VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Describing obstetric ultrasound video content using deep learning

In recent years, advances in ultrasound technology have made devices cheaper and portable thus making the technology more accessible in both High Income Country (HIC) and Low and Middle Income Country (LMIC) settings. Meanwhile, there is an increasing amount of ultrasound scans that might not necessarily be performed by experienced sonographers. Automatic recognition of patterns in such scans can be difficult for traditional machine learning models trained with hand-crafted features, due to its high variability in terms of image quality and anatomies appearance. This doctoral thesis presents deep learning based methods for the automation of fetal structure recognition in free-hand obstetric ultrasound video.
First, we demonstrate the feasibility of training deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for ultrasound image classification. It is worth noting that the challenge faced in this case is overfitting caused by limited training data. We show that the over-fitting of deep CNNs can be prevented by: (i) tailoring the architecture, for example by removing fully-connected layers; (ii) introducing data augmentation during training; and (iii) careful regularization. We also visualize the high level CNN features to understand the classification results which suggests that standard CNN architectures are not good enough for learning discriminative representations of complicated anatomy, for example the fetal heart, that shows high variability in terms of anatomical appearance and scale.
Next, we address the challenge of fetal heart recognition by learning deep representations of ultrasound video that take into account temporal information. We inflate the standard CNN by adding a motion detection stream to the spatial stream. This novel two-stream CNN model demonstrates: (i) its capability of detection and localization of the fetal heart; (ii) significantly superior fetal heart recognition than standard CNNs; and (iii) the capability of describing fetal cardiac motion.
Finally, we expand the capability of object detection to other important fetal structures of interest, such as the fetal head and abdomen. We present a hybrid model, consisting of CNNs and recurrent neural networks (RNNs), which can localize the target structures in short video sequences. In this model, we do not have object level annotation (e.g. bounding boxes) so the localization is achieved by class activation mapping (CAM). Additionally, a soft-attention mechanism is introduced into the representation learning to produce a spatial-temporal saliency map that is shown to be useful to highlight the object of interest, suggesting the potential as a video navigation cue.
The methods described in this thesis contribute to the ultrasound video image analysis literature, and also understanding of how to design image analysis algorithms for potential use by minimally trained users of ultrasound devices in HIC and LMIC settings.

Advisor: Noble, A
Mosul and Mosilu historians of the Jalīlī era (1726-1834)

This work of regional history deals with the Ottoman town of Mosul in northern Iraq at a time when it was ruled by a local dynasty of walis, the Jalīlīs. The work falls into eight chapters covering: the urban geography of Mosul and the pattern of urban growth under the Jalīlīs (suqs, religious buildings, etc.); urban society (communities, officialdom, armed forces); the nature of the Mosuli economy and the role of the town in an intricate network of trade routes linking Persia to the Mediterranean and Asia Minor to the Gulf; political life in Iraq as it developed along the major arteries of communication encircling Mosul (influence of the walis of Bagdad, power of the Arab, Kurdish and Yazīdī tribes); the urban politics of notables (rise of the Jalīlīs, the "localisation" of political combinations, etc.); cultural life in Mosul (fundamental orientations as determined by the geopolitical situation of the area, the centres of cultural life in Mosul, the main fields of cultural production); a presentation of the Mosuli historians and historical production; and finally, an investigation into Mosuli perceptions of the history of the Ottoman Empire, the political entity of which Jalīlī Mosul was - - and felt itself to be - - an integral part.

Keywords: Iraq
Jalīlī
historiography
Mosilu
Jalīlīs
Mosul
historians
Middle-class suburban lifestyles and culture in England, 1919-1939

Between the wars, approximately three million houses were constructed by private builders, the majority for owner-occupation. Many of these houses were located in new suburban estates, catering for an expanding white-collar middle class. Alongside the growth of these new suburbs, there emerged a virulent if composite indictment of inter-war suburbia. Although the critics did not focus exclusively on suburbia, they frequently claimed that suburbia's environment and values exacerbated problems which were more widespread within society. The result, it seemed, was a life that was isolated, philistine, overly materialistic, and obsessed with status. This thesis challenges that picture. It focuses on six areas of suburban life on which the critics were particularly vocal. These areas centre on, or grow out of, suburban domestic life: the suburban environment, house interiors, the life of the housewife, the experience of mothers and children, primary education, and recreation.
The main conclusion is that contemporary criticism of suburban life was often unjustified. Although speculative builders may have covered the countryside with ugly and badly-planned estates, the inter-war suburbs satisfied both the desire for bucolic seclusion and the demand for a safe place to rear children. The much-denigrated suburban semi catered successfully for the needs of the small family, incorporating modernity and efficiency without the uncompromising symbols of modernism. The suburban housewife did not feel imprisoned within a regime of unremitting domestic drudgery; she usually accepted her role as logical and satisfactory. Far from preferring consumer goods to children, middle-class parents revealed a concern for their offspring which extended even to following expert advice that was over-rigorous and insensitive. True, some of these parents sent their children to private schools which were physically and educationally unsatisfactory. But they did so because they believed that such institutions offered the best prospects - both educational and social - for their children's future advancement. Private education was simply one element of a middle-class attachment to privatised values. Yet privatised values did not preclude gregarious activity. For middle-class suburban recreation reveals a wealth of both family-centred and communal activities, defying the pessimistic image of a demoralised and isolated people forced exclusively onto solitary and 'mechanised' amusements.

Keywords: life
lifestyles
class
suburban
middle-class
20th century
culture
England
middle
The monstrous vegan: reading veganism in literature, 1818 to present

The term “vegan” was coined in 1944. In the years since, the prevalence of individual vegans and the intelligibility of veganism, as a commitment to living without exploiting nonhuman animals, has increased rapidly across the developed world. Numerous studies detailing the impact of animal agriculture and mass meat consumption on the environment, compounded by an unprecedented rise in global population, have contributed to a significant shift in veganism’s cultural currency: from ineffectual fad to an urgent and essential response to a wide range of ethical, environmental, and social issues. Within such contexts, it is necessary to address how veganism is written, how it is read, and the importance of the critical construction and deconstruction of vegan identity.
However, a nuanced interrogation of veganism as activism and lived practice has been limited within existing humanities scholarship. My DPhil thesis addresses this lacuna by establishing a theoretical lens through which to read both with and for veganism. The dissertation constitutes a significant intervention within the nascent field of vegan theory and establishes the relevance of veganism for a range of existing fields of study, beyond those with which it is typically associated. I expand the remit of contemporary queer theory and offer radically new readings of canonical texts, providing close textual analysis that demonstrates their overlooked potential as sources for thinking about vegan modes of life. I focus on the iteration of a trope which I define as “the monstrous vegan” across two hundred years of Anglophone literature, including the work of Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, and Alan Hollinghurst. Explicating, through such monsters, veganism’s relation to utopian longing and challenge to the conceptual category of the “human,” the dissertation explores ways in which ethical identities can be written, represented, and transmitted.

Advisor: Mukherjee, A
Gas dynamics in the galactic center

In this thesis we examine several aspects of the dynamics of the interstellar medium at the centre of the Milky Way. The gas is an excellent dynamical tracer: models of the gas response to an externally imposed barred potential place unique constraints on the Galaxy's matter distribution.
We show how a simple two-dimensional model of gas flow in a rigidly rotating barred potential provides a convincing explanation of many of the features observed in the (l, b, v) distribution of molecular emission lines at Galactic longitudes |l| < 5°, within the so-called "central molecular zone" (CMZ). In particular, we show that the central gas disc develops a twoarmed spiral, which, in projection, naturally explains two of the dominant elongated emission features. We compare our model against competing explanations for these features in the CMZ and make predictions for future observations.
We investigate the general behaviour of gas flow in realistic self-consistent barred N-body models and nd that, in contrast to previous work, the potential is sufficiently smooth and regular that the gas quickly settles into an equilibrium conguration. We show that simple rigid-potential models can be constructed that give good qualitative matches to the gas flow in the live, self-consistent potential. We provide guidance on how best to apply methods that attempt to constrain the Galaxy's potential by tting features in the (l, v) distribution semi-automatically.
Finally we discuss the vertical dynamics of the central gas disc in our simulations. We nd that the central gas disc in our models almost exactly follows ballistic orbits. If tilted out of the plane of the galaxy the normal vector to the gas precesses in the opposite sense to the circulation of the gas as a simple consequence of epicyclic theory. Our simulations do not reproduce the observed magnitude of the tilt of the CMZ, suggesting that something other than gravitational forces are responsible for tilting the gas out of the Galactic plane.

Advisor: Magorrian, J
The nature of teaching and learning when using a painting as a central stimulus across the curriculum

The study qualitatively explores why and how five UK primary schools operationalised a project that uses a painting as a central stimulus for teaching and learning across the curriculum, as promoted by the Take One Picture scheme run by the National Gallery, London. On analysis, it was found that teachers at two of the schools mainly approached Take One Picture primarily as an art project, whilst teachers at the three other schools mainly approached the scheme in a more cross-curricular way.
Using a multiple within-case analysis approach, data was collected through interviews and a questionnaire from 25 teachers to explore teachers’ understanding of the Take One Picture scheme and their expectations for undertaking a project. This data, alongside data from log journals compiled by the teachers, was used to explore the operationalisation of projects teacher-by-teacher. In addition, pupil outcomes, as perceived by the teachers and actual pupil outcomes contained in the log journals, were analysed to consider whether teachers’ expectations were borne out.
It was found that on the whole teachers planned for their expectations and these were realised in pupil outcomes. However, in some cases where teachers expressed an expectation to encourage creativity or to follow pupil interests, this was not apparent in the way they planned or in pupil outcomes. Furthermore, the nature of teaching and learning in these projects was shown to be heavily teacher-led. Also, these projects tended to be planned by teachers in the schools that took a primarily art-based approach. In contrast, projects that were more cross-curricular showed greater signs of encouraging individuality and originality from pupils. These latter projects regularly involved experiential strategies, as characterised by Dewey (1938), identified in the study as (i) encouraging individual responses from pupils beyond the parameters of practising an art technique, and (ii) making connections between the painting and other stimuli and/or known pupils’ previous learning experiences. The analysis suggests that the inclusion of experiential strategies both helps to encourage creativity (if the definition of creativity used includes the concept of originality) and increase cognitive challenge. In addition, the data shows that those teachers who worked in partnership with artistic practitioners, or had art expertise themselves, tended to plan in a more instructional, less experiential way.
Overall, the study offers a contribution to knowledge by showing that in art education some teaching and learning strategies seem more effective than others in providing opportunities for pupils to develop creative skills, and that these strategies link to high cognitive demand.

Keywords: art education
creativity
creative and cultural learning
art
creative teaching
Advisor: Childs, A
Elliott, V
Motivating teenage girls’ take-up of digital opportunities: the role of peers, programmes, and parents

As technology mediates more facets of teenage life, many worry about technology’s impacts, particularly onto young adolescent women who are often depicted as vulnerable. However, by equipping teenage girls with the skills to constructively engage with digital content and to be resilient in their Internet use, we can prepare girls to be capable of seizing online opportunities and more resistant to online risks.
However, much literature on teenage technical empowerment, particularly for girls, models one aspect of the student’s sociocultural environment, not the whole system in which they operate. Some studies focus on individual factors that might predispose a child to positive behaviours, such as technology access, demographic indicators, or individual psychopathology. Other research focuses on one aspect of the child’s environment – whether their school environment, home environment, or social environment. Those studies that do explore the social system are not rooted within the psychological discipline. My thesis aims to bring their theories to hypothesis testing, using the methods associated with psychological inquiry. Moreover, existing literature on online opportunities focuses either on concrete measures of rewarding actions or on the psychological traits necessary for their take-up. No literature explores how actions and underlying psychology might be linked. The studies included in this thesis focus on how individuals’ motivation for technology predicts socially-desirable outcomes.
Recognizing these two literature gaps, my thesis applies self-determination theory to assess how social settings influences the take-up of online opportunities and technical education. It consists of three discrete studies, each modelling one common method of the psychological inquiry. Study 1 utilizes existing representative datasets from cross-sectional surveys to explore hypotheses connecting individual-level predictors with online opportunity, showcasing that psychological factors are as impactful as demographic and social factors. Then, study 2 runs a field experiment at the Bit by Bit conference, showcasing how students’ need satisfaction influences the take-up of academic study. Finally, study 3 pilots an SDT-based intervention with parents of teenagers to showcase how relatedness influences their decision to create supportive environments for their children’s technology use.

Advisor: Przybylski, A
Nash, V
Resilience, posttraumatic stress and recovery: insights from brain network dynamics

In our lifetimes we will encounter varying degrees of stress and traumatic experiences, and how we respond to them will strongly affect our well-being and mental health. While there is considerable literature on the neural correlates of stress-related mental disorders, there are only very few models including a perspective on the neural factors that render us vulnerable to stress and how therapeutic interventions can modulate brain activity to help us recover. This is in part due to the scarcity of longitudinal studies necessary to investigate both the trajectories of maladaptive changes that make us vulnerable as well as the positive changes that allow us to rebalance our brain back to healthy functioning. Moreover, only very few human neuroimaging studies have been able to incorporate a perspective on the temporal dimension of brain activation patterns. This is specially important given the highly dynamic nature of the stress response, and the current perspectives that propose fast shifts in large-scale brain networks as key in the production of an adaptive response to stress.
In this thesis, we started by investigating brain function in relation to stress and stress vulnerability using a standard method of static functional connectivity on a longitudinal dataset of healthy soldiers exposed to stress (Chapter 2). This allowed us to define a starting point comparable to most of the available fMRI studies on stress and revealed a broad network of differences between stress conditions. We then used a recently developed method (i.e., Leading Eigenvector Dynamic Analysis) to investigate the stability and temporal dominance of discrete and recurrent functional connectivity patterns (or states) showing that increased temporal stability of a frontoparietal functional connectivity state was associated with stress vulnerability (Chapter 3). Exploration of transitions between the detected functional connectivity states showed that the increase in temporal stability was furthermore accompanied by decreased transitions from the frontoparietal to the default mode state in vulnerable participants (Chapter 4). We then applied a second state-of-the-art method (i.e., Hidden Markov Models) to detect recurrent activation patterns in a dataset of participants with PTSD before and after cognitive therapy. We showed that PTSD is associated with a decrease in the temporal dominance of activation patterns related to the default mode network. Moreover, cognitive therapy was related to normalization of these default mode activation patterns back to a level similar to that of healthy participants (Chapter 5). In the final chapter, we integrate our findings into a brain dynamic perspective of stress vulnerability, PTSD and recovery.

Advisor: Kringelbach, M
Ehlers, A
Regulatory T cells in experimental solid organ transplantation

Clinical transplantation outcome has been improved significantly over the last few decades by powerful immunosuppressive drugs. However, transplant recipients are subjected to non-specific immunosuppression, which increases the risks of malignancy, opportunistic infections, and drug associated toxicities. Alternative strategies that provide more selective immunosuppression are currently being investigated. The possibility of harnessing regulatory T cells as cellular therapeutic agents has been proposed based on the evidence obtained from a number of pre-clinical studies.
We have developed an in vitro protocol that could generate an enriched population of CD4+ Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (IFN-γ Treg) by stimulating CD4+ T cells with allogeneic APC in the presence of exogenous IFN-γ. We found that these Treg could suppress alloresponses following adoptive transfer to immunodeficient, as well as immunocompetent hosts in the presence of a sub-optimal costimulation blockade treatment in vivo. When compared to Treg generated by other in vitro protocols, IFN-γ Treg appeared to be superior in their suppressive function on a cell-to-cell basis. Alloantigen-driven IFN-γ Treg prolong allograft survival in a dose-dependent manner. More importantly, Treg delivered prior to the transplant resulted in the induction of tolerance but they had no impact on graft survival when given post-transplant.
We demonstrated that IFN-γ Treg control alloresponses via the action of CTLA-4 and are partially dependent on IL-10 in vivo. Using an in vitro suppression assay, we showed that IFN-γ Treg controlled the proliferation of naïve CD4+CD25- T cells in vitro. Tolerance was only partially reversed following the depletion of IFN-γ Treg suggesting that the persistence of IFN-γ Treg was not a prerequisite for the induction of tolerance long-term, but that tolerance was maintained via infectious tolerance in vivo. However, IFN-γ Treg were less efficacious in controlling memory responses in sensitized recipients compared to naïve hosts at a given cell dose.
IFN-γ Treg were more resistant to expansion in response to polyclonal or allogeneic stimulation in the presence of exogenous IL-2 compared to naturally-occurring Treg (nTreg) in vitro. However, at the same cell dose, IFN-γ Treg were more potent than freshly-isolated nTreg or expanded nTreg. Cryopreservation is a permissible solution to various logistic issues; however, Treg function could be discounted following the freeze and thaw processes. Activation status of Treg appeared to be crucially important for their suppressive function and we found that activated nTreg were equally effective in controlling allograft rejection in immunocompetent recipients as IFN-γ Treg, in the presence a sub-optimal costimulation blockade. Furthermore we developed a novel in vivo magnetic resonance imaging technique that provided a non-invasive method to assess graft function.
In conclusion, we propose that alloantigen-driven Treg are potential candidates as alternative to nTreg for controlling allograft rejection after transplantation.

Advisor: Wood, K