VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Customary law and 1992 constitution of Ghana: a comparative theoretical study

Ghana’s 1992 Constitution entrenches Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms, some of which do not exist in the customary law of the tribal polities with whom the state shares citizens. The state’s efforts to assert this liberal identity as the people’s; and the tribal polities’ commensurate efforts to resist the erosion of the socio-political identity they have chosen for themselves and their subjects; create tensions that, unmanaged, are apt to culminate in destructive conflict. My thesis casts the state-tribe friction in terms of a struggle over sovereignty and seeks a theoretical strategy to address that challenge.
I compare three philosophical constructs: federalism, bicameralism, and constitutional pluralism. I draw on Nigeria’s experience to conclude that though federalism might preserve the citizen-subject’s tribal identity, it does so at the cost of her statal one. Based on Botswana’s experience, I reject bicameralism for over-aligning state and tribe, thereby distorting the latter, and, thus, robbing the citizen-subject of her native lens for navigating the world.
Rather than obsess about being the only entity making a sovereignty claim in the territory, constitutional pluralism (CP) teaches the state to concentrate on amplifying its effectiveness to match the scope of its normative claim, so as to render implausible all competing sovereignty claims. This new focus allows the state to tolerate its rivals and even optimise their existence thereby offering the citizen-subject equal access to both her statal and tribal identities. I therefore endorse it.
I craft a Ghanaian theory of CP which values the inter-order friction and establishes thereon a model of competition and collaboration in which the state gains both the benefit of the strengths and legitimacy of tribal authority, and, through its competing remedies, the power to trigger and mould the evolution of customary law rights regimes into a connotationally-compliant body of law.

Keywords: 1992 Constitution
Constitutional Pluralism
Nigeria Federalism
Botswana Constitution
Nigeria Constitution
Asante Constitution
Ghana Constitution,
Bicameralism
Advisor: Barber, N
Exploring the relationships between Japanese L2 acquisition rates, study environments and kanji learning strategies

This study investigated whether adult L2 Japanese learners from alphabetic L1 backgrounds displayed different L2 acquisition rates depending on the time period when they began studying the language. In particular, it analysed L2 acquisition rates and language learning strategy usage by learners who began studying L2 Japanese in the pre-Internet / pre- globalization / pre-smartphone period (‘the Pre-1997 sample’) compared with those who began studying afterwards (‘the Post-1997 sample’). The study used a cross-sectional, mixed methods approach, which incorporated both quantitative and qualitative elements in its analysis. Data collection was based on an online survey with participants recruited using a snowball sampling approach. Time-to-fluency measures for L2 Japanese learners and details of their language learning environment during this time were collected, along with data about their motivation for studying Japanese and the types of kanji learning strategies they employed. In addition, the participants provided three open-ended responses on: 1) learning challenges; 2) role models; and 3) fluency milestones. Of the 115 accepted survey responses that were received online, 56 responses were identified where there was a quantifiable level of equivalent fluency between participants (‘the Equivalent Fluency group’). Within the Equivalent Fluency group, the mean time to fluency of the Pre-1997 sample (N = 32) was 5.4 years, significantly faster than the Post-1997 sample (N = 24) mean of 8.0 years. The Pre- 1997 sample also employed a significantly higher level of kanji learning strategy usage. At a more qualitative level, it was noted that the Pre-1997 sample spent a higher percentage of their time-to-fluency period studying in Japan, spent more of their day in Japanese-speaking environments, and were more willing to embrace an immersive approach to L2 Japanese learning. Follow-up interviews with three participants focussed mainly on motivation and their language learning experiences. The study provided a very detailed insight into the collective mindset of a wide range of successful adult L2 Japanese learners from alphabetic L1 backgrounds. It has pedagogical implications for instructors on the types of study environments, motivation profiles and learning strategies that can produce high levels of proficiency for character-based languages such as L2 Japanese and L2 Chinese.

Keywords: logographic languages
self-regulation
time-to-fluency
motivation
language learning strategies
kanji
Chinese characters
L2 Japanese
alphabetic L1 background
Japanese language education
online survey
adult L2 Japanese learners
L2 acquisition
Developing new biomarkers fro cardiovascular disease: the prognostic potential of oxidative stress, and perivascular adipose tissue phenotyping

Despite the fact that cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality rates have seen major declines during recent years compared to past decades, reflecting advances made in primary and secondary prevention, CVD remains a significant mortality contributor, and the so-called residual cardiovascular risk persists. For the purposes of my thesis, I used the Oxford Fat, Vessels and Fat (Ox-HVF) cohort, which constitutes a uniquely phenotyped cohort, including >1,000 patients undergoing cardiac surgery, with long-term follow-up, to perform observational association studies, functional ex vivo bioassays on human tissue, and discovery transcriptomics combined with radiomics.
In the first part of my thesis, I focused on characterising the prognostic value of arterial and myocardial oxidative stress. I showed that increased production of free radical oxygen species in human arteries and myocardium is associated with a higher risk of future major adverse cardiac events (MACE). I further revealed S100A8 and S100A9 as the most dysregulated genes in the presence of oxidative stress in the vascular wall. Applying discovery network transcriptomics, I unveiled a transcriptomic signature that is redox related and predicts future risk of MACE. Pathways relevant to oxidative phosphorylation, glucose metabolism, and the mitochondrial respiratory chain assembly were enriched and therefore revealed as potential therapeutic targets.
In the second part of my thesis, I developed a method that allows the integration of transcriptomic and radiomic data to produce biologically relevant imaging signatures from radiomic features calculated from segmented three dimensional volumes. I applied this concept to radiomic features of perivascular adipose tissue around the internal mammary artery and thoracic aorta imaged in computed tomography angiography (CTA) to generate an imaging signature that captures vascular inflammation defined by upregulation of key inflammatory pathways in arterial transcription. This signature was validated in the context of vascular inflammation induced by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and was proven to predict in hospital death, admission to the intensive care unit, response to dexamethasone, and systemic thrombosis.
Taken together, my findings propose oxidative stress, and specific redox-relevant genes and pathways as prognostic and therapeutic targets in CVD. Further, COVID-19 related vascular inflammation can be captured non-invasively by a novel radiotranscriptomic perivascular adipose tissue signature, which can maximise the diagnostic and prognostic yield of CTA.

Keywords: perivascular adipose tissue
radiomics
computed tomography angiography
biomarkers
transcriptomics
prognosis
oxidative stress
Advisor: Antoniades, C
Channon, K
Democratization from below: citizen-activated participatory democracy in Colombia's extractive industries

Political participation is widely accepted as a crucial element of conflict prevention and successful transitions from conflict to peace. Indeed, participatory institutions are often included in peace agreements. Yet we still know little about their use in practice. How are participatory reforms activated? Can they upend exclusionary power structures? This thesis explores these questions by examining the unlikely case of civil society-led participatory democracy in Colombia’s extractive sectors. Historically, contention between communities, the state, and private businesses over land use in Colombia has mirrored the country’s violent conflict. Yet beginning in 2013, civil society groups began turning toward the state and its participatory institutions—specifically consultas populares—to contest the development of new mining and oil projects in rural regions. While only ten communities succeeded in implementing the consulta, those that did transformed exclusionary dynamics of Colombia’s extractive sector, if only temporarily.
Combining analysis of an original dataset of extractive-related consultas populares with in-country fieldwork and online interviews, this thesis uses mixed-methods to examine when and how civil society can activate and implement participatory democracy from below. I apply the analogy of Archimedes’ Lever to explain the rare successes of consulta implementation. With the right tools (participatory institutions) and the right circumstances (de jure support and weakened veto players), weak actors can lift the heavy weight of transformative participation.

Keywords: armed conflict
participation
mining
peace
Colombia
democracy
social movements
Advisor: Payne, L
Exploring Bangladeshi learner’s understanding of form, meaning and unction in L3 rench: the case of the subjunctive mood

This study aimed at exploring Bangladeshi L3 French learners’ understanding of the form, meaning and function of the subjunctive in French and their ability to use them in productive skills. The study adopted an exploratory sequential mixed method research design. The quantitative data were collected through Grammaticality Judgement Task (GJT), Elicited Imitation Task (EIT), spontaneous writing task and spontaneous oral task. The GJT and spontaneous writing task were administered to check learners’ explicit knowledge of the subjunctive in French while EIT and spontaneous oral task were administered to check learner’s implicit knowledge i.e. their competence in using the subjunctive mood spontaneously and subconsciously. The data were collected from 38 tertiary level students who have been studying for a BA or an MA in French Language and Culture (FLC). A semi-structured interview was also conducted among 6 purposefully selected participants based on their performance in the GJT and EIT. The analysis of quantitative data revealed that the learners performed very well in the GJT task implying that they have developed explicit knowledge about the French subjunctive. On the other hand, they have used only a very few subjunctives both in writing and speaking tasks. The study also identified their tendency to use non-subjunctive structures in the contexts where the use of subjunctive structures could express the same meaning. The study further revealed that the participants lacked proficiency in speaking and writing in French in general.

Keywords: Grammatical Judgement Task
French as foreign language, subjunctive in French, explicit and implicit knowledge, Grammaticality Judgement Task, Elicited Imitation Task
Elicited Imitation Task
Advisor: Woore, R
The contamination of the soul: Plato on evil

In this essay I want to explore the concept of evil in the sense of badness within Plato. I suggest that Plato had a theory of evil, and I will articulate and discuss its main features. Plato can be shown to have had a theory of evil in the sense that he had a coherent view about the nature of evil, how it is possible for things to be evil, and how these ideas fit together to explain the nature of more specific forms of evil such as, say, vice. I argue that Plato’s theory of evil is a very early version of the so-called privation theory of evil, according to which evil is the absence in a thing of what ought to be there given the essence it has as the kind of thing it is. The discussion will focus upon Plato’s doctrine of due measure as found in, among other places, Statesman, Timaeus, and Philebus.

Keywords: evil
Plato
Advisor: Judson, L
Magidor, O
Crisp, R
Single molecule mass photometry of DNA and DNA-protein interactions

Mass photometry (MP) based on interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT) is a novel, label-free imaging and quantification approach, which allows for the accurate mass measurement of biomolecules as well as the quantification of protein-protein interactions in solution. In this work, we show that this approach is equally applicable to DNA and DNA-protein interactions.
After illustrating iSCAT's ability to visualise the crystallisation events of non-biological systems, including alkali-metal halides and metal-organic frameworks, we switch to demonstrating the capability of MP to directly measure relative concentrations by molecular counting in complex DNA mixtures. Using a dsDNA ladder, we find a linear relationship between the number of bases per molecule and the associated imaging contrast for up to 1200 bp, enabling us to quantify dsDNA length with up to 2 bp accuracy.
We then present an experimental assay to measure the key interactions responsible for the cohesin assembly, its interactions with DNA, and their modulations by ATPase cycle, providing new insights into studying complex biomolecular assemblies and interactions with the multimeric nature.
Lastly, we introduce surface passivation to control the binding density of biomolecules to cope with increasing measurement complexity, introducing a path to detect low-abundance biomolecules of interest without a pre-purification step, also with the potential to measure low-affinity interactions.
These results together highlight mass photometry as a label-free, rapid, and accurate single molecule method complementary to existing techniques for characterising and quantifying DNA and DNA-protein interactions.

Keywords: DNA-protein interactions
crystallisation of MOFs
surface passivation
interferometric scattering microscopy
single molecule detection and quantification
mass photometry
loop extrusion
cohesin
Advisor: Kukura, P
Ritchie, G
Characterisation of fluorescent concentrators in visible light communication

Visible Light Communication (VLC) has gained significant attention in the last few years. In VLC, light from existing solid-state light sources is used as a data carrier. The maximum capacity of a VLC channel, like other communications systems, is dependent upon two key factors i.e. the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver and channel bandwidth. VLC systems rely upon light-emitting diode (LED) and lasers as the light sources. Unfortunately, due to the limited bandwidths of most commercial LEDs, a higher data rate can only be achieved by increasing the SNR at the receiver. One simple way to increase SNR is to use a large detector, however, this results in larger capacitance which consequently reduces the bandwidth of the detector. Previously, optical concentrators such as parabolic and compound parabolic concentrators have been coupled to the detectors to concentrate light onto the detector, however, these concentrators are limited by the conservation of etendue. Alternatively, a relatively new approach is to use fluorescent concentrators (FC) which do not conserve etendue and can provide much higher optical gains.
In this thesis, the performance of several types of FC is characterised for use in VLC links which includes gain, bandwidth, absorption-emission spectra, FOV and maximum achievable data rates. The selective absorption of different wavelengths by the FC means that they act as natural filters, therefore, the performance of a blue filter was compared to an FC. Experimental results are presented which show that the FC not only increased the FOV but also increased the maximum achievable data rate. In addition, the feasibility of enabling a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system with FCs is discussed. More importantly, a wide FOV receiver for a smartphone that was designed by coupling a commercially available fluorescent fibre to an APD is presented. This receiver provides a wide FOV of ±120°, for a smartphone application. Finally, a method to predict the OOK data rate is described with the experimental results.

Keywords: Fluorescent Concentrator
Visible Light Communication
Optical receiver
Advisor: Collins, S
O'Brien, D
Advances in statistical methods for large-scale binary-valued neuroimaging data

White matter lesions are common in the ageing brain and their size, location, and evolution have been shown to be informative of diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis. The work presented in this thesis explores the use of voxel-based approaches for modelling binary lesion data obtained from brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans. We seek to develop methods that are computationally efficient and stable for massive datasets with very low lesion incidence, and demonstrate the value of these methods with a real dataset to disentangle contributing risk factors of lesion incidence.
Our contributions are spread across three main chapters including two published articles and one preprint, and they could be summarised as
Chapter 2
Kindalova et al. (2021a) explore whether the potential gains in estimator accuracy justify the use of a more computationally intensive spatial modelling approach as opposed to a mass-univariate approach to modelling voxel-wise binary lesion data. A method comparison of three crosssectional lesion mapping approaches is facilitated through the development of a novel simulation framework of artificial lesion masks, which mimics features of real lesion masks.
Chapter 3
Veldsman et al. (2020) use data on 13,680 healthy ageing UK Biobank participants at one time point to explore the effects of the individual cerebrovascular risk factors (e.g. waist-to-hip ratio and smoking) on lesion load and on lesion probability, which has been an obstacle in the literature so far due to the dominating effect of hypertension and the presence of comorbidities.
Chapter 4
Kindalova et al. (2021b) adopt a generalized estimating equations approach to modelling longitudinal binary-valued outcomes. By adding a Jeffreys-prior penalty to log-link generalized estimating equations for relative risk regression, finiteness of the estimates along with superior convergence rate are demonstrated in an extensive simulation study as well as in a UK Biobank application on 1,578 participants with data from 2 visits.

Advisor: Nichols, T
Kosmidis, I
The socio-ecosystem of South-Western Asia Minor in the Roman period

The aim of this thesis is to explore the characteristics of the socio-ecosystem of south-western Asia Minor in the Roman period. I propose a new narrative anchored in complex systems approach reconstructing the co-evolution of the human populations and their environment with the main focus on the ancient regions of Pisidia and Pamphylia. This experimental work combines recent developments in a number of scholarly fields. The previous historical narratives on the regions, both ancient and modern, have been deconstructed. The numismatic material serves firstly as a starting point for the synthesis of the history of the region, and then as a material for performing Social Network Analysis of Anatolian ‘poleis’ and the creation of multiple graphs. The climatic framework of the Roman period has been discussed with the special focus on the proxies relevant to south-western Asia Minor. The past landscapes and their changes have been reconstructed with the use of palynology. My main hypothesis is that in the Roman Imperial period Anatolia operated not only on the basis of independent micro-ecologies, but also on the level of meso-scale entities. These were formed along river systems from their springs in the high mountains through upland and coastal plains to their outlets to the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas. Such regional socio-ecological systems were more connected internally than externally, characterised by hierarchical structures and developed thanks to both cultural and natural drivers. The cultural drivers included the interplay between imperial and local politics and economy, changes in land ownership patterns and land use practices. The main natural drivers were the shape and cycles of the local hydrosphere and climatic variability. The potential and connectivity of the regional and supra-regional socio-ecological systems of Anatolia had been accumulating over a longer period of time, but it was particularly encouraged and accelerated by the conditions created effectively by the Pax Romana, and this proved later to be the basis of the resilience of the Roman Empire in Anatolia. My reconstruction tries to grasp the dynamics of these processes in Pisidia and Pamphylia and add nuance to earlier syntheses on the region.

Keywords: Social Network Analysis
Roman Provincial Coinage
Palynology
Asia Minor
Pamphylia
Environmental History
Climate
Panarchy
Roman Early Imperial Period
Roman Empire
Pisidia
Advisor: Ma, J
Thonemann, P
A diagrammatic approach to unitary representations of rational Cherednik algebras

This thesis investigates the image of modules of rational Cherednik algebra under the KZ functor and its the compatibility with the unitarity conditions of modules of cyclotomic Hecke algebras. The special case of type A has been well-studied in the literature. Here we aim to generalize the result to rational Cherednik algebras of G(l, 1, n) with generic parameters, and postulate that the KZ functor preserves unitarity. The approach is via the isomorphism between the KZ functor and the direct sum of generalized weight space functors, which leads to the introduction of weighted Khovanov-Lauda-Rouquier (KLR) algebras encoding the action of the intertwining operators. The cyclotomic Hecke algebra whose representations are images under the KZ functor is isormorphic to the cyclotomic KLR algebra as a subalgebra of the weighted KLR algebra. We use this subalgebra as a bridge to discuss how the image of the direct sum of generalized weight space functors becomes a representation of the cyclotomic Hecke algebra, and show that KZ (Mc(λ)) ≅ Vλtr for generic parameters. Then we pass the *-operation on the rational Cherednik algebra to the cyclotomic Hecke algebra. We compare the *-operation with the star-operation that defines unitarity of cyclotomic Hecke algebras. Furthermore, we prove a stronger statement by equating the asymptotic signature of the Hermitian form βc,λ of rational Cherednik algebras with the signature of Hermitian forms of cyclotomic Hecke algebras.

Keywords: Unitary representations
KLR algebra
Rational Cherednik algebra
Cyclotomic Hecke algebra
Advisor: Ciubotaru
McGerty, K