VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The aesthetics of videogame music

The videogame now occupies a unique territory in contemporary culture that offers a new perspective on conceptions of high and low art. While the fear that the majority of videogames 'pacify' their audience in an Adornian "culture industry" is not without justification, its reductionism can be countered by a recognition of the diversity and aesthetic potential of the medium. This has been proposed by sociologist, Graeme Kirkpatrick, although without close attention to the role of music. Videogame music often operates in similar ways to music in other mixed-media scenarios, such as film, or opera. In the same way that film music cannot be completely divorced from film, videogame music is contingent on and a crucial part of the videogame aesthetic. However, the interactive nature of the medium—its différance—has naturally led to the development of nonlinear musical systems that tailor music in real time to the game's dynamically changing dramatic action. Musical non-linearity points beyond both music and videogames (and their respective discourses) toward broader issues pertinent to contemporary musicology and critical thinking, not least to matters concerning high modernism (traditionally conceived of as resistant to mass culture). Such issues include Barthes's "death of the author", the significance of order/disorder as a formal spectrum, and postmodern conceptions and experiences of temporality. I argue that in this sense the videogame medium—and its music—warrants attention as a unique but not sui generis aesthetic experience. Precedent can be found for many of the formal ideas employed in such systems in certain aspects of avant-garde art, and especially in the aleatoric music prevalent in the 1950s and 60s. This thesis explores this paradox by considering videogames as both high and low, and, more significantly, I argue that the aesthetics of videogame music draw attention to the centrality of "play" in all cultural objects.

Keywords: aesthetics
videogame music
ludomusicology
Advisor: Franklin, P
Making friends: amity in American foreign policy

This thesis examines an important but understudied phenomenon in international politics: the role of amity in foreign policy. The core research question is "how have American friendships for specified others been made possible?" Drawing on the logic of securitization, this thesis employs Aristotle's notion of character friends as Other Selves and Judith Butler's concept of performativity to elaborate an international process of friendship or amitization. In doing so, the thesis employs critical discourse analysis of presidential rhetoric and popular culture to elucidate the process through which discourses of similarity become naturalized frames of reference within the conduct of foreign policy. It argues that friendship emerges when a state comes to see itself in an other and that this similarity (re)produces a certain form of state identity that enables and forecloses certain policy options vis-à-vis friends. Friendship manifests in a habitual, or naturalized, disposition to treat friends better than others. As such, it can account for how certain policies and postures, such as uncritical and often unconditional support for subjects positioned as "friends," have come to be pursued as common sense. Amitization is illustrated by assessing three case studies: the Anglo-American "special relationship;" the US-Israel "unbreakable bond;" and America's membership of "the Atlantic Community." Specifically, the thesis similarly demonstrates the ways in which amity accounts for how supererogatory commitments such as vast financial assistance, diplomatic support, information sharing, security guarantees and concern for the welfare of these specified others have come to be seen as unquestionably legitimate policies in the broader trajectory of American foreign policy. Amity matters and the practices of amitization are inseparable from intelligible foreign policy.

Advisor: Khong, Y
Assessment of anti-merozoite antibody function in the context of blood-stage malaria vaccine development

In regions endemic for malaria, natural exposure results in an acquired immunity which protects individuals from severe disease. However, no vaccine against the blood-stage of malaria, against which naturally-acquired immunity is targeted, currently exists that is capable of emulating, or out-performing, natural protection. To rationally direct the next generation of blood-stage malaria vaccine development, a greater understanding of the immunological mechanisms involved in clinical protection is required.
To date, the assessment of naturally-acquired and vaccine-induced immunity to the blood-stage of malaria has suffered from a paucity of in vitro immunological assays that are both robust and reproducible, whilst allowing for assessment of anti-parasitic activity induced by antibodies, either alone, or in conjunction with immune cells. Thus this Thesis describes the development of the antibody-dependent respiratory burst (ADRB) assay, for assessment of blood-stage immunity against Plasmodium falciparum, as well as the Duffy antigen receptor for chemokines (DARC) – Duffy binding protein (DBP) binding inhibition assay, for assessing antibody mediated immunity to P. vivax. A reproducible and standardised assay of ADRB activity was developed here and applied to studies of immunity in both mice and humans. ADRB activity, which assesses antibodies' ability to activate oxidative burst in neutrophils via Fc receptor (FcR)-dependent pathways, was shown to associate with clinical protection in a cohort from Mali where FcR-independent immunological assays, such as the assay of growth inhibition activity, did not. This work thus elucidates the importance of FcR-dependent immunity to P. falciparum malaria and establishes the ADRB assay as a useful tool for future vaccine development. In addition, the DARC-DBP binding inhibition assay was established and utilised to assess inhibitory activity of antibodies induced in the first Phase I clinical trial of this antigen. Results identify the need for significant improvements in vaccine design, and show the utility of the assay as a tool for assessing future blood-stage vaccine development efforts against this neglected parasite.

Keywords: Neutrophil
Antibody
Vaccine
Malaria
Advisor: Draper, S
The impact of disjunction on reasoning under existential rules

Ontological database management systems are a powerful tool that combine traditional database techniques with ontological reasoning methods. In this setting, a classical extensional database is enriched with an ontology, or a set of logical assertions, that describe how new, intensional knowledge can be derived from the extensional data. Conjunctive queries are therefore answered against this combined knowledge base of extensional and intensional data.
Many languages that represent ontologies have been introduced in the literature. In this thesis we will focus on existential rules (also called tuple-generating dependencies or Datalog± rules), and three established languages in this area, namely guarded-based rules, sticky rules and weakly-acyclic rules. The main goal of the thesis is to enrich these languages with non-deterministic constructs (i.e. disjunctions) and investigate the complexity of the answering conjunctive queries under these extended languages. As is common in the literature, we will distinguish between combined complexity, where the database, the ontology and the query are considered as input, and data complexity, where only the database is considered as input. The latter case is relevant in practice, as usually the ontology and the query can be considered as fixed, and are usually much smaller than the database itself.
After giving appropriate definitions to extend the considered languages to disjunctive existential rules, we establish a series of complexity results, completing the complexity picture for each of the above languages, and four different query languages: arbitrary conjunctive queries, bounded (hyper-)treewidth queries, acyclic queries and atomic queries. For the guarded-based languages, we show a strong 2EXPTIME lower bound for general queries that holds even for fixed ontologies, and establishes 2EXPTIME-completeness of the query answering problem in this case. For acyclic queries, the complexity can be reduced to EXPTIME, if the predicate arity is bounded, and the problem even becomes tractable for certain restricted languages, if only atomic queries are used. For ontologies represented by sticky disjunctive rules, we show that the problem becomes undecidable, even in the case of data complexity and atomic queries. Finally, for weakly-acyclic rules, we show that the complexity increases from 2EXPTIME to coN2EXPTIME in general, and from tractable to coNP in case of the data complexity, independent of which query language is used.
After answering the open complexity questions, we investigate applications and relevant consequences of our results for description logics and give two generic complexity statements, respectively, for acyclic and general conjunctive query answering over description logic knowledge bases. These generic results allow for an easy determination of the complexity of this reasoning task, based on the expressivity of the considered description logic.

Keywords: Description Logics
Tuple-Generating Dependencies
Disjunction
Complexity
Existential Rules
A fundamental perspective on the effects of sulfur modification for transition metal nanocatalysts

The application of heterogeneous catalysts to industrial processes is a key factor in the synthesis of nearly all chemicals currently produced, however billions of pounds are lost every year due to unplanned reactor shutdowns and catalyst replacement as a result of catalytic deactivation processes. Poisoning of heterogeneous catalysts by sulfur compounds is a particularly prominent class of deactivation processes, affecting a wide range of catalytic materials and catalytic reactions, including the industrially-prominent Haber-Bosch process for the synthesis of ammonia and steam reforming of methane for the synthesis of hydrogen. However, while the effects of sulfur adsorption on catalytic behaviour are often unmistakably apparent, the fundamental interactions leading to these effects are not yet well understood.
The work presented in this thesis uses a combination of models systems, novel and traditional characterization techniques, and methods of modifying catalyst geometric and electronic structure to approach the topic of sulfur poisoning from a fundamental perspective. Particular focus is placed on using selective decoration of active sites to develop a system of model hydrogenation reactions to relate changes in catalytic behaviour to changes in geometric and electronic structure. Application of these model reactions to investigate the sensitivities of palladium- and ruthenium-based catalytic systems to modification by sulfur shows contrasting effects for the two metals. While both systems exhibit similar geometric effects of modification, the palladium-based catalysts are far more sensitive than the ruthenium-based catalysts to modification of electronic structure. Additionally, controlled variation in particle size for the palladium-based catalysts demonstrates that catalytic behaviour is dominated by electronic structure for small nanoparticles and geometric structure for large nanoparticles. This leads small nanoparticles to show increased sensitivity to electronic modification effects resulting from sulfur adsorption.
Ultimately, the research presented within this thesis provides a basis for the intelligent design of heterogeneous catalysts for improving tolerance for sulfur poisoning, and for utilizing the effects of sulfur modification to optimize catalytic activity and selectivity for the synthesis of fine chemicals.

Keywords: Geometric modification
Sulfur poisoning
Catalyst deactivation
Catalytic hydrogenation
Electronic modification
Heterogeneous catalysis
Advisor: Tsang, E
Verification of message passing concurrent systems

This dissertation is concerned with the development of fully-automatic methods of verification, for message-passing based concurrent systems.
In the first part of the thesis we focus on Erlang, a dynamically typed, higher-order functional language with pattern-matching algebraic data types extended with asynchronous message-passing. We define a sound parametric control-flow analysis for Erlang, which we use to bootstrap the construction of an abstract model that we call Actor Communicating System (ACS). ACS are given semantics by means of Vector Addition Systems (VAS), which have rich decidable properties. We exploit VAS model checking algorithms to prove properties of Erlang programs such as unreachability of error states, mutual exclusion, or bounds on mailboxes. To assess the approach empirically, we constructed Soter, a prototype implementation of the verification method, thereby obtaining the first fully-automatic, infinite-state model checker for a core concurrent fragment of Erlang.
The second part of the thesis addresses one of the major sources of imprecision in the ACS abstraction: process identities. To study the problem of algorithmically verifying models where process identities are accurately represented we turn to the π-calculus, a process algebra based around the notion of name and mobility. The full π-calculus is Turing-powerful so we focus on the depth-bounded fragment introduced by Roland Meyer, which enjoys decidability of some verification problems. The main obstacle in using depth-bounded terms as a target abstract model, is that depth-boundedness of arbitrary π-terms is undecidable. We therefore consider the problem of identifying a fragment of depth-bounded π-calculus for which membership is decidable. We define the first such fragment by means of a novel type system for the π-calculus. Typable terms are ensured to be depth-bounded. Both type-checking and type inference are shown to be decidable. The constructions are based on the novel notion of Τ-compatibility, which imposes a hierarchy between names. The type system's main goal is proving that this hierarchy is preserved under reduction, even in the presence of unbounded name creation and mobility.

Keywords: Concurrency
Advisor: Ong, L
A study of the relationships between informal second language contact, vocabulary-related strategic behaviour and vocabulary gain in a study abroad context

This thesis reports on a longitudinal, mixed-methods study of the relationships between informal (i.e. out-of-class) second language (L2) contact, vocabulary-related strategic behaviour and vocabulary gain in a study abroad context. The study addressed three main gaps in knowledge that arose from analysis of the literature: (1) the evidence of informal L2 contact was largely unreliable, ungeneralisable, or both; (2) the evidence of vocabulary-related strategic behaviour in informal L2 contact was neither context nor task specific; and (3) there was no evidence of the interplay between informal L2 contact, vocabulary-related strategic behaviour and vocabulary gain in a study abroad context.
The sample (n=241) were adults undertaking a study abroad experience (SAE) in England, who comprised a range of nationalities and first language backgrounds and for whom the majority of the SAE was spent outside of the classroom. A vocabulary test was administered at the beginning and end of the SAE. A questionnaire was administered during the SAE to determine the most highly identified with informal L2 contact scenarios and out-of-class vocabulary-related strategies. Subsequently, an innovative research tool comprising computer-based simulations of the most identified with scenarios was developed and used as the stimulus in semi-structured interviews to capture task and/or context-specific vocabulary-related strategic behaviour. Analysis grouped participants by length of stay and location.
The most highly identified with informal L2 contact scenarios involved participants seeking information from external sources, such as interlocutors, posters or websites. The vocabulary-related strategies most highly identified with by the sample pertained to the use of a newly encountered lexical item; that is, they were strategies in which the learner used or prepared to use a lexical item that they had decided to engage with strategically. The strategic behaviour manifested in response to the simulation tool (the 'OWLS') provided strong evidence in support of the fundamental considerations of task, context and intention in strategy-based research. Regression analysis revealed that informal L2 contact scenarios that were less strategically prohibitive and strategies that were less context-dependent were predictors of vocabulary gain. The pedagogical implications of these findings are far- reaching in terms of preparing L2 learners for informal contact on a SAE and guiding their manipulation of that contact for maximum linguistic gain.

Keywords: vocabulary acquisition
Advisor: Macaro, E
Summoning the courage for philosophising: a new reading of Heidegger's the fundamental concepts of metaphysics

This thesis provides an original reading of Heidegger's 1929-30 lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. Currently, the notoriety of FCM stems from controversy surrounding its description of human beings as 'world-forming,' and of animals as comparatively 'poor in world.' These propositions are interpreted within the secondary literature as a reinforcement of ontotheological and humanistic metaphysics. However, this standard interpretation misses the more complex and subtle significance of this material in the broader context of the lectures. I argue that Heidegger's 'comparative examination' forms part of a wider metaphysical project of interrogating a contemporary 'delusion,' a metaphysical division drawn between 'life' and 'spirit' engendered by an 'anthropological' worldview which pictures man as a composite of those two elements. Heidegger traces the manifestations of this delusion in Kulturphilosophie and biology, before attempting to recover a more genuinely metaphysical attitude, one founded not on anthropocentric 'worldviews' but on a direct, courageous 'confrontation' with ourselves. Heidegger argues that this confrontation must take its orientation from Greek thought, in which man is interpreted as that part of physis that apprehends physis as a whole. For Heidegger, this notion of the human as a kind of 'meta-physical' being enables us to grasp the coextensive essence of the human and of metaphysics. I argue that Heidegger's position can be extended and enriched if we consider it in conjunction with what he presents in the lecture course as one of its great adversaries; for the German tradition of philosophical anthropology, rather than being a straightforward articulation of the life-spirit divide that Heidegger wishes to eschew, actually harmonises with and deepens Heidegger's reflections in FCM concerning the nature of the human as a meta-physical being.

Advisor: Mulhall, S
Turkish loanwords in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Bosnian and Bulgarian Franciscan texts

This dissertation analyses when, how and why Turkish loanwords became incorporated into Bosnian and Bulgarian, as seen in the writings of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Bosnian and Bulgarian Franciscans. I analyse Bosnian works (religious and secular) by Matija Divkovi&cacute;, Ivan Bandulavi&cacute;, Pavo Posilovi&cacute; Mošunjanin, Mihovil Radni&cacute;, Stjepan Margiti&cacute; Markovac, Lovro Bra&ccaron;uljevi&cacute;, Filip Lastri&cacute;, Nikola Marčinkuši&cacute; Lašvanin, Marko Dobreti&cacute;, Bono Beni&cacute;, and Grgo Iliji&cacute;-Varešanin. As a Bulgarian counterpart, I analyse three eighteenth-century Bulgarian Franciscan manuscripts and the works of Petar Bogdan Bakši&cacute; and Filip Stanislavov.
The dissertation consists of eight chapters. The first chapter gives background information on Turkish presence in Bosnia and Bulgaria, the history of the Franciscans in Bosnia and Bulgaria, short biographies of each of the writers whose works are analysed, phonology and orthography. The second chapter focuses on the complications regarding establishing earliest attestations for turkisms in Bosnian and Bulgarian. The third chapter discusses the nominal morphology of turkisms in Bosnian and Bulgarian. This chapter analyses why turkisms developed the gender that they did when borrowed from a language that does not have gender as a category. Chapter four addresses the verbal morphology of turkisms in Bosnian and Bulgarian. Verbal prefixes are discussed in detail, as are Turkish voiced suffixes in Bulgarian. The fifth chapter analyses adjectives and adverbs, with focus on gender and number agreement. The sixth chapter addresses the use of Turkish conjunctions. The seventh chapter looks at the motivation, semantics and setting of turkisms in Bosnian and Bulgarian. The conclusion addresses how morphology, semantics, motivation and setting of turkisms relate to their chronology in Bosnian and Bulgarian and how these areas differ from language to language.

Advisor: MacRobert, M
Biochemical and functional characterization of the RNA binding protein SAF-A/hnRNP U and investigation of its potential role in mammalian X chromosome inactivation

X chromosome inactivation (XCI) is an important mechanism for gene dosage compensation between XY males and XX females during early embryonic development of eutherian mammals. The major regulator of XCI is the long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) X inactive specific transcript (Xist). Xist RNA is believed to recruit epigenetic modifiers and initiate a silencing cascade that alters the chromatin structure and culminates in the transcriptional repression of most genes at the inactive X chromosome (Xi). Though extensively studied, the protein factors involved in the recruitment, spreading and maintenance of Xist RNA at the Xi are largely unknown.
Recently published studies provide evidence that the DNA and RNA binding nuclear matrix protein scaffold attachment factor A/heterogeneous ribonucleoprotein U (SAF-A/hnRNP U) is required for Xist localization to the Xi. These studies, however, are incomplete in that they neither provide information on the RNA binding consensus sequence for SAF-A/hnRNP U on Xist, nor on its functional role in XCI.
The present study was designed to re-investigate the role of SAF-A/hnRNP U in XCI using state-of-the-art techniques, notably fluorescence recovery after photo-bleaching (FRAP), 3D-structured illumination microscopy (3D-SIM), and in vivo crosslinking and RNA immunoprecipitation (CLIP).
The results indicate that SAF-A/hnRNP U exists in two forms; a highly dynamic pan-nuclear protein and a stably Xi-associated form. 3D-SIM reveals that the latter closely associates with Xist RNA, and lines out the interchromatin channels within the Barr body. This finding suggests that SAF-A/hnRNP U takes part in the structural organization of the Xi by creating a secluded chromatin environment that retains XCI factors in their dedicated nuclear location. In contrast to observations made in microscopy imaging, biochemical experiments did not confirm a direct binding of SAF-A/hnRNP U to Xist RNA. This observation led to the conclusion that the protein plays an indirect, structural role in XCI.

Keywords: X Chromosome Inactivation
Nuclear Scaffold
Advisor: Brockdorff, N