VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Metaphors of waste: several ways of seeing "development" and Cairo's garbage collectors

The struggle with garbage is not only a physical struggle to deal with the unwanted stuff people throw away. It is also a struggle over meanings. At the centre of that struggle in Cairo are the Zabbaleen: the city's 'informal sector' or 'traditional' waste collectors.
Over the past 40 years the Zabbaleen have been the focus of a great deal of outside attention and intervention, especially by the Egyptian state and development organizations. Based on 1.5 years' fieldwork in Cairo, including interviewing, archival work, and analysis of artefacts of mass culture such as film and newspapers, this dissertation asks how different outsiders represented and construed the Zabbaleen, and what they wanted to change about them.
Each chapter corresponds to a different outside viewpoint. Chapter 3 examines the beginning of the story of outside development intervention, with the French Mother Theresa figure Sr. Emmanuelle. Starting in 1971, she lived with the Zabbaleen and built schools, hospitals and clubs for them. Chap- ter 4 examines how a popular Egyptian film, which appeared in 1980, used the story of a garbage collector's success as a social metaphor for the country's dysfunction and the overthrow of its mod- ernist ideal. Chapter 5 examines a series of Zabbaleen development projects implemented by the World Bank (water, sewer and electricity) and its consultants (modifications to the Zabbaleen built environment and behaviour) between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. Chapter 6 discusses the Egyptian Government's decision to contract European waste management firms in the early 2000s. Chapter 7 examines why and how the Egyptian state decided to slaughter all pigs (raised by the Zab- baleen) during the 'swine flu' epidemic in 2009, and how this split Christians in the country.
The ambition of the dissertation is to make a contribution to critical development studies. It plots the evolution of development thinking and practice over the forty-year period covered (including weigh- ing developmentalism relative to other paradigms of intervention), and demonstrates how interpreta- tions of waste have been central to shaping interventions and imaginaries of 'development' through- out that period.

Keywords: waste
Zabbaleen
development studies
Cairo
Advisor: Gooptu, N
Literary Jacobitism

This thesis argues that much of the gender based criticism that has led to the "rediscovery" of neglected early modern women writers has, paradoxically, also served to limit our understanding of such writers by distracting attention from other aspects of their writing, such as their political commitments. The three authors considered, Jane Barker (1652-1732), Mary Caesar (1677-1741) and Anne Finch (1661-1720), have been selected precisely because Jacobitism is central to their writing. However, it will be argued that a focus upon gender politics in the texts of these writers has led to a failure to comprehend the party political boldness of their work.
The thesis examines the writing of each author in turn and explores the implications of Barker's, Caesar's and Finch's Jacobite allegiances for their respective views of human history as played out in political affairs. It also considers the ways in which each author attempts to reconcile a cause that is supposedly supported by God with apparent political failure. The quest of Barker, Caesar and Finch to investigate these issues and to comprehend how Jacobitism forms part of their own authorial identities is central to what is meant here by "literary Jacobitism" in relation to these writers.
The thesis demonstrates that Jacobitism is enabling for each of these three women as it enhances their ability to conceive of themselves as authors by allowing their sense of political identity to overcome their scruples about their position as women who write. However, it also illustrates that Jacobitism functions differently in the writing of each of the selected authors. It thus argues that an undifferentiated labelling of the work of these three women as "Jacobite" is as restrictive as their previous categorisation as "women writers".

Advisor: Kean, M
The structural and kinematic development of the Austroalpine-Pennine boundary, S.E. Tauern, Eastern Alps

The Eastern Alps are a belt of major deformation formed by the convergence and collision of Europe with the Adriatic microcontinent. A major tectonic boundary can be defined between the dominantly continental Austroalpine domain, which represents the northerly fringe of Adria; and the Pennine oceanic domain, which once lay between the Austroalpine domain and Europe. This boundary is one of the key areas for unravelling the convergent tectonic history of the Eastern Alps. The main emphasis of this thesis is on the deformational behaviour of the Austroalpine domain and its implications for the regional tectonic processes that were instrumental in forming the structure of the Eastern Alps. The data for this work are derived from structural and metamorphic studies in the S.E. Tauern in profiles straddling the boundary, and a review of the published regional geology.
The first manifestation of convergence is the development of a broad zone of thickened crust, including both Pennine and Austroalpine units, which underwent Cretaceous burial metamorphism. Postdating this thermal event in the Austroalpine domain, there was a further phase of regional deformation, which caused substantial reduction in the structural thickness. To the south of the Tauern Window, a study of the associated kinematic development gives a minimum estimate of 10km for this thinning, which radiometric dating suggests took place while convergence was still active. A comparable 10km post-metamorphic thinning is suggested throughout the Austroalpine domain in the Eastern Alps by the shortfall in the overburden compared to the depth of burial indicated by the Cretaceous metamorphic conditions.
Major extension in a dominantly convergent tectonic setting cannot be accounted for by the paradigm of plate tectonics and implies that body forces acting on the thickened crust of the destructive margin were a major driving force for deformation.

Advisor: Platt, J
High temperature superconducting microwave devices

This thesis describes investigations into the application of high temperature superconductoRs(HTS) for microwave devices. The ultimate aim of this research was to produce HTS components that would demonstrate the commercial potential of their use in spacecraft such as satellites or in base stations for terrestrial cellular communication systems. During the course of this research the surface resistance (Rs) of HTS thick and thin films deposited onto different substrates has been measured by a variety of techniques. These have been compared and contrasted with each other. There has been a particular emphasis upon the use of dielectric resonators as characterization tools and this thesis describes their use to measure the Rsof films and the loss tangents of the materials used in them. Consideration has been given to losses in the walls of the enclosures that surround dielectric resonators which is an area that has been neglected in previous work. Many of the films characterized had Rs values lower than normal conductoRsat the same temperature and frequency including a thick film which had an Rsof 2.7mΩ±8.0% at 77K and scaled to 10 GHz which represents the second lowest result achieved in a thick film to date. Using such high quality films a number of devices have been made including microstrip resonatoRsoperating at 1.7-8.4 GHz, 5.58 GHz, 23 GHz and 24.75 GHz dielectric resonatoRsand filteRswith centre frequencies from 5.58-13 GHz. Such devices have shown performance enhancements of up to 700% over their normal conductor equivalents. Benefits have been delivered in light, low volume packages which is of particular advantage to the satellite communications industry. Finally, there has been a demonstration, for the first time, of a tunable HTS thin film filter.
Automatic measurements of femoral characteristics using 3D ultrasound images in utero

Vitamin D is very important for endochondral ossification and it is commonly insufficient during pregnancy (Javaid et al., 2006). Insufficiency of vitamin D during pregnancy predicts bone mass and hence predicts adult osteoporosis (Javaid et al., 2006). The relationship between maternal vitamin D and manually measured fetal biometry has been studied (Mahon et al., 2009). However, manual fetal biometry especially volumetric measurements are subjective, time-consuming and possibly irreproducible. Computerised measurements can overcome or at least reduce such problems. This thesis concerns the development and evaluation of novel methods to do this.
This thesis makes three contributions. Firstly, we have developed a novel technique based on the Random Forests (RF) classifier to segment and measure several fetal femoral characteristics from 3D ultrasound volumes automatically. We propose a feature selection step in the training stage to eliminate irrelevant features and utilise the "good" ones. We also develop a weighted voting mechanism to weight tree probabilistic decisions in the RF classifier. We show that the new RF classifier is more accurate than the classic method (Yaqub et al., 2010b, Yaqub et al., 2011b). We achieved 83% segmentation precision using the proposed technique compared to manually segmented volumes. The proposed segmentation technique was also validated on segmenting adult brain structures in MR images and it showed excellent accuracy.
The second contribution is a wavelet-based image fusion technique to enhance the quality of the fetal femur and to compensate for missing information in one volume due to signal attenuation and acoustic shadowing. We show that using image fusion to increase the image quality of ultrasound images of bony structures leads to a more accurate and reproducible assessment and measurement qualitatively and quantitatively (Yaqub et al., 2010a, Yaqub et al., 2011a).
The third contribution concerns the analysis of data from a cohort study of 450 fetal femoral ultrasound volumes (18-21 week gestation). The femur length, cross-sectional areas, volume, splaying indices and angles were automatically measured using the RF method. The relationship between these measurements and the fetal gestational age and maternal vitamin D was investigated. Segmentation of a fetal femur is fast (2.3s/volume), thanks to the parallel implementation. The femur volume, length, splaying index were found to significantly correlate with fetal gestational age. Furthermore, significant correlations between the automatic measurements and 10 nmol increment in maternal 25OHD during second trimester were found.

Keywords: fetal biometry
medical image analysis
image registration and fusion
3D fetal ultrasound
image segmentation
Advisor: Noble, A
Javaid, K
Cooper, C
Preparation of bulk and supported Co/Mo carbide catalysts for CO2 conversion

This thesis investigates the preparation and characterisation of Co/Mo bimetallic carbides and their stability and catalytic activity as bulk catalysts for the Dry Methane Reforming (DMR) reaction and as supported catalysts on alumina. The DMR reaction was chosen due to its importance in producing syngas, as a precursor for liquid fuels, from CO2 and CH4, two greenhouse gases.
Bulk and supported bimetallic carbides were prepared by reductive carburization of the oxides with various hydrocarbons. The resultant carbides were characterized by X-Ray diffraction.
Reactivity studies were undertaken by investigating the variable temperature reactivity of the catalysts on the DMR reaction.
Characterization studies indicate that the oxides were transformed to the carbides successfully and these carbides had significant catalytic activity and were stable under the conditions used in the investigations.

Keywords: CO2 conversion
carbide catalysts
catalysts
Advisor: Edwards, P
Cavafy hero: literary appropriations and cultural projections of the poet in English and American literature

The present thesis examines the way E.M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Joseph Brodsky, and James Merrill appropriated C.P. Cavafy in writings that were disseminated and consumed amongst culturally dominant literary circles, and which eventually determined the Greek-Alexandrian poet’s international reputation. I aim to contribute a new perspective on Cavafy, by evading the text-based tradition of reception studies, and proposing an alternative method of discussing the production of Cavafy's canonical status. Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory, I view literary canonization as involving a variety of factors at play beyond creative achievement: in particular, relationships of 'authorial consecration' whereby writers create and circulate cultural capital through their power to legitimize other artists.
The critical and fictional texts I analyse perform readings of Cavafy's poetry alongside imaginative portrayals of the poet's life and personality. I take this complementary relationship - between the image of the poet each author projects and their reading of his work - as a starting point to explore the broader ideas of aesthetics and authorial subjectivity that inform the renderings of Cavafy generated by prominent literary figures. Rather than passive recipients of influence, these figures are considered as active agents in the production of 'Cavafy narratives', appropriating the poet according to their own agendas, while also projecting onto him their own position within the cultural field.
Eventually, Cavafy becomes a point of insight into the multiplicity of networks and practices involved in the production of cultural currency; in turn, the study of the construction of Cavafy's authorial identity sheds light on the cumulative processes that have defined the way the poet is read and perceived to the present day. This duality of perspective is essential to a study concerned with the cultural contexts framing the poet's steady rise to international fame throughout the 20th century.

Keywords: Cavafy
Brodsky
Durrell
Forster
comparative
Auden
Merrill
Advisor: Papanikolaou, D
Molecular engineering with endohedral fullerenes: towards solid-state molecular qubits

Information processors that harness quantum mechanics may be able to outperform their classical counterparts at certain tasks. Quantum information processing (QIP) can utilize the quantum mechanical phenomenon of entanglement to implement quantum algorithms. Endohedral fullerenes, where atoms, ions or clusters are trapped in a carbon cage, are a class of nanomaterials that show great promise as the basis for a solid-state QIP architecture. Some endohedral fullerenes are spin–active, and offer the potential to encode information in their spin-states. This thesis addresses the challenges of how to engineer the components of a scalable QIP architecture based on endohedral fullerenes. It focuses on the synthesis and characterization of molecules which may, in the future, permit the demonstration of entanglement; the optical read-out of quantum states; and the creation of quasi-one-dimensional molecular arrays.
Due to its long spin decoherence time, N@C60 is the selected as the basic molecular unit for ‘coupled’ fullerene pairs, molecular systems for which it may be possible to demonstrate entanglement. To this end, isolated fullerene pairs, in the form of spin-bearing fullerene dimers, are created. This begins with the processing of N@C60 at the macroscale and leads towards the synthesis of 15N@C60-15N@C60 dimers at the microscale. High throughput processing is introduced as the most efficient technique to obtain high purity N@C60 on a reasonable timescale. A scheme to produce symmetric and asymmetric fullerene dimers is also demonstrated. EPR spectroscopy of the dimers in the solid-state confirms derivatization, whilst permitting the modelling of spin–spin interactions for 'coupled' fullerene pairs. This suggests that the optimum inter–spin separation for which to observe spin–spin coupling in powders is circa 3 nm.
Motivated by the properties of the trivalent erbium ion for the optical detection of quantum states, optically–active erbium–doped fullerenes are also investigated. These erbium metallofullerenes are synthesized and isolated as individual isomers. They are characterized by low temperature photoluminescence spectroscopy, emitting in the infra- red at a wavelength of 1.5 μm. The luminescence is markedly different where a C2 cluster is trapped alongside the erbium ions in the fullerene cage. Er2C2@C82 (isomer I) exhibits emission linewidths that are comparable to those observed for Er3+ in crystals. Finally, the discovery of a novel praseodymium-doped fullerene is reported. The balance of evidence favours the structure being assigned as Pr2@C72. This novel endohedral fullerene forms quasi-one-dimensional arrays in carbon nanotubes, which is a useful proof-of-principle of how a scaled fullerene-based architecture may be achieved.

Keywords: nanomaterials
quantum nanoscience
fullerenes
quantum computing
Advisor: Porfyrakis, K
Ardavan, A
Briggs, GAD
The evolutionary dynamics of neutral networks: lessons from RNA

The evolutionary options of a population are strongly influenced by the avail- ability of adaptive mutants. In this thesis, I use the concept of neutral networks to show that neutral drift can actually increase the accessibility of adaptive mu- tants, and therefore facilitate adaptive evolutionary change. Neutral networks are groups of unique genotypes which all code for the same phenotype, and are connected by simple point mutations. I calculate the size and shape of the networks in a small but exhaustively enumerated space of RNA genotypes by mapping the sequences to RNA secondary structure phenotypes. The qual- itative results are similar to those seen in many other genotype–phenotype map models, despite some significant methodological differences. I show that the boundary of each network has single point–mutation connections to many more phenotypes than the average individual genotype within that network. This means that paths involving a series of neutral point–mutation steps across a network can allow evolution to adaptive phenotypes which would otherwise be extremely unlikely to arise spontaneously. This can be likened to walking along a flat ridge in an adaptive landscape, rather than traversing or jumping across a lower fitness valley. Within this model, when a genotype is made up of just 10 bases, the mean neutral path length is 1.88 point mutations. Furthermore, the map includes some networks that are so convoluted that the path through the network is longer than the direct route between two sequences. A minimum length adaptive walk across the genotype space usually takes as many neutral steps as adaptive ones on its way to the optimum phenotype. Finally I show that the shape of a network can have a very important affect on the number of generations it takes a population to drift across it, and that the more routes between two sequences, the fewer generations required for a population to find an advantageous sequence. My conclusion is that, within the RNA map at least, the size, shape and connectivity of neutral networks all have a profound effect on the way that sequences change and populations evolve, and by not considering them, we risk missing an important evolutionary mechanism.

Keywords: adaptive
map
RNA folding
point mutation
phenotype
simulation
genotype
landscape
fitness
epistasis
Advisor: Grafen, A
Hydrogen atom abstraction pathways to functionalised free radicals

Radical translocation chemistry has classically been employed for the generation of carboncentred radicals as a means of remotely functionalising nominally unreactive sites. Previous work within the group had investigated vinyl radicals to effect translocation and had identified a need for a more reactive abstracting radical. In this regard, the high energy of alkoxyl radicals would facilitate rapid 1,5-hydrogen abstraction as opposed to simple reduction.
This thesis describes the use of alkoxyl radicals, generated from N-alkoxyphthalimides, to abstract a hydrogen atom selectively from the α-position of a lactam ring.
Alkoxyl radicals generated from precursors designed to lead to intramolecular trapping of the translocated radical were prone to β-scission in preference to 1,5-hydrogen atom abstraction. This is attributed to a combination of developing π-overlap in the transition state and stabilisation of the resulting radical both by nitrogen and the attached alkyl substituents.
Incorporation of an alkenyl trap onto the lactam ring led to successful 1,5-hydrogen atom abstraction and stereoselective cyclisation, although β-scission remained the dominant pathway.
Translocation initiated by nitrogen-centred radicals was investigated and it was found that 1,5-hydrogen abstraction occurred in preference to β-scission; intramolecular trapping of the translocated radical proved impossible either because the precursors were unstable to the reaction conditions or because increased steric bulk impeded hydrogen abstraction by the less reactive aminyl radical.
Preparation of bicyclic pyrrolidinones via successive 5-endo-5-exo-trig cyclisations was investigated; the precursors were found to undergo direct reduction in preference to cyclisation. Alkyl or aryl groups attached to the a-acylamino carbon may lead to preferential 5-endo cyclisation by stabilisation of the developing radical in the transition state.

Advisor: Robertson, J
Deep brain surgery for pain

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgical intervention now established for the treatment of movement disorders. For the treatment of chronic pain refractory to medical therapies, several prospective case series have been reported, but few centres worldwide have published findings from patients treated during the last decade using current standards of technology. This thesis seeks to survey the current clinical status of DBS for pain, investigate its mechanisms and their interactions with autonomic function, its clinical limitations and ablative alternatives.
Presented first is a review of the current status of analgesic DBS including contemporary clinical studies. The historical background, scientific rationale, patient selection and assessment methods, surgical techniques and results are described. The clinical outcomes of DBS of the sensory thalamus and periventricular / periaqueductal grey (PAVG) matter in two centres are presented including results from several pain and quality of life measures.
A series of translational investigations in human subjects receiving DBS for pain elucidating mechanisms of analgesic DBS and its effects upon autonomic function are then presented. Single photon emission tomography comparing PAVG, VP thalamus and dual target stimulation is described. Somatosensory and local field potential (LFP) recordings suggesting PAVG somatotopy are shown. ABPM results demonstrating changes with PAVG DBS are given and Portapres studies into heart rate variability changes with ventral PAVG DBS are detailed. Investigations using naloxone are then shown to hypothesise separate dorsal opioidergic and ventral parasympathetic analgesic streams in the PAVG. Finally, cingulotomy in lung cancer to relieve pain and dyspnoea results are discussed in the context of altering pain and autonomic function by functional neurosurgery. Pain and autonomic interactions and mechanisms in deep brain surgery for pain are then discussed alongside its limitations with proposals made for optimising treatment and improving outcomes.

Keywords: Blood Pressure
Thalamus
Amputation
Brachial Plexus Injury
Local Field Potentials
Deep Brain Stimulation
Single Photon Emission Tomography
Opioids
Pain
Periaqueductal Grey
Heart Rate Variability
Advisor: Green, AL