VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Multi-agent exploration of unknown areas

This work focuses on the autonomous exploration of unknown areas by a swarm of mobile robots, referred to as agents. When an emergency happens within a building, it is dangerous to send human responders to search the area for hazards and victims. This motivates the need for autonomous agents that are able to coordinate with each other to explore the area as fast as possible. We investigate this problem from an algorithmic, rather than a robotics point of view, and thus abstract away from practical problems, such as obstacle detection and navigation over rough terrain. Our focus is on distributed algorithms that can cope with the following challenges: the topology of the area is typically unknown, communication between agents is intermittent and unreliable, and agents are not aware of their location in indoor environments. In order to address these challenges, we adopt the stigmergy approach, that is, we assume that the area is instrumented with small inexpensive sensors (called tags) and agents coordinate indirectly with each other by reading and updating the state of local tags. We propose three novel distributed algorithms that allow agents to explore unknown areas by coordinating indirectly through a tag-instrumented environment. In addition, we propose two mechanisms for discovering evacuation routes from critical points in the area to emergency exits. Agents are able to combine the tasks of area exploration and evacuation route discovery in a seamless manner. We study the proposed algorithms analytically, and evaluate them empirically in a custom-built simulation environment in a variety of scenarios. We then build a real testbed of agents and tags, and investigate practical mechanisms that allow agents to detect and localise nearby tags, and navigate toward them. Using the real testbed, we derive realistic models of detection, localisation and navigation errors, and investigate how they impact the performance of the proposed exploration algorithms. Finally, we design fault-tolerant exploration algorithms that are robust to these errors and evaluate them extensively in a simulation environment.

Keywords: multi-agent systems
exploration
robotics
Advisor: Trigoni, N
Conventions and the stock market game

Forecasting stock price movements is a notoriously difficult job. Were it not so, it would be easy to get richer. In this case, however, nobody would get poorer. But if nobody gets poorer, nobody will get richer. There are two ways to get out of this vicious circle. The first, and the more well-trodden, is the Efficient Market Theory (EMT), or: Everybody Understands Everything. The second is the Casino Market Theory (CMT), or: Nobody Understands Anything. This work is an attempt to bridge the gap between these two theories.
In the first chapter the EMT is analysed in its fundamental constituents, while Chapter 2 contains a discussion of several empirical tests of the theory. Chapter 3 extends the EMT to incorporate variable risk premia and rational speculative bubbles and Chapter 4 presents the available empirical evidence on the extended model.
The line of research based on the EMT paradigm is abandoned in Chapter 5, where the central principle of the EMT - the assumption of homogeneous investors with common priors - is investigated and challenged. The basis is there laid for an alternative view of the stock market game, which emphasises the conventional nature of investors' beliefs about future returns and is consistent with the view that stock market prices do not only reflect the fundamental value of underlying companies. In Chapter 6, the hypothesis that non fundamental information (in particular, past information) may have an influence on current stock prices is evaluated against monthly data relative to the US, UK, Japanese and Italian stock markets. Contrary to popular wisdom, we find that past information has a significant effect on current stock returns. Our evidence indicates that, as Keynes suggested in the General Theory, conventional beliefs play a crucial role in the stock market game.
'see ourselves as others see us': a phenomenological study of James Joyce's Ulysses and early cinema

This thesis examines James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and early cinema (c. 1895-1920) through Merleau-Pontian phenomenology. Instead of arguing for lines of direct influence between specific films and particular parts of Ulysses, I show that Joyce’s text and selected early films and film genres exhibit parallel philosophies. Ulysses and early cinema share similar ideas on the embodied nature of perception, the close relationship between mind and body, the intermingling of the human and the mechanical, intersubjectivity, and the subject’s inherence in the world. All of these shared ideas are inherently phenomenological. My phenomenological position on the Joyce-and-cinema relationship is at odds with a popular strain of scholarship which cites impersonality, neutrality, and automatism as the key linking factors between early cinema and modernist literature (including Joyce).
‘Joyce-and-cinema’ studies is a relatively large, and growing, field; as is ‘modernism-and-cinema’ studies. As well as ploughing my own path through an already crowded area, I analyse the different trends present (both historically and currently) in each area of study. I also add to the scholarship on phenomenological film theory by analysing the work of phenomenologically inflected film-philosophers and suggesting some new ways in which Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology might be used in the analysis of films and literature.
I provide close analyses of several episodes of Ulysses and pay particular attention to ‘Ithaca’, ‘Circe’, ‘Nausicaa’, and ‘Wandering Rocks’. Several of Charlie Chaplin’s Mutual films are analysed, as are a select number of films by George Méliès. I also look at other trick-films, Irish melodrama, panoramas, ‘phantom rides’, and local actuality films (especially Mitchell and Kenyon’s Living Dublin series). Proto-cinematic devices – the Mutoscope and stereoscope – are also included in my analyses.

Keywords: motion pictures - philosophy
James
motion pictures and literature
Maurice
1908-1961
English literature - 20th century - history and criticism
Joyce
modernism (literature)
1882-1941. Ulysses
film criticism
phenomenology and literature
Merleau-Ponty
Advisor: Johnson, J
Marcus, L
Ethics of religious belief

This thesis seeks to answer the question of what it would be for a person to be persuaded rationally to believe that God exists, and tries to explain in a related way the possibility of rationality in Christian faith. I begin by explicating and defending the "ethics of belief" approach to epistemology. Then two competing ethics of belief are described: "Strong Formalism", which holds, through a voluntaristic decision, a deductivist epistemology; and "Soft Rationalism", which contains an infonnalist epistemology, and rejects voluntarism. Arguments for and against each view are canvassed. But I show that our attempted adjudication is blocked by the "Ultimate Rationality Problem": no ethic of belief seems able rationally to justify its view of rationality. I reduce the Problem to this fact: any view of rationality refutes itself which tries to give a foundational method of epistemic evaluation that both gives a verdict on every proposition and avoids self-justification. I reject several suggested solutions in favour of one which replaces the foundational view of justification by a contextual view. I then generate from the process of justification itself several common epistemic standards, which allow us rationally to favour Soft Rationalism over Strong Formalism. But the former is both foundationalist and needlessly opposed to formalism. I remedy these faults by developing a "Modest Formalist" ethic of belief: a'partly formal set of standards for rational metaphysical argument,"given in. the form of a set of constitutive rules for certain games of interpretive argument. In doing this I defend an improved theory of epistemic probability, and reveal the structure of our substantive views of rationality - as this virtue would be required of believings per se, of actions based on believings, and'of actions (such as living a Christian life) based on what I describe as "experimental faith".
Analysis of nonlinear systems : large-scale, time-varying, non-polynomial and uncertain properties

This thesis introduces, develops and applies methods for analysing nonlinear systems with the multiple challenges of time-varying, non-polynomial, uncertain or large-scale proper- ties. Both computational and analytic methods using Lyapunov functions are developed and the methods are applied to a range of examples. Generalised Absolute stability is introduced, which is a method of treating polynomial systems with non polynomial, uncertain or time-varying feedback. Analysis is completed with Sum of Squares programming, and this method extends both the applicability of sum of squares as well as existing absolute stability theory. Perturbation methods for invariant Sum of Squares and Semidefinite programs are introduced, which significantly improves scalability of computations and al- lows sum of squares programming to be used for large scale systems. Finally, invariance principles are introduced for nonlinear, time-varying systems. The concept of trajectories leaving sets uniformly in time is introduced, which allows a non-autonomous version of Barbashin-Krasovskii theorem.

Keywords: Nonlinear Systems
Advisor: Papachristodoulou, A
Recognizing describable attributes of textures and materials in the wild and clutter

Visual textures play an important role in image understanding because theyare a key component of the semantic of many images. Furthermore, texture representations, which pool local image descriptors in an orderless manner, have hada tremendous impact in a wide range of computer vision problems, from texture recognition to object detection. In this thesis we make several contributions to the area of texture understanding.
First, we add a new semantic dimension to texture recognition. Instead of focusing on instance or material recognition, we propose a human-interpretable vocabulary of texture attributes, inspired from studies in Cognitive Science, to describe common texture patterns. We also develop a corresponding dataset, the Describable Texture Dataset (DTD), for benchmarking. We show that these texture attributes produce intuitive descriptions of textures. We also show that they can be used to extract a very low dimensional representation of any texture that is very effective in other texture analysis tasks, including improving the state-of-the art in material recognition on the most challenging datasets available today.
Second, we look at the problem of recognizing texture attributes and materials in realistic uncontrolled imaging conditions, including when textures appear in clutter. We build on top of the recently proposed Open Surfaces dataset, introduced by the graphics community, by deriving a corresponding benchmarks for material recognition. In addition to material labels, we also augment a subset of Open Surfaces with semantic attributes.
Third, we propose a novel texture representation, combining the recent advances in deep-learning with the power of Fisher Vector pooling. We provide thorough evaluation of the new representation, and revisit in general classic texture representations, including bag-of-visual-words, VLAD and the Fisher Vectors, in the context of deep learning. We show that these pooling mechanisms have excellent efficiency and generalisation properties if the convolutional layers of a deep model are used as local features. We obtain in this manner state-of-the-art performance in numerous datasets, both in texture recognition and image understanding in general. We show through our experiments that the proposed representation is an efficient way to apply deep features to image regions, and that it is an effective manner of transferring deep features from one domain to another.

Keywords: Image Classification
Computer Vision
Material Recognition
Texture Understanding
Advisor: Vedaldi, A
Experimental study of the through-thickness strength of laminated composites

Complicated structures made of fibre reinforced laminates will suffer the failure of delamination which is the main through-thickness failure mode and is usually caused by the combined through-thickness stress state. Three tests, namely the oblique test, the waisted C-specimen test and the notched beam test, have been developed to reveal the failure activities under the combined stress state of in-plane normal stress, through-thickness normal stress and interlaminar shear, and, as a part of the big project, to establish a 3-D failure map in the coordinates of the three stress components. All tests have been analyzed either numerically by FEM or experimentally by Moire interferometry technique.
The experimental results have shown that the failure behaviours of laminates are far more complicated than and very different from the traditional metallic materials which can usually be described by phenomenological failure criteria. The phenomenological criteria attempt has been tried and further confirmed that a full experimental understanding is the most important. Moreover, fractographic analysis by SEM has also been conducted to support the test results.
Finally the Weibull statistics method has been used to treat the stress gradient effect in the different test geometries while establishing the failure map. It has proved to be a very efficient instrument.

Advisor: Ruiz, C
The susceptibility of leopards Panthera pardus to trophy hunting

The trophy hunting of African leopards Panthera pardus pardus may generate revenue to help foster their conservation. However, leopards are sensitive to hunting and populations decline if overharvested. The practice therefore requires careful management grounded in robust estimates of population density/status. Camera-trap surveys are commonly used to establish leopard numbers, and may guide harvest quotas. However, such surveys are limited over wide spatial scales and many African governments lack resources to implement them.
In this thesis I explore the potential use of a harvest composition scheme applied to puma Puma concolor in North America, to monitor leopards. The method hinges on the susceptibility of different leopard cohorts to hunting and if this varies, then predictions can be made about harvest composition. Susceptibility is likely to be governed by space use, encounter rates with bait lures (a common method used to attract leopards to hunting hides) and hunter selectivity. Thus in this thesis I explore leopard susceptibility to these factors using a protected leopard population in northern Zululand, South Africa. In my first chapter I examine using scent lures in camera-trapping. Against a backdrop of a passive survey I show adult males, females and sub-adults are captured at similar rates compared to a passive survey using lures. The use of lures does not appear to violate closure assumptions or affect spatio-temporal patterning, but their use appears limited as density estimate precision is not improved.
My second chapter examines ecological (likelihood of encountering a hunter) and anthropogenic (attractiveness to hunters) susceptibility of leopards to trophy hunting. I show that adult males are the most susceptible cohort to hunting (sub-adults least susceptible). I then take the incident rates from ecological and anthropogenic models and create a theoretical harvest composition using population parameters of protected leopards.
My third data chapter departs from hunting susceptibility and examines determinants of leopard trophy package price across Africa. I show that factors such as trophy quality, outfitter leopard hunting reputation and hunt success have little impact on price determination. Instead, overall outfitter reputation and the number of charismatic species in a package are positively correlated with price. These results have important consequences on several sustainable leopard hunting schemes proposed in the literature.

Keywords: conservation
camera-trapping
trophy hunting
leopard
economics
Advisor: Macdonald, D
Dickman, A
Balme, G
Comedy in James Joyce's Ulysses

The comic in Ulysses needs more attention. The few studies that exist disregard the problems: the adoption of assumptions which limit discussion, the inconsistent terminology, the lingering prejudice regarding comedy as inferior to tragedy. This study begins by examining the common assumption that comedy in Ulysses is either a restraint on Joyce's saeva indignatio, or an affirmation of life; and then looks at the difficulties of comic criticism.
Chapter two considers modern comedy, distinguishes three schools of theory, and indicates how these will be considered in relation to Ulysses. Chapter three, countering the assumptions observed in chapter one, discusses the book's refusal to indulge the reader's desire for certainty, illustrating this with a criticism of Kenner's conception of Joycean irony and Goldberg's reading of the 'Nausicaa' episode.
Chapter four examines Mulligan: "in risu veritas: for nothing so reveals us as cur laughter" (Joyce). Using Freud's study of aggressive jokes, it works backwards from 'Circe,' where Mulligan is revealed in his true (motley) colours. Chapter five evaluates Bloom's comic/ heroism, working with Bergson's study of social laughter and against Darcy O'Brien. The final chapter considers farce, particularly in 'Cyclops' and 'Circe,' using Bergson's body-as-machine theory and Bakhtin's study of the medieval carnival in Rabelais and his World<.em>.
Protein engineering of human properdin

Properdin is a serum glycoprotein that upregulates the alternative pathway of complement by stabilizing the C3bBb complex. It also binds sulphated glycoconjugates, such as sulphatide, in vitro. Properdin is composed of cyclic dimers, trimers and tetramers of a 53 kDa monomeric subunit. The monomer contains an N-terminal region of no known homology and six thrombospondin type 1 repeats (TSRs) of approximately sixty amino acids. The sixth TSR of properdin contains an insertion of approximately 30 amino acids which corresponds to the position of an intron in the human properdin gene.
In order to identify the regions of properdin important for function, human properdin, and mutant forms each lacking a single TSR, were expressed in Chinese Hamster Ovary cells. In addition, limited tryptic digestion yielded "nicked" properdin by the cleavage of one peptide bond in TSR5. The structural and functional properties of the normal and altered forms of properdin were investigated. Wild type recombinant properdin is similar to properdin purified from plasma in size, immunoreactivity, N-terminal sequence, possession of N-linked sugar, oligomerization (as determined by electron microscopy and gel exclusion chromatography), and functional activity in an alternative pathway haemolytic assay, and in C3b and sulphatide binding assays.
Properdin "nicked" in TSR5 is unable to bind C3b, while retaining its overall structure and its ability to bind sulphatide. The removal of TSRS prevents C3b and sulphatide binding. Properdin lacking TSR4 is unable to stabilize the C3bBb complex, but is able to bind C3b and sulphatide, and shows the presence of monomers and dimers in the electron microscope. Properdin without TSR3 is able to stabilize the C3bBb complex, to bind CSb and sulphatide, and forms dimers, trimers and tetramers. Properdin lacking TSR6 is unable to form oligomers. The N-linked carbohydrate of properdin is not required for oligomerization or stabilization of the C3bBb complex. Monoclonal antibodies which bind to the N-terminal region, TSR1, or TSR2 are able to inhibit properdin binding to CSb. A monoclonal antibody which binds TSR4 is able to inhibit properdin binding to sulphatide, but not to CSb.
The results confirm that TSRs are folded as independent units. The N-terminal end and TSR5 of properdin are implicated in CSb binding. The vertices of properdin oligomers may be important for interaction with CSb. TSR4 may also be involved in stabilization of the C3bBb complex. The sulphatide binding site is distinct from the CSb binding site, but TSR5, which contains many basic residues, may be important for both activities.

Advisor: Reid, K
Quo virtus?

The standard of propriety is frequently appealed to in ancient literary discourse, most notably in discussions of poetics, criticism of literary works and precepts for composition. Its importance derives from the audience orientation of most ancient discussions of literature: writers were interested in the ways various forms of speech and writing had to be accommodated to their audience in order to achieve particular effects. Discussion of the representation of character, for instance, explored the ways that fictional persons or oratorical speakers could be made moving and convincing: they must conform to common preconceptions about the behviour and language suitable to their rank, sex, age, nationality, education.
This raises important questions about the concept of propriety. First, is it coherent? It seems to depend heavily on the assumption that audiences are homogeneous; in practice, however, ancient writers recognise wide disparities in readers and spectators, and are often ready to accuse certain types of audience of bad taste. The concept is thus embroiled in the general aesthetic problem of the nature of taste: can criteria for artistic excellence be found which are independent of what people happen to like, and which can therefore justify claims about what they should like? Second, where does use of the concept place ancient literary discussion in relation to various forms of modern literary theory and criticism? A large number of modern movements have held it as axiomatic that the excellence of art lies in defeating the preconceptions of the audience; does ancient criticism have any defence against such a position? Both of these points touch on further issues: the place of literature and oratory in Greek and Roman societies, and the connection between literary discourse and other types of intellectual activity, most notably philosophy (propriety is equally important in most ancient moral philosophy). I consider these points in connection with major poetic genres, rhetoric, and the question of linguistic purity.