VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Why is there anything at all? Early modern and contemporary perspectives

The question of why there is anything at all is perhaps the most mysterious question that human beings can ask. Chapter One argues that the question is legitimate regardless of the particular form it takes, and that certain Humean-inspired attempts to dismiss the question as a spurious one fail.
Chapter Two commends Leibniz for providing a substantial solution to the question of existence before critiquing this solution. In particular, Leibniz argues that all contingent things are grounded in a being, namely God, that necessarily exists. Moreover, Leibniz contends that God’s necessary existence is not subject to further explanation. This latter contention is what makes Leibniz’s answer unsuccessful, and its downfall entails that satisfactorily answering the question is impossible. The chapter concludes by claiming that, contra Derek Parfit, making any progress towards a solution is impossible.
Chapter Three contains Nietzsche’s reflections about the fact that the question of existence is unanswerable. In recognizing that existence will forever remain a mystery, Nietzsche inquires as to why we ask the question of existence in the first place. In providing a critical genealogy of the philosophical tradition in which the question has been raised, Nietzsche argues that the question has been asked due to the conviction that it would have been better if there had been nothing. Nietzsche then sketches out the possibility of a vindicatory genealogy that affirms that the question may be raised from a positive emotive outlook. The chapter concludes by claiming that asking the question from a place of love and gratitude for the totality of existence, which begins with loving oneself, is an approach that encourages us to contemplate the mystery of existence without becoming overwhelmed by its mysteriousness.

Keywords: mystery of existence
love
dogmatic philosophy
theism
infinite regress
Leibniz
fundamental question
Hume-Edwards Principle
hypercategorematic infinite
autonomous facts
Hume
self-explanation
nihilism
Nietzsche
explanatory demand
question of existence
perspectivism
Advisor: Rodriguez-Pereyra, G
Essays on partiality: special cases and new areas

The leitmotif of this thesis is the examination of special cases and new areas in the ethics of partiality. ‘Partiality’ refers to the special concern that we display for ourselves and other people with whom we stand in some special personal relationship.
The first essay provides a thematic backdrop to the ethics of partiality. I trace the main themes in the debate on the ethics of partiality through a focus on permissible partiality (options) and required partiality (associative duties).
The second essay considers one of the most special cases: the justification of parental partiality. I defend a new account of the right to parent that appeals to the special value of engaging in parental projects. These are a distinctive kind of valuable creative pursuit.
The third essay extends the theme of permissible partiality, but with a twist. I defend the existence of what I call other-sacrificing options, which are permissions to act sub-optimally by making choices that discount the interests of people with whom we stand in an adversarial personal relationship.
The fourth essay digs deeper into the question of what distinguishes pursuits that can justify permissible partiality from those that cannot. I develop a meaning-based view according to which those endeavours that can justify permissible partiality are meaningful.
The fifth essay moves from the domain of permissible to the domain of required partiality. I explore the revisionist thesis that there can also be associative duties to give less moral priority to our adversaries. These duties turn out to be duties that we owe to ourselves.
The sixth essay concludes by considering structural questions about the relationship between positive and negative partiality. Four symmetries between positive partiality to intimates and negative partiality to adversaries are defended. These, in turn, help point us to a more fundamental principle of morality: its propensity to dissolve negative personal relationships while preserving positive ones.

Keywords: Ethics
Partiality
Moral Phlosophy
Negative Partiality
Advisor: Bader, R
Crisp, R
Nationalist China on Taiwan and the Cold War, 1958-1971: the struggle for stability and status

This thesis studies the diplomatic behaviours of Nationalist China on Taiwan in the period from 1958-1971. It examines the decision-making process over the episodes including the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis; the Chinese representation debate in the United Nations in 1961; the façade of a military crisis in 1962; the involvement in the Vietnam War from 1964-1966; and the withdrawal from the United Nations in 1971. It addresses questions including: what were the calculations and motivations of Nationalist China’s officials when dealing with those episodes? How far was policy formulation shaped by their understanding of the domestic political dynamics and the international circumstances? To what extent were the behaviours of Nationalist China relevant to the Cold War? And how influential was the Cold War as a factor on decision-making? These questions are the lenses from which we make sense of the trajectory in which Nationalist China’s leaders struggled for consolidating their political status and attaining the state of stability.
This thesis argues that Nationalist China had agency and possessed the authority to guide its own course, and that its policy-makers made decisions based on the calculation on what they deemed as capable of ensuring the stability of the regime, thereby its survival. In order to achieve these objectives, the leaders placed the maintenance of the status quo and preservation of the political order at their top priority. They put the framework of geopolitics in disguise as a means of gaining credibility. Depending on the circumstances, they sometimes even sought to gain political leverage by claiming that their actions fit into the Cold War struggle. With the use of multifarious archival resources, this thesis provides a more nuanced understanding of the international profile of Nationalist China and offers new dimensions for the existing historiography of postwar Taiwan.

Advisor: Mitter, R
Muscolino, M
Revising supply and demand: Women's electoral participation and performance where parties are diverse, personalism prevails, and corruption is commonplace


This dissertation has two ambitions. First, it presents renovations to the Supply and Demand Model for analysing variation in women’s descriptive outcomes in elective office. It advances these by demonstrating their utility in assessments of Brazilian mayoral elections. Second, by clarifying that the model should be considered porous to external influence, the project pursues the empirical ambition of bringing spatial econometrics to the study of women’s representation in a context with thousands of contiguous voting districts, and a diversity of party institutionalisation on par with global variation. My main revisions to the Supply and Demand Model are the inclusion of proportional comparison with the represented (whereas the original framework began with party voters), and the redefinition of stages of recruitment prior to candidacy in de facto terms, by what is routinised. Defining stages by routinisation elasticises the model, enabling the nature and number of stages to vary, and to exist outside of the party. This perspective brings out a distinction between the single route towards candidacy of highly institutionalised parties—whether these parties adhere to written recruitment rules or not—and the multiple, parallel recruitment pathways of weakly institutionalised parties. The revised model is sensitive to shifts in gendered voter demand, which can affect outcomes in candidate-centric systems. By analysing data from randomised, municipal government audits, I find that the scale of violations by a male incumbent who is seeking re-election predicts female candidates’ vote share and women’s proportional candidacies, but only in municipalities with AM radio stations in certain later stages of an electoral cycle. A novel dataset of rerun elections adds weight to the argument that the activation of the female incorruptibility stereotype among voters is driving these changes. I then demonstrate that women’s candidacies and incumbencies generate interdependence and spillover effects, respectively, using various spatial model specifications.

Keywords: corruption
vote buying
supply and demand
spatial analysis
rerun elections
political parties
Brazil
gender
Advisor: Power, T
Burden and trends in cancers of the breast in sub-Saharan Africa 

Despite breast cancer (BC) being the most common cancer in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), there is insufficient evidence on its temporal trends across the continent, and on reasons for differences in the cancer burden observed. This thesis sets out to describe the BC burden and trends in SSA. Specifically, it aims at describing incidence trends and survival patterns across SSA using population-level cancer registry data from the African Cancer Registry Network and to summarise the aetiologic research from SSA.
The temporal trends in BC incidence rates in women from 10 SSA countries over the last 15 years are described. There are rising incidence rates in all registries; however, these temporal trends are of different magnitudes. Trends in registries with the longest temporal data show rising incidence rates across successive birth cohorts of women aged 45+.
Reasons for the differences observed in the incidence trends are explored. A systematic review was carried out summarising the evidence from SSA on reproductive, anthropometric, and lifestyle risk factors. The associations observed are similar to Western studies, however, quality aetiological research has been conducted in less than 75% of SSA countries. The population-level prevalence of these risk factors are described.
The short-term relative survival outcomes of women diagnosed with BC across 12 African countries are also estimated. There are large survival differences across the continent. Late-stage at diagnosis and limited access to quality care are drivers of survival differences. More than two-thirds of women present at stages III/IV, and approximately 50% of women with non-metastatic BC receive inadequate or no cancer-directed therapy. However, there are challenges of incomplete records and high rates of loss to follow-up.
In conclusion, the BC burden is rising in SSA. It is imperative to improve timeliness of diagnosis, access to care, aetiologic research, and the quality of cancer surveillance.

Keywords: Risk factors
epidemiology
Breast cancer
Africa
trends
Survival
population-based cancer registry
treatment
cancer registration
Incidence
sub-Saharan Africa
systematic review
Advisor: Parkin, D
McGale , P
Local inference of Morse indices using finite point samples

We consider a smooth function f : M → R on a Riemannian submanifold M embedded in an ambient Euclidean space Rd. We provide theoretical guarantees for inferring the Morse index of a compact, dynamically isolated critical set of f using a pair of finite point clouds X and X− in Rd, and detail sufficient conditions which X and X− have to satisfy. We also outline a realisable computational procedure for obtaining X and X− and inferring the Morse index.
In a separate study with Jacob Leygonie, we discuss how persistent homology and wavelet signatures can be applied to graph classification problems in machine learning. We construct a supervised learning model which backpropagates through persistent homology to optimise over the space of wavelet signatures. We then apply this model to several benchmark graph classification problems and obtain accuracies in line with state of the art models.
The final portion of this thesis investigates how maximum diversity, a notion of effective cardinality in geometric measure theory, can be applied to industrial applications of interest to Elsevier, who sponsor this DPhil. In particular, we apply maximum diversity to assess the multi-disciplinarity of a collection of EPSRC grants, which takes relations between topics and grants into account. We also derive a generalised notion of Jaccard similarity such that we can measure the topical similarity between two grants, leveraging the pairwise similarities between their associated topics. We give recommendations on further industrial applications of maximum diversity in Elsevier’s business.

Keywords: Magnitude
Maximum Diversity
Mathematical Modelling
Graph Classification
Topological Data Analysis
Computational Topology
Applied Topology
Topological Inference
Morse Index
Advisor: Nanda, V
Grindrod, P
Deep Reinforcement Learning in complex environments

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), is becoming a popular and mature framework for learning to solve sequential decision making problems. The application of Deep Neural Networks, flexible and powerful function approximators, towards learning policies has effectively enabled RL to solve applications that were thought to be too difficult: from beating professional human players in hard games such as Go, to becoming the foundation for flexible embodied control. We explore what happens when one attempts to learn policies in environments that present complex dynamics and hard and structured tasks. As these environments provide challenges that lie fundamentally at the forefront what most state-of-the-art Reinforcement Learning methods try to tackle, they provide a general view of existing weaknesses, while also providing opportunities for improving the general framework as well as particular algorithms. Firstly, we study and develop methods for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning, a setting in which multiple agents are interacting with an (often complex) environment and each other. The presence of multiple agents breaks some of the key assumptions that provide necessary stability to standard learning methods, creating unique and interesting problems. We test these methods by formulating a multi-agent version of the StarCraft micromanagement problem, an extremely complex real-time control and planning problem based on one of the hardest environments currently available in the literature. Secondly, in a single-agent version of the same problem, we investigate how DRL can be used to develop a set of parameter-efficient differentiable planning modules to solve path-planning tasks with complex environment dynamics and variable map sizes. We show that the modules enable learning to plan when the environment also includes stochastic elements, providing a cost-efficient learning system to build low-level size-invariant planners for a variety of interactive, hard navigation problems. Thirdly, and lastly, we present a novel RL benchmark based on one of the oldest and most complex video games ever developed: the NetHack Learning Environment (NLE). NLE provides an environment that is scalable, rich, and challenging for state-of-the-art RL, while maintaining familiarity with standard grid-worlds, and dramatically decreasing the computational requirements compared to existing environments of similar complexity and scope. We believe that this particular intersection of properties will enable the community to employ a single environment both as a debugging tool for increasingly complicated RL agents, and as a target for the next decade of RL research.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence
Deep Learning
Reinforcement Learning
Machine Learning
Advisor: Torr, P
Topics in laboratory plasma instability and turbulence

The first part of this thesis investigates the growth of ion density perturbations in large-amplitude laser-driven wakefields via two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Growth rates and wave numbers of the perturbations are found to be consistent with a longitudinal strong-field modulational instability. We examine the transverse dependence of the instability for a Gaussian wakefield envelope and show that growth rates and wave numbers can be maximised off- axis. On-axis growth rates are found to decrease with increasing ion mass or electron temperature. These results are in close agreement with theoretical predictions obtained by solving the dispersion relation for a long-wavelength electrostatic oscillation in resonance with the plasma frequency and energy density that is large compared to the plasma thermal energy density. The implications for wakefield accelerators – in particular multi-pulse schemes – and methods to mitigate the effects of ion dynamics are discussed.
In the second part of the thesis, we develop a linearised Fokker-Planck collision model for gyrokinetic simulations that satisfies conservation laws and is accurate at arbitrary collisionality. The differential test-particle component of the operator is exact; the implementation of the integrodifferential field-particle component uses a spherical harmonic expansion and a modified Laguerre polynomial expansion introduced by Hirshman and Sigmar [S. P. Hirshman, D. J. Sigmar, Phys. Fluids 19, 1532 (1976)]. The numerical methods of the implementation in the δf-gyrokinetic code stella [M. Barnes, F. I. Parra, M. Landreman, Journal of Comp. Phys. 391, 365-380 (2019)] are discussed, and conservation properties of the operator are verified. The accuracy of the collision model is demonstrated by computing transport coefficients for the classical Spitzer problem and by performing benchmarks against the collision model of the gyrokinetic solver GS2.

Keywords: Turbulence
Plasma instabilities
Advisor: Barnes, M
Hooker, S
The effect of disruptive light conditions on sleep and circadian rhythms

The rotation of our planet on its axis provides a rhythmic environment for almost all life on Earth, and most forms of life display daily cycles in physiology and behaviour. In mammals these circadian rhythms are entrained to the external environment by light through visual and non-visual pathways from the eyes. Circadian rhythms are important for many aspects of physiology and behaviour, and their disruption appears to cause many negative consequences, including heart disease, obesity, and cancer in humans. This is important as over the last two hundred years, the invention of artificial light has majorly changed our exposure to light, with increases in many of the negative side effects of circadian disruption. Abnormal light cycles are commonly used in nocturnal rodents to understand the effects of disrupted circadian rhythms. Here, we used a variety of different abnormal light cycles to investigate their effects on locomotor activity and sleep. First, we show that each light cycle has a unique effect on locomotor activity and sleep, which appears related to the amount of light they get at night. This suggests that their effects cannot be directly compared. Next, we show that constant light induces sleep in nocturnal rodents, and that this is likely mainly due to the direct effects of light. This effect highlights where our quantitative models of sleep-wake regulation are lacking. Finally, we show that after prolonged circadian disruption, locomotor activity is not altered. This suggests that the circadian system is more robust to disruption than we previously assumed, and highlights the problems of using light to induce disruption. Overall, the data presented here in this thesis help us understand the e�ects of abnormal light cycles on locomotor activity and sleep, and demonstrate where our understanding of sleep and circadian rhythms are lacking.

Keywords: Sleep, Circadian rhythms
Advisor: Peirson, S
Vyazovskiy, V
A new technique for diagnosing pulmonary embolism based on respiratory exchange

This thesis was primarily concerned with whether it would be possible to develop a technique for diagnosing pulmonary embolism without employing ionising radiation. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic halted experimental work in this area, and so a second aim of this thesis became to determine whether any residual physiological abnormalities in cardiopulmonary function could be detected in patients who had recovered from acute COVID-19 infection. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the hypotheses and goals of the research contained within the thesis. Chapter 2 outlines the key concepts explored by this thesis and reviews relevant literature relating to cardiopulmonary physiology, gas exchange, pulmonary embolism and COVID-19. Chapter 3 describes a pre-existing molecular flow sensing technology and model of the lungs that form the basis of the work in the following chapters. Chapter 4 covers development of a novel model of the circulation and body gas stores which gives estimates of blood gas states across the circulation (and allows recirculation when connected to a model of the lung). This model is validated in Chapter 5, with good reproduction of measured changes demonstrated using a number of experiments that perturb the storage of body gases. Chapter 6 presents a small study collecting gas exchange measurements from hospital patients with suspected pulmonary embolism. Significant differences are observed between pulmonary embolism positive and negative patients when circulatory model estimates of blood gas state are compared with measurements of blood gases from a venous cannula. Chapter 7 extracts data from a cohort of pulmonary embolism negative patients to further investigate the ability of the proposed method to correctly estimate blood gas states in health. In Chapter 8, data were collected from participants who had recovered from COVID-19 infection and several pathological changes to model lung parameters are shown to scale with the severity of initial COVID-19 infection. Chapter 9 presents validation work using enhanced gravity to induce changes in the distribution of lung compliance but not deadspace. The pre-existing lung model successfully disentangled these two sources of expired gas profile smearing. Finally, Chapter 10 concludes this thesis with a summary of my findings, their implications and potential future avenues of research.

Keywords: lung heterogeneity
body gas stores
pulmonary embolism
non-invasive
human research
gravitational effects on lung physiology
blood gases
laser absorption spectroscopy
metabolism
mixed venous gas composition
pulmonary physiology
computational modelling
Advisor: Robbins, P