VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The case of case: A morphological investigation of Russian heritage speakers in the UK


With the field of heritage language study only emerging in linguistics in the last few decades, Russian as a heritage language spoken in the UK remains an understudied area. In the present study, we aimed to investigate noun case inflections of 10–13-year-old children and adults residing in the UK from birth or early childhood and speaking Russian with their families at home from birth. Testing was done using a sentence translation task, a type of task not used previously in the field, and compared against age-matched monolingual controls. A background questionnaire was also administered to gather information about the way participants use their dominant and heritage languages in their household, family, friends, and entertainment. Our findings show that the case performance of heritage speakers significantly differs from age-matched controls, and worsens from the younger group to the older, suggesting a deterioration in the case system as the speaker moves away from their family and community upon transitioning into adulthood. These findings, however, do not entirely support earlier data from similar studies completed in the US and present the UK as a new underexplored playing field for future heritage language studies.

Keywords: Case inflection
Language Attrition
Heritage language
ALSLA
First language acquisition
Russian
Bilingualism
Education
ALSLA2023
Language acquisition
Advisor: Chalmers, H
Topological data analysis of organoids

Organoids are multi-cellular structures which are cultured in vitro from stem cells to resemble specific organs (e.g., colon, liver) in their three- dimensional composition. The gene expression and the tissue composition of organoids constantly affect each other. Dynamic changes in the shape, cellular composition and transcriptomic profile of these model systems can be used to understand the effect of mutations and treatments in health and disease. In this thesis, I propose new techniques in the field of topological data analysis (TDA) to analyse the gene expression and the morphology of organoids. I use TDA methods, which are inspired by topology, to analyse and quantify the continuous structure of single-cell RNA sequencing data, which is embedded in high dimensional space, and the shape of an organoid. For single-cell RNA sequencing data, I developed the multiscale Laplacian score (MLS) and the UMAP diffusion cover, which both extend and im- prove existing topological analysis methods. I demonstrate the utility of these techniques by applying them to a published benchmark single-cell data set and a data set of mouse colon organoids. The methods validate previously identified genes and detect additional genes with known involvement cancers. To study the morphology of organoids I propose DETECT, a rotationally invariant signature of dynamically changing shapes. I demonstrate the efficacy of this method on a data set of segmented videos of mouse small intestine organoid experiments and show that it outperforms classical shape descriptors. I verify the method on a synthetic organoid data set and illustrate how it generalises to 3D to conclude that DETECT offers rigorous quantification of organoids and opens up computationally scalable methods for distinguishing different growth regimes and assessing treatment effects. Finally, I make a theoretical contribution to the statistical inference of the method underlying DETECT.

Advisor: Harrington, H
Byrne, H
Lu, X
Characterisation of novel transcripts in the 3’ region of L-type calcium channel genes in human brain

The alpha-1 subunit (CACNA1 family) of L-type voltage-gated calcium channels (LTCCs) play significant roles in brain function and neuropsychiatric disorders. Transcription of LTCCs is complex, with each alpha1 gene producing multiple isoforms. CACNA1S and CACNA1F were reported to have short-length transcripts from their 3’ region in the human brain which were not well characterized. Moreover, whether other CACNA1 genes also produce the 3’ transcripts have not been studied.
This thesis aims to identify and understand the short-length transcripts arising from the 3’ region of LTCC genes in human brain, especially CACNA1S and CACNA1F, using a series of technical approaches and analyses. Firstly, using PCR amplification and long-read nanopore sequencing, multiple 3’ transcripts with exon-skipping possibilities were identified. Secondly, 5’ Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends (5’ RACE) identified the 3’ transcripts as being complete transcripts, arising from alternative transcription start sites (TSS). These findings were corroborated by exon expression level findings from Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) data. Analyses using PhyloP showed that the 5’-untranslated region (5’-UTR) of the 3’ transcripts are more conserved than the intronic regions. Finally, the translation and localization of the protein encoded by each 3’ transcript was investigated in transfected HEK-293T and SH-SY5Y cell lines. All proteins were detectable by western blot. C-CaV1.3 (encoded by CACNA1D) localized to the nucleus in both cell types; C-CaV1.2 (encoded by CACNA1C) translocated to the nucleus in the excitable (SH-SY5Y) cells but not the non-excitable (HEK-293T) cells. C-CaV1.1 and C-CaV1.4 (encoded by CACNA1S and CACNA1F respectively) were not localized to the nucleus. This thesis shows that LTCC alpha1 subunit genes produce 3’ transcripts using alternative TSS in human brain. Their potential functionality is supported by the evolutionary conservation of their 5’-UTRs and by their translation in vitro. However, further studies are required to identify the significance of these transcripts for brain function.

Keywords: alternative TSS
L-type calcium channel genes
5’RACE
long-read nanopore sequencing
Advisor: Harrison, P
Tunbridge, E
Legal practice and its continuity

This thesis has a particular and a general aim. The particular aim is to provide a satisfactory account of constitutional crises. Available accounts tend to either exaggerate the disruptive character of such crises or, conversely, to deny it; the challenge is thus to acknowledge the disruption without blowing it out of proportion.
The general aim is to outline a theory of law from which such a satisfactory account would follow. The available accounts oscillate between the two extremes because they are attached to the idea that law is a system of legal norms. I critique this idea—not to reject it, though, but to show that it is only one element in a complete account of law. Instead of viewing legal practice as governed by a system of norms, posited and administered by state institutions, we may view it as a collective practice among the general population, whereby they make sense of each other’s actions in legal terms so as to know how best to navigate their mutual interactions. The legal system does have a place in this latter picture, but this place corresponds to the important yet limited role of the state in wider social practice.
Articulating and substantiating this proposal takes up the better part of the thesis, eventually to yield an understanding of legal continuity which translates into a satisfactory account of constitutional crises. The continuity of legal practice is not a direct function of the continued efficacy of some normative system, but depends on whether participants in the practice can make enough legal sense of their interactions to know how to carry on with them. In a constitutional crisis, no such legal sense can be made of at least certain practices of constitutional actors; but many everyday interactions may still make perfectly good legal sense.

Keywords: legal system
general jurisprudence
legal norms
constitutional crisis
legal theory
legal meaning
legal philosophy
Advisor: Endicott, T
Adams, T
Providing and assessing intelligible explanations in autonomous driving

Intelligent vehicles with automated driving functionalities provide many benefits, but also instigate serious concerns around human safety and trust. While the automotive industry has devoted enormous resources to realising vehicle autonomy, there exist uncertainties as to whether the technology would be widely adopted by society. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are complex systems, and in challenging driving scenarios, they are likely to make decisions that could be confusing to end-users. As a way to bridge the gap between this technology and end-users, the provision of explanations is generally being put forward. While explanations are considered to be helpful, this thesis argues that explanations must also be intelligible (as obligated by the GDPR Article 12) to the intended stakeholders, and should make causal attributions in order to foster confidence and trust in end-users. Moreover, the methods for generating these explanations should be transparent for easy audit. To substantiate this argument, the thesis proceeds in four steps: First, we adopted a mixed method approach (in a user study N=101
) to elicit passengers' requirements for effective explainability in diverse autonomous driving scenarios. Second, we explored different representations, data structures and driving data annotation schemes to facilitate intelligible explanation generation and general explainability research in autonomous driving. Third, we developed transparent algorithms for posthoc explanation generation. These algorithms were tested within a collision risk assessment case study and an AV navigation case study, using the Lyft Level5 dataset and our new SAX dataset---a dataset that we have introduced for AV explainability research. Fourth, we deployed these algorithms in an immersive physical simulation environment and assessed (in a lab study N=39
) the impact of the generated explanations on passengers' perceived safety while varying the prediction accuracy of an AV's perception system and the specificity of the explanations. The thesis concludes by providing recommendations needed for the realisation of more effective explainable autonomous driving, and provides a future research agenda.

Keywords: autonomous vehicles
intelligibility
human factors in autonomous driving
explanations
explainable AI
human-machine interaction
autonomous driving
interpretability
Advisor: Jirotka, M
Kunze, L
Regulatory technologies for the study of data and platform power in the app economy

Tracking, the large-scale collection of data about user behaviour, is commonplace in mobile apps. While some see tracking as a necessary evil to making apps available at lower prices by showing users personalised advertising and selling their data to third parties, tracking can also have highly disproportionate effects on the lives of individuals and society as a whole. For example, tracking has significant effects on the rights to privacy and data protection, but also on other fundamental rights, such as the right to non-discrimination (e.g. when data from mobile tracking is used in AI systems, such as targeted ads for job offers) or the right to free and fair elections (e.g. when political microtargeting is used, as in the Brexit vote or the Trump election).
This thesis develops and applies techno-legal methods to study choice over app tracking at four levels: the impact of the GDPR (Chapter 4), consent to tracking in apps (Chapter 5), differences between Android and iOS (Chapters 6), and the impact of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework (Chapter 7). While many previous studies looked at data protection and privacy in apps, few studies analysed tracking over time, took a compliance angle, or looked at iOS apps at scale. Throughout our analysis of apps, we find compliance problems within apps as regards key aspects of US, EU and UK data protection and privacy law, particularly the need to seek consent before tracking. For instance, while user consent is usually required prior to tracking in the EU and UK (under the ePrivacy Directive), our empirical findings suggest that tracking takes place widely and usually without users’ awareness or explicit agreement.
This thesis contributes 1) a scalable downloading and analysis framework for iOS and Android privacy and compliance analysis (PlatformControl), 2) an improved understanding of the legal requirements and empirical facts regarding app tracking, 3) a comprehensive database of the relations between companies in the app ecosystem (X-Ray 2020), and 4) an Android app to support the easy and independent analysis of apps’ privacy practices (TrackerControl).

Keywords: iOS
GDPR
privacy
tracking
platform power
data power
smartphones
digital platforms
security
Advisor: Shadbolt, N
Cross-linguistic influence among Chinese learners of English (L2) and German (L3)

Chinese, English and German have different word orders. The word order in English and Chinese is largely Subject-Verb-Object (SVO). However, the Chinese word order is more flexible, so Chinese sentences are sometimes presented as Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). The SVO order is simpler than the verb second (V2) word order system in German, which requires one of other fragments to exist before the verb in a sentence to ensure that the verb always occurs in the second position in the sentence (In subordinate clauses in German, the verb position does not fulfil the verb second rule). As such, the word order of the three languages is sometimes identical, sometimes completely different, and sometimes pairwise similar. This study aimed to investigate the effects of Chinese as a first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2) on Chinese learners’ acquisition of the German word order. 30 sentences with different word orders across the three languages were selected for a set of novel multiple-choice tasks, during which participants had to choose the correct option to make the sentence having the correct word order. The task was completed by 27 undergraduate students (L1 Chinese, L2 English, L3 German) who majored in German studies and had English learning experience before attending university. The results showed that participants’ knowledge of both Chinese and English had a positive effect on the acquisition of German word order and that the participants’ L2 and L3 proficiency levels were not correlated with their performance in the L3 word order tasks and their L2 and L3 proficiency levels were not correlated neither. Based on these findings, it is believed that when the L1 and L2 word order is the same, participants do not tend to generalise this pattern to the L3 regardless of how proficient in their background languages they are.

Keywords: third language acquisition
word order
language transfer
cross-linguistic influence
Advisor: Faitaki, F
The activation of phonological representations in Cantonese-English bilingual young adults with different levels L2 proficiency

This study delves into the contentious issue of lexical activation and access in bilinguals, primarily focusing on whether the process is selective or nonselective. Selective activation means that only one of the two language systems in a bilingual individual is activated while processing. Conversely, nonselective activation means both language systems are activated simultaneously. While previous research largely supports the nonselective hypothesis, the roles of second language (L2) proficiency and the influence of different language scripts remain largely unexplored.
To elucidate these aspects, the study involved 42 Cantonese-English bilinguals, a less investigated demographic and employed a phonological relatedness judgement task, a seldom-used approach. Findings revealed that neither the direction of language priming nor the use of different scripts significantly influenced the participants’ reaction times. However, the script and direction of priming markedly impacted accuracy rates, providing new insights into cross-script bilingual word recognition. These results offer a deeper understanding of bilingual lexical access and carry significant educational and theoretical implications such as teaching English as a second language for Cantonese-English bilinguals, the awareness on the education of Jyutping and theories of bilingual language processing such as the BIA+ model.

Keywords: ALSLA2023
ALSLA
Advisor: Faitaki, F
Was your university worth it? - comparing expectations and aspirations of university graduates

Education in South Korea has been carrying a deeper significance then a dissemination of knowledge. Both historically and culturally education has been profoundly intricated with socioeconomic value that receiving education itself even entailed certain social class significance. Such value of education created a separate socio-educational class, called hakbeol, which is still rampant in the modern Korean society (Jung, 2014). Particularly after the Korean War in 1953, the role of education extended to being an anecdote to various social ill, from uniting the divided nation to reconstructing the destructed economy (Kim, 2004). Naturally such extended role of education was also re-shaping the meaning of HE and HEI as well. The values of education, HE, and HEI are socially recognized and, thus, are well-known. However, whether HE and HEI, specifically of undergraduate level, are appropriately fulfilling its role is remaining unanswered, which this research seeks to answer.
This dissertation utilised semi-structured interviews with 17 participants to analyse aspiration and expectation participants had before university and after attending a Korean university. By examining how interviewees had prepared for university, what, and why, the study analyses what kind of aspiration participants incorporated pre-entrance to university and how the aspirations are shaped.
The majority of participants claimed they had economic aspiration before entering university. Expecting HEIs to guarantee graduate premium either through HC or Signaling, participants were aspiring to have their life preparation completed with the entrance to university. Some participants (3 out of 17) noted they had no expectation before entering university.
However, HEI was not an ending for their employment preparation, but, in fact a new beginning, a steppingstone. Due to such disparity in the degree of universities financial assurance, participants experienced a reality hit that led to psychological voidness, or even to depression. Therefore, in investigating the role of HEIs in contemporary Korea through the perspective of those who had experienced university, HEIs is serving as an employability shaping institution either by knowledge or its name value.

Keywords: university name value
higher education
human capital
educational aspiration
education degree
educational motivation
educational expectation
HE2023
university admission
university ranking
university
Advisor: Inouye, K
'Smart' colonialism: a case study of international students' (from non-native English-speaking countries) perspective and experience of navigating 'smart campus' features at Oxford University

This thesis is a study of power. More specifically, it investigates the forms and operations of power that can be observed in ‘smart campus’ projects in UK higher education, which promises to improve the student experience with more inclusive and innovative digital infrastructure systems.
A case study of Oxford University is taken to explore its Digital Transformation Programme (DTP), supported by the Digital Education Strategy 2023-2027, which provides a strategic policy to advance learning and research, and the digital technologies that enable access and participation. The purpose of this research is twofold: to examine the extent to which Oxford University is mobilising ‘smart campus’ imaginaries to create data-driven, coded spaces that have the effect of sculpting particular kinds of educational values and practices; and how these features are experienced by international students—an important yet often overlooked group who rely on ‘smart’ applications to overcome social and cultural barriers, and at the same time, find themselves increasingly subject to technology’s racial and imperialist power relations. For such a group, questions of the future of education—and of social justice and equality more generally—are of vital importance to be addressed.
Through the collection of institutional documents and statistics, relational maps, and semistructured interviews with international students, faculty members, and DTP consultants, a core finding of the research suggests that when it comes to the use and development of ‘smart campus’ features for international students, there are considerable ambiguity, contradiction, and unease among participants as to what this looks like, and the principles and practices that undergird these systems. Drawing on Foucault’s critical concept of the dispositif and decolonial theories, the thesis argues that a colonial gaze guides initiatives to create ‘smarter’ universities in ways that, despite its modernist rhetoric of transformation, continue an oppressive history of counting, categorising, and governing Others.
This research attempts to make sense of the long-term consequences of ‘smart campus’ projects in both masking and deepening social inequalities; and thus, engages with alternative ways of imagining the future of education that represents, liberates, and places social justice within a wider and historical field of power relations.

Keywords: smart campus
digital transformation
power
Oxford
digital education
international students
Advisor: Shi, L
Winters, N
Investigating checkpoint inhibitor-induced gastrointestinal disease: comparisons with idiopathic ulcerative colitis and health

In the last decade, immunotherapy with anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA4 drugs has revolutionized the treatment of metastatic cancer. A significant proportion of patients given these checkpoint inhibitors develop off-target inflammation in the colon (checkpoint inhibitor-induced colitis, CC). Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a well-characterized multisystem disorder, propagated by a combination of barrier defects, immune dysfunction and a disordered microbiome, all on a background of genetic susceptibility. The underlying mechanisms of both checkpoint inhibitor-induced colitis and ulcerative colitis remain poorly understood, with a significant proportion of patients failing therapy. Using clinical data, next-generation single-cell RNA sequencing, unbiased spatial transcriptomics and organoid model systems, we elucidate clinically relevant patterns of cellular behaviour across blood, epithelium, stroma and immune populations. We describe and characterize novel disease-specific cell populations and cellular interactions in tissue ‘microdomains’ with functional relevance. Our work has implications for therapeusis as well as puts forward a new approach for identifying drug-bound cells in vivo.

Keywords: inflammatory bowel disease
checkpoint inhibitors
immunotherapy
colitis
Advisor: Simmons, A
Brain, O