VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Adiposity and atrial fibrillation: An observational, genetic, and phenotypic study in UK Biobank

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia and is associated with a number of cardiovascular complications including stroke. While obesity has been shown to be associated with risk of AF, body-size and shape are heterogeneous and differ substantially by sex. Additionally, the independent causal relevance of related anthropometric measures remains uncertain. Pericardial adipose tissue (PAT) has been associated with risk of AF; however, the strength of the association between PAT and risk of AF is unclear. Adiposity has also been associated with inflammation; although, whether inflammation mediates associations between adiposity and risk of AF has not been established.
Methods: Using data from UK Biobank (UKB) the independent associations between anthropometric measures and risk of AF were explored in men and women. A novel PAT area phenotype was developed in a sub-set of UKB participants using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging data and used to examine the association with risk of AF. Genetic scores for a number of anthropometric measures and inflammatory proteins were developed. The associations between genetically predicted anthropometric measures and both inflammation and risk of AF were explored. Mediation analyses used to determine the proportion of the effect of anthropometric measures on risk of AF mediated by a set of systemic inflammatory proteins.
Results: Lean mass, fat mass, and waist circumference were all independently associated with risk of AF in both men and women. A novel PAT phenotype was developed in ~3,500 participants. Greater PAT area was shown to be associated with risk of AF and was comparable to other anthropometric measures. When adjusted for abdominal visceral adipose tissue, the association between PAT area and risk of AF remained similar. Genetically predicted anthropometric measures including body mass index, waist circumference, fat mass, and lean mass were found to be associated with risk of AF. A set of genetically predicted inflammatory proteins were shown to be associated with risk of AF but to only mediate a modest proportion of the effect of anthropometric measures on risk of AF.
Conclusions: Anthropometric measures of both body size and body shape are independently causally associated with risk of AF in both men and women. PAT area was associated with risk of AF to a similar extent to other more easily obtained anthropometric measures. Genetically predicted systemic inflammatory proteins were associated with risk of AF but only mediated a modest proportion of the association between anthropometric measures and risk of AF.

Keywords: Mendelian randomization
adiposity
atrial fibrillation
obesity
Advisor: Hopewell, J
Casadei, B
The fate of Atlantic Water heat in the Arctic Ocean

Atlantic Water (AW) is the most significant source of oceanic heat in the Arctic Ocean, and has played a key role in recent Arctic sea ice loss. Better understanding of the spatial and temporal variability of AW heat and its future evolution is therefore key to understanding future Arctic change.
I use observations and model data from CESM-LE (Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble) to investigate 20th and 21st century AW layer changes. Observations show that AW heat has had an increased influence on the upper ocean in the eastern Arctic, but has become more isolated from the surface in the west. However, CESM-LE suggests that this is due to a regional lag in response, and that the AW will warm, freshen and shoal throughout the Arctic from the 2020s. These trends are anthropogenically forced. A shift in atmospheric circulation likely plays an important role in these changes, with the resultant atmospheric forcing from a weakened Beaufort High and expanded low over the eastern Arctic enhancing AW transport from the Atlantic, and causing more AW to be advected into the western Arctic.
Local processes such as mixing and cascading shelf flows also play an important role in modifying AW properties, and buffer against high frequency AW temperature variability.
In CESM-LE, despite AW warming and freshening, the stability of the upper water column increases in the future due to surface and halocline freshening. However, there is a shift to alpha ocean stratification in the summer Barents Sea towards the end of the 21st century which may have implications for AW heat loss and could occur in the Arctic basin itself in the longer term.
This thesis highlights the importance of AW heat in governing how the future Arctic may evolve in a changing climate, and the various processes that influence its fate.

Keywords: Arctic Ocean
Atlantic Water
Physical oceanography
Advisor: Johnson, H
Lique, C
The financing of low-cost, non-state schools in Africa

Much of the literature on the phenomenon of low-cost schools focuses on South Asia with little research on this in Africa. This study investigates if there is a shortfall in state provision of early-years and primary education in Africa, and if so, what the contributing factors are and what role low-cost schools are playing. The study investigates how such schools are funded, if they are able to access finance, and if not, what the barriers to finance are.
Research in seven African cities, involved listing state and non-state schools in low-income communities in order to establish the extent of low-cost schools. 1,390 schools were surveyed to identify factors contributing to the shortfall in state provision and shortfall in finance. Two case studies of low-cost school operators in Lagos and Nairobi were performed using semi-structured interviews.
The study finds a 52% shortfall in state provision of education ranging from 14% in Dar es Salaam to 86% in Kampala. The political economy of education impacts policy, regulation and funding of schools with African governments adopting a colonial legacy model of Western education which assumes majority state provision of primary education. However, early-years education is a priority for low-income households with 65% of low-cost schools providing early-years and primary education. With asymmetry of education quality information, locality and accountability are important in households establishing trust with schools.
Low-cost schools receive no state funding, rely almost entirely on households paying fees and only 15% have been able to access conventional finance. Barriers include lack of certification and institutional voids where schools are unbanked. New financial intermediaries are emerging to address the institutional void similar to the role played by micro-finance institutions with micro-entrepreneurs. Non-conventional finance, such as impact investing, has started to invest in the sector but faces political economy opposition and institutional voids - requiring intermediaries to reach small schools. Central bank concessionary finance is found to play a role, as seen in the Lagos case study.
If governments recognised low-cost schools as partners in education and certified them, finance to the sector could increase. Access to concessionary blended finance (conventional, unconventional, central bank, philanthropy and aid) could be used to attract unbanked schools and meet their demand for finance. Governments could leverage off the low-cost school sector’s existing physical and human infrastructure to absorb out-of-school children and provide early-years education to many more children to the benefit of societies and economic development across Africa.

Keywords: finance
financing of schools
Low-cost schools
ploitical ecoomy of non-state education
economicsof education
sub-Sahara Africa
Advisor: Michie, J
Nicholls, A
Mathematical ecology in a more-than-human world

This thesis is centered around the fundamental inquiry of ecology, which is to understand the relationships between organisms and their environment. Two core themes run and intertwine throughout the following work, beginning in parallel and then moving steadily towards synthesis in the concluding chapter. The first is concerned with developing and testing novel mathematical and computational methods which provide richer understanding of these species-environmental relationships. The second draws on emerging research from branches of the environmental social sciences and humanities, using the mathematical and scientific analyses in the earlier chapters as the entry into a more holistic engagement with ecology than is possible from any one disciplinary perspective alone.
We begin in Chapter 2 with the realm of community ecology and species distribution modelling, where we introduce the 'smoothing function' and the 'environmental manifold'. These two concepts provide new techniques for mapping the Hutchinsonian niche and working with the nonlinear and multivariate patterns emerging within and strongly influencing the quantitative relationships between species and environment. The following three chapters then shift focus to animal movement and landscape connectivity, each working from a different angle to provide more depth and breadth in addressing salient questions from this increasingly influential field of ecology. Chapter 3 introduces 'Pathwalker', a new individual-based computational method for modelling animal movement and connectivity, which is then used in Chapter 4 to provide the simulated data required for a comparative evaluation of major models in landscape connectivity.
Chapter 5 then keeps one foot in ecological science and places the other amongst areas of environmental geography, in order to analyse and overcome epistemological and methodological limitations in scientific studies of animal movement and landscape connectivity. This sufficiently motivates and widens the aperture of the thesis for disciplinary boundaries to dissolve in the heartfelt investigation of the final chapter, where we conclude by painting the possibility of an 'ecological mathematics'.

Keywords: modelling
geography
ecology
more-than-human
interdisciplinary
heart
paradigm
mathematics
Advisor: Cushman, S
Maini, P
Asymptotic dimension of one-relator groups and coxeter groups

The asymptotic dimension is a large scale analogue of topological dimension which proved to be a very useful tool in Group Theory and Topology.
In Chapter 1, we prove a new inequality for the asymptotic dimension of HNN-extensions. We deduce that the asymptotic dimension of every finitely generated one relator group is at most two, confirming a conjecture of A.Dranishnikov. As further corollaries, we calculate the asymptotic dimension of RAAGs, and we give a new upper bound for the asymptotic dimension of fundamental groups of graphs of groups.
In Chapter 2, we give a new upper bound for the asymptotic dimension of RACGs. To be more precise, let WΓ be the right-angled Coxeter group with defining graph Γ. We show that the asymptotic dimension of WΓ is smaller than or equal to dimCC(Γ), the clique-connected dimension of the graph.
In Chapter 3, we give some new results for the asymptotic dimension of Artin and Coxeter groups. If AΓ (WΓ) is the Artin (Coxeter) group with defining graph Γ we denote by Sim(Γ) the number of vertices of the largest clique in Γ. We show that asdimAΓ ≤ Sim(Γ), if Sim(Γ) = 2. We conjecture that the inequality holds for every Artin group. We prove that if for all free of infinity Artin (Coxeter) groups the conjecture holds, then it holds for all Artin (Coxeter) groups. As a corollary, we show that asdimWΓ ≤ Sim(Γ) for all Coxeter groups, which is the best known upper bound for the asymptotic dimension of Coxeter Groups. As a further corollary, we show that the asymptotic dimension of any large type Artin groups with Sim(Γ) = 3 is at most three.
The fourth chapter is inspired by a theorem of topological dimension theory which states that every topological space X of dimension n can be separated by a subset Y of dimension equal to or smaller than n − 1. We give an analogous theorem in the asymptotic dimension case. To be more precise, we prove that every geodesic metric space of asymptotic dimension n containing a bi-infinite geodesic can be coarsely separated by a subset S of asymptotic dimension equal to or smaller than n − 1. Moreover, we define asymptotic Cantor manifolds and we state some questions related to them.

Keywords: Artin Groups
Coxeter Groups
One Relator Groups
Asymptotic Dimension
Advisor: Papasoglu, P
Studies in the Paris Psalter, metrical version

The metrical version of the psalter in Old English is extant principally in Paris, Bibliothéque nationale MS lat. 8824, but fragments from the text and parallel versions of verses appear in three other medieval manuscripts. Chapter One of this thesis describes the manuscript of the Paris Psalter, and discusses its compilation. Chapter Two looks at the other versions of the metrical psalter, in Eadwine’s Canterbury Psalter, in the Menologium, and in the Benedictine Office. The changes made to the source by the translator in the course of transposing a sacred Latin text into the vernacular are considered in Chapter Three. These alterations include additions, omissions, the use of doublets and epithets, and rearrangements of material, especially those invoiving shifts of tense, person, case and aspect. The chapter attempts to identify when in the psalm verse the poet was likely to add to or delete from the source in his translation. In Chapter Four a word-by-word analysis of the Latin text studies the way in which individual parts of speech are handled by the poet in his rendition. While these chapters provide no conclusive answers, they reveal some of the methods used to render the Roman psalter into Old English.
How the metrical psalter can be compared to the glossed psalters of Anglo-Saxon England is considered in Chapter Five. In Chapter Six the text is compared to other works of Old English poetry. The syntactic, metrical and alliterative structures used by the psalter poet are explored. In particular, the chapter considers the occurrence of hapax legomena in the text, and compares their incidence here with the appearance and structure of coinages in several other Old English poems. The role of the Paris Psalter is considered; perhaps it is merely bad poetry, or it may be one of the few surviving examples of liturgical poetry--a kind of poetry concerned primarily with the transmission and comprehension of sacred texts in the vernacular, and not to be judged by neo-Romantic standards.

Keywords: Anglo-Saxon
English (Old)
Old English Manuscripts
Old English
Bible
paraphrases
English poetry
metrical
Paris psalter
Anglo-Saxon paraphrases
manuscripts
poetry
Psalms
psalter
Advisor: Stanley, EG
Electromagnetic signal injection attacks on embedded systems: modeling and detection

Embedded systems are ubiquitous in our lives, from smart locks in home automation to robotic arms in industrial equipment, playing key roles in many safety- and security-critical applications. An embedded system can interact with the external world through three interfaces: it uses sensors to sense environmental changes, controls actuators to cause physical impacts, and exchanges information with others through transmission lines. In recent years, studies have demonstrated using electromagnetic interference (EMI) to wirelessly manipulate signals in these interfaces. Such manipulation can maliciously control the embedded systems, threatening users' privacy and safety, for example, unlocking a smart lock or raising the temperature of infant incubators.
Detecting such attacks is becoming increasingly essential, but proposed detection methods in the literature are designed for specific applications. Thus, this thesis proposes two novel detection methods that can protect various systems regardless of their types, filling the gap of generalized detection methods. The first detection method is for the sensors, and its core idea is to modulate the sensor power in a secret pattern unknown to the attacker. To bypass the detection, the attacker must guess the secret correctly; however, this detection method provides a strong security guarantee, where the probability of a correct guess is negligible. The second detection method is designed for the actuators, and its detection principle is to compare a signal to be protected with a reference, between which the difference can indicate whether an attack occurs. This method can guarantee that any attack effectively impacting a victim system will be detected. This thesis will demonstrate that these detection methods do not only provide strong security guarantees but are also lightweight and flexible to be integrated with different systems. In addition to these detection methods, this thesis presents a pioneering study about how to corrupt the signal integrity of differential signaling. Since many popular protocols such as USB, Ethernet, HDMI, and CAN derive their electromagnetic noise immunity from differential signaling, many people believe it can make communications immune to external interference, whereas the study challenges this assumption and shows a state-of-the-art attack that allows an attacker to use fine-tuned EMI to inject arbitrary messages into differential signaling.

Keywords: differential signaling
cyber-physical systems
sensors
embedded system security
electromagnetic interference
actuators
Advisor: Rasmussen, K
Lymphocyte receptor cis interactions in immune cell signaling

Lymphocytes express a wide range of surface receptors that transduce important signals, including by binding to other proteins expressed at the same membrane (in cis). Such interactions are typically studied with biochemical tools like immunoprecipitation, in which interaction equilibria are disturbed by cell lysis, or through fixed high-resolution imaging, in which all dynamics are lost. Here, we adapt and implement a form of fluctuation spectroscopy, called scanning fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy (sFCCS), to study the diffusion and interactions of proteins expressed at the surface of living cells. This system is used to test three different instances of important receptor cis interactions. In Chapter 4, we demonstrate the presence of intermolecular PD-1/PD-1 cis binding (i.e., transient dimerization) and validate this novel and unexpected finding with other biophysical methods. Using genetic engineering and in vivo models of disease, we find that PD-1 dimers are important for the functional inhibition of T cells. Next, in Chapter 5, we address the controversy surrounding the coupling between T-cell coreceptors (CD4 and CD8αβ) and the signal-initiating kinase Lck at the cell surface. sFCCS experiments show that coreceptor/Lck occupancy is much higher than claimed by previous reports. In addition, we find that differences between CD4 and CD8αβ are especially pronounced when they are co-expressed and need to compete for limiting amounts of Lck, which may be relevant for models of thymopoiesis. Finally, in Chapter 6, we turn to the study of cis interactions between an inhibitory NK-cell receptor and class I MHC molecules. Guided by structural biology, we determine how novel malarial surface antigens have evolved to bind inhibitory molecules even when ‘masked’ by MHC-I binding in cis. Together, our results shed light on this puzzling class of receptor interactions and provide important context for understanding lymphocyte signaling in infection, immunology and translational biology.
Improving female participation in the Afghanistan higher education system: the role and application of information technology 

This study investigates the role of Educational Technology (EdTech) in improving female participation in Afghanistan higher education, the measures adopted so far and the remaining challenges to be addressed. Female participation in Afghanistan higher education has been shaped by conflict, socio-economic and political conditions, culture, institutional and individual capacity, structural and governance issues, community, family and individual factors and characteristics. In 2021, Afghanistan was ranked last in the gender parity index in tertiary education in South Asia, despite improvements in the last two decades, In terms of innovation, Afghanistan has lagged behind many comparator countries in the integration and application of EdTech for teaching and learning in higher education. The COVID-19 global crisis and the closure of university campuses amplified the central role of technology in ensuring continued access and participation. This study covers mainly the context of the last ten years, reflects on some of the existing challenges, and has implications for the future of women in higher education in Afghanistan. The study employed qualitative research, collecting data from the review of policy documents and semi-structured interviews with higher education policy-makers, academics and female students. The study's central finding is that EdTech plays a direct and critical role in improving female participation in higher education in Afghanistan. However, the optimal integration of EdTech to sustain and improve female participation and access is impacted by socio-economic conditions, infrastructural readiness, student agency - motivation and initiative – and teaching staff readiness, as well as the national and institutional regulatory and policy environment.

Keywords: qualitative research
female participation
equity
synchronous interviews
CIE2022
semi-structured questions
CIE
higher education
gender
educational technology
Afghanistan
access
asynchronous interviews
Advisor: Chankseliani, M
"Love for China:" an ethnography of US-based Chinese international students' patriotism

While the COVID-19 pandemic has wrecked havoc around the world, it has also caused upheavals to many Chinese international students studying in the US. Facing exorbitant prices of US-China airline tickets and stringent quarantine regulations, some of these previously mobile Chinese find themselves stranded in the US. Yet, they nevertheless declare their “love for China” after spending a majority of their adolescent and adult life abroad. Despite radical cultural and political differences between China and the US and the Chinese government’s unwelcoming gesture, they show an enduring bond to their motherland. Therefore, the following research questions are raised: In the contemporary context of China and the US, how do these international students negotiate patriotism—their “love for China”—while navigating educational and social terrains across the two nations? And more specifically, how is their institutional/lived experience in China and in the US able to reshape their understanding of and relation to these countries, and how do these well-educated youth reject, reconnect, and redefine Chinese patriotism over time as they mature academically in the US? This dissertation explores these questions by drawing on my ethnographic engagement with a dozen of young Chinese students, who have been pursuing their education in the US for at least a quarter of their lives. Through ethnographic interviews and observations, I show that the development of these Chinese international students’ patriotism is by no means a smooth transplant from China to the US but rather represents a fragmented, contingent process fraught with paradoxes and liminality. Defying simplification and dualism, these migrant students’ patriotism are under continuous negotiation. By dovetailing theoretical understanding with corporeal lived experience, contrasting privilege in China with challenges in the US, conjoining Chinese political resistance and US racial awakening, and combining Confucian epistemology with Enlightenment thinking, these US-based Chinese students approach their love for China in their unique, diasporic way. This ethnography of transnational patriotism attempts to capture the complex “love for China” of Chinese international students in the US.

Keywords: international students
nationalism
studying abroad
CIE2022
ethnography
CIE
patriotism
higher education mobility
Advisor: Chankseliani, M