VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A history of medical technology in post-colonial India

Over the past 60 years, India has undergone immense political, economic, and social changes, which have led to its emergence as a global economic power and regional military power. During this period, the population has surged, growing from 233 million to 1.2 billion people, making India the second most populous nation in the world. In the course of this change, there have been key indicators of medical progress, such as rising life expectancy and a falling infant mortality rate. Another striking indicator, specifically in the area of medical technology, is the fact that India in 2006 was a net exporter of HIV medications to dozens of countries around the globe, earning a reputation as the pharmacist of the developing world. Although many books and papers have been written about the emergence of the country’s economy and military, little has been written on how it has been able to achieve its leadership in medical technology.
This thesis, 'A History of Medical Technology in Postcolonial India: 1947—1991', is the first major study examining the development of medical technology in India in the period directly following colonial rule. The period covered in this research is crucial because it highlights the evolution and impact of medical technology in postcolonial India, leading up to, but excluding, the free-market reforms enacted by the Indian government in 1991. This thesis will also illustrate the impact diffusion had on the evolution of medical technology.
Most importantly, this thesis introduces a new concept appropriate to understanding India's trajectory in this period: the medical technology complex. It will be shown that this complex consists of different groups working toward an aligned objective. It is not the point of this thesis to characterize the medical technology complex in a positive light or a negative one. Its primary concern is to demonstrate through historical evidence that this construct grew throughout the twentieth century and still exists today.

Keywords: Diffusion
WHO
Technology
History
Devices
Innovation
Pharmacutical
Rockefeller
India
Supplies
Medical
Advisor: Harrison, M
Probing the molecular basis of photochemistry and photophysics with vibrational coherence spectroscopy

We present a time-domain impulsive vibrational spectroscopy (IVS) setup capable of recording background- and baseline-free Raman spectra of excited electronic states in condensed-phase molecular systems. The setup records vibrational Raman spectra from 50-3000 cm-1 and is readily extended to follow spectral evolutions with a time resolution of &LT;20 fs, opening up the possibility for multi-dimensional Raman spectroscopy. Based on the setup, we explore a wide range of photochemical reactions aimed at gaining fundamental insights in the chemistry of excited electronic states.
In rhodopsin, we investigate the consequences of vibrational wavepacket motion through a conical intersection. We identify the C11-H hydrogen out-of-plane mode as a coupling mode and devise a general model of how vibrational coherences can be used to obtain otherwise inaccessible structural information. In a second experiment, we determine the photoproduct distribution and dynamics upon isotopic substitution of selected hydrogen atoms along the retinal backbone. The results suggest a re-definition of the traditional Jablonski diagram for ultrafast photoreactions, which proceed faster than vibrational relaxation.
In channelrhodopsin-1, we structurally characterise the primary photoproduct in the photocycle to be of 13-cis character. The study highlights the capabilities of IVS to obtain structural information for short-lived intermediate structures which are otherwise challenging to obtain.
For the green fluorescent protein and all-trans retinal protonated Schiff base, we identify key excited-state (intermediate) structures and complement the studies with multi-dimensional Raman spectroscopy. The results provide a first picture of the structural origin of energy flow directly after photoexcitation.
This thesis emphasises the capabilities of IVS beyond a proof-of-principle experiment and outlines the high potential of time-domain vibrational spectroscopy to reveal detailed structural information on ultrafast processes with high temporal resolution and sensitivity.

Advisor: Kukura, P
Justification to all: liberalism, legitimacy, and theology

This thesis concerns the reason-giving aspect of legitimacy. What reasons must be used to justify coercive laws, if citizens are to be respected as morally free and equal, in the face of their many moral, religious, and philosophical disagreements?
Many theorists endorse 'political liberalism', according to which laws must be justified to all citizens by reasons that they can accept. This claim has been interpreted in two conflicting ways. The dominant view, which I call 'public reason liberalism', holds that laws must be justified by appeal to a set of values that all citizens can share, despite their many disagreements. In the first part of the thesis, I argue that this view should be rejected in favour of 'justificatory liberalism', which holds that laws must be conclusively justified to each citizen on the basis of all of their reasons. I also respond to the challenge of the 'right reasons view', which rejects the claim that laws need to be justified to citizens by reasons they can accept.
Several prominent objections to political liberalism claim that it is incompatible with committed religious belief. In the second part of the thesis I investigate whether this is the case with regard to Christianity, by engaging with Christian theology. I argue that many of the common objections to political liberalism fail, but so do certain arguments that aim to show that Christians ought to endorse public reason liberalism on the basis of their religious beliefs. Nonetheless, Christians can accept political liberalism, and justificatory liberalism in particular. The requirements of justificatory liberalism and individuals' Christian beliefs will sometimes conflict, however. Justificatory liberals should accept that individuals can sometimes justifiably prioritise the latter over the former.
My overall argument is that justificatory liberalism offers the best account of the reason-giving aspect of legitimacy, and that this is partly shown by its compatibility with Christian theology.

Keywords: Public justification
Legitimacy
Justificatory liberalism
Public reason
Advisor: White, S
Volcanism as an active planetary process on Venus

Volcanism has been a crucial planetary process in the evolution of Venus, shaping the surface and contributing to the formation of the atmosphere and clouds. Some of the key outstanding questions are whether or not volcanism is active today, and what range of volcanic styles have occurred in the past or may occur in the future. This project uses three methods of investigating these questions. Firstly, computer modelling is used to simulate volcanic processes under Venusian conditions using a steady-state, isothermal, homogeneous flow model. It was found that the addition of CO2 to an H2O-driven eruption reduces the H2O requirement for explosive activity, and that eruptions possible on Venus may be detectable in Venus Express data. Next, radar datasets from both Venus and Earth were investigated with the aim of assessing relationships between differing volcanic deposits on Venus and their likely mode of formation, and using trends in the Earth radar data to inform us of what the Venus observations may be telling us. It was found that, in some cases, regional-scale radar observations may be useful in identifying deposit types, but the data used in the study were insufficient to define a globally applicable deposit identification scheme, pending further study. Finally, mapping and spatial analysis of volcanic features and rifts was performed to evaluate the nature of the interaction of volcanism within the global tectonic environment. Spatial relationships are consistent with aspects of the directional model of Venus' evolution, favouring a shift from globally dispersed, relatively small-scale, volcanism spread randomly across the planetary surface towards a gradually more rift-focused distribution indicative of a corresponding shift in global tectonic regime. These various strands are brought together here in order to contribute to our further understanding of volcanism as a fundamental Venusian planetary process.

Keywords: Volcanology
Modelling
Venus
Advisor: Mather, T
Pyle, D
Small scale mechanics applied to nuclear materials

Ion implantation is increasingly used as a cost effective and safe alternative to neutron irradiation in the study of materials for future nuclear applications. However, the micron-sized layers of radiation damage necessitate the use of small scale testing techniques to obtain mechanical properties data from these materials. This thesis explores such techniques, highlighting the relative merits and limitations of nanoindentation, and the deflection of FIB-machined specimens, in a variety of applications.
As a simple starting point, the effect of crystal orientation on nanoindentation hardness and modulus is explored in a pure Fe polycrystal, with selected indents examined further post-test by HR-EBSD and AFM. Hardness in grains with &LT;111&GT; and &LT;110&GT; surface normal directions is found to be &Tilde; 20 % higher (&Tilde; 1.1 GPa) than those with &LT;100&GT; surface normals (&Tilde; 0.95 GPa), whilst no discernible trend is seen for modulus.
A novel L-shaped micro-cantilever technique is developed and used to extract single crystal elastic constants within a single grain of Fe. A computational routine minimising the difference between experimental data and the response of an FE model is used to extract such constants, with a good agreement between experiment and literature found after two runs.
Slip transfer across grain boundaries is studied in unirradiated and ion-irradiated samples using nanoindentation. Grain boundaries in the irradiated specimen show less resistance to slip transfer, and the presence of dislocation bursts associated with the operation of dislocation sources in adjacent grains is reduced compared to the unirradiated sample.
Finally, the effects of size and orientation on plastic properties are examined in FIB-machined micro-cantilevers. Two different functions are used to fit flow stresses evaluated at different maximum strains to beam width, and compared. Cantilevers orientated for multiple slip are observed to have lower flow stresses than those aligned for single slip with a Schmid factor of 0.5.
The work in this thesis highlights the importance of both types of small scale mechanical test in providing information of relevance to candidate materials for nuclear applications. Nanoindentation is able to quickly probe mechanical characteristics, but at the expense of a well-defined stress state under the indenter tip, whereas FIB-machined specimens can provide a simpler stress state to test, for higher costs of time and instrument usage.

Keywords: Micromechanics
Small scale mechanics
Ion Irradiation
Iron
Grain Boundaries
Nuclear Fusion
Elasticity
Nanoindentation
Advisor: Wilkinson, A
Opacity and saturable absorption in solid-density plasmas generated by an x-ray free-electron-laser

The arrival of 4th generation light-sources has opened up new regimes in x-ray–matter interactions. A billion times spectrally brighter than the preceding x-ray sources, free-electron-lasers (FELs) can deposit large amounts of energy into a system in less than 100 fs. Since the absorption of x-rays is reasonably well understood and the pulse length is so short, the plasma conditions created are well characterized. The work presented in this thesis relates to a series of experiments where solid aluminium foils were heated with the focussed FEL radiation. The way that the opacity of the FEL heated foil would affect the observed emission spectrum is investigated. The extent to which the opacity influences the emission spectra is found to have intensity and photon energy dependencies. The transmission of the x-ray pulse used to generate a solid-density aluminium plasma is studied in both simulation work using the collisional-radiative code SCFLY and experiment. The phenomenon of saturable absorption is seen to occur, caused by the system being ionized to such an extent that none of the ions present can absorb the x-ray photons through K-shell photoionization. The use of the FEL beam in a split and delay scheme was also explored. Simulations of the time dependent changes in transmission and what may be observed were performed.

Advisor: Wark, J
Pancreas transplantation: associations with graft failure and measures of function

Pancreas transplantation, either as a simultaneous pancreas kidney (SPK) or an isolated pancreas (IP), is a successful treatment option for some people with diabetes; however, grafts at the highest risk of failing are difficult to identify, and a means of monitoring graft function effectively post-transplant is lacking. The work in this thesis aimed to identify factors associated with pancreas graft failure and explore metabolic features of early graft dysfunction. First, the published Pancreas Donor Risk Index tool was predictive using UK National data in SPK but not IP transplantation, suggesting greater influence of recipient and post-transplant factors in determining IP graft survival. HLA antibody monitoring showed that the development of de novo DSA post-transplant was associated with poorer graft outcomes, particularly in IP transplant; and assessment of ICA and GADA autoantibodies also showed a deleterious effect of pre-transplant autoantibody positivity in IP transplantation; suggesting IP recipients may be immunological disparate to those receiving SPK. A retrospective analysis of early post-transplant oral glucose tolerance tests showed impaired glucose tolerance to be associated with later graft failure, and led to prospective studies examining glucose homeostasis in the early post-transplant period. Early impaired glucose tolerance was correlated to hyperglycaemia detected on continuous glucose monitoring. Analysis of patients pre- and post-transplant confirmed complete normalisation of glucagon concentrations early post-transplant and early impairment in insulin secretion. A comparison of the response to oral and intravenous glucose demonstrated that insulin secretion may be affected by the absence of the incretin effect early after pancreas transplantation, associated with reduced GLP-1 but normal GIP concentrations evident post-transplant. The incretin effect became established by 3 months post-transplant, and was associated with an increased GLP-1 response. Together these studies demonstrated novel features associated with high risk of graft failure which could help to identify patients who may benefit from therapeutic interventions aimed at improving graft outcomes.

Advisor: Friend, P
Gough, S
Sharples, E
Educated youth in Kenya: negotiating waithood by greening livelihoods

The burgeoning scholarship on African youth indicates that young people are experiencing difficulties in attaining social adulthood and spend extended time in waithood – a period of economic and job insecurities that is becoming a permanent marker of their youth, affecting their life trajectories and future aspirations (Honwana, 2012; Locke & te Lintelo, 2012). Youth waithood involves navigating precarious conditions arising under neoliberalism and its economic liberalization reforms, and developing new subjectivities resulting from the acquisition of extra skills set, maintaining social networks, and engaging in new political formations (Jeffrey, 2008).
Informed by concepts of neoliberal subjectivities, opportunity spaces, and Bourdieu’s forms of capital, I conducted qualitative research with university students in six public universities, and with educated young farmers in Western, Eastern, and Central regions of Kenya. I investigated how Kenyan youth navigate waithood by occupying new opportunity spaces opened up by student environmentalism and agricultural entrepreneurialism – two areas that have been reconfigured by global discourses of environmental change, green jobs, and agricultural transformation.
My findings show that the occupational aspirations of educated youth were changing to include navigation strategies of portfolio occupations, tarmacking, and side-hustling. Within the new opportunity spaces, these youth realized neoliberal subjectivities that enabled them to garner capitals through self-making, entrepreneurialism, and reworking of elite distinctions. Student environmentalists’ navigation strategies included acquiring environmental knowledge and work experiences; joining networks of environmental professionals; and participating in environmental anti-politics. Educated young farmers embraced ideologies of portfolio occupations and green livelihoods. They also relied on the reconfigurations of gendered identities and the rural-urban divide, competitive individualism, and associational life to rework their occupational aspirations and maintain elite distinctions in society.
In sum, negotiating youth waithood is a complex, intertwined, and uncertain process involving flexibilities and chance opportunities to access, maintain, and utilize capitals. The emergent subjectivities remain insecure, unstable and do not necessarily guarantee exiting waithood.

Keywords: neoliberal subjectivities
young people
waithood
Advisor: Daley, P
Joint survival models: a Bayesian investigation of longitudinal volatility

In this thesis, we investigate joint models of longitudinal and time-to-event data. We extend the current literature by developing a model that assigns subject-specific variance to the longitudinal process and links this variance to the survival outcome. During development we provide the theoretical definition of the model and its properties, and explore the practical implications for estimating the parameters. We use Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, and compare the different samplers used in similar models in the literature with our custom MCMC algorithm, written in C++.
We use the Deviance Information Criterion to perform model comparisons, and we formalise suggestions from the literature to use posterior predictive model checking to construct a goodness-of-fit test for our model. We use the model on two real-world datasets to investigate claims relating to the importance of blood pressure volatility on stroke risk, and examine the consequences of ignoring measurement error.
We amend our model to accommodate competing risk, time-dependent baseline hazard rates, and bivariate longitudinal processes --- at which point we update our MCMC samplers and identify the issues. Finally, we use our code in a separate, but related, collaboration with other researchers to analyse repeated counts data.

Advisor: Steinsaltz, D
Public reasoning and reciprocity: reconceptualising accountability in the arm's length governance of emerging biotechnologies in the UK

In the UK, public access to emerging biotechnologies is largely regulated by three government bodies that operate at arm's length from democratically elected representatives: the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Purposefully situated beyond traditional lines of electoral accountability, how can these independent bodies (commonly referred to as 'quangos') conceptualize and demonstrate their accountability to the public in regulating technically complex and morally controversial technologies? After articulating this general theoretical tension between independent and accountable decision-making in the arm's length context, I illustrate how it generates distinct, practical challenges within the HFEA, NICE and the MHRA.
To navigate this general tension and address its practical ramifications, I invoke political theories of public reason and deliberative democracy, as well as recent attempts to apply these theories to the governance of biotechnologies. Through a critical analysis of these accounts, I articulate a new framework for 'public accountability as reciprocity' in the arm's length context. Its four, process-oriented conditions, of 1) reciprocal reasoning, 2) acceptance of deliberative disagreement, 3) voting, and 4) fostering the means of deliberative resistance, affirm the goal of identifying mutually acceptable reasons for collective decisions, but take seriously the fact that characteristics of emerging biotechnologies will often confound such attempts. Taken together, these conditions provide a more theoretically robust and normatively legitimate approach than existing accounts, notably 'accountability for reasonableness.'
Next, I translate the theoretical claims of this framework into practice, illustrating how its conditions may be fruitfully applied towards the resolution of the practical challenges identified within the HFEA, NICE, and MHRA. In the HFEA, public accountability as reciprocity provides a robust approach to moral reasoning in the body's deliberations and resituates the role of public consultation. In NICE, it suggests a justifiable and properly tailored role for patient involvement in technology appraisals. Finally, in the MHRA, it explains why a growing number of devices defy the institution’s traditional assessments of safety and effectiveness and offers reforms to its regulatory boundaries.
I conclude with a set of policy recommendations for creating and operating arm's length bodies, as well as an account of broader contributions to the literature on public reasoning, the concept of 'ethics expertise,' and the practice of patient and public involvement.

Keywords: PPI
ethical expertise
expertise
telehealth
QALY
cost effectiveness
sex selection
public consultation
cognitive enhancement
patient and public involvement
Advisor: Savulescu, J
Dunn, M
Goold, I