VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Beyond theatre regionalism: when does formal economic integration work in Africa?

For the most part, formal economic integration between African states can be characterised as ‘theatre regionalism’: governments sign regional economic agreements with no intention to implement them. Yet amidst widespread theatre there have been a few instances of actual integration. This thesis sets out to explain this variance: under what conditions do African governments implement – and not just sign – formal agreements on regional economic integration? To answer this question the dominant Eurocentric literature on comparative regionalism is amended with insights from the third worldist literature on African states to develop a new approach for comparative analysis, the ‘Regionalism as Policy Space’ (RPS) framework. This framework models African regionalism as a two-stage game. At the first stage, governments’ interests in regionalism are determined by perceptions of the existence of structural cross-issue linkages connecting implementation of regional agreements with the widening of government policy space. Given such linkages, at the second stage, governments of a region engage in a coordination game to establish the distribution of benefits from integration. Variance in the implementation of regional agreements, then, is explained by variance in the existence of perceived cross-issue linkages (the Benefits Existence Condition) and the ability of participating governments to ease distributional tensions (the Benefits Distribution Condition). Four African customs union case studies - the East African customs union of the 1960s and 70s, the customs union of the East African Community in the 2000s, the customs union of the Economic Community of West African States and the Southern African Customs Union – lend strong empirical support to the RPS framework. The thesis ends with a discussion of the role of hegemons and proposes a series of policy measures aiming to reduce the likelihood of theatre regionalism in Africa.

Keywords: policy space
international political economy
issue linkages
Africa
regional economic integration
Advisor: Collier, P
Nicolaidis, K
Evaluation of the immunological mechanisms induced by mycobacteria and the potential effect this may have on immunity induced by tuberculosis vaccines

The efficacy of Bacille-Calmette Guerin (BCG) vaccination in protection against pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is highly variable between populations. One possible explanation is increased exposure of certain populations to non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). Given the variable efficacy of BCG an improved vaccine against TB is required. The novel TB vaccine MVA85A has shown promising results, however, the immunogenicity of the vaccine is reduced when it is administered in the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) schedule. This thesis aims to explore: (A) the effect of exposure to NTM on the level of protection afforded by BCG vaccination against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) and (B) the immunological mechanisms behind EPI interference with MVA85A.
The effect of M. avium (MA) exposure via systemic and oral routes on the efficacy of BCG was tested using M. tb aerosol infection in a mouse model. The adaptive immune response was profiled in BCG vaccinated mice with and without exposure to MA pre- and post- M. tb infection. The results showed BCG efficacy could be enhanced by exposure to dead MA by a systemic route; T helper 1 and T helper 17 responses were associated with increased protection. In contrast, BCG efficacy may have been reduced by exposure to live MA by the oral route; T helper 2 and regulatory T cells were associated with reduced protection.
To answer the second aim MVA85A was co-administered to mice with aluminium adjuvants or aluminium-containing vaccines to replicate the effect of co-administration in the EPI schedule; the adaptive immune response was profiled. T helper 2 and regulatory T cell responses induced by aluminium-containing vaccines were associated with a reduction in the immunogenicity of MVA85A.

Keywords: Mycobacterium tuberculosis
non-tuberculous mycobacteria
bacillus calmette-geurin
T cells
adaptive immunity
pulmonary tuberculosis
Advisor: McShane, H
Image formation mechanisms in three-dimensional aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy

This thesis considers the theory and calculations of image formation mechanisms for various modes of three-dimensional imaging in aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy. Discrete tomography is used to determine and refine the three-dimensional structure of molecular nanowire bundles. The structure determination is expedited by the use of annular dark-field imaging, an incoherent imaging mode which provides directly interpretable images. The development of spherical aberration correctors and the subsequent reduction in probe sizes, including the depth of field, has made optical depth sectioning a feasible technique. The localisation in three dimensions of substitutional impurity atoms in zone-axis imaging is discussed. Both the channelling of the probe and the pre-focussing effect of the atomic column play an important role in determining the depth response of the impurity atom. Interband scattering within a sample is shown to be influential in imaging crystals containing dislocations and optical depth sectioning is explored as a possible option for overcoming surface relaxation effects in the imaging of screw dislocations end-on. The possibility of extending the optical depth sectioning approach using aberration-corrected scanning confocal electron microscopy is discussed. The coherent and incoherent imaging modes, involving elastically and inelastically scattered electrons respectively, are investigated.

Keywords: scanning transmission electron microscopy
Advisor: Nellist, PD
Ráð Rétt Rúnar: reading the runes in Old English and Old Norse poetry

Responding to the common plea in medieval inscriptions to ráð rétt rúnar, to ‘interpret the runes correctly’, this thesis provides a series of contextual readings of the runic topos in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse poetry. The first chapter looks at the use of runes in the Old English riddles, examining the connections between material riddles and certain strategies used in the Exeter Book, and suggesting that runes were associated with a self-referential and engaged form of reading. Chapter 2 seeks a rationale for the use of runic abbreviations in Old English manuscripts, and proposes a poetic association with unlocking and revealing, as represented in Bede’s story of Imma. Chapter 3 considers the use of runes for their ornamental value, using 'Solomon and Saturn I' and the rune poems as examples of texts which foreground the visual and material dimension of writing, whilst Chapter 4 compares the depiction of runes in the heroic poems of the Poetic Edda with epigraphical evidence from the Migration Age, seeking to dispel the idea that they reflect historical practice. The final chapter looks at the construction of a mythology of writing in the Edda, exploring the ways in which myth reflects the social impacts of literacy. Taken together these approaches highlight the importance of reading the runes in poetry as literary constructs, the script often functioning as a form of metawriting, used to explore the parameters of literacy, and to draw attention to the process of writing itself.

Advisor: O'Donoghue, H
Constructing an international market for carbon trading: an institutional perspective

Mitigating climate change requires the collaborative and international management of a range of socio-economic processes that produce greenhouse gas emissions. Governments in a number of regions are developing carbon markets to mitigate climate change by limiting the production of greenhouse gases. This thesis examines the construction of carbon markets in the United States and Europe to understand what role these markets play in mitigating climate change. Using a relational economic geography framework and institutional theory, I frame the markets into two components: 1) the regulatory structures which give the markets existence and bound their rules of operation, and 2) the financial and service components which operationalized the markets. Within these components, I investigate four specific facets of market development: complementarity, spacetime, design vs. path dependence and institutional development. The study is conducted through close dialogue and case studies of organization in London, New York and Chicago as well as interviews with policymakers in Washington D.C. Sacramento, and San Francisco. I find that the regulatory components of the market are built both by regulatory agencies and private organizations such as legal firms. Political path dependence constrains the development of the regulatory framework of the carbon markets. The financial service components are constructed in existing financial service centers such as London and New York by directly adopting expertise, products, services and infrastructure from other markets. With respect to the spacetime construction of markets, I find that carbon markets are being adapted to management in existing time zones, with a seamless transaction of activity between North America, Europe and Asia. However, the nature of spacetime within the markets is changing; the markets now manage non-spacetime. In sum, the carbon markets are constructed as a social institution which mitigates greenhouse gas production by communicating and widely disseminating the value of the absence of emissions.

Keywords: institutional political economy
climate policy
carbon markets
Advisor: Clark, G
Sound propagation in an urban environment

This thesis concerns the modelling of sound propagation in an urban environment. For most of the thesis a point source of sound source is assumed, and both 2D and 3D geometries are considered. Buildings are modelled as rigid blocks, with the effects of surface inhomogeneities neglected. In the time-harmonic case, assuming that the wavelength is short compared to typical lengthscales of the domain (street widths and lengths), ray theory is used to derive estimates for the time-averaged acoustic power flows through a network of interconnecting streets in the form of integrals over ray angles. In the impulsive case, the propagation of wave-field singularities in the presence of obstacles is considered, and a general principle concerning the weakening of singularities when they are diffracted by edges and vertices is proposed. The problem of switching on a time-harmonic source is also studied, and an exact solution for the diffraction of a switched on plane wave by a rigid half-line is obtained and analysed. The pulse diffraction theory is then applied in a study of the inverse problem for an impulsive source, where the aim is to locate an unknown source using Time Differences Of Arrival (TDOA) at multiple receivers. By using reflected and diffracted pulse arrivals, the standard free-space TDOA method is extended to urban environments. In particular, approximate source localisation is found to be possible even when the exact building distribution is unknown.

Keywords: source localisation
acoustics
Advisor: Ockendon, J
Allwright, D
Is religious education possible?

The present thesis is a contribution to an unresolved debate in philosophy of education about the logical coherence of a particular account of Religious Education.
The account of Religious Education at issue, which I call the liberal account, prescribes the teaching of religious understanding without religious belief. It stipulates that the aim of Religious Education is to teach pupils the meaning of religious propositions while leaving open the question of their truth. Underpinning the account are the assumptions that (i) no religious proposition is known to be either true or false and (ii) it is morally objectionable to teach questionable propositions as if they were known to be true.
Opponents of the liberal account argue that it is logically incoherent. Their argument rests on two premises: (i) that religious propositions constitute an autonomous epistemological class or 'form of knowledge', and (ii) that understanding a form of knowledge involves holding certain propositions of that form to be true or false. If both premises are sound, it follows that religious understanding necessarily involves religious belief.
The aim of the present thesis is to show that this challenge to the logical coherence of the liberal account of Religious Education is unsuccessful. I argue that the second premise is sound but the first is not.
The second premise, that understanding a form of knowledge involves holding certain propositions of that form to be true or false, is an extension of an argument about language in general made by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein claims that 'If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments' (Wittgenstein, 1953, Section 242). That is to say, language-users must reach agreement not only on how words are connected to each other (agreement in definitions) but also on how words are connected to experiences (agreement in judgments). The process of fixing experiential criteria necessarily involves accepting the truth of certain contingent propositions. I contend that Wittgenstein's argument can properly be extended to individual epistemological classes, with the exception of the class of necessary propositions.
The validity of the first premise, that there is a religious form of knowledge, turns on the method of verification of religious propositions. I argue that religious propositions are propositions about divine persons and, as such, are verified in exactly the same way as propositions about human persons. Gods, like other persons, comprise minds and bodies (or minds and a relation to the material world analogous to 'having a body'), so religious propositions can be distributed without remainder over the familiar epistemological classes of mental and material propositions. Pupils can be taught what religious propositions mean with reference to other propositions of the same epistemological kinds and without reference to distinctively religious experiences. It follows that the aim of teaching for religious understanding without religious belief is logically coherent.

Advisor: Pring, R
The induced mean flow of surface, internal and interfacial gravity wave groups

Although the leading-order motion of waves is periodic - in other words backwards and forwards - many types of waves including those driven by gravity induce a mean flow as a higher-order effect. It is the induced mean flow of three types of gravity waves that this thesis examines: surface (part I), internal (part II) and interfacial gravity waves (part III). In particular, this thesis examines wave groups. Because they transport energy, momentum and other tracers, wave-induced mean flows have important consequences for climate, environment, air traffic, fisheries, offshore oil and other industries. In this thesis perturbation methods are used to develop a simplified understanding of the physics of the induced mean flow for each of these three types of gravity wave groups. Leading-order estimates of different transport quantities are developed.
For surface gravity wave groups (part I), the induced mean flow consists of two compo- nents: the Stokes drift dominant near the surface and the Eulerian return flow acting in the opposite direction and dominant at depth. By considering subsequent orders in a separation of scales expansion and by comparing to the Fourier-space solutions of Longuet-Higgins and Stewart (1962), this thesis shows that the effects of frequency dis- persion can be ignored for deep-water waves with realistic bandwidths. An approximate depth scale is developed and validated above which the Stokes drift is dominant and below which the return flow wins: the transition depth. Results are extended to include the effects of finite depth and directional spreading.
Internal gravity wave groups (part II) do not display Stokes drift, but a quantity analogous to Stokes transport for surface gravity waves can still be developed, termed the “divergent- flux induced flow” herein. The divergent-flux induced flow it itself a divergent flow and induces a response. In a three-dimensional geometry, the divergent-flux induced flow and the return flow form a balanced circulation in the horizontal plane with the former transporting fluid through the centre of the group and the latter acting in the opposite direction around the group. In a two-dimensional geometry, stratification inhibits a balanced circulation and a second type of waves are generated that travel far ahead and in the lee of the wave group. The results in the seminal work of Bretherton (1969b) are thus validated, explicit expressions for the response and return flow are developed and compared to numerical simulations in the two-dimensional case.
Finally, for interfacial wave groups (part III) the induced mean flow is shown to behave analogously to the surface wave problem of part I. Exploring both pure interfacial waves in a channel with a closed lid and interacting surface and interfacial waves, expressions for the Stokes drift and return flow are found for different configurations with the mean set-up or set-down of the interface playing an important role.

Keywords: Stokes drift
surface waves
interfacial waves
internal waves
Advisor: Taylor, P
Deformation studies near hard particles in a superalloy

Superalloys have performed well as blade and disc materials in turbine engines due to their exceptional elevated temperature strength, high resistance to creep, oxidation and corrosion as well as good fracture toughness. This study explores the use of a relatively new technique of strain measurement, high resolution electron backscatter diffraction (HR-EBSD) to measure local deformation fields. The heart of the HR-EBSD technique lies in comparing regions in EBSD patterns from a strained region of a sample to those in a pattern from an unstrained region. This method was applied to study the elastic strain fields and geometrically necessary dislocation density (GND density) distribution near hard carbide particles in a nickel-based superalloy MAR-M-002.
Significant thermal strains were initially induced by thermal treatment, which included a final cooling from the ageing temperature of 870°C. Elastic strains were consistent with a compressive radial strain and tensile hoop strain that was expected as the matrix contracts around the carbide. The mismatch in thermal expansion coefficient of the carbide particles compared to that of the matrix was sufficient to have induced localized plastic deformation in the matrix leading to a GND density of 3 × 1013 m–2 in regions around the carbide. These measured elastic strain and GND densities have been used to help develop a crystal plasticity finite element model in another research group and some comparisons under thermal loading have also been examined.
Three-point bending was then used to impose strain levels within the range ±12% across the height of a bend bar sample. GND measurements were then made at both carbide-containing and carbide-free regions at different heights across the bar. The average GND density increases with the magnitude of the imposed strain (both in tension and compression), and is markedly higher near the carbide particles. The higher GND densities near the carbides (order of 1014 per m2) are generated by the large strain gradients produced around the plastically rigid inclusion during monotonic mechanical deformation with some minor contribution from the pre-existing residual deformation from thermal loading. A method was developed of combining the local EBSD measurements with FE modelling to set the average residual strains within the mapped region even when a good strain free reference point was unavailable.
Cyclic loading was then performed under four point loading to impose strain levels of about ±8% across the height of bend bar samples. Similar measurements as in the case of monotonic deformation were made at several interruptions to fatigue loading. Observations from the cyclic loading such as slip features, carbide cracking, GND density accumulation have been explored around carbide particles, at regions away from them and near a grain boundary.

Keywords: dislocation density
crystal plasticity finite element
Nickel superalloys
high-resolution EBSD
strain analysis
Advisor: Wilkinson, A
Materials toward an edition of William Camden's Remains concerning Britain

This thesis represents the first stage of a projected complete edition of Camden's Remains. I offer here Camden's text for three chapters (Britain, Inhabitants, and the Wise Speeches) along with a textual apparatus. The General and Textual Introductions are based on a study of the whole book.
The General Introduction examines the relation of the Remains to Camden's major work, the Britannia. It also contains a discussion of Camden's sources and the manner in which he handles his material. Briefly, I indicate the extent of Camden's contact with other historians and antiquarians and state whose libraries he had access to. Discussion is purposely brief because these and related matters have already been: treated in works by Linda van Norden, F. T. Levy, and May McKisack. A separate study of how and where Camden saw the manuscripts and books he used lies outside the scope of the thesis. To conclude the General Introduction I offer brief comments on Camden's style, his intentions, and the place of the Remains in relation to his two historical works.
The Textual Introduction studies the evidence of the manuscripts and of the three editions in Camden's lifetime.
The text is based on the edition of 1605. It adopts the authoritative revisions and additions of 1614 and 1623. The apparatus at the bottom of each page records substantive variants of the manuscripts, 1614, and 1623. It also records all departures from the copy text.
Commentary for the two sections Britain and Inhabitants is confined to identifying sources and explaining points in the text. For the Wise Speeches, I attempt to trace the origin and development of each story and, where possible, to identify Camden's source or the tradition leading to Camden's version. In a number of cases it is possible to identify the particular manuscript or edition which Camden used and these have been noted. I indicate any changes Camden has made in the substance of a story and, in most cases, I present for comparison the text of the speech or aphorism. The Commentary was designed for the convenience of the general reader, hence some entries are no doubt fuller than an historian would need.
Appendix A presents a selection of manuscript apophthegms which, for one reason or another, Camden chose not to print. They are not part of his final intentions. For this and other reasons, I offer them here, unannotated, simply as a sample of the contents of the manuscript. I hope to deal with the unpublished apophthegms separately at another time. Appendix B provides a table identifying all the material Camden added to the editions of 1614 and 1623.