VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Cryogenic phonon-scintillation detectors  with NTD germanium readout

Cryogenic detectors are an advanced technology for both dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay searches, having the key advantage of a range of possible absorber materials that can be used for the detectors. Neutron transmutation doped germanium sensors are highly sensitive thermometers ideal for use at milli kelvin temperatures, with a simple repeatable resistance temperature relation. To discriminate between candidate events and background events simultaneous measurements can be made of the energy deposited in the detector as phonons and the energy emitted by the absorber crystal as scintillation light.
Phonon detectors with a calcium tungstate or calcium molybdate crystal as the target and an NTD sensor as a thermometer were made in Oxford, along with a light detector with a light-absorbing silicon layer on a sapphire crystal, also with an NTD thermometer. A system of electronics was designed and tested in Oxford to bias and readout the NTD thermometers, while the setup inside the cryostat was developed to provide a thermally and mechanically stable shielded environment for the detectors. As part of this, prototype semi-rigid kapton cabling for use in the EDELWEISS experiment was installed and tested in the cryostat.
Three different NTD germanium sensor types were characterized and calibrated in the cryostat and two of these selected for use on the phonon and light detectors. The detectors were operated at temperatures as low as 9 mK and tested with radioactive sources to produce energy spectra. Baseline resolutions of 1.7 keV and 2.5 keV, respectively, were achieved for the calcium molybdate and calcium tungstate phonon detectors. A working scintillation light detector was demonstrated as part of a phonon-scintillation detector module with a suggested application in double-beta decay searches.

Keywords: Particle Physics
NTD germanium
Dark Matter
Advisor: Kraus, H
The role of Wee1 in the hypoxia-induced DNA damage response and its potential as a therapeutic target

The majority of tumours have a poor vasculature which results in low oxygen supply. This, coupled with the high oxygen demand often leads to regions of hypoxia. The physiological relevance of this includes resistance to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, as well as activation of specific signalling cascades. Chk1, a component of the DNA damage response, is activated in acute hypoxia even in the absence of DNA damage. Loss or inhibition of Chk1 sensitises cells to hypoxia/reoxygenation. Wee1 is purportedly a downstream target of Chk1 and this study suggests this is the case in mammalian cells. Wee1 is involved in G2-M progression; inhibitors of Wee1 force cells into premature mitosis causing damage as well as radiosensitising cells even under hypoxic conditions.
Wee1 also regulates genomic stability via inhibition of the endonuclease Mus81-Eme1 in S phase cells. Previous reports suggest damage induced by Wee1 inhibition is Mus81 dependent however no evidence for this was seen in this study in normoxia or hypoxia. However, a novel finding was the involvement of Mus81 in reoxygenation-induced restart suggesting this nuclease does play a significant role in cellular adaptation to hypoxia.
Overall Wee1 inhibitors have been shown to be effective in normoxic and hypoxic conditions and successfully radiosensitise hypoxic cells which are usually resistant to therapy. This suggests this combination treatment should be investigated further in clinical studies.

Keywords: Wee1 inhibitor
DNA damage response
Hypoxia
Advisor: Hammond, E
Fake Geometric Brownian Motion And Its Option Pricing


In this thesis, we begin with introducing the notion of a fake geometric Brownian motion in analogy to the fake Brownian motion. Secondly we construct two discontinuous fake geometric Brownian motion processes via the solutions to the Skorokhod embedding problem. Finally we simulate European and path-dependent option pricings for stock prices following these processes, to see how different the results can be compared with the traditional Black & Scholes setting. Key words: fake Brownian motion, fake geometric Brownian motion, Skorokhod embedding problem, Azema-Yor solution, reversed Azema-Yor solution.
Terence and the verb ‘to be’ in Latin: contractions, sigmatic ecthlipsis, and some clitic characteristics of esse

The main topic of the thesis is a discussion of the contraction of esse (-st < est , -'s < -es), a widespread phenomenon in Latin comedy, generally known as ‘prodelision’.
The thesis collects evidence for contracted forms from a large variety of sources (e.g. inscriptions, Sabellian languages and ancient grammarians) and analyses their transmission in the manuscript tradition of Latin authors. Contracted forms appear to be widespread but are neglected by or puzzling to editors. They are not misspellings, abbreviations, or representations of a sandhi phenomenon related to elision (‘prodelision’), but are clitic forms of the verb esse, showing phonetic reduction. The thesis discusses their linguistic significance, relying in particular on analysis of their behaviour in Terence: auxiliary or copula esse is clitic and its standard position seems to be clause-final, attached to the participle or predicate noun or adjective.
Second, the thesis analyses another complex phenomenon of early Latin, the prosodical omission of final -s before a consonant (sigmatic ecthlipsis), relying on a database of all Terence's lines potentially involving it. Metrical evidence appears to be limited to cases in which a participle or predicate noun or adjective precedes a form of esse beginning with s-, thus confirming the prosodical distinctiveness of such a sequence. The evidence of sigmatic ecthlipsis thus ties in closely with that of contraction.
The findings of the thesis have philological and editorial implications. First, they throw light on orthographic, phonetic, prosodic, and syntactic aspects of the verb ‘to be’ in Latin. It has a strong bond with the participle and predicate noun or adjective and may either be reduced phonetically in combination with such hosts, or participate in a simplification of -ss- which it may share with its host. Second, transmitted contracted spellings or readings betraying a misunderstanding of them should be given full consideration by editors and not disregarded. Contracted spellings might be restored in other conditions since manuscripts are often not trustworthy when transmitting uncontracted forms. Contracted forms may be stylistically motivated. They occur in comedy particularly in spoken metres, and in late Latin become a spelling archaism. Finally, sigmatic ecthlipsis in Terence occurs for certain only in restricted conditions: the editorial practice of printing it wherever it is possible even if not necessary is misleading.

Keywords: sigmatic ecthlipsis
esse
Terence
Copula
clitics
Advisor: Adams, J
The molecular epidemiology of HCV and related viruses in Africa

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes severe illness in millions of people worldwide, but the epidemic strains responsible for most infections arose within the past hundred years and represent only a small part of total HCV diversity. In this thesis I combine laboratory and computational methods to study HCV in Africa. I aim to characterize its current genetic diversity and its historical transmission prior to the global HCV epidemic.
In Chapter 2 I begin by screening samples from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for HCV and the related human pegivirus. I find high HCV sequence diversity, including a putative new subtype, and find significantly higher HCV prevalence in those born before 1950.
Chapter 3 continues this screening, and combines the sequences obtained with those from online databases. Using molcular clock methods I estimate that genotype 4 originated in central Africa around 1733, and that multiple lineages, including subtype 4a which dominates the HCV epidemic in Egypt, have moved to north Africa since ~1850.
In Chapter 4 I analyse sequences sampled from an elderly population in Kinshasa to estimate HCV’s transmission history there during the 20th century. The results indicate a rapid increase in HCV transmission between 1950 and 1970 in multiple independent lineages. Possible causes of this increase are discussed. This study population also exhibits high HCV genetic diversity, including the second genotype 7 sample discovered to date.
Finally, Chapter 5 uses a range of sequencing techniques, including RNAseq, to characterise two putative HCV recombinants from Cameroon. I confirm that both sequences are recombinants, and generate a full genome sequence for one. I also develop new tools to distinguish between dual infection and recombination in next-generation sequencing data, and discuss how recombination might affect HCV diversity and treatment.

Keywords: emergence
Hepatitis C Virus
recombination
phylogeography
phylogenetics
Advisor: Pybus, O
Klenerman, P
The synthesis and reactivity of Group 4 metal hydrazides

This thesis describes the synthesis, characterisation and reactivity of diamide-amine and bis(cyclopentadienyl) supported Group 4 hydrazido(2-) compounds towards unsaturated molecules.
The mechanisms of these transformations are probed using a range of structural, kinetic and computational methods.

Keywords: Organometallics
Hydrazides
Kinetics
Mechanism
Group 4
Stoichiometric Reactivity
Advisor: Mountford, P
Curved twistor spaces

This thesis is concerned with the problem of "coding" the information of various zero-rest-mass fields into the complex structure of "curved twistor spaces". Chapter 2 is devoted to various preliminaries: a brief outline of twistor theory; an introduction to vector bundles and sheaf cohomology and some of their applications in twistor theory; and a discussion of potentials for electromagnetic fields.
Chapter 3 deals with left-handed (i.e. anti-self-dual) electromagnetic fields and describes in some detail the associated curved twistor spaces. It is shown how holomorphic functions on the curved spaces give rise to "charged" zero-rest-mass fields on space-time. The first section of Chapter 4 gives the corresponding results for left-handed gravitational fields, using Penrose's "nonlinear graviton" construction. The rest of Chapter 4 is devoted to the concept of twistors relative to a hypersurface in a general curved space-time. In §4.2 the hypersurface is taken to be spacelike; the hypersurface twistors are described and the problem of using holomorphic hypersurface twistor functions to generate fields on the hypersurface and in space-time is discussed.
Next the hypersurface is taken to be null. The structure of the associated hypersurface twistor space and and#x210b;-space are described in some detail. The twistor space has a natural inner product and, if the hypersurface is shear-free, then it has a "fibred" structure as well. In §4.4 the hypersurface twistor language is used to show that the propagation of twistors through an analytic pp-wave is given by the unfolding of a canonical transformation. Chapter 5 extends the "electromagnetic" construction of Chapter 3 to non-Abelian gauge theories; left-handed gauge fields are described in terms of complex vector bundles over protective twistor space.

Advisor: Penrose, R
Dramatic ritual and preaching in late Anglo-Saxon England

My thesis involves an examination of the dramatic liturgical ritual of the late Anglo-Saxon period and its relationship to other aspects of Christian worship, especially vernacular preaching. One particular ritual, the Visitatio Sepulchri, has received a tremendous amount of attention by critics of early Western drama, who see in it an emergence of the representational mode of drama that characterizes later medieval drama. Because the rest of the Anglo-Saxon liturgy is less 'representational,' it has been largely ignored when discussing dramatic ritual, so that the Visitatio appears singularly brilliant. The Visitatio, however, is driven by the same forces that drive equally dramatic liturgical commemorations year-round, climaxing in but not exclusive to the period around Easter. Beginning with an account of late Anglo-Saxon baptism, I examine the liturgy for the high festivals from Christmas to Ascension Day. For each chapter, I describe the liturgical forms for the day and their intended relationships with the participants, focussing on the establishment of dramatic associations between the celebrants and certain figures in the commemorated events. I then compare the liturgical forms with vernacular treatments of a particular festival, looking both for overt instruction and more subtle influence of the liturgy on the preaching texts. Anglo-Saxon preachers and homilists openly assumed the themes and symbolic images of the dramatic ritual in their attempts to make their congregations understand and take on Christian imperatives. Recursively, vernacular preaching helped solidify the meanings of the symbolic elements of the dramatic ritual and their significance to the lives of Christians. Anglo-Saxon appreciation of the dramatic potential of the liturgy was realized both in creative expansion of the liturgy and in the vernacular preaching texts that identified and enhanced this dramatic dynamic.
Time Series Modelling of Monthly WTI Crude Oil Returns

This paper examines the dynamics of the monthly WTI crude oil return for the past two decades. The data are divided into two ten-year periods, and we explore with two approaches. We rst build univariate time series models using the Box-Jenkins methodology. Techniques such as stationarity tests and autocorrelation plots are used to determine the orders of the nal ARIMA model. GARCH and APARCH are also used to model residuals. Then, we build regression models based on eight explanatory variables. They are consumption, production, ending stock, net import, renery utilisation rate, U.S. interest rate, NYMEX oil futures contract 4 and S&P; 500 index. Stepwise AIC method is employed to determine the optimal variables to be included. Multicollinearity is not evident in the reduced models. Residual analysis suggests that the assumptions of linear regression are not violated. Lastly, the forecasting powers of the models are compared. GARCH and APARCH perform the best in terms of forecasting accuracy, with APARCH performing the best in a turbulent market. Keywords: Linear regression, ARIMA, GARCH, APARCH, time series forecasting, residual analysis
Technology mapping of heterogeneous lookup table based field programmable gate arrays

A lot of work has been done over the last decade on the logic synthesis and technology mapping of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) based on a single size of lookup table (LUT). A significant part of the FPGA market is occupied by devices based on more than one type of lookup tables. Examples of these heterogeneous LUT-based FPGAs are the Xilinx 4000 series devices. The technology mapping for this class of FPGAs has hardly been considered. This thesis covers work on the synthesis for heterogeneous LUT-based FPGAs.
The proposed scheme uses the typical steps of graph covering, decomposition, node elimination and Boolean graph simplification. The covering step is based on the concept of flow networks and cut-computation. A theory is devised that reduces the flow network sizes so that a dynamic programming approach can be used to compute the feasible cuts in the network. An iterative selection algorithm can then be used to compute the set cover of the network. For the decomposition, the conventional bin-packing (cube-packing) algorithm has been extended so that it produces two types of bins. It has also been enhanced to explore several packing possibilities and include cube division and cascading of nodes. The classical functional decomposition method is extended to heterogeneous graphs. In particular, variable partitioning is coupled with other decomposition methods and exploits the structure of the functions. Partial collapsing and re-decomposition are used to re-synthesise the graphs. A strategy for eliminating nodes within a heterogeneous graph is developed. A simplification strategy is also derived from logic optimisation techniques.
Comparisons of the mapping results on Xilinx devices show an improvement of over 11% over existing mapping tools for the same devices.
Disorder in an exactly solvable quantum spin liquid

We investigate the properties of the Kitaev honeycomb model with both site dilution and exchange randomness. Embarking on this work, we review disorder in some strongly correlated electron systems, including spin-½ and spin-1 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chains, two dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnets, the cuprates and graphene. We outline some aspects of resonating valence bond phases, valence bond solids, spin liquids and quantum computation that are pertinent to an understanding of the Kitaev model. The properties of the Kitaev model without disorder are discussed and it is found to be a critical spin liquid, with algebraic correlations in two spin operators sigma^{alpha}_{i}sigma^{alpha}_{j}, where i and j are either end of a link of type alpha = x, y or z on the honeycomb lattice.
The Kitaev model is exactly solvable and we show that this remains so in the presence of site dilution and exchange randomness. We find that vacancies bind a flux. In the gapped phase, a vacancy forms an effective paramagnetic moment. With two or more vacancies we describe the interaction of their effective moments and show that a finite density of vacancies leads to a divergent macroscopic susceptibility at small fields.
In the gapless phase the effective moment has a susceptibility that is, to leading order at small fields, chi(h)~log(1/h). Interaction between the moments from two vacancies on opposite sublattices cuts off this divergence in susceptibility at a large but finite constant. Two vacancies on the same sublattice behave quite differently and we find the combined susceptibility is parametrically larger than that of an isolated vacancy, chi(h)sim [h(log(1/h))^{3/2}]^{-1}.
We also investigate the effects of slowly varying, quenched disorder in exchange coupling. We demonstrate that this does not qualitatively affect the susceptibility but show that the heat capacity C ~ T^{2/z}, where z is a measure of the disorder and increases from one with increasing disorder strength.

Keywords: disorder
Kitaev
spin liquid
Advisor: Chalker, J
Moessner, R
Non-Gaussian fluctuations in active suspensions

An active particle converts energy to motion. An active suspension is a population of active particles, typically microscale, that are immersed in a viscous and/or elastic medium.
This thesis is about the statistics of active suspensions. Unlike a suspension at thermodynamic equilibrium, we show that an active suspension inherently has non-Gaussian fluctuations due to an interplay between self-driven constituents and microscopic physics. Consequently, the diffusion of a tracer in an active suspension is not Gaussian.
Our results explain some experiments with active suspensions that contain either swimming microorganisms or molecular motors. We provide different models for the fluctuations in dilute active suspensions, ranging from phenomenological to exact. The fundamental ingredient of such non-Gaussian fluctuations is an ultraslow convergence to the central limit theorem caused by truncated power-laws. Without any truncation, there is an intimate relation to the generalized central limit theorem.
We suggest similar effects occur in many other systems. These may be associated with probability distributions that appear to be exponential.

Keywords: stochastic processes
statistical physics
fluid mechanics
elasticity
diffusion
Advisor: Yeomans, J
Berry, R
Saturation−Based Decision Procedures for Extensions of the Guarded Fragment

We apply the framework of Bachmair and Ganzinger for saturation-based theorem proving to derive a range of decision procedures for logical formalisms, starting with a simple terminological language EL, which allows for conjunction and existential restrictions only, and ending with extensions of the guarded fragment with equality, constants, functionality, number restrictions and compositional axioms of form S\\circ T< H. Our procedures are derived in a uniform way using standard saturation-based calculi enhanced with simplification rules based on the general notion of redundancy. We argue that such decision procedures can be applied for reasoning in description logics, where they have certain advantages over traditionally used tableau procedures, such as optimal worst-case complexity and direct correctness proofs
Sustaining family life in rural China: reinterpreting filial piety in migrant Chinese families

This study explores the changing nature of filial piety in contemporary society in rural China. With the economic, social and political upheavals that followed the Revolution, can 'great peace under heaven' still be found for the rural Chinese family as in the traditional Confucian proverb,"make yourself useful, look after your family, look after your country, and all is peaceful under heaven"? This study explores this question, in terms not so much of financial prosperity, but of non-tangible cultural values of filial piety, changing familial and gender roles, and economic migration. In particular, it examines how macro level changes in economic, social and demographic policies have affected family life in rural China. The primary policies examined were collectivisation, the hukou registration system, marketization, and the One-Child policy.
Ethnographic interviews reveal how migration has affected rural family structures beyond the usual quantifiable economic measures. Using the village of Meijia, Sichuan province, as a paradigmatic sample of family, where members have moved to work in the cities, leaving their children behind with the grandparents, the study demonstrates how migration and modernization are reshaping familial roles, changing filial expectations, reshuffling notions of care-taking, and transforming traditional views on the value of daughters and daughters-in-law.
The study concludes that the choices families make around migration, child-rearing and elder-care cannot be fully explained by either an income diversification model or a survival model, but rather through notions of filial piety. Yet the concept of filial piety itself is changing, particularly in relation to gender and perceptions about the worth of daughters and the mother/ daughter-in-law relationship. Understanding these new family dynamics will be important for both policy planners and economic analysts.

Keywords: rural-urban divides
Sichuan Province
left-behind
Filial Piety
Hukou Registration
filial care
China
Asia
one China policy
gender
intergenerational relationships
migrant labor
elderly well-being
ethnography
rural education
Advisor: Smith, T
Jaschok, M
Murphy, R