VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The study of soil-reinforcement interaction by means of large scale laboratory tests

This thesis presents the results of an investigation into soil-reinforcement interaction by means of direct shear and pull-out tests. Scale and other factors affecting test results were studied; for this purpose an apparatus able to contain a 1 cu.m sample of sand was designed by the author in order to perform large scale tests. Plastic and metal sheet and grid reinforcements were used in conjunction with Leighton Buzzard sand. Direct Shear tests on unreinforced sand samples showed that soil strength parameters were not affected by the test scale, although the post peak behaviour and the shear band thickness at the centre of the sample were significantly affected by the scale of the test. The presence of a reinforcement layer inclined to the central plane of the box had a marked effect on the strength and behaviour of the sample. The reinforcement increased the vertical stress and inhibited the shear strain development in the central region of the sample. The behaviour of the reinforced sample was found to depend on the type and form of the reinforcement as well as its mechanical properties. Pull-out test results can be severely affected by boundary conditions, in particular by the friction on the front wall of the box. The results obtained in the series of tests showed that interference between grid bearing members is the main factor conditioning the pull-out resistance of a grid reinforcement. The intensity of such interference was quantified on the basis of results obtained in tests using single isolated bearing members and grids with different geometric characteristics. An expression for the bond coefficient between soil and grid, taking into account the degree of interference, was suggested. It was also observed that the maximum bearing pressure exhibited by a bearing member depends on the ratio of the member diameter to the mean particle size.

Keywords: soil reinforcement
Advisor: Milligan, G
A theory of national application of the European Convention on Human Rights

This study seeks to flesh out a theory of national application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It does so by seeking to provide an answer to the research question, ‘what is the proper role of the domestic courts in the application of the European Convention?’ By relying upon the examples of French, German, and UK law, the study argues that it is not true in descriptive terms, nor desirable in normative terms, that the domestic courts take an approach to the ECHR based upon friction and assertion of sovereignty. This study argues instead that domestic application of the ECHR is built on the attainment of certain aims. These aims are inferred, in the main, from the domestic courts’ jurisprudence, such as it relates to four central ECHR doctrines, and they are: the doctrines of evolutionary interpretation; proportionality; the margin of appreciation; and autonomous concepts. On the basis of an analysis of this jurisprudence, the four aims are identified as being, first, honouring the principle of pacta sunt servanda; secondly, the safeguarding of human rights based upon the insight that human rights are a paramount good to be pursued; thirdly, the aim of positive, as opposed to negative, rights diversity; and, fourthly, the aim that conclusions reached on the domestic level of one state must be capable of being universalized. The approach of the domestic courts to the application of the ECHR can be explained on the basis of the domestic courts’ wish to attain these four aims. The proper role played by the domestic courts, the study argues, is one in which they are willing to give a lead to Strasbourg as well as to be led, in both, to use the wording of the Preamble of the ECHR, ‘the maintenance’ and in the ‘further realisation’ of the Convention rights.

Keywords: ECHR; domestic courts' application of international law; comparative public law
Advisor: Craig, P
Stratagems for effective function evaluation in computational chemistry

In recent years, the potential benefits of high-throughput virtual screening to the drug discovery community have been recognized, bringing an increase in the number of tools developed for this purpose. These programs have to process large quantities of data, searching for an optimal solution in a vast combinatorial range. This is particularly the case for protein-ligand docking, since proteins are sophisticated structures with complicated interactions for which either molecule might reshape itself. Even the very limited flexibility model to be considered here, using ligand conformation ensembles, requires six dimensions of exploration - three translations and three rotations - per rigid conformation. The functions for evaluating pose suitability can also be complex to calculate. Consequently, the programs being written for these biochemical simulations are extremely resource-intensive. This work introduces a pure computer science approach to the field, developing techniques to improve the effectiveness of such tools. Their architecture is generalized to an abstract pattern of nested layers for discussion, covering scoring functions, search methods, and screening overall. Based on this, new stratagems for molecular docking software design are described, including lazy or partial evaluation, geometric analysis, and parallel processing implementation. In addition, a range of novel algorithms are presented for applications such as active site detection with linear complexity (PIES) and small molecule shape description (PASTRY) for pre-alignment of ligands. The various stratagems are assessed individually and in combination, using several modified versions of an existing docking program, to demonstrate their benefit to virtual screening in practical contexts. In particular, the importance of appropriate precision in calculations is highlighted.

Keywords: genetic algorithms
early rejection
active sites
computational chemistry
shape descriptors
PASTRY
molecular structure
parallel processing
virtual screening
lazy evaluation
machine learning
pocket detection
PIES
computational geometry
spatial reasoning
drug discovery
protein-ligand docking
quaternions
Advisor: Cameron, S
Voiculescu, I
Revelations of a modern mystic: the life and legacy of Kun bzang bde chen gling pa 1928-2006

This study traces the development of Tibetan ‘treasure’ texts and practices in contemporary times via the life-story and scriptural revelations of the Tibetan ‘treasure revealer’ (gter ston) Kun bzang bde chen gling pa (1928-2006). It examines how his revelations (gter ma) rooted in the historic spirituality of Tibet, continue and adapt into the twenty first century.
The study is important in order to understand the ways this Asian religious concept develops and coalesces in North America. With the dramatic advances in communication through digital technology, it examines how gter ma texts and practices reach a modern audience. Also discussed are the implications of centuries old debates surrounding Buddhist lineage, transmission and ‘authenticity’ as well as concepts such as liberty, equality and authority. All of which are culture-specific constructions that differ radically when seen from a variety of perspectives.
The main conclusion drawn from this research is that as a Western Vajrayāna ‘tradition’ emerges and intersects with older Tibetan forms, both must attempt to find a middle path between their differing applications and interpretations if they are to avoid drifting into an arena of extensive commercialisation, dilution and distortion.

Keywords: Tibet
gTer ma
Advisor: Ramble, C
Roesler, U
The role of genetic variation in glucokinase and glucokinase regulatory protein in diabetes and related traits

The rising prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a global problem, and suggests that we need better therapeutic strategies against this disease. The glycolytic enzyme glucokinase (GCK) catalyses the phosphorylation of glucose, and is a well-established T2D drug target. Rare GCK mutations cause monogenic beta-cell dysfunction, whilst common genetic variants within GCK are associated with fasting plasma glucose (FPG) levels and T2D risk. Since GCK is expressed in both the pancreas and liver, pharmacological GCK activation provides the promise of a two-pronged attack on hyperglycaemia.
In vivo, GCK activity is modulated by the hepatic inhibitor glucokinase regulatory protein (GKRP, gene GCKR). GKRP negatively regulates GCK activity competitively with respect to glucose, and is controlled by fructose 6- and fructose 1-phosphate (F6P and F1P), which compete with each other for binding and enhance or diminish GCK inhibition respectively. GKRP also sequesters GCK in the nucleus and paradoxically stabilises the enzyme.
As GCK and its regulatory protein are fundamental to glucose homeostasis, we aimed to investigate the role of genetic variation in both GCK and GCKR to further our understanding of these important T2D drug targets in a system that would be relevant to man.
I demonstrated that two novel GCK mutations (T103S and V389L) identified in patients with hyperinsulinaemic hypoglycaemia were kinetically activating and through structural modelling identified a novel regulatory site for GCK activation by small molecular activators.
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) identified GCKR as a regulator of FPG and triglyceride levels, and showed a role for GKRP in T2D risk. Unlike most GWAS hits, this signal included a non-synonymous variant within GCKR (P446L), thus facilitating functional studies. P446L-GKRP was characterised kinetically and at the cellular sequestration-level. This variant showed diminished F6P-mediated modulation, which was proposed to reduce hepatic GCK inhibition, increase glycolytic flux (decreasing FPG), and feed metabolites into liver pathways (elevating triglycerides). As GCKR was not expressed at functional levels within human islets, this phenotype was thought to be driven by the liver. Preliminary analysis at the cellular level was inconclusive, with optimisation required to study human P446L-GKRP in this cellular system.
Finally, I showed that mutations within GCKR are not a common cause of “GCK-Like” phenotypes in man, despite the regulatory protein directly modulating GCK activity.
These data provide further insight as to the pathogenic consequences of perturbing GCK activity. This must be considered if this enzyme is to be the subject of therapeutic intervention in T2D.

Keywords: glucokinase
genetics
monogenic disease
glucokinase regulatory protein
diabetes
metabolism
Advisor: Gloyn, A
Rorsman, P
'Marry - stitch - die - or do worse'?:  female self-employment and small business proprietorship in London c.1740 - 1880.

'Marry - Stitch - Die - or Do Worse' ran a Times newspaper leader in 1857. Yet a significant proportion of the adult female population at this time were surviving without a husband, particularly in London. This thesis focuses on the activities of such women who never married, were deserted or became widowed. Sometimes labelled 'redundant', 'distressed' or 'failed' by their contemporaries, they were frequently unsupported.
In the face of substantial barriers to paid employment, this thesis argues that self-employment and small business proprietorship was often a viable option. The evidence presented suggests a somewhat different picture to that often generalised for all middle and upper class women in the nineteenth century - that of retreat into the private sphere of home to become the ‘angel in the house’. A wide variety of sources have been drawn upon to examine women's use of small business proprietorship as a strategy in nineteenth century London, including published diaries, trade cards, opinion pieces, trade directories and insurance records.
In addition, it is argued that it is only by following the female proprietor home that we can begin to understand the role of proprietorship in women's work-life strategies. Record linkage has been used to obtain more detailed and consistent information on the families and household's of female proprietors than that available from trade directories or newspaper advertisements. Common stereotypes of women in business in this period relating to age, marital status and so on have been assessed in the light of this evidence.
This research has revealed that these stereotypes have some truth in their application to women engaged in the production and typically 'male' trades but that such trades represent only a small fraction of the experience and activities of female proprietors.

Keywords: social history
history of entrepreneurship
women's history
business history
history of the family
economic history
Advisor: Humphries, J
Étale homotopy sections of algebraic varieties

We define and study the fundamental pro-finite 2-groupoid of varieties X defined over a field k. This is a higher algebraic invariant of a scheme X, analogous to the higher fundamental path 2-groupoids as defined for topological spaces. This invariant is related to previously defined invariants, for example the absolute Galois group of a field, and Grothendieck’s étale fundamental group.
The special case of Brauer-Severi varieties is considered, in which case a “sections conjecture” type theorem is proved. It is shown that a Brauer-Severi variety X has a rational point if and only if its étale fundamental 2-groupoid has a special sort of section.

Keywords: arithmetic geometry
higher-category theory
homotopy theory
Advisor: Kim, M
Vulnerability and food insecurity in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is a food insecure country in the Horn of Africa. A wide body of literature in the 1980s and early 1990s justifiably associated food insecurity and famine in Africa and Ethiopia with centralised governance and weaknesses in national early warning systems, which were argued to have had an enduring influence on the outcomes of early warning and famine/food security interventions. Among this wide body of research, however, little attention has been devoted to the socio-spatial dimensions of the problem and the resulting effect on interventions aimed at addressing vulnerability to food insecurity at the household level. In this thesis it is argued that social processes, inherent in the structure of societies and institutions, combine globally, nationally and locally to undermine the treatment of vulnerability to food insecurity as a variable, place-based phenomenon. The arguments are developed with reference to food policy and vulnerability assessments in Ethiopia during the 1990s. Specific references are made to the findings from interviews with national early warning system staffs carried out in 1997 and 1998 and to food security surveys in Delanta Dawint, Ethiopia carried out in 1998.
[Please see pdf. for full abstract.]

Advisor: Dr Tom Downing, P
Utility-based pricing of stochastic income

In this thesis we investigate an optimal investment problem for an investor who also receives an unhedegable stochastic income stream. We extend the log-Brownian model of Henderson to a stochastic volatility model where the underlying market is incomplete and the income is a function of the stock volatility. With exponential preferences, explicit solutions to the primal and dual problems are possible using extensions of the distortion power solution of Zariphopoulou and Henderson. We derive expressions for the utility indifference price and the associated marginal utility-based price of the stochastic income stream.
Even in the absence of stochastic income the market is incomplete and the optimal dual measure is the minimal entropy measure ℚE. We show how this horizon dependent measure serves as a pricing measure in the utility indifference valuation scheme. This is in contrast to Henderson [18] where the underlying market is a Black-Scholes model and the optimal dual measure, without the income, is the minimal martingale measure ℚM. The horizon dependence of the pricing kernel in the stochastic volatility model can potentially lead to inconsistencies in the pricing of claims with multiple payment dates. We carefully construct a forward utility function which restores the minimal martingale measure as the dual minimiser for the model without the claim, thus removing the horizon dependence.

Keywords: stochastic income
marginal utility-based price
distortion solution
stochastic volatility
indifference pricing
utility maximisation
Advisor: Monoyios, M
Hamann's prophetic mission

Johann Georg Hamann has often been seen as a rhapsodic precursor of Sturm und Drang, but more recent work by theologians has shown that his obscure style is a deliberately constructed tissue of detailed allusions. This genetic study begins with a reconstruction, based on the letters, of the circumstances that first led him to write such texts. An analysis of three late works, Konxompax, the Metakritik über den Purismum der Vernunft, and Golgatha und Scheblimini, then demonstrates Hamann's blanket application of aspects of Lutheran theology in his anti-Enlightenment polemic. Placing Hamann's targets in their wider context, both as. he himself understood it (on the basis of his contemporary correspondence) and also through independent discussion of the aims of Lessing, Kant, and Mendelssohn, reveals the nature of his engagement with them: rather than responding to his opponents' arguments on their own terms, he uses intertextuality to suggest a completely different, Christian, framework which it is their collective error, in Hamann's view, to reject. The substance of Hamann's work thus lies not in intellectual penetration of specific opposing arguments, but in the elaboration of conservative theological ideas and their radical application to the contemporary scene. To an extraordinary degree, Hamann's style compels the reader to unfold the implications of obscure hints and allusions, but this makes it important to establish which ideas are actually present in his writing. Close reading of the texts chosen as illustrations, drawing on existing commentaries, but aiming at a larger overview, shows how Hamann uses the same concepts and method against a wide variety of targets. The richness and complexity of the resulting polemics reveals more about Hamann's own attitudes to the Enlightenment in general than about the specific debates in each case.

Advisor: Reed, T
La Relève: Catholic intellectuals in Quebec, 1930-1950

This study traces the intellectual and political itinerary of the review La Relève, an influential cultural journal in 1930s and ‘40s Quebec, in order to explore broader trends within francophone Catholicism in the middle decades of the twentieth century. La Relève enjoyed a unique role as a propagator of French Catholic thought in Quebec due to its close ties with the prominent French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain. In the early ‘30s, members of the Relève group espoused a militant Catholicism with conservative-minded nationalist sympathies. The group’s encounter with Maritain in October 1934, however, moved La Relève towards a more communitarian Catholicism which was open to social and religious pluralism. During the later ‘30s, the Relèvistes would display a new interest in democratic forms of politics, reflecting the larger ‘democratic turn’ evident amongst many francophone Catholic intellectuals. In examining this shift, this study argues that the progressive Catholicism embraced by La Relève remained strongly rooted in longstanding Catholic social teachings and mentalities, thereby shedding light upon the political trajectory of the larger French Catholic Revival during this period. The emergence of a ‘Left’ Catholicism in France and Quebec was the result of a gradual and often contradictory process in which new attempts to engage with pluralism, democracy and human rights were heavily influenced by the traditionally anti-liberal and anti-individualistic perspectives of Catholic social and political thought.
This study also examines the social and cultural environment of Catholic intellectual engagement in Quebec during this period, focusing upon the role played by friendship in defining the experiences of the Relève circle during the 1930s and ‘40s. Initially the product of a close-knit and often cliquish group of former schoolmates, La Relève provided a forum for masculine solidarity and shared intellectual and religious pursuits. The Relèvistes' conception of friendship expanded over the course of the decade, reflecting their exposure to the ideas of the French Catholic intelligentsia, for whom the idea of friendship signalled a wider community bound together by common religious, social and political goals. During the war years, the Relève group came to play a new role within the larger francophone Catholic intellectual community, founding a publishing company which printed numerous anti-fascist Catholic authors. In the postwar period, however, contact with the European intellectual milieu diminished, as the review closed in 1948 and the Relèvistes embraced new trends in Catholic thought which ultimately distanced them from Maritain. However, intellectual engagement with French Catholic thought would continue on in Quebec through the review Cité libre, which would play an important role in shaping politics and society in Quebec and Canada during the later twentieth century.

Advisor: Conway, M
Some aspects of complex statistical dependencies

In the first part parametric models for which the likelihood is intractable are discussed. A method for fitting such models when simulation from the model is possible is presented, which gives estimates that are linear functions of a possibly large set of candidate features. A combination of simulations based on a fractional design and sets of discriminant analyses is used to find an optimal estimate of the parameter vector and its covariance matrix. The procedure is an alternative to Approximate Bayesian Computation and Indirect Inference methods. A way of assessing goodness of fit is briefly described.
In the second part the aim is to give a relationship between the effect of one or more explanatory variables on the response when adjusting for an intermediate variable and when not. This relationship is examined mainly for the cases in which the response depends on the two variables via a logistic regression or a proportional hazards model. Some of the theoretical results are illustrated using a set of data on prostate cancer. Then matched pairs with binary outcomes are discussed, for which two methods of analysis are described and compared.

Keywords: statistics
Advisor: Cox, D