VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
An experimental and analytical study of electrokinetic consolidation 

This thesis describes settling process of clay particles in suspension and subsequent consolidation behaviour of Speswhite Kaolin clay under the influence of electrokinetics. Comprehensive experimental investigations on soil behaviour under different stress conditions (e.g. electrokinetics, self-weight, and hydraulic gradient) were performed and reported. For comparing soil behaviour under electrokinetics with self-weight consolidation, the electrode configuration of closed anode and open cathode (the anode at the base of the cathode at the top of the soil) was used. One of the problems with this electrode arrangement was the gas produced at the anode electrode entering the soil and destroying the developing structure of soils. This problem was overcome by developing a specially designed electrokinetic cell. The density measurements of soil were achieved by an accurate and non-destructive X-ray technique, and pore pressures were also measured during the process. The experimental results revealed that the electrically induced surface settlement was greater in magnitude and faster in rate than that under self-weight stresses; the dissipation rate of excess pore pressure was directly related to the applied electric field strength; the density in the anode region was increased significantly by the development of effective stress die to the effect of electroosmosis; the movement of acid and base fronts due to electrolysis was identified by the variation of pH; and the development of the denser layer at the soil surface was caused by the additional effects of electrokinetics, such as the variation of zeta potential and voltage gradient. Numerical simulations using the simple diffusion equation with constant coefficients were investigate in order to predict the soil behaviour under the influence of electrokinetics. The normal small strain assumption (equivalent to the boundary remaining fixed) made in previous solutions of the equation has been replaced by boundary movement coupled with the requirement of conservation of mass. Remarkably good agreement between the measured and simulated surface settlement, density, and excess pore pressure profiles has been achieved using the method above, with appropriate soil parameters, such as Cc, Cv, Kh, and Ke.

Keywords: electrokinetic
consolidation
Advisor: Sills, G
Employment and labour relations in the Theban necropolis in the Ramesside period

The text deals essentially with the workmen employed on the construction of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties in Egypt. Material from other sites and periods is used freely, but only for comparative purposes. Attention is paid, wherever possible, to placing this workforce within the context of Egyptian society as a whole, and to relating their behaviour and events concerning them to general historical developments in Egypt during the Ramesside period.
The first chapter contains a survey of the documents preserved from the village of Deir el Medina, where the workmen lived, and from the sites where they worked, with attempts to classify these documents, to discuss their purpose, their use, their authorship, and the light they threw on Egyptian documentary practices in general. The following two chapters discuss the relationship between the workmen and the king, as their employer, as the head of state, and as the object of worship in the workmen's village. Succeeding chapters discuss the relationship between the workmen and the vizier, the high priest of Amon, and the local mayors, with particular attention paid to important individual officials and to changes in these relationships during the course of the period under discussion. Than evidence is collected for a discussion of the way in which workmen were recruited, and so far as possible, of the way they were punished and dismissed. This is followed by a description of the way in which the work on the tombs and the work of local supply and service staff was controlled. The final two chapters contain a collection of references to labour troubles at Deir el Medina during the Twentieth Dynasty, and an attempt to draw wider conclusions from these about the nature of employment on that site.
'"A free and Protestant people"? The campaign for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, 1786-1828'

Protestant Dissenters launched a campaign for Test Act repeal in 1786 that encountered strong opposition. Half a century later a second campaign inconspicuously secured repeal whilst the established Church was preoccupied with the problem of Catholic emancipation. Historians have examined the political narrative of both campaigns and the theories of toleration propounded by some Dissenters. However, little attention has been paid to the symbolic importance of the Test Acts, which Dissenters considered as badges of their exclusion from national citizenship. This thesis will examine the language of the repeal campaigns as a window into wider notions of citizenship and national identity.
The resultant picture of Dissenters' identities and the larger national identities that they contested makes it possible to problematise and refine Linda Colley's Britons: Forging the Nation, which expounds a pan-Protestant, anti-Catholic, British national identity. Protestantism and anti-Catholicism were indeed central to the language of the debate, but this language marginalised Dissenters as often as it included them. Several Dissenters therefore united with a parallel Catholic campaign for toleration, whilst very few united with their fellow-Protestant Churchmen against the Catholic threat. The Dissenters' strategies reveal the ambiguity of their relationship to the nation: they were usually seen by Churchmen as marginalised or subordinate though less so than the Catholics. Moreover, overlooked divisions between evangelical and old Dissent, and between Trinitarian and Unitarian Dissent, led different sections of Dissent to pursue different strategies according to their perception amongst Churchmen.
Notions of national identity and citizenship were changing in this period, particularly as a result of the French Revolution and wars. Both Test Act repeal and Catholic emancipation may be situated within long-term processes of state-building and nation-building. Older notions of national identity endured to a greater extent than has been recognised, but adapted to these processes by becoming more inclusive and assimilative. Though Test Act repeal and Catholic emancipation granted Dissenters and Catholics similar rights, because of the enduring importance of Protestantism to British national identity Test Act repeal signified Dissent's integration into the nation in a way that Catholic emancipation did not for Catholics.

Keywords: National  Identity
Religious Toleration
Advisor: Skinner, S
Program synthesis from domain specific object models

Automatically generating a program from its specification eliminates a large source of errors that is often unavoidable in a manual approach. While a general purpose code generator is impossible to build, it is possible to build a practical code generator for a specific domain. This thesis investigates the theory behind Booster — a domain specific, object based specification language and automatic code generator. The domain of Booster is information systems — systems that consist of a rich object model in which the objects refer to each other to form a complicated network of associations. The operations of such systems are conceptually simple (changing the attributes of objects, adding or removing new objects and creating or destroying associations) but they are tricky to implement correctly. The thesis focuses on the theoretical foundation of the Booster approach, in particular on three contributions: semantics, model completion, and code generation. The semantics of a Booster model is a single abstract data type (ADT) where the invariants and the methods of all the classes in the model are promoted to the level of the ADT. This is different from the traditional view that considers each class as a separate ADT. The thesis argues that the Booster semantics is a better model of object oriented systems. The second important contribution is the idea of model completion — a process that augments the postconditions of methods with additional predicates that follow from the system’s invariant and the method’s original intention. The third contribution describes a simple but effective code generation technique that is based on interpreting postconditions as executable statements and uses weakest preconditions to ensure that the generated code refines its specification.

Keywords: code generation
Booster
model driven development
program synthesis
refinement
Advisor: Davies, J
A comparative study of phonetic sex-specific differences across languages

Extensive reviews of phonetic and phonological investigations into sex-related differences reveal a mottled history. The investigations suffer from methodological and theoretical deficits: the most serious being the misrepresentation of the interaction between variables, a lack of homogeneous data and its misinterpretation, and the widespread neglect of women's speech. Existing phonetic databases are shown to be inadequate and poorly-controlled, admitting too many unwanted variables. A very tightly-controlled database, constructed for this research, contains data for eighty female and male speakers of two accents of British English. This contribution is regarded as important per se. Digital acoustic analysis of the data permits quantification of the phonetic divergence shown by the sexes in British English. Previous attempts to normalize the acoustic effects of speaker-sex on vowels have been largely unsuccessful. Here, the application of an innovative auditory normalization procedure reflects how perceptual normalization may be achieved. It further demonstrates that male/female phonetic differences remain after normalisation, which cannot be accounted for by anatomy, but are accountable by social-role conditioning (i.e. learned). These differences are statistically significant. Speaker-sex and gender are thus shown to interact at the phonetic level. Extending this technique to five other languages/dialects corroborates the central hypothesis that the degree to which the sexes diverge phonetically will vary from speech-community to speech-community. Exploration of the possibility that contoids will reveal similar systematicity shows this to be unlikely across languages. The examination of suprasegmental sex-associated differences, however, merits further pursuit. Implications of these experimental findings are discussed for 'inter alia' speech technology, language-planning and medical aids. Using sex-linked differential voice quality as a springboard, it is suggested that sex-appropriate norms are required in speech pathology. The need for socio- phonetics to be recognized as an important new discipline is thus underlined.
American literature and global time, 1812-59

American Literature and Global Time, 1812-59 explores the effects of the early stages of globalization on time consciousness in antebellum American literature and non-fiction. It argues that oceanic trade, extracontinental imperialism, immigration, and Pacific exploration all affected how antebellum Americans configured their national pasts, presents, and futures. The ensuing pluralisation of time that followed disallowed cogent conceptions of national identity. It analyses transnational geographies to examine how they transmit heterogeneous times. The project’s interest is in U.S. national sites that counterintuitively acted as fulcrums for the importations of foreign times and non-U.S. sites that interacted with and modified the homogenous progressive time of nationalism. As such, my project seeks to combine the transnational and temporal turns. It argues that the ethnic, racial, and geographic contestation emphasized by transnational critics found parallels in how antebellum Americans conceived of time. Conversely, it suggests that there were profound links between globalization and the sorts of instabilities in time identified by the critics of the temporal turn. Over its course my project identifies a series of “global times” that came into being in the years between the War of 1812 and the discovery of petroleum in 1859. These fall under three broad headings. First, what I term, entangled times that came about as a result of the movement of ships across borders and different social contexts; secondly, foreign local times that re-set the clock of imperialism and national progress; and, thirdly, a huge mass of reconfigurations in the origins and futures of the still-young United States.

Keywords: space
time
antebellum
globalization
Advisor: Pratt, L
Gerrard, C
More-than-representational archaeologies of leisure in the Dean Forest and Wye Valley National Forest Park

The thesis that follows is interdisciplinary in nature, bringing together the fields of contemporary archaeology, cultural and historical Geography to explore the changing landscape of the Dean Forest and Wye Valley National Forest Park. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Forest of Dean was a significant industrial region, a landscape dominated by pitheads, tramroads and railways, coal mines, ironworks, and quarries. However, the twentieth century saw the radical transformation of this landscape, from industry to leisure. In the chapters that follow, it is aspects of this landscape transformation that are examined through the lens of non-representational theory, as each chapter explores the questions: what might a ‘more-than-representational’ approach to contemporary archaeology look like? And, what can archaeological perspectives offer in terms of the development of non-representational theory?
Starting from the premise that contemporary archaeology is not just about the recent past, but about how we engage with the past from the perspective of the present, this thesis focuses upon those barely perceptible echoes from the past that have the power to move us in unexpected ways. As such, it examines not just the legacy of the past in the landscape, but its capacity to generate affective registers, to evoke and to unsettle. It develops a distinctly archaeological approach to considerations of materiality and time within non-representational theories, placing an emphasis on matter, memory and haunting, absence and presence. It focuses on new temporalities arising from the time of the ‘event’, new materialisms that are ‘more-than-representational’, and new ways of performing and practicing the archaeological.

Keywords: cultural geography
contemporary archaeology
Advisor: Griffiths, D
Hicks, D
Naylor, S
Basil II and the government of Empire (976-1025)

The reign of Basil II (976-1025)is widely accepted as the high point of medieval Byzantium. When the emperor died, imperial frontiers were at their most far-flung since the seventh century. Yet despite the territorial significance of Byzantium in this period, there is no comprehensive modern history of the reign. This thesis develops two important foundation stones for a new narrative history of Basil II: a better understanding of the relevant medieval historiography, and an analysis of the economic and administrative structures which underpinned contemporary political society. The first three chapters analyse the main Greek narrative account of the reign composed by John Skylitzes at the end of the eleventh century. The first chapter is a detailed textual study. The second chapter explores the literary, social and political contexts behind Skylitzes' text. The third chapter compares Skylitzes' coverage of Basil's reign with the rest of the medieval historical record, and identifies a hitherto unacknowledged source in the Greek tradition. Read together, these chapters demonstrate how the demands of history writing in the later eleventh century conditioned Skylitzes' narrative. In order to gain a more contemporary view of the reign, chapters four to six examine the economy and administration of the eastern half of the Byzantine empire during the tenth and eleventh centuries. These chapters argue that from the middle of the tenth century onwards, the administration of the eastern half of the empire was predicated on an imperial desire to exploit increasing regional economic prosperity. However, successive emperors, most notably Basil II himself, recognised the substantial practical constraints on the penetration of imperial authority in the locality. As a result the administration of the Byzantine east was characterised by considerable flexibility, and was able to adapt with surprising ease to local conditions.
Mitochondrial and transcription rate heterogeneity of mouse embryonic stem cells

Cell-to-cell variation in expression of pluripotency- and lineage-determining factors has been proposed to be integral to the process of cell fate commitment in pluripotent cells both in vitro and in vivo. Understanding the sources of this heterogeneity in pluripotent stem cells promises greater insight into the mechanisms underlying cell fate choice. I identify mitochondrial membrane potential as an axis of heterogeneity in mouse embryonic stem cell populations, and show that high mitochondrial membrane potential marks cells that are in a stable self-renewing state. Partial overlap with previously described metastable subpopulations is demonstrated through gene expression analysis. I present evidence that similarly to previous findings in HeLa, heterogeneity in mitochondrial membrane potential is associated with variation in global transcription rate in mESCs. The direct impact of global transcription rate on differentiation propensity is demonstrated through manipulation of RNA Pol II transcription elongation rate. Mitochondrial variability is therefore likely a functionally relevant source of extrinsic gene expression variability in mouse embryonic stem cells.

Keywords: heterogeneity
stem cells
Advisor: Enver, T
Nick, J
Bass, H
Twistor theory of higher-dimensional black holes

The correspondence of stationary, axisymmetric, asymptotically flat space-times and bundles over a reduced twistor space has been established in four dimensions. The main impediment for an application of this correspondence to examples in higher dimensions is the lack of a higher-dimensional equivalent of the Ernst poten- tial. This thesis will propose such a generalized Ernst potential, point out where the rod structure of the space-time can be found in the twistor picture and thereby provide a procedure for generating solutions to the Einstein field equations in higher dimensions from the rod structure, other asymptotic data, and the requirement of a regular axis. Examples in five dimensions are studied and necessary tools are developed, in particular rules for the transition between different adaptations of the patching matrix and rules for the elimination of conical singularities.

Keywords: ernst potential
reduced twistor space
black holes
conical singularity
higher dimensions
penrose ward transform
twistor theory
black ring
myers perry black hole
Advisor: Tod, P
Mason, L
A search for supersymmetry with the ATLAS detector using kinematic shape constraints in events containing one electron or muon

The ATLAS experiment is used to observe the √s=7 TeV proton-proton collisions produced by the LHC at CERN. This gives an unprecedented opportunity to search for physics beyond the Standard Model at hitherto unexplored kinematic regimes. Supersymmetry (SUSY) provides interesting solutions to a variety of theoretical problems that may be encountered in the Standard Model at high energy scales, while providing signatures that may be observed at the LHC. However, in order to produce a search that is sensitive to SUSY it is vital to understand how the physics that has been discovered to date may produce signatures that mimic those expected from SUSY.
Statistical models are constructed using both Monte Carlo and data-driven predictions of various background processes. The expectations are compared to the observed data for selections containing one electron or muon, each in association with jets and missing transverse momentum. Kinematic variable shapes, in the form of histograms, are used to enhance the sensitivity of the search. Squark and gluino masses in a MSUGRA SUSY model are excluded up to 1200 GeV, while gluino masses up to 900 GeV are excluded in a simplified SUSY model. Model-independent limits are also set, excluding theoretical models with efficiency times cross section above 1 fb.

Keywords: ATLAS
experimental particle physics
supersymmetry
particle physics
physics
Advisor: Barr, A
Occurrence of exceedances in a finite perpetuity

Generated by stochastic recursions, perpetuities encompass a vast range of discretetime financial behaviours. When focusing on the dramatic changes occurring in such processes, the analysis of threshold exceedances provides an extensive description of their underlying mechanisms. Asymptotically, an exceedance point process tends to a compound Poisson measure, highlighting a tendency to cluster. Now, the parameters of this limit law are known, but complex. Here, an empirical approach is adopted, and a class of explicit compound Poisson models developed, with a bound on the error, for the exceedance point process of a finite, multidimensional perpetuity. In a financial regulatory context, this provides a new way of examining the Value-at-Risk criterion for securities.

Advisor: Reinert, G
Informal carers' attitudes to pensions and retirement savings

Concerns about population ageing have been central to reforms of pensions policy and social care policy in the UK over recent decades. However, policy responses to these social problems are in tension, as individuals have been expected to take greater responsibility for both pension saving and provision of care, even when care involves a reduction in earnings and savings. While the pension system protects carers’ state pensions, little attention has been paid to their non-state pensions.
This thesis therefore explores the attitudes and beliefs carers hold regarding pensions, and the effect of caring on pensions planning, particularly planning a non-state pension. It focuses on the assumptions made about agency and decision-making contained within social policy. Semi-structured interviews were held with those aged 35-64 who were providing 20 hours of care or more a week in the Thames Valley and Greater London.
Almost all of the carers reported disruption to their private pension savings as their employment was impacted by caring. Few felt able to make a choice regarding either caring or employment. Caring also affected the importance many attached to saving, although there was no uniform effect on decision-making. Some carers became more reflexive, attempting to take more control in response to the uncertainty in their lives; others felt powerless due to this uncertainty and limited financial resources.
The study provided support for the theory of an ethic of care, which suggests individuals make decisions based on relationships rather than calculations of expected outcomes. The findings challenge the assumptions made in pensions policy. Carers were classed in four categories of approach to pensions savings: reflexive planners, non-reflexive planners, reflexive non-planners and non-reflexive non-planners. A range of financial and social resources corresponding to Bourdieu’s habitus and economic and cultural capital was required for carers to act as reflexive planners.

Keywords: decision-making
social care
carers
retirement
care
social security
pensions
Advisor: Kemp, P