VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Encapsulation of indigoid dyes

This thesis describes approaches towards the synthesis of encapsulated indigo-based systems. The chemistry and application of indigo has been widely investigated, but its use as an emitter is restricted by its low fluorescence, which is caused by the ultrafast proton transfer in the excited state. Substitution of the N-positions prevents this process, making indigo accessible for photonic applications. This thesis focuses on the synthesis and properties of indigo-derived materials. The aim is to make new encapsulated indigo-derived materials for photonic applications (e.g. OLEDs). Encapsulation is a common tool to prevent interactions (e.g. π-stacking) between molecules which can lead to a decreased emission in the solid state. Focus is set on two encapsulation methods, i.e. self- encapsulation by a metathesis reaction, and encapsulation under formation of hydrogen bonds between a tetralactam macrocycle (hydrogen bond donor) and several guest systems (hydrogen bond acceptor). The concept of increasing binding strengths in hydrogen bonding systems by electrochemically reducing the guest (hydrogen bond acceptor) has also been introduced and investigated.
Chapter 1 reviews encapsulation as a tool to enhance the emissive properties of host-guest systems. Focus is mainly on self-encapsulation and encapsulation with hydrogen bonding macrocycles. Additionally, the chemistry of indigo and its use in devices is explained.
Chapter 2 explores the N-substitution and the bay-annulation of indigo including a study of their photophysical properties. Analysis of several crystal structures shows the impact of substitution resulting in increased emissive properties.
Chapter 3 describes the synthesis of a self-encapsulated bay-annulated indigo derivative and its photophysical properties in solution and solid state.
Chapter 4 focuses on the binding between tetralactam macrocycles and hydrogen bond acceptors. Also, binding enhancement with electrochemical methods is investigated. Simulations of the binding processes are shown and their results compared to the common tools for calculating the binding constants in the reduced state.
Chapter 5 summarises the results in this thesis and contains proposals for future work in this research area.

Advisor: Anderson, H
The curious brain: behavioural and neural mechanisms of spatial updating and reward surprise

In an ever-changing environment, organisms learn about non-random events and use that information to form predictive models to facilitate the processing of expected stimuli or planned actions and their outcomes. Predictions about stimuli enable for an efficient and appropriate response and predictions about action outcomes determine the value and therefore likelihood of repetition of that action. In primate brains, these models have been described in the framework of spatial attention and reward expectation. Unexpected observations in space trigger an attentional reorienting process and surprising action outcomes are defined as reward prediction errors. These error signals can be used by the brain to update and refine its internal model that contains probabilistic information about events in the environment (Chapter 1). In what follows, I will report effects of spatial surprise and unexpected rewards on behaviour and brain activity in humans and macaques. I will show how humans react to visually surprising events and how they use that information to form future predictions (Chapter 2). Brains reacting to surprise have been primarily described in the attention literature but there are dissociable networks for an attentional shift and for an expectation updating process following unexpected but informative observations (Chapter 3). Macaques also form spatial predictions and violations of these predictions result in a behavioural cost. Furthermore, both expectations about the size of a reward and prediction errors influence behaviour (Chapter 4). FMRI in macaques performing a task reveals a network of reward sensitive areas. Nodes of this network however carry different information about the reward history and therefore play different roles in forming a reward expectation. Spatially surprising events activate networks similar to those described in human fMRI studies (Chapter 5). In summary, unexpected observations and action outcomes influence behaviour and activate brain networks that process the surprise as well as form new predictions.

Advisor: Rushworth, M
O’Reilly, J
Sallet, J
Kolling, N
Regulating the internet through private international law

This thesis discusses how private international law can effectively address challenges raised by the internet for different areas of private law, linking this question to the broader debate about the potential of private international law to resolve conflicts of regulatory authority in a globalised world.
The thesis identifies two core challenges of the internet: its independence from state borders, which drastically increases the number of connections to different countries in internet cases but reduces their usefulness; and the prevalence of private ordering, especially on online platforms that are effectively regulated only by their hosts.
Using EU private international law as an example, it argues that existing approaches to internet cases are often dominated by a deep-rooted fear of leaving claimants underprotected from the perceived dangers of an unregulated internet; thus, instead of reducing the overwhelming number of connections created by internet communication to few, particularly useful ones that allow to effectively allocate adjudicatory and prescriptive jurisdiction, they attach significance to all of them, allowing claimants to chose from a large of number of fora and applicable laws. This creates complex mosaics of jurisdiction and problematic overlaps of national laws, exposing defendants to a risk of worldwide liability.
This thesis proposes an alternative approach that arguably creates a better balance between the parties’ interests and expectations, combining a country-of-origin default rule with a targeting-based exception for consumer cases. It shows how such an approach could be implemented within the existing framework of EU private international law but would be difficult to extend beyond the relatively harmonised internal market of the EU. It argues that this approach would not only better exploit the potential of private international law for the horizontal coordination between national courts and legal systems but could also facilitate the vertical coordination between public regulators and private parties.
It thus provides an example for how private international law can accommodate new challenges without abandoning its commitment to ‘conflicts’ justice and substantive neutrality.

Keywords: Information Technology
Regulation
Internet
Advisor: Dickinson, A
Study of the Drell-Yan process with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, at which protons collide at unprecedented center of mass energies and very high instantaneous luminosity, gives unique possibilities for precise tests of the Standard Model and to search for new physics phenomena. A precise prediction of the processes at the LHC is essential and the knowledge of the parton density functions (PDFs) of the proton plays a key role in this.
In this thesis, three analyses covering different aspects of the Drell-Yan process are presented.

Keywords: QCD
SM
PDF
Advisor: Cooper-Sarkar, A
Rizvi, E
From revolt to nostalgia: rethinking the Moroccan postcolonial malaise with Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, Abdelkebir Khatibi, and Abdellatif Laâbi

This thesis problematizes revolt and nostalgia in relation to individual and collective malaise in Morocco by analysing the expression of both concepts in the postcolonial works of three contemporary Moroccan Francophone authors: Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, Abdelkebir Khatibi, and Abdellatif Laâbi. Weaving together the three writers’ personal experiences and the broader political and historical context in Morocco, this thesis demonstrates that the two concepts can serve as productive mediums through which to probe a multifaceted Moroccan discourse of opposition and longing. Divided into six chapters and based mainly on close reading, the thesis builds upon a theoretical investigation of revolt and nostalgia in postcolonial studies to argue that their multi-layered and shifting meanings tend to be reduced respectively to a one-dimensional counter-discourse and a form of inefficient sentimentalism. Grounded in the political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, the following two chapters demonstrate that the writers’ revolt is either strictly personal, connected to political activism, geared towards cultural decolonization, or concerned with transnational struggles, while being simultaneously performed in aesthetics through innovative strategies of formal transgression in theatre and poetry, for instance. Drawing on the work of Svetlana Boym, nostalgia is then analysed in the writers’ late autobiographies, where its retrospective and prospective forms mourn lost spaces and long for uncertain futures, and subsequently in relation to exile, where it complicates the relationship with the homeland through the exilic-like experiences of wandering, travel, and incarceration. The final chapter probes how both concepts work together in poetry to rekindle past revolts and unsatisfied nostalgias, but often end up producing bitterness and disillusionment. This thesis ultimately argues for a critical reading of more recent Moroccan Francophone literature to acknowledge the oft-neglected signs of an ongoing malaise, and further investigate the historical depth and the transformative power of both revolt and nostalgia in writing.

Keywords: Abdellatif Laâbi
Malaise
Autobiography
Nostalgia
Exile
Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine
Revolt
Abdelkebir Khatibi
Advisor: Hiddleston, J
Applications, synthesis and catalyst design for oxygenated polymers

The main focus of this thesis is the synthesis of oxygenated block copolymers. These are attractive materials for a range of applications; however, they are typically associated with time- and labour-intensive synthetic procedures. For this reason, a more efficient one pot combination of two different polymerisation mechanisms, anhydride/epoxide ring-opening copolymerisation (ROCOP) and lactone ringopening polymerisation (ROP), with a single catalytic system was investigated. Three major advances in ‘switch’ catalysis are presented herein: (i) The use of the first chromium salen catalyst, (ii) propylene oxide was accessed as a monomer and (iii) the synthesis of block polyesters from a fully commercial feedstock featuring propylene oxide, phthalic anhydride, (rac)-lactide. With these insights, new ‘switch’ catalysts were developed and (potentially) bio-based polycarbonates were tested as future coating materials.

Advisor: Williams, C
Transonic shock waves and free boundary problems for the nonlinear wave system

In this Thesis, we study the problem of Shock Reflection-Diffraction by a Wedge for the Nonlinear Wave System. Shock Reflection-Diffraction problems in Fluid Dynamics, and the corresponding wave patterns have been studied by many authors, via many different analytical, experimental and numerical methods.
The Nonlinear Wave System is obtained from the Full Euler System, by making the assumption that the inertial terms are small. It has many similar properties (such as the structure of the characteristics) in common with it, so is a useful model for understanding the Full Euler System, and also plays an important role in some operator splitting schemes in numerical analysis.
The solutions to the problem of Shock Reflection-Diffraction by a wedge that we seek are Self-Similar Regular Shock Reflection-Diffraction configurations. The first necessary ingredient in the structure of these solutions is the existence of local reflection at the point where the incident shock hits the wedge. We find that there exists sonic and detachment angles, depending only on the initial data, determining the existence of the local reflection, and the pattern which appears. With the local theory in hand, we use a similar approach to that used in [1, 26], by using a nonlinear method of continuity that relies on the Leray- Schauder degree theory from [87], to obtain existence in all cases where the local reflection exists.
There are three key difficulties in the approach. The first is the changing elliptic or degenerate elliptic structure as the wedge angle passes through the sonic angle, and the corresponding change in wave patterns. In particular, we find that for some subsonic wedge angles, we require a new technique to attain suitable regularity near the reflection point, from the limited structure estimates available. The second is the degenerate obliqueness of the free boundary condition where the shock wave meets the flat part of the wedge. Because obliqueness is a property that relies not just on the values of the coeficients, but on the shape of the boundary, this is handled via a new technique involving imposing a cutoff on the boundary itself. The third is ensuring that, in the iteration problem, we obtain a gainin- regularity so that compactness of the iteration map holds. This involves careful analysis of the regularity of both the density and boundary.

Advisor: Chen, G
Ambitwistor strings and amplitudes in curved backgrounds

Feynman diagrams have been superseded as the tool of choice for calculating scattering amplitudes. Various other methods are not only more efficient but also explicitly exhibit beautiful structures obscured by Feynman diagrams. This thesis aims to lay some groundwork on how two of these methods, ambitwistor strings and the double copy, can be generalised to scattering in curved backgrounds.
In the first part of this thesis, a heterotic ambitwistor string model coupled to a non-abelian background gauge field is constructed. It is shown that after decoupling gravity this model is anomaly free if and only if the background field is a solution to the Yang-Mills equations. A fixed gluon vertex operator for the aforementioned heterotic model as well as a vertex operator encoding graviton, B-field and dilaton for type II ambitwistor strings in a curved background are presented. It is shown that they are BRST closed if and only if they correspond to physical on-shell states.
In the second part, sandwich plane waves are considered. It is shown that scattering of gluons and gravitons is well defined on these backgrounds. 3-point amplitudes are calculated using quantum field theory techniques and a double copy relation between gluons on a gauge theory plane wave and gravitons on a gravitational plane wave is proposed. Using the results from the first part of this thesis, it is then shown that curved background heterotic and type II ambitwistor string models correctly reproduce these 3-point amplitudes on sandwich plane waves.

Keywords: Ambitwistor strings
Double copy
Curved backgrounds
Scattering amplitudes
Advisor: Mason, L
B-type and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptides in heart failure

The thesis evaluated the role of the B-type natriuretic peptides and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptides in the management of heart failure patients. In a population-based retrospective cohort study of electronic medical records, the thesis examined the patterns of natriuretic peptide testing in primary care practices within the United Kingdom. The thesis showed that single brain natriuretic peptides and N-terminal pro brain natriuretic peptides were independent predictors of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality in the primary care setting. In a small subgroup of patients with two natriuretic peptides measured, changes in brain natriuretic peptides did not provide additional prognostic information beyond a single point-in-time peptide level. Age adversely impacted the mortality especially in elderly. In a clinical trial setting, the thesis also investigated the within-subject variability of B-type natriuretic peptides, vital signs and serum creatinine over a three-month period in stable chronic heart failure patients with New York Heart Association class II-III. Correlations between B-type natriuretic peptides and cardiac structure factors, weight, heart rate, blood pressure and serum creatinine were estimated. The B-type natriuretic peptide within-subject variability was 46%, much higher than the heart rate or blood pressure within-subject variability of 10%, serum creatinine within-subject variability of approximately 8% and weight within-subject variability of 1%. The three-month monitoring interval of B-type natriuretic peptides in stable chronic heart failure was too short. Extended monitoring intervals should be further investigated. Monitoring natriuretic peptides in primary care provides an opportunity to positively impact the burden of heart failure by better directing management for patients with poorer prognoses and better utilizing health care resources.

Advisor: Perera-Salazar, R
Hobbs, R
An imperial ideology and its legacy: Ottomanism in a comparative perspective, 1894-1928

This dissertation focuses on the Ottomanist ideas of Tunalı Hilmi (1871- 1928), Avram Galanti (Abraham Galante) (1873-1961) and Mustafa Satı (Sati’ al-Husri) (1880-1968) in the years 1894-1928. Despite their different socio-political backgrounds, the three intellectuals pursued similar intellectual agendas with similar ideological inclinations over their long careers. Following their early publications as committed Ottomanists in the Ottoman period, Tunalı Hilmi and Avram Galanti turned into Turkish nationalists, while Mustafa Satı became a pioneering Arab nationalist in the context of the political shift from the Empire to post-Ottoman successor states. This study first examines the Ottomanist pursuits of the three figures in depth. It begins with a discussion of the late Ottoman milieu that constructed their Ottomanist mindset and continues with the clarification of the pillars of their Ottomanist stances. In order to better explore the broader implications of their pursuits, the dissertation particularly examines how Hilmi, Galanti and Satı considered education and language as a means to promote their Ottomanist agendas. Finally, the dissertation reflects on their nationalist stances and discusses the continuities in their intellectual pursuits to reveal the legacy of their Ottomanism on their nationalist years.
With its content and scope, the dissertation aims to participate in the growing revisionist dialogue on Ottomanism. Its inclusive approach to Ottomanism and transnational reading of its legacy in the context of three intellectuals’ ideological shifts constitute one of the first comparative studies on the subject. While it reveals the varying nature of Ottomanism in the multicultural context of the late Ottoman Empire, it indicates the broad implications of the ideology on the socio-political dynamics of the late Ottoman milieu and beyond. Moreover, by clarifying the discursive elements and political tools of their Ottomanist and nationalist years, it argues that Hilmi, Galanti and Satı’s intellectual pursuits in two different political orders contain important elements of continuity.

Keywords: Avram Galanti (Abraham Galante)
Ottomanism
Tunalı Hilmi
Mustafa Satı (Sati’ al-Husri)
Advisor: Mignon, L
Exporting pandemics: free trade agreements and the global diffusion of unhealthy behaviours

This thesis is about the causes of unhealthy behaviours, and the role of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) in shaping them. Unhealthy behaviours include smoking, harmful alcohol consumption, and excess caloric intake. Sociologists have primarily investigated the causes of these behaviours with reference to individuals’ socio-economic and local environmental characteristics. Yet these determinants may, in turn, be shaped by a society’s macro-economic and political institutions, including FTAs. FTAs are major policy instruments that are increasingly being used to promote cross-border trade and investment. In doing so, FTAs may unintentionally foster the cross-border diffusion of unhealthy behaviours and constrain governments’ abilities to regulate them. However, scholars’ understanding of whether and how these impacts prevail is limited: most prior analyses precluded causal conclusions, whilst more rigorous statistical analyses of FTAs primarily focussed on economic outcomes. In this thesis I address these gaps. In the first empirical chapter I used a natural experiment design to evaluate whether entering into an FTA with the US corresponded to a rise in caloric intake in Canada. In a second analysis I used the synthetic control method to disentangle the specific clauses within FTAs that lead to dietary changes. In a third study I created a new dataset to investigate how FTAs might constrain governments’ abilities to introduce regulations aimed at preventing unhealthy behaviours. These empirical chapters advance previous analyses of FTAs and unhealthy behaviours by providing more robust evidence to infer a causal effect of FTAs and by elucidating their pathways to impact. They also make two broader, inter-related contributions to social scientific scholarship. First, my findings demonstrate the importance of FTAs for sociologists’ understanding of the causes of unhealthy behaviours. Second, my thesis shows that FTAs can have detrimental consequences for a society’s well-being in ways that are often overlooked in economic FTA evaluations.

Keywords: Trade policy
Medical sociology
Global health
Advisor: Stuckler, D
Monden, C
Trophic interaction modifications in food webs

Trophic interaction modifications are an important, but historically neglected, set of relationships between species within ecological communities. They define how the rate of consumption of a resource by a consumer is affected by the population of other species in the ecosystem. These modifications can derive from a wide range of ecological processes, and individual modifications have been shown to have major effects in small systems. Here I develop ecological understanding of interaction modifications at the whole network scale using theoretical analyses of generalised models. First, I examine in detail how interaction modifications can be considered as distinct processes to conventional pairwise interactions, demonstrating that otherwise disparate ecological processes can be united through a common framework that allows systematic and precise analysis. I illustrate this with a discussion of how the strength of an interaction modification can be understood from multiple angles and contexts. Second, I use models of artificial ecological communities to test for the properties that determine the importance of particular interaction modifications for the dynamics of whole communities in terms of directional predictability of responses to perturbations and local stability. I find that, in general, interaction strength-based methods are more effective than topological based metrics of key modifications. Third, I examine the impact that structured distributions of interaction modifications within ecological communities can have on the overall pattern of dynamic interactions and the resultant consequences for the stability of ecosystems. I demonstrate that certain reasonable distributions of interaction modifications can generate significant additional structure. Fourth, I directly test the impact of the multi-species nature of interaction modifications on the robustness of ecological communities to extinctions in response to sustained perturbations using generalised models of ecosystems. I show that interaction modifications shift the relative vulnerability of species and that higher-order models give notable different results to pairwise representations. I conclude with a discussion of approaches to gather network-level empirical data of the distribution of interaction modifications in order to translate the theoretical advances into natural systems.

Advisor: Morris, R
Bonsall, M