VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
‘Artlessness and artifice’: Byron and the historicity of poetic form.

This thesis examines the conscious amalgamation of conflicting forms in Byron’s verse, and how these forms strain to create meaning in the processes of his poetry. Through a series of close readings and critical engagements with other Romantic poets, I endeavour to show how Byron’s poetry is often a rich site of contention between revolutionary and conservative impulses; both in its style and subject matter, and more often than not, in the complicated relationship between them.
Beginning with Byron’s problematic place in the English Romantic canon, I attempt to lay a foundation for my claims that for all his mistrust of closed systems and predetermined positions there remained an urging desire to reconcile definitive artistic contour with internal form-developing process in many of his most intense poetic engagements. In his efforts at reconciling an awareness of the ever-moving provisional nature of subjectivity with a deep-rooted demand for evaluative permanence, Byron habitually employs a hybrid poetic idiom which seeks to be both timeless and time specific.
In many of his most distinctive compositions, Byron holds a so-called ‘High Romantic’ lyrical mode, in which meaning is immersed in a persistent flowing rhythm, in tension with an eighteenth-century rhetorical style in which the careful placement of weighty words offsets its continuity to striking effect. By bookending my enquiry with Byron’s penetrating discursive conflicts with the naïve lyrical impulses of Wordsworth’s blank verse and what he perceived as the rhetorical appropriations of Keats’s poetry, I wish to demonstrate that Byron’s poetry enacts a curious meeting of nature and culture by a refusal to cleave them.

Keywords: poetics
romanticism
Byron
Advisor: Halmi, N
The contribution of non-structrual components to the overall dynamic behaviour of concrete floor slabs

Prestressing and the advent of high strength materials enable the construction of more slender floor slabs with lower values of natural frequency and damping. Under certain circumstances, the vibrations due to forcing frequencies of normal human activities can be annoying to the occupants. Since the occupants are both the source and the sensor, the vibration cannot be isolated and must be controlled by the structural system. At present, there is a limited knowledge about the overall dynamic characteristics of such concrete slabs, including contributions from individual structural and non-structural components. An extensive programme of modal testing on a slender one-way spanning 50% scaled post-tensioned concrete slab is described. Testing was performed using electromagnetic shaker, instrumented hammer, heeldrop, and walking excitations, to determine full floor dynamic characteristics. The tests investigated the effect on vibration performance of the level of prestress, and of various non-structural additions, including vibration absorbers and effect of occupants. It was found that an increase in prestressing force increases natural frequency and decreases damping due to closing up of microcracks. A model is presented to reflect these changes in terms of effective second moment of area. Cantilever partition tests showed energy to dissipate by swaying, and full-height partitions were seen to act as line supports leading to a significant stiffening of the slab. Analytical models are derived for both forms of partitions. Tests with false floors showed a significantly higher increase in slab damping when the floor panels rested on the pedestals, as opposed to being rigidly fixed to them. Although the addition of viscoelastic screed layers were not seen to have great effect in damping, an analytical model is derived which shows the advantages of using such layers. A TMD system was designed and installed on the floor, using plywood sheets, which led to a reduction in vibration response by as much as 80%. A theoretical model is derived to represent the TMD results and a design criterion is suggested. Finally, the effect of human-structure interaction is investigated. An analytical model shows the natural frequency of the body to be 10.43Hz with a damping of 50%. Results are also reported of tests on a full-scale field slab, confirming some of the findings of the model slab experiments. Broadly, the results show that contrary to popular belief, merely the presence of non-structural components does not necessarily enhance the dynamic behaviour of the system. The design of these components and nature of their installation are important factors affecting their contribution to the overall floor vibrational behaviour.

Keywords: concrete
dynamics
Advisor: Williams, M
Mucosal associated invariant T cells and related CD161 expressing T lymphocytes

The C-type lectin CD161 is expressed by a large number of T lymphocytes, with approximately a quarter of both T cell receptor (TCR)αβ+ and TCRγδ+ T cells expressing this marker. Within CD8+ T cells, a large proportion of these are comprised of Mucosal Associated Invariant T (MAIT) cells, a novel innate-like lymphocyte subset characterised by expression of a semi-invariant TCR together with high levels of CD161 (CD161++). These cells display a phenotype reflective of type 17 CD4+ helper T cells (Th17), which are also hallmarked by CD161 expression. Both MAIT and Th17 cells arise from preprogrammed progenitors, identifiable within umbilical cord blood by expression of CD161. Thus, CD161 appears to identify cells of a pre-determined and distinct phenotype. Whether this reflects a common transcriptional programme, developmentally induced within these cells, and further whether this extends to other CD161 positive T cells, was examined here by mRNA microarray analysis. This analysis identified a shared transcriptional signature and common innate-like function of all CD161 expressing T lymphocytes, and independent of TCR expression or lineage. Furthermore, a population of CD8+ T lymphocytes expressing lower levels of CD161 which overlap phenotypically with CD161++CD8+ MAIT cells was identified by both mRNA microarray analysis and mass cytometry (CyTOF); the CD161+CD8+ T cell population. TCR repertoire analysis, flow cytometry and cell culture experiments were utilised to investigate the origin of this subset, and its phenotype and function in both health and disease investigated in depth. This revealed a pre-programmed, tissue-resident memory population with potent effector functions. Both CD161++ MAIT and CD161+CD8+ T cells expressed high levels of the drug efflux pump MDR1, previously described to confer drug resistance to certain malignant cells. The significance of expression of this pump was hence investigated to determine its potential affect on the success of a variety of clinical therapies.

Keywords: CD161
immunology
MAIT cells
T lymphocyte
MDR1
Advisor: Klenerman, P
Painful stories: the experience of pain and its narration in the Greek literature of the Imperial period (100-250)

This research project investigates the relationship between pain and the practices of explaining and narrating it to others. Current scholarship argues that the representation of suffering became, during the Imperial period, an increasingly effective and popular strategy for cultivating authority and that this explains the success of Christian culture’s representation of itself as a community of sufferers. One criticism of this approach is that the experience of pain has often been assumed, rather than analysed. Here, I investigate the nature of pain by attending to its intimate relationship with language; pain was connected to the strategies used to communicate that experience to others. I will show that writers throughout the Imperial period were concerned with questions about how to communicate pain and how that act of communication shaped, managed, and alleviated the experience.
I investigate this culture along three axes. Part 1, ‘The Sublime Representation of Pain’, investigates the way different authors thought about the capacity of sublime language and rhetorical techniques such as enargeia to effectively communicate pain. I argue that for writers such as Longinus, the sublime offers an opportunity to replicate the traumatic experience of the pain sufferer in the audience or listener—pain is narrated to the audience through a traumatic communicative mode. Contrarily, I show how authors such as Plutarch and Galen were particularly concerned to desublimate the representation of pain, reducing the affective power of images of pain by promoting the audience’s conscious engagement with the text or representational medium. Part 2, ‘Medical Narratives’, examines a conflict between Galen and Aristides over the way language and narrative signified or referred to painful experiences. I show how both writers negotiate the way pain destroys and transcends ordered, structured, narrative by engaging in a process of narrative translation. I will illuminate the difference between scientific, diagnostic narratives which explain and rationalise pain experiences (in the case of Galen) and those which attempt to give witness to the nebulous, ineffable qualities of pain. In Part 3, ‘Narrating Cures’ I investigate ancient practices of psychotherapy. I show how various philosophical consolations were underpinned by an understanding of the power of pain to continually return and overwhelm the individual. I show further that the Greek romances engage in a type of talking cure: the novels use narration and story-telling to help assert the protagonists’ distance from their past traumatic experiences and, thus, allow the individual to overcome their painful past.

Keywords: suffering
the body
Imperial Greek culture
ancient novels
pain
ancient art
ancient medicine
Advisor: Whitmarsh, T
Towards a new theory of financial intermediation

This thesis includes three interconnected essays which, building on the work by Hart and Zingales (2011), lay down the foundations for a new theory of financial intermediation. The first essay explains the Hart and Zingales (HZ) framework and shows that their results are not general. In the HZ model, there is a lack of simultaneous double coincidence of wants, and future income is not pledgeable. This implies that agents need money to trade. However, holding money entails an opportunity cost that leads to a waste of resources. Because of this inefficiency, pecuniary externalities have welfare consequences that private price-taking agents fail to internalize. I find that HZ's result, whereby the market produces inefficiently high levels of liquidity, cannot be generalized, because the conflict between private and social incentives to create money depends on agents' preferences. In the second essay I construct a framework that explains the transactions, precautionary and speculative demand for money. Again, the welfare analysis indicates that, depending on individuals' preferences, the market may produce inefficiently high or low levels of liquidity. The results also evidence that the speculative demand for money exists only when households are risk averse in their wealth. In that case, private and social incentives to hold money are stronger, but the market produces insufficient means of payment relative to the social optimum. The third essay introduces active financial institutions, and examines the role played by moral hazard in the provision of and demand for liquidity. Limited liability and the non-contractibility of bank investment policy induce highly levered financial institutions to invest in an inefficient gambling asset. I find that, when the probability that banks gamble is non-zero, the primary goal of public intervention is to address the moral hazard problem by restricting the creation of liquidity. Several policies to address this inefficiency are discussed and analyzed.

Keywords: monetary economics
financial intermediation
Advisor: Vines, D
Noe, T
Data analysis and results of the upgraded CRESST dark matter search

CRESST has an established analysis procedure to evaluate the energy of the events it detects, in an attempt to detect WIMP dark matter. It was shown that unless eight classes of contaminant event were removed prior to this analysis, the output energy spectrum would be significantly biased. For both scientific and practical reasons, the removal process should be blind, and a series of cuts were developed to flag these events automatically, without removing any true events. An event simulation package was developed to optimise these cuts. It was shown that noise fluctuations could also reduce CRESST’s sensitivity, so a noise-dependent acceptance region was introduced to resolve this. The upgraded CRESST experiment included a new electronics system to provide heating and bias currents for 66 detectors. This system was integrated into the CRESST set-up, and it was shown that the electronics contributed no extra noise to the detectors. Data with an exposure of 50 kg days were analysed using the cuts and the noise-dependent acceptance. The cuts were successful, with no contaminant event retained and a live time reduction of just 2.3%. The data were used to set an upper limit on the WIMP-nucleon cross section for elastic scattering with a minimum of 6.3 × 10^(−7) pb at a WIMP mass of 61 GeV. This is a factor of 2.5 better than the previous best CRESST limit.

Keywords: limit
CRESST
dark matter
WIMP
neutralino
robust analysis
OxRop
Advisor: Kraus, H
Template directed synthesis of porphyrin nanorings

This thesis describes supramolecular approaches to porphyrin nanorings. Cyclic porphyrin arrays resemble natural light harvesting systems, and it is of interest to probe the photophysical effects of bending the porphyrin aromatic π-system.
A general overview of the synthesis and photophysical properties of porphyrins and their arrays is carried out in Chapter 1. The electronic structure of porphyrins is examined, and how conformational effects in oligomers, such as inter-porphyrin torsional angle and backbone bending influence the π-conjugation pathway. The structures of light harvesting complexes are discussed.
Chapter 2 describes the design and synthesis of a complementary 12-armed template designed to coordinate linear porphyrin oligomers in the correct conformation for cyclisation to give a cyclic porphyrin dodecamer.
Chapter 3 demonstrates two approaches to a cyclic porphyrin dodecamer ring. Firstly, a classical templating approach using the 12-armed template is described. The limitations of this approach in the quest for larger nanorings are discussed. Vernier templating, which utilises a mismatch in the number of binding sites between a ligand and its receptor is introduced as a general strategy to the synthesis of large nanorings. This is demonstrated by the synthesis of cyclic dodecamer from a linear porphyrin tetramer and a hexadentate template via a figure-of-eight intermediate.
The general utility of the Vernier method to large nanorings is explored in Chapter 4 with steps towards the synthesis of a cyclic tetracosamer, consisting of 24 porphyrin subunits. In preliminary experiments, an improved route to the cyclic porphyrin octamer is described.
Finally, the photophysical properties of the nanoring series are explored in Chapter 5 as a function of size and conformation. Femtosecond photoluminescence spectroscopy shows that even in cyclic dodecamer, exciton delocalisation over the entire porphyrin backbone occurs on a sub-picosecond timescale, and parallels are drawn with the dynamics of natural light harvesting complexes.

Keywords: vernier templating
light harvesting complexes
porphyrins
template directed synthesis
molecular wires
nanorings
Advisor: Anderson, H
Inflation and socio-political conflict in Chile, 1955-1970

The fundamental objective of this thesis is to identify the factors responsible for the persistence of the Chilean inflation and, particularly, for the failure of the three main stabilization efforts which took place under democratic conditions in Chile, i.e. those implemented in 1956-57, 1959-61 and 1965-67.
In this thesis, the Chilean inflation of 1955-1970 is considered to have been, to a large extent, the result of the failure of the political system to accommodate conflicting demands within the limits of available resources.
The analysis of the literature about the Chilean inflation shows that the economic approaches fail to take socio-political factors into account, and that the literature which focuses on the non-economic aspects of the phenomenon is varied, less formalized and, in general, more concerned with the sociological aspects of the conflicts which existed in Chilean society than with the political and particularly the institutional aspects involved.
This thesis attempts to overcome these shortcomings by placing the Chilean inflationary process in its specific institutional and political context. This approach shows how important the contribution of socio-political analysis can be to the understanding of inflation, particularly in historically and geographically bound case studies.
The thesis concentrates considerable effort on the analysis of the connection between the cyclical pattern of the Chilean inflation, the cyclical socio-political forces at work in the Chilean society and their institutional framework.
The thesis argues that under democratic conditions the inflationary propensity which existed in Chilean society had both an upper and lower limit. The analysis of the record for 1955-1970 shows that there were forces working in favour of price stabilization that became more powerful as inflation accelerated, but there were also countervailing forces favouring the continuation of inflation and these came to prevail as inflation decelerated. The cyclical character of the Chilean inflation was partly related to the cyclical pattern of the six year presidential terms which involved alternating periods of strong and centralized presidential authority and of power dispersal.
The Chilean inflation was the result of a society still searching for effective forms of social regulation, alternative to the traditional ones which started to collapse in the 1920s.
Derrida's return to Freud: from phenomenology to politics

This thesis identifies and explores a ‘return to Freud’ in the work of Jacques Derrida. Resemblances between Derrida’s method of deconstruction and the therapeutic procedure of psychoanalysis have long been a source of debate among critics. Is deconstruction little more than a psychoanalytic reading of the history of philosophy, or is Freud a Derridean avant la lettre? Revealing this dilemma to be a false one, this thesis challenges major interpreters of Derrida such as Jonathan Culler and Gayatari Chakravorty Spivak. By developing Derrida’s well-known yet little understood concept of différance, it argues that this dilemma stems from an inadequate understanding of Derrida’s treatment of time. The structure of temporality implied by différance entails that the meaning of the past is continually reconstituted in its relationship to an ever-evolving present. Far from dissolving the importance of Freud’s contribution, this structure allows Derrida to circumvent nebulous notions of ‘influence’ and ‘indebtedness’ while still engaging psychoanalysis as a key theoretical resource in his own project of deconstruction. A productive engagement with psychoanalytic theory is shown to inform every major stage of the philosopher’s career, from his early phenomenological work to his later reflections on the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Derrida repeatedly turns to Freud as a crucial interlocutor in interrogating a number of philosophical problems encountered in his own work. These problems include the nature of time, space, and memory; the role of the fictive in scientific discourse; the question of the archive; the interdependence of the psyche and technology; and the relationship between politics and the unconscious. At a theoretical level, this thesis provides a detailed account of Derrida’s notion of spacing, arguing that the unconditional belatedness entailed by différance calls us to a difficult, dual responsibility: both towards the legator of an inheritance (that is, towards the textual legacy Freud has bequeathed to us) and towards the unforeseeable future contexts in which this inheritance will require transformation. The discourse of deconstruction, it concludes, enacts a careful negotiation of these two demands.

Keywords: phenomenology
deconstruction
unconscious
influence
French thought
psychoanalysis
Freud
philosophy
Derrida
politics
theory
Advisor: Howells, C
New techniques in fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance

New techniques in Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy are introduced with chemical applications to the study of molecules in the liquid state.
Recently a theoretical description of magnetic resonance in terms of single transition operators has been introduced which provides a geometric interpretation of the behaviour of a spin system. This formalism is developed further and extended to the general description of a system of nonequivalent spin-1/2 nuclei. Operator combinations are introduced which allow extension of the convenient geometric representation to the concerted behaviour of coupled spins. The operator formalism is applied to the excitation and detection of multiple quantum transitions, providing a description of the processes in terms of rotating vectors.
The process of coherence transfer in two-dimensional Fourier transform experiments is studied in detail and single transition operators are used to derive a general expression for the tip angle dependence of the detection process. A method of discriminating the sense of precession of double quantum coherence is presented and applied to the correlation of chemical shifts of carbon-13 spins in natural abundance. A new technique is presented for the correlation of chemical shift information in coupled proton spin systems in which excitation and indirect detection of double quantum transitions is used to assign coupling patterns in complex spectra. The tip angle dependence of the detection process is used to suppress all but direct correlation of spins.
Methods for the measurement of heteronuclear coupling constants in proton spectra are introduced which discriminate the heteronuclear satellites from the parent proton resonance. The technique provides a sensitivity advantage over direct measurement of coupling in the heteronuclear spectrum. Ambiguities are encountered when the protonproton and proton-heteronuclear coupling constants are of the same order of magnitude. This problem is overcome by extension of the basic experiment to its two-dimensional analogue.

Advisor: Freeman, R