VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Definability in Henselian fields

We investigate definability in henselian fields. Specifically, we are interested in those sets and substructures that are existentially definable or definable with 'few' parameters. Our general approach is to use various versions of henselianity to understand the 'local structure' of these definable sets.
The fields in which we are most interested are those of positive characteristic, for example the local fields Fq((t)), but many of our methods and results also apply to p-adic and real closed fields. In positive characteristic we have to deal with inseparable field extensions and we develop the method of Λ-closure to `translate' inseparable field extensions into separable ones.
In the first part of the thesis we focus on existentially definable sets, which are projections of algebraic sets. Our main tool is the Implicit Function Theorem (for polynomials) which is equivalent to t-henselianity, by work of Prestel and Ziegler. This enables us to prove that existentially definable sets are `large' in various senses. Using the Implicit Function Theorem, we also obtain a nonuniform local elimination of the existential quantifier. The non-uniformity and local character of this result at present forms an obstacle to full quantifier-elimination. From these technical statements we can deduce characterisations of, for example, existentially definable subfields and existentially definable transcendentals.
We prove that a dense, regular extension of t-henselian fields is existentially closed which, in particular, implies the old result of Ershov that Fp(t)h ≤Ǝ Fp
((t)). Using the existential closedness of large fields in henselian fields, we are able to apply many of these results to large fields. This answers questions for imperfect large fields that were answered in the perfect case by Fehm. In the second part of the thesis, we work with power series fields F((t)) and subsets which are F- definable (and not contained in F). We use a `hensel-like' lemma to characterise F-orbits of (singleton) elements of F((t)). It turns out that all such orbits are Ǝ-t-definable. Consequently, we may apply our earlier results about existentially definable subsets to F-definable subsets. We can use this to characterise F-definable subfields of F((t)).
As a further corollary, we obtain an Ǝ-0̸-definition of Fp[[t]] in Fp((t)).

Keywords: 03C model theory
12L field theory
logic
polynomials
Advisor: Koenigsmann, J
The sedimentology and chemostratigraphy of the Nafun Group, Huqf Supergroup, Oman

Two glacial units have been identified within the Abu Mahara Group, with the upper being overlain by a 'cap carbonate' (the Hadash Formation). Ash beds from the lower glacial unit are dated herein by U-Pb zircon methods at 723+107-16 Ma. The Hadash Formation is succeeded by the Naftm Group which is overlain by the volcaniclastic Fara Formation. An ignimbrite unit within the Fara Formation is dated herein by U-Pb zircon methods at 544±3.3 Ma.
The lithologies of the Nafun Group are found to indicate shallow marine deposits in the Huqf area of east-central, Oman and more distal deposits in the Oman Mountains of north Oman. The east-central Khufai Formation carbonates shoal-upward from mid-ramp settings to intertidal carbonates with outer-ramp carbonates in the Oman Mountains. There was arguably a slight draw-down in the uppermost Khufai Formation before the drowning of the carbonate ramp by the Shuram Formation siliciclastics. These red and green siliciclastics are typically swaley cross-stratified upward, indicative of storm deposition. An increase in carbonates in the upper Shuram Formation leads gradationally into the lower Buah Formation. The Buah Formation carbonates preserve another upward-shoaling trend from subwave base to sabkha deposits in east-central Oman. In Wadi Bani Awf, the coeval sediments are shown to contain slump structures and brecciated beds of the ramp slope, with thick breccia units representing slope failure deposits. The Oman Mountains therefore preserves the margin of a carbonate platform.
The dramatic positive and negative to positive excursions recorded in the stable isotope stratigraphy through the Nafun Group are argued to largely reflect sea water δ13C signatures and may perhaps be explained in terms of climatic changes identified lithologically. The top of both carbonate formations are sequence boundaries with the maximum flooding surfaces identified within the siliciclastic formations.
Religion in the wake of ‘total war’: Protestant and Catholic communities in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, 1945-9

By May 1945, most major German cities lay in ruins, and a largely demoralised population struggled for subsistence in many areas. National Socialist remnants, Christian faith and communist ideology met in the rubble of the Third Reich. The Protestant and Catholic Churches attempted to ‘re-Christianise’ the Volk and reverse secularisation, while the German communists sought to inspire dynamism for their socialist project in Eastern Germany. This thesis recreates the religious world of Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia in the Soviet zone, 1945-9, and analyses ‘religio-politics’ (the interactions between the secular authorities and the Churches), the affairs of the priesthood/pastorate, and the behaviours, mentalities and emotions of ‘ordinary people’ amongst the pews. After the American withdrawal in July 1945, the Soviet authorities occupied the entirety of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, and they proclaimed a ‘freedom of religion’. The realities of this policy were different in each state, and the resolution or non-resolution of local-level disputes often determined Church and State relations. At the grassroots, though, many people engaged in a latent social revolt against all forms of authority. The Churches’ hopes of ‘re-Christianisation’ in 1945 were dashed by 1949, despite a brief and ultimately superficial ‘revival’. The majority of people did not attend church services regularly, many allegedly practiced ‘immorality’, and refused to adopt ‘Christian neighbourly love’ in helping often-destitute refugees. ‘Re-Christianisation’ also did not incur comprehensive denazification or a unified pastorate, and there was even a continuation of the Third Reich Kirchenkampf in some areas. Christian ideas of guilt for a popular turning from God, much less for Nazism and its crimes, rarely resonated amongst the population and some sections of the pastorate. This mentality encapsulated the popular rejection of authority, whether spiritual or political, that endured up to and beyond the foundation of the German Democratic Republic in October 1949.

Keywords: German history
SBZ
Soviet occupation of Germany
Religion in East Germany
East Germany
GDR
DDR
Advisor: Caplan, J
The Greek and Arabic fragments of Paul of Aegina's Therapy of Children

In this MPhil thesis I have collected, re-edited, translated, and commented upon the fragments of the Therapy and Upbringing of the Children by Paul of Aegina which mostly survive in the Arabic tradition. Since there has been very little scholarly work on this paediatric treatise by Paul of Aegina, and no critical edition of its major source, al-Baladī, the philological work of securing the text, translating it, and giving it a first although preliminary commentary has been the prime objective. There are three areas I could only touch upon without being able at this stage to undertake any in-depth study: Firstly the Greek sources for Paul's Therapy of Children could only be dealt with in a cursory way. I have placed in appendix I the fragments of Rufus' Therapy of Children, one of the major sources and a treatise that we will probably be able to restore to a great extent with the help of the Arabic fragments, as the reader will see from the material presented here, since the limited time and scope of this thesis did not allow for a full edition of the text of these fragments. Secondly I inquired into the translation technique applied to Paul's treatise in F9 only, a field that will certainly yield many wonderful fruits once tilled thoroughly. Thirdly, I could make but a few remarks about how Paul's Therapy of Children was used in the subsequent tradition. This said I think nonetheless that the present work will bear some new evidence that can cast a fresh light on Greek paediatrics from Rufus of Ephesus to Paul of Aegina.

Advisor: Wilson, N
Savage-Smith, E
Mathematical modelling of oxygen transport in skeletal and cardiac muscles

Understanding and characterising the diffusive transport of capillary oxygen and nutrients in striated muscles is key to assessing angiogenesis and investigating the efficacy of experimental and therapeutic interventions for numerous pathological conditions, such as chronic ischaemia. In articular, the influence of both muscle tissue and microvascular heterogeneities on capillary oxygen supply is poorly understood. The objective of this thesis is to develop mathematical and computational modelling frameworks for the purpose of extending and generalising the current use of histology in estimating the regions of tissue supplied by individual capillaries to facilitate the exploration of functional capillary oxygen supply in striated muscles. In particular, we aim to investigate the balance between local capillary supply of oxygen and oxygen demand in the presence of various anatomical and functional heterogeneities, by capturing tissue details from histological imaging and estimating or predicting regions of capillary supply. Our computational method throughout is based on a finite element framework that captures the anatomical details of tissue cross sections. In Chapter 1 we introduce the problem. In Chapter 2 we develop a theoretical model to describe oxygen transport from capillaries to uniform muscle tissues (e.g. cardiac muscle). Transport is then explored in terms of oxygen levels and capillary supply regions. In Chapter 3 we extend this modelling framework to explore the influence of the surrounding tissue by accounting for the spatial anisotropies of fibre oxygen demand and diffusivity and the heterogeneity in fibre size and shape, as exemplified by mixed muscle tissues (e.g. skeletal muscle). We additionally explore the effects of diffusion through the interstitium, facilitated--diffusion by myoglobin, and Michaelis--Menten kinetics of tissue oxygen consumption. In Chapter 4, a further extension is pursued to account for intracellular heterogeneities in mitochondrial distribution and diffusive parameters. As a demonstration of the potential of the models derived in Chapters 2--4, in Chapter 5 we simulate oxygen transport in myocardial tissue biopsies from rats with either impaired angiogenesis or impaired arteriolar perfusion. Quantitative predictions are made to help explain and support experimental measurements of cardiac performance and metabolism. In the final chapter we summarize the main results and indicate directions for further work.

Keywords: numerical simulations
computational modelling
skeletal muscles
muscle ischaemia
Voronoi tessellations
cardiac muscles
angiogenesis
finite elements
capillary supply
mathematical modelling
capillary domains
microcirculation
physiology
hypoxia
oxygen transport
flux trapping regions
Advisor: Gaffney, E
Attentional contributions to children’s limited visual short-term memory capacity: developmental change and its neural mechanisms

It is increasingly recognised that, in adulthood, attentional control plays an important role in optimising the ability to encode and maintain items in visual short-term memory (VSTM). Memory capacity limits increase dramatically over childhood, but the mechanisms through which children guide attention to maximise VSTM remain poorly understood. Through a number of experiments manipulating different parameters, the current thesis aimed to explore the developmental trajectories of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying selective attention within VSTM and to examine whether variations in attentional control are accompanied by individual differences in VSTM capacity. Chapters 2 and 3 investigated the development of attentional orienting in preparation for encoding and during maintenance. Younger children emerged as less able than older children and adults to orient attention to internally held representations. Therefore, Chapter 4 tested whether younger children’s attentional orienting is differentially affected by memory load. While attentional orienting prior to encoding was more beneficial when required to remember a greater number of items, cueing benefits during maintenance were similar across load conditions. Chapter 5 investigated whether temporal parameters influence younger children’s variable ability to orient attention during maintenance. Attentional orienting operated more efficiently on transient iconic traces rather than on VSTM representations due to passive decay of the memory traces as a function of time. Chapter 6 assessed whether the characteristics of the memoranda constrain the efficiency of attentional orienting within VSTM. Attentional orienting supported differentially the maintenance of familiar and meaningless items and pinpointed the quantitative improvement of mnemonic strategies over development. Finally, Chapter 7 examined the temporal dynamics of prospective and retrospective orienting of attention in VSTM. Children deployed neural pathways underpinning attentional orienting less efficiently than adults and differentially across the two orienting conditions suggesting their neural dissociation. Overall, findings from the current thesis define how children develop the ability to deploy attentional control in service of VSTM.

Keywords: Visual short-term memory
Working memory
Cognitive Development
Attention
Electroencephalography
Advisor: Scerif, G
Muslim communities in England, 1962-92: multiculturalism and political identity

Since the conflicts in the Gulf and Bosnia in the 1990s, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, a large sociological and political literature on British Muslims has appeared. It is often a contention of these works that Muslims in Britain did not identify, and were not seen in terms of, their religion prior to the time of the Rushdie affair. This thesis contends that, contrary to these arguments, religion has been a significant referent for the claims-making of Muslim communities in England since essentially the time that those communities settled (the early 1960s). This is demonstrated through the consideration of Muslim claims-making and elite practice and policy in a number of thematic areas, including education, employment, social services, and party politics. Building on these insights, it is suggested that such misconceptions about English Muslim social and political mobilisations are attributable to the absence of an historical perspective upon British multiculturalism. This thesis, particularly in two concluding chapters, attempts to correct this absence, offering a broader consideration of British multiculturalism in the studied period. It suggests that – rather than a relatively coherent ideology or policy approach – British multiculturalism has been an institution, produced in an ad hoc manner through the largely uncoordinated actions of a large number of actors, often lacking shared aims, at both local and national level. Although subject to changes over time, this institution has observed a number of consistent ‘rules’ in the form of concepts shared by actors involved in it (such as the ‘ethnic group, ‘community leadership’ and ‘special needs’). Finally, it is suggested that multiculturalism in Britain has endured primarily due to a process of ‘path dependence’ through which many actors have ‘learned’ how to operate within the rules of the institution, and may owe their existence of prestige to it.

Keywords: diaspora
immigration
islam
politics
britain
modern britain
multiculturalism
muslims
Advisor: Davis, J
The career of Matilda of Boulogne as countess and queen in England, 1135-1152

This thesis attempts to produce a biographical study of King Stephen's wife, similar in scope and type to Marjorie Chibnall's 1991 work The Empress Matilda. The introduction will examine the primary sources for Matilda of Boulogne's career - chronicles written during and after her lifetime and charters she issued or attested - and point out their problems; examine her career as discussed in secondary sources; and examine her early life, including an attempt to put her children in birth order. A lack of primary source material prevents any longer examination of her career before Stephen's 1135 accession.
The first chapter is a narrative of the queen's career, collating documentary and chronicle sources to provide the background for later, in-depth discussion. Where possible and appropriate, this chapter also attempts to date charters more precisely. The second chapter discusses Matilda's religious life, and has three parts. The first and longest is an in-depth analysis of her charters to religious houses, to determine her patterns of patronage and personal preferences. The second compares her religious charters to Stephen's and examines the connections between them using the queen's attestations; this determines whether the queen's grants were self-directed or motivated by her husband. The final section examines Matilda of Boulogne's relationships with various religious figures, and in particular tries to date her various interactions with Bernard of Clairvaux.
The third chapter analyses the witness-lists of Matilda's charters in order to determine with whom she was in closest contact - the make-up of her curia, in other words - and provides some discussion of her most frequent attestors. There is also a comparison between Stephen and Matilda's most frequent attestors, which determines that Matilda, rather than being an alternative nexus of prestige or having a parallel curia, was a member of Stephen's inner circle who had a small personal household. The fourth chapter is an examination of Matilda of Boulogne's authority - its sources, types, and uses. In general, Matilda's authority was highly nuanced, came from multiple sources, including her roles as wife, mother, countess, and queen, and allowed her to take highly effective, flexible action whenever Stephen's interests or hers were threatened. The final chapter places the queen's career in context by examining the careers of four of her relatives, and comparing them to Matilda's; it becomes apparent from this analysis that Matilda actively modelled herself on her predecessors, particularly those who were queens.

Advisor: Thompson, B
The Global Fund: an experiment in global governance

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was created as a new type of international organisation. Its founders uniquely enfranchised non-state actors on its Board, hoping that decision would attract new resources to combat these diseases. Funding decisions would be evidence-based rather than politically-driven. And, the institution would be deliberately ‘lean’ to promote ‘country-ownership’ of grant proposals and implementation. The Fund’s Board (‘principals’) made deliberate choices to constrain the autonomy of its Secretariat (‘agent’). Delegation was strictly limited. In theory, this was to ensure the Fund remained a catalyst for donor funding, evidence-based decision-making and country-ownership. However, the research adduced for this thesis suggests inadequate delegation opened opportunities for direct donor influence in recipient countries. This thesis assesses three specific dimensions of the Fund’s performance in its first decade. The first concerns whether the Fund successfully mobilised more resources, from more funders and did so more reliably. The second is whether the Fund made initial and continued funding decisions in an identifiable evidence-based way. The third centres on ‘country-ownership:’ whether recipient and donor countries on the Fund’s Board had equal influence and whether grant writing and oversight can be assessed as being recipient country ‘owned.’ Data is aggregated from several sources, including: the Fund’s grant portfolio, individual grant agreements and Board documentation; the U.S. PEPFAR programme; and, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The research reveals the Fund likely gave a ‘kick-start’ to resources flowing to its diseases but PEPFAR’s arrival a year later contributed relatively more. Broad-based support did not emerge though the Fund proved relatively more successful in converting pledges to contributions. The Fund made evidence-based decisions for initial and continued funding, but the latter is a less robust conclusion given missing grant performance data. Equal donor and recipient Board representation was insufficient to ensure recipients had influence equal to donors. The Secretariat never developed an in-country presence but donors embedded themselves in-country, through grant oversight mechanisms and providing technical assistance to implementers. Principal-agent theory generally assumes agents have more information than principals, a key source of their authority. In the Fund, that asymmetry was in the principals’ favour. The scant delegation of authority to the Secretariat left donors in a position to exert control at all levels. The Fund was an experiment in global governance but has not yet proven to be a success in establishing a new model for cooperation.

Keywords: Global Fund
HIV/AIDS
global governance
Advisor: Woods, N
White slavery

In this thesis, I argue the case for putting the industrial revolution back into literary accounts of the Romantic period. Writers of fiction played an important part in disseminating knowledge about the changes to technology and society, as well as helping to form the image of the newest social class: that of the industrial workers. Literature aspired to educate and integrate this class, as well as to influence the parallel process of educating the upper classes about the advent of the new manufacturing order. I have taken as the governing metaphor for industrialization that of 'white slavery', drawing the contrast to the contemporary movement to abolish black slavery. To illustrate the thesis, I have chosen six writers: three Romantic poets - Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth - and three women educationalists - Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth and Harriet Martineau, each of whom represents a significant philosophical approach to a manufacturing society and who each made an important contribution to imaginative literature. Whilst the Romantic poets analysed industrialization as a divisive and demoralizing phenomenon and looked to the past for solutions, the educationalists responded to the challenge presented by the factory system by suggesting new visions of social relationships which bound moral and economic behaviour together. The thesis aspires to restore the voices of neglected women writers in the industrial debate with the aim of promoting a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the Romantic period and a fuller comprehension of its creative expression.