VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Investigation of charge-transfer dynamics in organic materials for solar cells

This thesis improves our understanding of the charge-transfer dynamics in organic materials employed in dye-sensitized and nanotube-thiophene solar cells. For the purpose of this work, a femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy setup was built. Additionally, microsecond transient absorption spectroscopy was utilised to explore dynamics on a longer time-scale.
In the first study, the dependence of dye regeneration and charge collection on the pore- filling fraction (PFF) in solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is investigated. It is shown that while complete hole transfer with PFFs as low as ~30% can be achieved, improvements beyond this PFF are assigned to a stepwise increase in the charge-collection efficiency in agreement with percolation theory. It is further predicted that the chargecollection efficiency saturates at a PFF of ~82%.
The study is followed by an investigation of three novel hole-transporting materials for DSSCs with slightly varying HOMO levels to systematically explore the possibility of reducing the loss-in-potential and thus improving the device efficiency. It is shown that despite one new HTM showing a 100% hole-transfer yield, all devices based on the new HTMs performed worse than those incorporating spiro-OMeTAD. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the design of the HTM has an additional impact on the electronic density of states present at the TiO2 electrode surface, and hence influences not only hole- but also electron-transfer from the sensitizer.
Finally, a study on a polymer-single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) molecular junction is presented. Results from femtosecond spectroscopic techniques show that the polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) is able to transfer charges to the SWNT within 430 fs. Addition of excess P3HT polymer leads to long-lived free charges making these materials a viable option for solar cells.

Keywords: Transient Absorption Spectroscopy
Organic Semiconductors
Photovoltaic power generation
Dye-sensitized solar cells
Advisor: Herz, L
Measurement of Neutral-Current π$^0$ production for $ν_µ$ interactions in ND280

This thesis presents a study of neutral-current π0 production from νµ interactions. The study uses data taken at the Tokai-to-Kamiokande off-axis experiment's near detector (ND280). Monte Carlo studies were used to develop selection criteria to reconstruct event signatures produced from such interactions. This physics analysis focuses on the tracker region of the ND280 subdetector. Other π0 analyses using different detector regions are either underway or completed. The physics analysis, after being developed from Monte Carlo studies, was then run on real data.
This analysis goes partway towards measuring the neutral-current π0-producing neutrino interaction cross-section, by measuring the rate of such interactions in the T2K experiment's near detector, ND280. The observed results were:

N NCπ0
Data
(1)
This rate measurement, when made as a ratio of the predicted Monte Carlo rate, yields a ratio of:

(2)
RData
RMC   = 1.20 ± 0.13stat ± 0.72syst

Keywords: nd280
oscillation
neutrino
pi-zero
current
pi0
T2K
neutral
Advisor: Barr, G
Romanticising crisis: digital revolution and ecological risk in late postmodern American fiction 

This thesis probes how recent experimental American "crisis fictions" from authors including Mark Z. Danielewski, Kathryn Davis, and Evan Dara reformulate transatlantic Romantic literary debates about technological and environmental change. Arguing that such texts extend previously theorised ties between Romanticism and postmodernism, it identifies enduring ties between late-postmodern accounts of crisis and those of Romantic predecessors. Responding to the upheavals of digital revolution and ecological risks, these texts, published between 1995 and 2012, inventively engage several linchpin constructs in transatlantic Romantic writing: chiefly, the imagined supersession of subjective and temporal boundaries; a sense that the natural and non-human world is of crucial importance; and a reliance on idioms of sublimity to suggest the unrepresentability of the aforementioned crises.
Although numerous critics have traced similarities between Romantic and postmodern modes, this thesis considers those resonances as deeper questions of cultural and literary history. It proposes to more carefully historicise the Romantic intellectual heritage in late postmodernism, identifying intermediating moments that inform contemporary accounts of crisis. It unearths how late postmodern technocultural and environmentalist imaginaries were always already Romantic. Deeply informed by countercultural, mid-century American movements and ideas that themselves drew significantly from transatlantic Romanticism, contemporary figurations of upheaval, syncretically figured in mid-century publications such as the Whole Earth Catalog, are indebted to both Romantic and neo-Romantic heritages.
This thesis additionally argues that the digital revolution and unprecedented environmental crisis act as pressures on postmodern literary practices from the mid-1990s onward. Digital speeding and a looming sense of ecological risk register as even earlier crises than the terrorist attacks of "9-11", requiring a recalibration of what the postmodern might mean and do. Crucially, in their preoccupation with embodied realities and environments, including natural ones, the contemporary narratives examined here diverge from the assumption that the natural world bears little importance in postmodern fields of representation.
Finally, many recent literary experiments figure themselves as materially participating in the technological and medial systems they respond to; formal experimentation is, accordingly, another centre of interest. This research examines how select texts deploy formal strategies to "materially instantiate" Romantic ideas, to borrow Katherine Hayles's term. Although numerous critics have suggested that Romantic discourse permeates digital cultural imaginaries, existing scholarship devotes little attention to how formal experimentation intersects with narrative strategies.

Keywords: experimental literature
Post-1945 literature
Romanticism
digital culture
ecocriticism
American counterculture
postmodernism
Transcendentalism
american literature
Advisor: Pratt, L
Contending with contradictions

This doctoral thesis examines the objectives, consequences, and significance of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) policy towards Soviet Eastern Europe with special reference to Poland from 1953 to 1960.
The most significant finding of this thesis is the confirmation of the close collaboration between the Chinese and Poles in the events surrounding the Polish October in 1956. This study argues that the Chinese Communist leadership played a decisive role in preventing Soviet military action in Warsaw during those few critical days in October, 1956. In successfully defusing the tension between Moscow and Warsaw, the Chinese reached a parity of prestige in which the PRC could duly consider itself equal with the Soviet Union. With the restoration of its "rightful" place in the postwar world order as the ultimate aim of the Chinese revolution, the PRC forged relations with the Soviet bloc holding the view that equality with the Soviet Union was a crucial prerequisite in recovering its global position. The PRC's Soviet East Europe policy, namely in its relations with Poland, paved the PRC's road toward reaching equality with the Soviet Union, but at the same time exposed the contradictory nature of bloc unity, the weak foundations of Soviet authority, and the deepseated belief of the Chinese leadership in the PRC's sovereign position as the centre of the world Communist revolution.
Thus, contending contradictions in intra-party relations between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP), and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) formed the crux of the intra-bloc imbroglio which threatened Soviet authority in the bloc and led to the Sino-Soviet split in 1960.
Temporal dynamics of resting state brain connectivity as revealed by magnetoencephalography

Explorations into the organisation of spontaneous activity within the brain have demonstrated the existence of networks of temporally correlated activity, consisting of brain areas that share similar cognitive or sensory functions. These so-called resting state networks (RSNs) emerge spontaneously during rest and disappear in response to overt stimuli or cognitive demands. In recent years, the study of RSNs has emerged as a valuable tool for probing brain function, both in the healthy brain and in disorders such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. However, analyses of these networks have so far been limited, in part due to assumptions that the patterns of neuronal activity that underlie these networks remain constant over time. Moreover, the majority of RSN studies have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in which slow fluctuations in the level of oxygen in the blood are used as a proxy for the activity within a given brain region.
In this thesis we develop the use of magnetoencephalography (MEG) to study resting state functional connectivity. Unlike fMRI, MEG provides a direct measure of neuronal activity and can provide novel insights into the temporal dynamics that underlie resting state activity. In particular, we focus on the application of non- stationary analysis methods, which are able to capture fast temporal changes in activity. We first develop a framework for preprocessing MEG data and measuring interactions within different RSNs (Chapter 3). We then extend this framework to assess temporal variability in resting state functional connectivity by applying time- varying measures of interactions and show that within-network functional connectivity is underpinned by non-stationary temporal dynamics (Chapter 4). Finally we develop a data driven approach based on a hidden Markov model for inferring short lived connectivity states from resting state and task data (Chapter 5). By applying this approach to data from multiple subjects we reveal transient states that capture short lived patterns of neuronal activity (Chapter 6).

Keywords: Resting State Networks
Functional Connectivity
Magnetoencephalography
Hidden Markov Model
Neuroimaging
MEG
Advisor: Woolrich, M
Probert Smith, P
Refined Probabilistic Abstraction

Network technology enables smarter and more adaptive computing devices in the context of vehicles, communication and energy networks. Performance and quality-of-service guarantees are vital concerns for such systems. Meaningful guarantees are typically of a probabilistic nature due to the use of randomized algorithms inside network protocols and other phenomena like message loss. Probabilistic verification provides methods and tools to quantify the performance and quality of service of systems. A central problem in probabilistic verification is to determine the probability that a system enters a particular set of goal states, e.g., states in which packages have been transmitted successfully. Despite the remarkable versatility of existing methods, they are inherently limited to systems with very small state spaces. This dissertation proposes new methods that solve the problem of probabilistic reach- ability for large or even infinite state spaces. The key is to automatically obtain small abstractions of a system. To this end, we start with a very coarse abstraction and successively refine it. The process is fully automatic and has been implemented in the tool Pass. Pass achieves significant performance improvements compared to previous methods and, further, applies to infinite-state systems which could previously not be handled by any existing automatic method.
The role of IL-18 in intestinal immune regulation

Elevated levels of the cytokine interleukin-18 (IL-18) are found in many chronic inflammatory disorders, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, the role of IL-18 in mucosal immunity and inflammation is not well understood. At mucosal and environmental interfaces, Th17 cells have been shown to contribute to protection from pathogenic infection. In contrast, regulatory T (Treg) cells maintain intestinal homeostasis by preventing aberrant inflammatory responses to the resident microbiota. We demonstrate that under homeostatic conditions, colonic Th17 cells highly express IL-18 receptor (IL-18R1) and that intestinal epithelial cell production of IL-18 acts directly on CD4+ T cells to limit colonic Th17 differentiation. Furthermore, whilst IL-18R1-signalling is dispensable for induction of colitis, we observed a critical role for IL-18R1-signalling in Foxp3+ Treg mediated control of colitis. Together, these studies demonstrate that the intestinal epithelium regulates colonic CD4+ T cell responses through production of the cytokine IL-18.

Keywords: Intestine
IL-18
Th17
Immunity
Foxp3
Advisor: Maloy, K
Klenerman, P
The Royalist war effort in Wales and the West Midlands, 1642-1646

The essential object of the thesis is to examine the demands made upon differing royalist leaders during the Great Civil War, and the responses of those communities to them. By doing so, it is intended to provide answers to one of the great unanswered problems of the war, the question of whether the royalists lost because they were defeated in the field or because they forfeited the sympathy of the local people upon whose support they depended. The region chosen for study comprises twenty counties within Wales, the Marches and the West Midlands, the area in which the king first gathered an army and in which his supporters staged their last stand.
The first section traces the delivery and impact of the royalist Commissions Of Array, the raising of the royal field army and the slow organisation of local communities for a prolonged war in the winter that followed. The second describes the completion of this process with the appointment of peers as regional generals. The third section is devoted to describing the machinery of royalist wartime government and the problems it faced. The fourth recounts how the noble generals came to be replaced by nore experienced soldiers, led by Prince Rupert. The fifth examines the challenge offered to these men in the winter of 1644-5 by a now war-weary local population, and the manner in which the military men overcame this challenge. The last section is devoted to showing how the destruction of the royal army at Naseby freed the local population to oppose any further demands by the royalist war machine and thereby destroy the machine itself.
Designing a quantum computer based on pulsed electron spin resonance

Electron spin resonance (ESR) experiments are used to assess the possibilities for processing quantum information in the electronic and nuclear spins of endohedral fullerenes. It is shown that ¹⁵N@C₆₀ can be used for universal two-qubit quantum computing. The first step in this scheme is to initialize the nuclear and electron spins that each store one qubit. This was achieved with a magnetic field of 8.6 T at 3 K, by applying resonant RF and microwave radiation. This dynamic nuclear polarization technique made it possible to show that the nuclear T₁ time of ¹⁵N@C����� is on the order of twelve hours at 4.2 K. The electronic T₂ is the limiting decoherence time for the system. At 3.7 K, this can be extended to 215 μs by using amorphous sulphur as the solvent. Pulse sequences are described that could perform all single-qubit gates to the two qubits independently, as well as CNOT gates. After these manipulations, the value of the qubits should be measured. Two techniques are demonstrated for this, by measuring the nuclear spin. Sc@C₈₂ could also be useful for quantum computation. By comparing ESR measurements with density functional theory calculations, it is shown how the orientation of a Sc@C₈₂ molecule in an applied magnetic field affects the molecule's Zeeman and hyperfine coupling. Hence the g- and A-tensors are written in the coordinate frame of the molecule. Pulsed ESR measurements show that the decoherence time at 20 K is 13 μs, which is 20 times longer than had been previously reported. Carbon nanotubes have been filled with endohedral fullerenes, forming 1D arrays that could lead to a scalable quantum computer. N@C₆₀ and Sc@C₈₂ have been used for this filling in various concentrations. ESR measurements of these samples are consistent with simulations of the dipolar coupling.

Keywords: quantum information processing
Pulsed electron spin resonance
high magnetic fields
Advisor: Briggs, G
Ardavan, A
On Auslander-Reiten theory for algebras and derived categories

This thesis consists of three parts. In the first part we look at Hopf algebras. We classify pointed rank one Hopf algebras over fields of prime characteristic which are generated as algebras by the first term of the coradical filtration. These Hopf algebras were classified by Radford and Krop for fields of characteristic zero. We obtain three types of Hopf algebras presented by generators and relations. The third type is new and has not previously appeared in literature.
The second part of this thesis deals with Auslander-Reiten theory of finitedimensional algebras over fields.
We consider G-transitive algebras and develop necessary conditions for them to have Auslander-Reiten components with Euclidean tree class. Thereby a result in [F3, 4.6] is corrected and generalized. We apply these results to G-transitive blocks of the universal enveloping algebras of restricted p-Lie algebras. Finally we deduce a condition for a smash product of a local basic algebra Λ with a commutative semi-simple group algebra to have components with Euclidean tree class, in terms of the components of the Auslander-Reiten quiver of Λ.
In the last part we introduce and analyze Auslander-Reiten components for the bounded derived category of a finite-dimensional algebra. We classify derived categories whose Auslander-Reiten quiver has either a finite stable component or a stable component with finite Dynkin tree class or a bounded stable component. Their Auslander-Reiten quiver is determined. We use these results to show that certain algebras are piecewise hereditary. Also a necessary condition for the existence of components of Euclidean tree class is deduced. We determine components that contain shift periodic complexes.

Keywords: Auslander-Reiten theory
Derived Categories
Hopf algebras
Advisor: Erdmann, K
Pretexts for writing: German prefaces around 1800

Throughout history, there have been playful prefaces to literature (or in classical oratory, before display pieces). But German examples written by authors around 1800 to their own works, together with contemporary, self-authored prefaces to speculative philosophy, constitute a peculiarly paradoxical text type. Once literature was conceived as an autonomous domain rather than as a branch of general learning; as a popular book market took hold; and once systematic philosophy competed with literature’s broad acclaim as well as intellectual independence, the preface became not only a pragmatic, but also a creative and conceptual problem. Hence the preface became complicated as a form, in a broadly Romantic tradition of thought in which every act of genuine reflection was understood to expose epistemological contradiction. After my general, theoretical Preface and my comparative, historical Introduction, I focus on three preface paradoxes and three case studies of remarkably complex textuality: on Goethe, Jean Paul and Hegel. Most notable among their prefatory texts are the prefaces to Werther (1774), to a fictive second edition of Quintus Fixlein (1797) and to Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807). This trajectory is a story that begins with literary creativity and moves towards greater philosophical intricacy.
The significance of my study is threefold. First and foremost, considering prefaces in this period of German literature and philosophy complements and augments the negative, subjective Early German Romantic idea of irony, Romantic textual fragmentation, as well as Jean Paul’s and Hegel’s literary and philosophically informed attempts to render both concepts and their manifestation on the page more positive and objective. Fragments are conventionally conceived as additive pieces, fortifying or undermining works. This conception can hold true for prefaces, including those by Goethe, Jean Paul and Hegel. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, though, a number of writers of fragments argued that their works should be understood as wholes. Precisely some prefaces by Goethe, Jean Paul and Hegel can be read so paradoxically: as unifying, wholesome (in a Sentimental sense) and systematic fragments respectively.
Second and third, I show the wider importance of the German preface at the turn of the nineteenth century. Authors around 1800 not only displayed, but discovered and debated a prefatory paradoxicality that we encounter in post-Romantic, post-Structuralist and post-modern literature, theory and philosophy, too. Moreover, I demonstrate the ways in which prefaces by particularly Jean Paul and Hegel influenced especially Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Derrida.

Keywords: Fragment
Prefaces
Post-Structuralism
German Literature 18th &amp; 19th century
Paratexts
European Romanticism
Advisor: Hilliard, K
The visual perception of projectile trajectories and the guidance of interceptive behaviour

Experiments were conducted examining human interception of projectiles. It was found that fielders tend not maintain a linear optic trajectory (LOT) as advocated by McBeath, Shaffer, and Kaiser (1995) for interception in two-dimensions. Furthermore, it was shown that its curvature provided an ambiguous cue to action. New interception models were proposed based on optic acceleration cancellation (OAC) and the constant δ model significantly improved upon the performance of the LOT model. Awareness of interception strategy was investigated by questioning subjects about their angle of gaze variation during the ball flight. A lack of awareness of the critical information that guides interceptive behaviour was demonstrated. It is proposed that the information is stored implicitly, challenging the position of Shanks and St. John (1994). Subjects were asked to discriminate the visual information that they experienced before running to catch real balls to examine the validity of experiments that test human ability to discriminate the acceleration of simulated trajectories. Discriminative performance found to remain high even when the duration of viewed information is reduced. This intact discriminative ability led to the suggestion that trajectory discrimination occurs very rapidly after ball launch. The movement and gaze angle of fielders running to catch under conditions in which OAC cannot be sustained was analysed. Subjects showed little deviation from the strategy until the final moments of the catch. The overall conclusion to the thesis is that subjects react rapidly to the optic acceleration of a projectile to determine interceptive behaviour but may not be aware of the sensory basis of their decision and use an approximate version of the constant δ strategy to reach the interception point.

Advisor: McLeod, P