in promoting developing countries’ shifts to low-emitting and climate-resilient economies, and how should it be managed? The thesis includes five academic papers. The first reviews the literature on vulnerability and adaptation. It argues that the adaptive capacity of human systems is constrained by structural and historical factors, and that the rich data necessary to identify these factors can only be obtained through qualitative research methods. The next two papers offer case studies from the Global Islands’ Vulnerability Research Adaptation and Policy Development project, which assess the adaptive capacity of Soufriere, Saint Lucia and Whitehouse, Jamaica, respectively. The fourth paper examines the mechanics of three low-carbon shifts in Brazil: the diffusion of no-till agriculture, the decrease in the deforestation rate in the Amazon, and the growth of the ethanol biofuel industry. It found that the driving forces behind each of the shifts were far more varied and complex than the price-based market dynamics analysed in neoclassical economics. The final paper argues that climate finance will need to perform a variety of functions beyond attracting low-carbon private investment. It concludes that the institutional architecture governing climate finance should enable direct access to national governments to incentivise them to implement sustainable innovation policy regimes.

Keywords: Economic Geography
Adaptation
Mitigation
Climate Change
Advisor: Wojcik, D
Problems in Lie rings and groups

We construct a Lie relator which is not an identical Lie relator in the variety 𝔓4𝔓2. This is the first known example of a non-identical Lie relator.
Next we consider the existence of torsion in outer commutator groups. Let L be a free Lie ring. Suppose that 1 < i ≤ j ≤ 2i and i ≤ k ≤ i + j + 1. We prove that L/[Lj, Li, Lk] is torsion free. Also, we prove that if 1 < i ≤ j ≤ 2i and j ≤ k ≤ l ≤ i + j then L/[Lj, Li, Lk, Ll
] is torsion free. We then prove that the analogous groups, namely F/[γj(F),γi(F),γk(F)] and F/[γj(F),γi(F),γk(F),γl(F)] (under the same conditions for i, j, k and i, j, k, l respectively), are residually nilpotent and torsion free. We prove the existence of 2-torsion in the Lie rings L/[Lj, Li, Lk] when 1 ≤ k < i,j ≤ 5, and thus show that our methods do not work in these cases.
Finally, we consider the order of finite groups of exponent 8. For m ≥ 2, we define the function T(m,n)
by T(m,1) = m and T(m,k + 1) = mT(m,k). We prove that if G is a finite m-generator group of exponent 8 then |G| ≤ T(m, 7471), improving upon the best previously known bound of T(m, 888).

Advisor: Vaughan-Lee, M
Remorse and retribution: justifying mitigation at sentencing

Remorse can be a powerful source of mitigation at sentencing. However, there is a lack of formal justification for this practice and a paucity of theoretical literature engaging with this issue. Addressing this gap, this thesis offers a comprehensive justification for why an offender’s remorse should mitigate the punishment he receives. It begins by discussing the emotion of remorse – its nature and value. With reference to broadly-retributive theories of punishment, it then considers various arguments that could be offered to justify the mitigating effect of remorse on the offender’s sentence. It rejects two arguments: either remorse constitutes some of the offender’s deserved punishment or remorse reduces the seriousness of the offence. Instead, it develops a justification inspired by philosophical work distinguishing blameworthiness and blaming. The thesis argues that, in the context of sentencing, a broadly-conceived dialogical model of censure is the most legitimate. Remorse, as the offender’s ideal input into the dialogue about the offence, modifies the subsequent censure required. If censure seeks a response, and this response is already forthcoming, to nonetheless continue to seek this response as if it were absent devalues the censure. Von Hirsch and Ashworth’s assertions that censure appeals to the offender as a rational moral agent, and their adherence to certain quasiretributive values, are shown to provide further support for these arguments. If the deserved censure is mitigated, then so is the corresponding punishment communicating this censure. The thesis next explores how this justification for mitigation compares with ‘mercy’ justifications, arguing that the justification offered in this thesis operates more internally to deserved censure, and is more principled, so is preferable on these grounds. In conclusion, the thesis considers the implications of its arguments for sentencing practice and whether it is a concern that they are valid only within ‘censure’ theories of punishment.

Keywords: mitigation
remorse
punishment
sentencing
retribution
Advisor: Roberts, J
McDermott, D
Toward an ecology of addiction: overeaters anonymous and weight watchers in a culture of consumption

There is increasing evidence that aspects of human eating may be 'addictive'. Much of the existing literature examining this focuses on specific foods or individual pathologies of 'addiction'. Qualitative research methods, in particular content analysis, offers a rich opportunity to better understand 'addictive' aspects of human eating through the stories shared by those who have experienced compulsive eating. This research examines two different organizations that use storytelling as a tool for changing eating behaviours. Overeaters Anonymous (OA) and Weight Watchers (WW) began in the United States in the early 1960s as mutual support groups designed to help members with problems of compulsive overeating. This research examines: 1) the ways that OA and WW addressed 'addictions' with food when they were first formed; 2) how each organization has changed over time; and 3) the ways that identities are constructed through the telling of stories within each programme. For this thesis, I used historical analysis, in-person and online participant observation, and content analysis as research methods. I found that while OA and WW once similarly addressed 'addictions' with food, this is no longer the case. WW no longer understands their members as fundamentally different from others in the ways that they eat, and OA now welcomes members with a variety of different compulsive eating behaviours. However, similar themes regarding identity emerged from the OA and WW stories used in this research. OA and WW members describe that they acquire different belief systems regarding health and how to eat in each programme. In comparing these two organizations, how each has changed over time and the shifts in identity described by OA and WW members, this research identifies aspects of everyday living that members of both groups similarly highlight as important factors influencing compulsive eating. Based on these findings, I then assess to what extent a new framework for understanding 'addiction' may be needed, and conclude by suggesting further areas of research that would be suitable for constructing this.

Keywords: twelve-step programmes
dieting
compulsive eating
obesity
addiction
weight loss
stigma
nutrition
commercial weight-loss programmes
Advisor: Ulijaszek, S