VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The effects of chemotherapy agents on hypoxia in colorectal cancer

Tumour hypoxia describes the phenomenon of reduced oxygen tension within solid tumours, resulting in an increase in morbidity, mortality and metastasis. We aim to identify chemotherapy agents that may reduce oxygen consumption and ultimately, improve tumour hypoxia and radiosensitivity.
Four colorectal cancer cell lines (COLO320DM, DLD1, HCT116 and HT29) and a nontransformed cell line (MRC5) were investigated. Clonogenic and cytotoxicity assays of a range of agents were used to determine sub-lethal concentrations that would alter consumption without cytotoxicity. The oxygen consumption and mitochondrial function of treated cells were assessed with the XF96 Analyzer. Flow cytometry, high performance liquid chromatography and western blot were performed to delineate mechanisms of action. The most responsive cell lines were grown as spheroids for hypoxia modelling before being tested in vivo for radiation sensitivity. In vivo tumour hypoxia analysis was achieved with the in vivo imaging system.
The oxygen consumption of all cancer cell lines was markedly reduced after treatment with a number of the agents compared to the non-transformed cell line. DLD1 and HCT116 cell lines showed the greatest balance of resistance to toxicity and reduction in oxygen consumption. Hypoxia imaging of the subsequent spheroids and in vivo tumours further demonstrated a reduction in hypoxia consistent with drug induced decrease in oxygen consumption. This also conferred a relative enhancement in radiosensitivity in both in vitro and in vivo settings.
Despite decades of clinical use these known chemotherapeutics have not been implicated in alterations in oxidative metabolism. These results raise the prospect of using them in an alternative way to potentially improve clinical outcome.

Keywords: Colorectal cancer
Tumour hypoxia
Chemotherapy
Advisor: Muschel, R
Kannan, P
The use of non-contact ultra-widefield imaging devices in infants

The ability to image the peripheral retina is important for the diagnosis and management of infants with proliferative retinopathies. With the current retinal imaging techniques available for infants, peripheral sweeps and montage techniques are necessary when information about the retinal periphery is required. These techniques are labour intensive, require highly skilled photographers, and do not permit the simultaneous capture of the posterior pole and the retinal periphery in a single image. A recent technological advance has been the development of non-contact ultra-widefield retinal imaging devices, which can capture simultaneously the posterior pole and the retinal periphery in a single image. Image acquisition with these imaging modalities in the infant patient population has not been well studied. This thesis aimed to evaluate non-contact ultra-widefield retinal imaging in infants with retinal diseases.
A retrospective review of all infants who had non-contact ultra-widefield retinal imaging at the Oxford Eye Hospital with the Optos Panoramic 200MA and/or the Heidelberg Spectralis between July 2012 and July 2014 was conducted. An analysis of all retinal images was performed for each ultra-widefield imaging device to determine the quality of each retinal image acquired. Adequate quality images were used for analysis of captured peripheral retinal features and artefacts.
A total of 82 infants (range, 33 weeks postnatal age to 6 months old) diagnosed with retinopathy of prematurity, incontinentia pigmenti, or familial exudative vitreoretinopathy had non-contact ultra-widefield retinal imaging. Eleven infants who underwent general anaesthesia had intravenous fundus fluorescein angiography (FFA) with the Heidelberg Spectralis in the operating room. Seventy-one infants were imaged with the Optos Panoramic 200MA in the outpatient setting. Of the 71 infants imaged with the Optos Panoramic 200MA, 42 infants had pseudocolour fundus imaging and 29 infants had FFA. Of the 29 infants who had FFA with the Optos Panoramic 200MA, 23 infants had sodium fluorescein administered intravenously and 6 infants had sodium fluorescein administered orally. A total of 2389 adequate quality ultra-widefield retinal images were analysed for peripheral retinal features and artefacts. A range of peripheral retinal features was adequately captured with both ultra-widefield imaging devices. Artefacts that decreased the field of view were present in images acquired from both ultra-widefield imaging devices.
The Optos Panoramic 200MA and the Heidelberg Spectralis were both capable of acquiring clinically useful, high resolution, ultra-widefield retinal images in infants with a range of retinal diseases.

Advisor: Patel, C
Bowles, N
The production of critical thought in the Maghrib: Abdallah Laroui and Hichem Djaït (1965-1978)

The critical essay gained immense popularity in the sixties and seventies in the Maghrib as a way to depict national realities that had failed to live up to nationalist ideals. Their authors often shared similar attributes: young highly educated intellectuals, committed toward modernity and who steered clear of politics. Such was the case of Abdallah Laroui (born 1933) and Hichem Djaït (born 1935), two celebrated Maghribi thinkers of the post-1967 generation in Arab thought. Despite their different ideological positions, they share a similar trajectory and both wrote about the need for another Arab renaissance, in Laroui's La crise des intellectuels arabes (1974) and Djaït's La personnalité arabo-islamique (1974).
The turn to critical writing is routinely dismissed for being secondary, for having a restricted audience and little political impact, yet it highlights well the Maghribi postcolonial intellectual's competing demands: to conform to an ideal representation of intellectual "commitment" through critical speech, and to secure national recognition and integration. As such, this thesis confronts the often-neglected impact of nationalism on intellectual conducts after independence around the impact of their disillusionment, and forces us to rethink critically notions of engagement, the role of intellectuals and postcolonial cultural productions that are current in Middle East studies, and problematically envisaged by postcolonial studies.
These texts have been approached as dynamic objects responding to a set of questions in their time, to account for the materiality of thought production, mobilising David Scott's concept of the "problem-space of intellectual production" (1999). This thesis looks at Abdallah Laroui and Hichem Djaït's intellectual projects from 1965 to 1978, to study the genesis and aftermaths of their critical moment, focusing on their published writings (critical essays and academic studies), press and journal articles, interviews, and fictional texts from a later period, in Arabic and French. Their writings will be read alongside several cultural journals, newspapers and memoirs dealing with this period of the Maghrib's history to account for the processes of circulation and reception by relevant audiences.

Advisor: McDougall, J
The Princely States v British India: fiscal history, public policy and development in modern India

This dissertation examines how direct versus indirect rule shaped late colonial India through government finance. Fiscal policy has hitherto been overlooked in the literature on Indian economic history. This thesis considers how revenues were raised and spent in the Princely States compared with British India, and the welfare outcomes associated with these fiscal decisions.
Part One examines the fiscal framework through the neglected public accounts. The key finding is that while the systems of taxation were broadly similar in both types of administration, patterns of public expenditure were dramatically different. The large Princely States spent more public revenue on social expenditure. This was made possible by lower proportionate expenditure on security and defence. Part one charts these trends empirically and unearths political and institutional reasons for the differences in fiscal policy between directly and indirectly ruled India.
Part Two examines welfare. The study goes beyond previous anthropometric scholarship by assessing the impact of institutions and policies on biological living standards, deploying a new database of adult male heights in South India. Puzzlingly, heights were slightly lower in the Princely States, traditionally lauded for being more responsive to the needs of their populations, especially those of low status. The resolution to the conundrum is found in poorer initial conditions, and caste dynamics. Higher social expenditure and reduced height inequality occurred simultaneously in the States from the 1910s, suggesting policies directed at low status groups within the Princely States may have been successful. I also examine the consequences of Britain’s policy of constructing an extensive rail network across the country. Importantly, the impact of railways differed by caste. Railways were good for High Caste groups, and bad for low status Dalit and Tribal groups. This suggests that railways served to reinforce the existing caste distinctions in access to resources and net nutrition.

Keywords: War
Tax
India
Advisor: Oxley, D
Euripides' Ion

In this line by line commentary l have attempted to discuss all matters textual and linguistic on which a reader might resort to a commentary for aid. There is, naturally, a pronounced emphasis on textual criticism; literary comment is interwoven with my arguments as the play unfolds. I have endeavoured to cite Greek with sufficient generosity to enable the reader to form a different judgement from my own from the material I have furnished. Considerable space has also been devoted to matters mythological and religious, as the nature of the play demands.
I conclude with an Endnote on the marginal annotations found in L. Three appendices follow: on the question of scenery, on alliteration in ancient poetry and poetic theory. and on a textual problem in the prologue to Euripides' Phrixus.
As no new evidence has emerged either to enhance our knowledge of the paradosis or to indicate the date and general background of the play, I would prefer at this stage to direct the reader to A.S.Owen's introduction to his Clarendon edition of 1939 rather than burden this work further with a formal introduction.
I conclude with a general bibliography of works often cited.

Keywords: Euripides
commentary
Ion
Being Fijian in the global system of professional Rugby Union: articulating multiple values through mobile bodies

A global rugby system has emerged which both motivates and facilitates the movement of large numbers of highly skilled professional athletes, and their swift integration into the dense social relations of professional clubs. Crucially, the global rugby system has become an articulation between the many localized values and practices of rugby and the professional codes of globally-oriented coaches and managers. This thesis uses an ethnographic approach to reveal the development of professionalism as a specific body culture produced at particular nodes, which has expanded to connect rugby union globally. In particular this theses focusses on the experiences of some of the several hundred indigenous Fijian professional rugby migrants playing overseas during the last fifteen years, and the several thousand aspiring young men working to do the same. This case study of mobility highlights the importance of the social, cultural and gendered contexts of specific mobility projects. Furthermore, the sometimes obvious cultural tensions that these men experience in the global system reveal the processes and power dynamics which create and define each local node and the global system as a whole. For these men rugby represents a unique opportunity to pursue both immediate social recognition in Fiji, fulfil familial expectations, gain the much coveted international mobility, and pursue an highly enjoyed activity. Individual and collective "rugby dreams" emerge in Fiji and motivate the collective production of rugby players willing to go overseas. To attain and retain professional contracts Fijians must abandon some of their own cultural system and meet the particular expectations of the clubs they play for. Those who successfully negotiate the transitions develop alternative Fijian professionalisms, combining the essence of their Fijian identity with the requirements of their adopted club. This articulation produces and manages the mobility of players, allowing skills and motivations developed in families and clubs of Fiji to be used by clubs on the other side of the globe. The ethnographic study of professional body culture as it emerges and is experienced in multiple locations within an interconnected global system is an innovative and particularly anthropological approach to understanding the social organisation of global sport. This approach contributes to the existing anthropological literature on mobility, globalisation and sport by highlighting the cultural tensions at different locations within this professionalised global system, revealing the multiple levels of frictions and power dynamics encountered by the mobile men within it.

Keywords: migration
globalisation
Fiji
bodies
sports
Advisor: Xiang, B
'Friends' and 'patriots': a comparative study of indigenous force cooperation in the Second World War

From the deployment of Roger's Rangers in the Seven Years War to the Sunni Awakening in the Second Gulf War, indigenous force cooperation has been a hallmark of significant armed conflicts in modern history. Indigenous forces are, by definition, recruited locally and are paramilitary in nature, as, for the most part, are their activities. They are not regular police, gendarme, or military forces. Rather, they represent a subset of a broader category of force that includes paramilitaries, unconventional forces, guerrillas, some militias, and auxiliaries. The focus of this dissertation is indigenous force cooperation. Indigenous force cooperation occurs when a metropolitan power (be it imperial or expeditionary) collaborates with one or more indigenous forces.
Despite recurring employment, indigenous force cooperation remains largely ignored in historical literature and there has been no comprehensive study of the nature, structure, function, or experience of these forces. Using comparative case studies of indigenous force cooperation in Palestine Mandate and Ethiopia during the Second World War, this project seeks to identify whether successful indigenous force cooperation in war exists as a unified historical phenomenon and whether it was instrumental to theatres of operation in which it took place. The research supporting this dissertation includes personally conducted interviews with veterans of the indigenous forces and examinations of recently declassified documents. The comparative framework allows the project to determine what, if any, underlying patterns connect cases of indigenous force employment and govern the success or failure of cooperation.
This dissertation consists of a comparative examination of four questions: why cooperation occurred, how cooperation was structured, what happened during cooperation, and whether cooperation was effective. Each chapter of this dissertation addresses one of the questions. Answering these questions will support a number of areas of study, including imperial history and contemporary strategic studies, by providing a theoretical framework by which to understand other cases of indigenous force cooperation.

Advisor: Johnson, R
Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in predator-prey communities

Once regarded as little more than simple model systems, microbial communities are now understood to drive major earth processes and patterns of biodiversity. In order to more fully understand them, there is a need to investigate the mechanisms that determine the structure and function of microbial systems. Predator-prey interactions have been studied for a long time in macroecological systems and are known for their role in determining community structure and dynamics. Functional diversity has come to the fore of ecology to take a central role in understanding what links species to biodiversity and ecosystem function. In this thesis I investigated the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of microbial predator-prey communities. I used naturally occurring bacterial communities in combination with co-occurring heterotrophic protists to perform manipulative experiments to investigate: a) the functional diversity of heterotrophic protists and their interactive contributions to ecosystem functioning; b) the effects of bacterial prey community diversity and composition on these attributes of protists; and c) the role of functional diversity in maintaining protist community diversity. I found that not only is it possible to classify functional diversity by species interactions, but that the effects of prey community diversity and composition highlight the flexible nature of this property, particularly in predators. I also found evidence of negative biodiversity-functioning relationships and strong competitive interactions among heterotrophic protists. However, their functional diversity allowed them to maintain higher diversity in disturbed environments. Taken together, my thesis has advanced the understanding of the role of predator-prey interactions and functional diversity in regulating interactions and ecosystem functioning in microbial systems.

Advisor: Bell, T
Lewis, O
Bass, D
A society of equals: the meaning, justification and implications of our basic moral equality

This is a thesis about our basic moral equality as human beings: its meaning, its justification and its implications for our society. It offers the fundamental principles of how we are obligated to live together in a Society of Equals.
Its major conclusions are as follows.
First, whilst there is more than one meaning to the claim that 'we are one another's basic moral equals', the most important meaning for political philosophy is that each individual has Equal Authority. More specifically, each individual has fundamental authority over herself, and herself alone.
Secondly, the justification of this fundamental authority over ourselves lies in our common limitation: we are all fallible. Further, we are not merely all fallible in the sense that any one of our beliefs could be false, but also in the sense that we have no non-circular way of judging the reliability of any of our beliefs. This aspect of our natural epistemic position justifies our equal, fundamental, practical authority over ourselves alone.
Finally, the most important implication of this justification is that each individual's most basic reason for action is to promote not merely her own, but each and every individual's compliance with her fundamental authority over herself. It follows that each individual has decisive reason to constrain her own compliance with her own fundamental authority over herself, where necessary, to allow the equal promotion of someone else's compliance with her fundamental authority over herself. This principle is called 'Equal Respect'. Upon this principle of Equal Respect arises an architectonic System of Right, and correlative duties, that is called Equal Sovereignty. Under this system, our rights and duties with respect to one another are distributed in accordance with a hypothetical auction and insurance scheme to ensure that each individual is truly sovereign over their own equal share of the world.

Keywords: political liberalism
Basic Equality
social contract theory
Second personal reasons
Equality of Resources
Dworkin
Advisor: White, S
Reading the city: Prague in Czech and Czech-German narrative fiction since 1989

In the course of its history, Prague has been the site of many significant cultural confrontations and conversations. From the medieval chronicle of Cosmas to the work of contemporary writers, the city has taken shape in literature as a multivalent space where identities are constructed and questioned. The evolution of Prague's literary significance has taken place in an intercultural context: both Czech-speaking and German-speaking writers have engaged with the city and its past, and their texts have interacted with each other. The city has played a central part in many collective narratives in which myth, history and literature intertwine.
Looking at contemporary prose fiction written in both Czech and German, this thesis explores continuities and contrasts in the literary roles played by Prague. It analyses two German-speaking emigrant authors, Libuše Moníková (1945-1998) and Jan Faktor (1951- ), viewing them alongside three Czech writers, Jáchym Topol (1962- ), Daniela Hodrová (1946- ), and Michal Ajvaz (1949- ). Through close readings of eight texts, the thesis approaches the imagined city from four angles. It discusses how contemporary authors portray the search for meaning in the city by imagining Prague as two contrasting realms (the 'real' city and the 'other' city), how the discontinuities of the city are reflected by the fragmentation of the authorial stance, how these authors assemble new Prague myths from the vestiges of older topoi, and how they confront the contradictory urges to uphold the boundaries of the city and to transgress them. In post-1989 Prague, authors explore the unstable spaces between continuity and discontinuity, constructing an authorial ethos in these areas of tension.

Keywords: spatial memory
collective memory
contemporary prague literature
interculturality
Advisor: Kohl, K
Zusi, P
Investigation of ʟ-amino acid hydroxylases

Ferrous-iron/2-oxoglutarate(2-OG)-dependent oxygenases have emerged as a widely distributed family of oxygenases. They have applications both in biocatalysis and as pharmaceutical/agrochemical targets. One of the first subfamilies of 2-OG oxygenases to be studied in detail were the prolyl hydroxylases. The work described in my thesis focused on substrate analogue studies on the proline hydroxylases and on a highly unusual type of 2-OG oxygenase that catalyses the production of ethylene from 2-OG.
The work involved the development of assays, in particular mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, to screen a panel of substrate analogues. The results identified the need for an α-amino acid for productive catalysis, and were consistent with previous studies showing that the proline hydroxylases can accept different ring sizes, and can catalyse production of dihydroxylated products. New substrates for the proline hydroxylases including bicyclic compounds, which undergo a bifurcating pathway to give singly hydroxylated products, were also identified.
In a separate line of investigation, a novel ethylene forming enzyme was studied. Previous work had identified an arginine-oxidising 2-OG oxygenase from Pseudomonas spp. that also produced ethylene. This observation is interesting given the key role of ethylene, as produced by aminocyclopropanecarboxylate (ACC) oxidase, in plant biology. ACC oxidase is structurally related to the 2-OG oxygenases but does not employ 2-OG during catalysis. Methods for the production of the recombinant ethylene-forming enzyme from Pseudomonas spp were developed as were assays for monitoring catalysis. The results reveal that the enzyme produces ethylene in an arginine-dependent manner and coproduces pyrroline-5-carboxylic acid (ʟ-P5C) (the cyclic form of glutamate-5-semialdehyde). Crystal structures were obtained for the ethylene forming enzyme in the presence of a 2-OG analogue with and without arginine. The combined biochemical and structural studies imply that the enzyme has bifurcating pathway, with ethylene production arising from 2-OG and requiring arginine, but which is not oxidised; alternatively arginine can be oxidised to give ∆1-pyrroline-5-carboxylic acid (ʟ-P5C) in a 'normal' 2-OG oxygenase type reaction with concomitant production of succinate. The results open up new possibilities for ethylene production in organisms ranging from bacteria to animals.

Advisor: Schofield, C