VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Buying influence? The international diplomacy behind donor financing of the World Bank’s International Development Association

This thesis addresses the puzzle of why changes in relative donor contributions to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) did not reflect shifts in their relative economic capabilities. It addresses the grand debates about how power transitions shape a US-led hegemonic international system by exploring one specific international organisation.
Drawing primarily on archives, elite interviews, and participant observation, I examine sixteen rounds of IDA replenishment negotiations from 1960 to 2010.
There are three puzzles a close empirical analysis throws up. The first is why the hegemon maintained its burden shares regardless of rise or fall in economic status; I call this ‘Hegemonic Lag’. The second is why ascending powers were slow to assume greater burden-shares despite economic ascents; I call this ‘Challenger Inertia.’ The third puzzle is why significant burden-shifting occurred on a much greater scale than shifts in relative economic weight; I call this ‘Accelerated Burden-Shifting.’
Two conventional explanations – donors’ relative ‘ability-to-pay’ and their ‘country-specific interests’ – offer a first-cut analysis of donors’ ability and willingness to contribute. However, they fail to uncover how bipolar geopolitics and World Bank governance shaped IDA burden-sharing dynamics.
This thesis tests whether the hegemon will maintain its shares even if its relative economic capacity wanes, if its bipolar rival poses a more intense external threat. Equally it tests whether a hegemon and/or waning powers with a desire to expand total IDA resources will cede voting rights to ascending powers in exchange for financial support to IDA. Finally, the research examines whether a hegemon violating the ‘fairness’ principle by shirking obligations but pursuing undue influence will face secondary states willing to take ‘exit/voice’ measures to restore an implicit contribution-to-influence equity line; and whether such countermeasures would be postponed if secondary states are structurally dependent upon the hegemon and/or lack viable outside options. In-depth case studies are used to test these hypotheses. Overall the thesis reveals that the US maintained or cut its burden share as the Soviet threat waxed and waned; and that as the Soviet Union collapsed the US abandoned both its leadership for IDA expansion to counter the Soviet threat and its self-restraint in controlling the World Bank, provoking the fairness concern among secondary states – the most potent factor in explaining IDA burden-sharing dynamics in the post-Cold War era.

Keywords: Development Finance
International Development Association
International Diplomacy
Power Transitions
World Bank
Advisor: Woods, N
Massively parallel computing for particle physics

This thesis presents methods to run scientific code safely on a global-scale desktop grid. Current attempts to harness the world’s idle desktop computers face obstacles such as donor security, portability of code and privilege requirements. Nereus, a Java-based architecture, is a novel framework that overcomes these obstacles and allows the creation of a globally-scalable desktop grid capable of executing Java bytecode. However, most scientific code is written for the x86 architecture. To enable the safe execution of unmodified scientific code, we created JPC, a pure Java x86 PC emulator.
The Nereus framework is applied to two tasks, a trivially parallel data generation task, BlackMax, and a parallelization and fault tolerance framework, Mycelia. Mycelia is an implementation of the Map-Reduce parallel programming paradigm. BlackMax is a microscopic blackhole event generator, of direct relevance for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The Nereus based BlackMax adaptation dramatically speeds up the production of data, limited only by the number of desktop machines available.

Keywords: grid computing
map-reduce
virtualization
emulation
parallel computing
Advisor: Tseng, J
Large–scale urban localisation with a pushbroom LIDAR

Truly autonomous operation for any field robot relies on a well-defined pyramid of technical competencies. Consider the case of an autonomous car – we require the vehicle to be able to perceive its environment through noisy sensors, robustly fuse this information into an accurate representation of the world, and use this representation to plan and execute complex tasks – all the while dealing with the uncertainties inherent in real world operation.
Of fundamental importance to all these capabilities is localisation – we always need to know where we are, if we are to be able to plan where we are going (or how to get there). As road vehicles make the push towards becoming truly autonomous, the system’s ability to stay accurately localised over its operating lifetime is of crucial importance – this is the core issue of lifelong localisation.
The goals in this thesis are threefold – to develop the hardware needed to reliably acquire data over large scales, to build a localisation framework that is robust enough to be used over the long–term, and to establish a method of adapting our framework when necessary such that we can accommodate the inevitable difficulties present when operating over city-scales.
We begin by developing the physical means to make large-scale localisation achievable, and affordable. This takes the form of a stand-alone, rugged sensor payload – incorporating a number of sensing modalities – that can be deployed in either a mapping or localisation role.
We then present a new technique for localisation in a prior map using an information theoretic framework. The core idea is to build a dense retrospective sensor history, which is then matched statistically within a prior map. The underlying idea is to leverage the persistent structure in the environment, and we show that by doing so, it is possible to stay localised over the course of many months and kilometres.
The developed system relies on orthogonally-oriented ranging sensors, to infer both velocity and pose. However, operating in a complex, dynamic, setting (like a town centre) can often induce velocity errors, distorting our sensor history and resulting in localisation failure. The insight into dealing with this failure is to learn from sensor context – we learn a place-dependent sensor model and show that doing so is vital to prevent such failures.
The integration of these three competencies gives us the means to make inex- pensive, lifelong localisation an achievable goal.

Keywords: Robotics
Localisation
Advisor: Newman, P
Ice-stream dynamics: the coupled flow of ice sheets and subglacial meltwater

Ice sheets are among the key controls on global climate and sea level. A detailed understanding of their dynamics is crucial to make accurate predictions of their future mass balance. Ice streams are the dominant negative component in this balance, accounting for up to 90% of the Antarctic ice flux into ice shelves and ultimately into the sea. Despite their importance, our understanding of ice-stream dynamics is far from complete.
A range of observations associate ice streams with meltwater. Meltwater lubricates the ice at its bed, allowing it to slide with less internal deformation. It is believed that ice streams may appear due to a localisation feedback between ice flow, basal melting and water pressure in the underlying sediments.
This thesis aims to address the instability of ice-stream formation by considering potential feedbacks between the basal boundary and ice flow. Chapter 2 considers ice-flow models, formulating a model that is capable of capturing the leading-order dynamics of both a slow-moving ice sheet and rapidly flowing ice streams. Chapter 3 investigates the consequences of applying different phenomenological sliding laws as the basal boundary condition in this ice-flow model. Chapter 4 presents a model of subglacial water flow below ice sheets, and particularly below ice streams. This provides a more physical representation of processes occurring at the bed. Chapter 5 then investigates the coupled behaviour of the water with the sediment, and Chapter 6 the coupled behaviour of the water with the ice flow. Under some conditions this coupled system gives rise to ice streams due to instability of the internal dynamics.

Keywords: ice sheets
ice streams
subglacial hydrology
Antarctica
Advisor: Katz, R
Fowler, A
Ontology module extraction and applications to ontology classification

Module extraction is the task of computing a (preferably small) fragment M of an ontology O that preserves a class of entailments over a signature of interest ∑. Existing practical approaches ensure that M preserves all second-order entailments of O over ∑, which is a stronger condition than is required in many applications. In the first part of this thesis, we propose a novel approach to module extraction which, based on a reduction to a datalog reasoning problem, makes it possible to compute modules that are tailored to preserve only specific kinds of entailments. This leads to obtaining modules that are often significantly smaller than those produced by other practical approaches, as shown in an empirical evaluation.
In the second part of this thesis, we consider the application of module extraction to the optimisation of ontology classification. Classification is a fundamental reasoning task in ontology design, and there is currently a wide range of reasoners that provide this service. Reasoners aimed at so-called lightweight ontology languages are much more efficient than those aimed at more expressive ones, but they do not offer completeness guarantees for ontologies containing axioms outside the relevant language. We propose an original approach to classification based on exploiting module extraction techniques to divide the workload between a general purpose reasoner and a more efficient reasoner for a lightweight language in such a way that the bulk of the workload is assigned to the latter. We show how the proposed approach can be realised using two particular module extraction techniques, including the one presented in the first part of the thesis. Furthermore, we present the results of an empirical evaluation that shows that this approach can lead to a significant performance improvement in many cases.

Keywords: description logics
OWL 2
ontologies
classification
semantic web
modules
Advisor: Horrocks, I
Cuenca Grau, B
The role of aquatic systems and the re-occupation and settlement of the North European Plain during the Lateglacial

The Lateglacial between &Tilde;14,600 - 11,500 cal yr BP is characterised by the rapid fluctuation of climatic conditions following the termination of the Last Glacial Maximum. During this period, the North European Plain (NEP) was re-occupied and settled by hunter-gather groups utilising a succession of lithic technocomplexes. Contrasting models of population expansion exist to explain the re-occupation of the NEP by &Tilde;14,600 cal yr BP. Both rapid climatic amelioration and increased food resource availability on the NEP are suggested as possible stimuli. Studies of food resource availability as a stimulus for re-occupation and settlement of the NEP have long been dominated by the prevailing view that large mammal hunting was the dominant subsistence strategy. A number of archaeological finds across the NEP however, suggest that the exploitation of aquatic resources such as fish may have played a role in a more varied subsistence strategy during the period &Tilde;14,600 - 11,500 cal yr BP.
This thesis sets out to examine the development of palaeolake systems and examine their potential as a resource base for Lateglacial hunter-gatherers. This is achieved through the analysis of sedimentary organic matter and cladoceran records from five Lateglacial sites in northern Germany and southern Denmark, providing important information on basin development and the presence or absence of fish. The results suggest that significant variability existed in the development and resource availability of the basins over a local scale. Observed variability in the organic matter and cladoceran records within chronozone boundaries suggests that the Lateglacial – Holocene development of aquatic systems across the NEP cannot be solely explained by external climate change, and that local environmental and ecological factors are likely to have played a major part in their development.
This thesis demonstrates that the local variance in aquatic conditions and fish populations would have offered, at best, limited and ephemeral resource availability and were therefore unlikely to have formed a major resource base for hunter-gatherer groups across the NEP. It is more likely that lakes were exploited opportunistically and as such formed only a minor component of a subsistence strategy more focussed on large mammal hunting.

Keywords: Cladocera
Tephra
Hamburgian
Lateglacial
Advisor: Barton, N
Lane, C
Early Palaeocene vegetation and climate of North America

Early Palaeocene floras from twenty seven sites within the Raton, southern Powder River and south-western Williston Basins of the western interior of North America were collected, and their leaf physiognomy, ecological character and depositional setting compared. Such a spread of samples enabled the study of spatial and temporal vegetational and climatic variations in the region, following the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary event.
Climatic changes are observed across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Precipitation increased dramatically, and remained relatively high throughout the earliest Palaeocene. Temperatures were somewhat lower, compared to those of the Late Cretaceous, and seasonality in climate increased. Climatic and vegetation zones shifted southwards as latitudinal climatic equability decreased.
Palaeotemperature and palaeoprecipitation were determined using CLAMP and leaf margin analysis. Experiments carried out to assess the robustness of CLAMP to loss of foliar physiognomic data revealed that this data loss did not drastically effect palaeoclimatic determinations but that information about leaf size and margin type had the most effect on results.
Vegetation was of low diversity directly after the boundary event, but recovered to stable, but still relatively low levels, within a short time. Changes in diversity are difficult to interpret due to masking by taphonomic biases, which are important within the depositional environments analysed in this study. Climatic deterioration and the prevalence of disturbed environments ultimately facilitated expansion of the angiosperms, although their aspect was changed with a general increase in deciduous forms, in relation to increased seasonality and decreased equability.
These trends cannot be related merely to the impact of a bolide at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, but reflect the more global and wide-ranging changes of the period, which were punctuated by this brief, deleterious event. Previous work has tended to concentrate on the North American continent but a more global perspective reveals that the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary event was not a world-wide catastrophe within terrestrial environments.

Advisor: Spicer, R
Spicer, B
Essays in financial stability under financial frictions

This thesis is a collection of essays where I explore and extend the study of the role of financial frictions for the determination of asset prices, financial stability, and economic resilience. The frictions included in the analysis are individual and aggregate uncertainty, agent heterogeneity, money, liquidity and default. The first essay is an empirical study that motivates my research objectives. This work starts with the exploration of the role of liquidity on asset prices, specifically on sovereign bonds of emerging countries. I present a comprehensive model where I developed a novel methodology for finding the role of liquidity in the determination of asset prices during the financial crisis. In the second essay, illuminated by the empirical findings, I apply and expand the general equilibrium theory of money, default and financial stability. The contributions at the theoretical level are the extension of two-period model with discrete state space to the infinite horizon dynamic stochastic setting, and the inclusion of liquidity restrictions. In the third essay, I further extend this framework, allowing for production technology and endogenous market liquidity. Given the theoretical setting, I have analyzed the responses of financial stability and economic performance variables to real and financial shocks. Finally, in the fourth essay I produce an empirical application of this work. I apply a novel semi-parametric financial stability metric, and evaluate its relevance for the determination of asset prices, in the presence of liquidity restrictions. As a result, this thesis suggest plausible explanations for financial and economic issues that conventional models have not dealt with adequately.

Keywords: emerging markets
liquidity
general equilibrium
financial stability
Advisor: Tsomocos, D
Cultural intermediaries in a colonial city: the Parsis of Bombay, c. 1860-1921

This dissertation traces a series of cultural negotiations through which the Parsis, a community of ethnic Zoroastrians, fashioned themselves into ‘modern’ citizens in the setting of colonial Bombay. It examines the ways Parsis negotiated change in a number of personal spheres such as their dress, deportment, dining and domesticity as well as the ways the community managed internal groupings such as Persian Zoroastrian refugees and the Parsi poor in the landscape of Bombay. It proposes that it was this unusual, simultaneous fashioning at the levels of the personal and the broader community, that turned the series of negotiations into a project of self-fashioning. It argues that it is in these cultural and intra-communal domains of self-fashioning that we see some of the more difficult negotiations, as well as the inner tensions, that the Parsi model of modernity entailed at the different levels of Parsi society.

Keywords: Colonial Bombay
Urban History
Bombay
Parsis
Advisor: O'Hanlon, R
Statistical methods for genotype microarray data on large cohorts of individuals

Genotype microarrays assay hundreds of thousands of genetic variants on an individual's genome. The availability of this high throughput genotyping capability has transformed the field of genetics over the past decade by enabling thousands of individuals to be rapidly assayed. This has lead to the discovery of hundreds of genetic variants that are associated with disease and other phenotypes in genome wide association studies (GWAS). These data have also brought with them a number of new statistical and computational challenges. This thesis deals with two primary analysis problems involving microarray data; genotype calling and haplotype inference.
Genotype calling involves converting the noisy bivariate fluorescent signals generated by microarray data into genotype values for each genetic variant and individual. Poor quality genotype calling can lead to false positives and loss of power in GWAS so this is an important task. We introduce a new genotype calling method that is highly accurate and has the novel capability of fusing microarray data with next-generation sequencing data for greater accuracy and fewer missing values. Our new method compares favourably to other available genotype calling software.
Haplotype inference (or phasing) involves deconvolving these genotypes into the two inherited parental chromosomes for an individual. The development of phasing methods has been a fertile field for statistical genetics research for well over ten years. Depending on the demography of a cohort, different phasing methods may be more appropriate than others. We review the popular offerings and introduce a new approach to try and unify two distinct problems; the phasing of extended pedigrees and the phasing of unrelated individuals. We conduct an extensive comparison of phasing methods on real and simulated data. Finally we demonstrate some preliminary results on extending methodology to sample sizes in the tens of thousands.

Keywords: microarray
genotype calling
haplotype
pedigree
phasing
recombination
GWAS
Advisor: Marchini, J
Sex determination and sex ration distortion in the mosquito Aedes aegypti

Aedes aegypti is one of the most important mosquito vectors of human disease, transmitting dengue, Chikungunya and yellow fever viruses. New control methods are much needed for this species and an ability to skew sex ratios toward males would be very useful for a number of strategies. In this study, male-specific chromosomal regions were searched for in Ae. aegypti using novel approaches such as microdissection of chromosomes. The sex determination pathway of Ae. aegypti was also explored, using Drosophila melanogaster as a model, to find candidate genes that could be used to induce male biased sex ratios. The transformer-2 (tra-2) gene is necessary for sexual differentiation of females in D. melanogaster, but its role remains unknown in mosquitoes. A homolog of tra-2 was identified in Ae. aegypti. Rapid Amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) experiments were conducted to characterize this gene in Ae. aegypti. The Ae. aegypti tra-2 gene, as for D. melanogaster, was highly variable in transcription due to alternative splicing and alternative polyadenylation, with 9 different variants identified. RNA interference (RNAi) was then used to determine if knockdown of all variants of Ae. aegypti tra-2 can be achieved and if it would cause gender switching in individuals, initially by means of direct injection of double stranded RNA, and then progressing to germline transformation. A construct designed to produce tra-2 dsRNA was injected into Ae. aegypti embryos and integrated into the Ae. aegypti genome. The transgenic population showed up to 100% male bias in single pair crosses. The male bias effect could still be seen in the heterozygous population. The results suggest that knockdown of tra-2 could provide a useful tool for sex ratio distortion as part of the development of novel control methods for Ae. aegypti.

Keywords: sex ratio
Aedes aegypti
sex determination
Advisor: Sinkins, S
Studies using B± → Dh± decays in the LHCb Run I data

Using data equivalent to an integrated luminosity of 3 fb−1 collected by the LHCb experiment during Run I (2011-2012), studies of beauty mesons decaying to a final state containing open charm are performed, concluding with a number of new results.
Direct CP-violation is explored in B± → Dh± decays through several measurements of CP violating observables, where the charmed meson D is reconstructed in both 2-track and 4-track final states. A measurement of the B± production asymmetry at LHCb is reported using B± → Dπ± decays, and a complementary measurement of the CP asymmetry in B± → J/ψK± decays made. A search for the rare Bc− → D(*)π− and Bc− → D (*)K− decays concludes this work.

Keywords: ADS/GLW
CP violation
Bc
production
asymmetry
flavour
Advisor: John, M