VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
John Zonaras’ Epitome of Histories (12th cent.): a compendium of Jewish-Roman history and its readers

This thesis is concerned with the twelfth-century chronicle of John Zonaras, the so-called Epitome of Histories (henceforth: Epitome). Its aim is to identify the unique qualities of the Epitome which make the work stand out, and thus determine its place within the tradition of Byzantine historical writing.
The first chapter discusses the biographical and chronological information available to us about Zonaras, and contains a survey of the other works composed by the author in addition to the Epitome.
Chapters 2 to 5 focus on the chronicle itself. The second chapter explains the arrangement of Zonaras’ text in volumes and in thematic units. It demonstrates that the author gradually developed his project into a universal historical account over a period of time. Chapter 3 looks at the author’s method of work, exploring how he used and adapted his source material. The fourth chapter deals with the work’s political and ideological framework. It shows that Zonaras’ disapproval of Alexios I Komnenos was to a great extent a personal attack, but also an outright rejection of similar policies that were implemented by various emperors in the past. Zonaras’ pronounced interest in Roman antiquities is discussed in the fifth chapter. His attention to the Roman origins of Byzantium is examined against the broader intellectual, literary and historical milieu of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Chapters 6 and 7 include discussions that go beyond the text. The sixth chapter proves that the chronicler was part of a network of intellectuals outside the monastery to which he had retired. Additionally, it shows that Zonaras addresses the Epitome to relatively learned readers. The last chapter, dedicated to the reception of the chronicle, investigates the various ways in which approximate contemporaries of Zonaras and later readers perceived and exploited the Epitome.
At the end of the thesis, some broader conclusions are drawn about the profile of Zonaras and about the overall character of his historical account.

Advisor: Lauxtermann, M
The relationship between political risk insurance policies and international investment agreements

This thesis analyses the relationship between political risk insurance ("PRI") policies issued by public providers such as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation ("OPIC") and international investment agreements ("IIAs"). The analysis proceeds in three parts.
Part I explains the basic features of the PRI industry and compares IIAs with PRI policies. Generally speaking, IIAs provide broad protections that are available to investors for free, whereas PRI policies provide specific and narrower protections, which are more effective and easier to enforce. Ultimately, both PRI policies and IIAs are risk-mitigation tools that should be evaluated together by investors at the time of making foreign investments.
Part II explores the impact of PRI policies on the development of international law. Of particular importance are subrogation provisions found in most IIAs, which allow PRI providers to 'step into the shoes' of the investors and seek recovery from the host State. PRI providers should therefore take account of rights available to them under IIAs when assessing their recovery options. Further, as public insurers are government owned agencies, their actions give rise to State practice that may be relevant for interpretation of treaties in accordance with Articles 31(3)(a) and 31(3)(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
Finally, Part III illustrates the contribution that OPIC jurisprudence can make to international law by studying specific determinations made by OPIC. Two OPIC determinations are particularly revealing: the Mid-American Holding/Indonesia Determination and the BoA/India Determination. In both cases, OPIC applied international law to determine whether the host State’s actions breached protections contained in the policies and, upon making payment to the investor, OPIC relied on international law to seek recovery fom the host States. Finallly, Part III analyses OPIC jurisprudence in the areas of attribution under international law and quantification of compensation – the analysis shows there is substantial scope for cross-fertilisation between OPIC’s jurisprudence and that of investment treaty tribunals.

Advisor: Paparinskis, M
The Greater Bundahisn

The task which I set myself when I undertook to study the text of the Greater Bundahisn was at that time by no means clear either in its difficulty or its extent. Nor could I then know to what degree the increased knowledge of Iranian, in particular, of Middle Iranian, the period from about 300 B.C. to 900 A.D., had made understanding of this text possible.
Iranian studies attained to a new birth when in 1904 the results of archaeological expeditions to central Asia were first made known. By these discoveries of MSS the difficulties of reading Pahlavi were at once lightened. It was certain that if the vocabulary of Western Persia of Sasanian times were fully known, the Zoroastrian Pahlavi texts could no longer hide their secrets under the cursive alphabet which had hindered the progress of earlier scholars. Not only the Western dialects but also the recently discovered Sogdian and Saka have naturally enriched our understanding of the Middle Iranian vocabulary. But the lack of complete indexes of the words of theses two dialects still renders their use difficult. For Saka, besides the published indexes (of which the most important has only just appeared in Sten Konow's Saka Studies) I made my own index of all the unindexed Saka so far published. For Sogdian there has been the grammar of Buddhist Sogdian by R. Gauthiot, besides which I have had some indexed material of my own. Reichelt's promised glossary of Buddhist Sogdian has not yet appeared. The few Manichean Sogdian texts so far published (by F.W.K. Miller and Waldschmidt-Lentz) have yielded interesting words. For the Christian Sogdian there is the index in F.W.K. Muller's Soghdische Texte.
From Introduction; continued in thesis ... .

Keywords: Zoroastrian
Bundahisn
Bundahishn
Cosmology
Greater
Current fluctuations in ionic nanopores

From electrical current to ecological and biological systems, fluctuations are characterised based on the frequency dependence of the power spectral density. Surprisingly - given the diversity of the systems considered - the power spectra of many systems reveal an inverse power- law dependence on the frequency f in certain regimes. This ubiquitous phenomenon famously known as “1/f noise” has triggered an abundance of investigations aimed at understanding its mechanism. Recently, “1/f noise” has also been observed in the ionic electric current through biological ion channels, nanometre-scale membrane pores and solid-state nanopores. Identifying and understanding the source of 1/f noise in nanopores emerges as a crucial prerequisite to design nanopore systems for their use in technological devices, such as nanopore- based DNA sequencers. At the same time, the current power spectrum in nanopores contains a wealth of information which, if extracted, would help towards a detailed characterisation of the nanopore’s microscopic properties.
To analyse the mechanism behind the occurrence of 1/f in nanopores, we study nanopores using Langevin-dynamics simulations and analytical methods. Ions move through the pore driven by an applied electric field, and the induced current is recorded. The power spectral density calculated from this data indicates the existence of a power law frequency dependence in an extended frequency regime.
To verify a series of conclusions drawn from experimental investigations, we systematically vary all parameters characterising the system, including the geometry, the electric field, the ion density and the flexibility of the pore wall. Furthermore, we derive an analytical expression for the current power spectral density and compare it to the results from the Langevin-dynamics simulations. Finally, we evaluate the role of hydrodynamic interactions and find that it does not induce any major changes in the current power spectral density. Our studies allow us to uncover the mechanism that leads to the power law behaviour: interactions among the ionic components.

Advisor: Golestanian, R
Development and application of genome-wide association studies in bacteria

Since the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) applied to humans in 2005, incredible advances have been made in understanding the genetic basis underlying common human diseases and complex traits. Dramatic technological developments have enabled rapid, inexpensive whole-genome sequencing in large numbers of bacteria, creating intense interest in the large-scale application of GWAS to bacteria. However, fundamental differences between the genomes of humans and bacteria mean that although the methodological developments in the human setting are an invaluable starting point, novel methods tailored specifically to bacteria are required. This thesis concerns the development and application of GWAS in bacteria. Taking lessons from the past decade of human GWAS, I began by assessing the feasibility of GWAS in bacteria by investigating the bacterial genetic basis underlying antimicrobial resistance. I aimed to empirically test the feasibility of bacterial GWAS in light of particular challenges posed by bacteria such as strong population structure, genome-wide linkage disequilibrium and the presence of large accessory genomes. Specifically, I performed a detailed investigation into fusidic acid resistance in Staphylococcus aureus to assess the impact of controlling for population stratification in highly structured populations. This demonstrated the importance of controlling for population structure in reducing the number of false positives, but also the substantial cost in doing so. Testing for lineage-level associations enabled the inference of important lineage-level differences in phenotypes, typically discarded when controlling for population structure.
I then went on to apply the methods developed to two further phenotypes. The first, carriage vs invasive disease in Neisseria meningitidis, identified the known hyperinvasive ST-11 lineage to be associated with invasive disease, and suggested that newly-reported variants in genes involved in capsule production and phase variation play an important role in the virulence potential of meningococci in natural populations. I hypothesised that a combination of two particular variants upstream of the gene encoding the virulence factor fHbp (factor H binding protein), produces a second putative FNR box, a binding site for the global transcriptional regulator FNR, which may affect expression of fHbp. Finally, I investigated wild bird vs chicken colonisation in Campylobacter jejuni and identified lineage-level associations in agreement with previously identified host-associated lineage characteristics. I hypothesised that host-associated variants downstream of the CRISPR-Cas region, in genes involved in lipooligosaccharide biosynthesis and the chemotaxis pathway, represent pathways enabling C. jejuni to survive bacteriophages encountered upon colonising a new host. To conclude, I discussed the findings of this thesis and suggested areas for future development where new technologies and methods will enable bacterial GWAS to be further advanced.
Ricci solitons and geometric analysis

This thesis studies Ricci solitons of cohomogeneity one and uniform Poincaré inequalities for differentials on Riemann surfaces.
In the two summands case, which assumes that the isotropy representation of the principal orbit consists of two inequivalent Ad-invariant irreducible summands, complete steady and expanding Ricci solitons have been detected numerically by Buzano-Dancer-Gallaugher-Wang. This work provides a rigorous construction thereof.
A Lyapunov function is introduced to prove that the Ricci soliton metrics lie in a bounded region of an associated phase space. This also gives an alternative construction of non-compact Einstein metrics of non-positive scalar curvature due to Böhm. It is explained how the asymptotics of the Ricci flat trajectories induce Böhm's Einstein metrics on spheres and other low dimensional spaces. A numerical study suggests that all other Einstein metrics of positive scalar curvature which are induced by the generalised Hopf fibrations occur in an entirely non-linear regime of the Einstein equations.
Extending the theory of cohomogeneity one steady and expanding Ricci solitons, an estimate which allows to prescribe the growth rate of the soliton potential at any given time is shown. As an application, continuous families of Ricci solitons on complex line bundles over products of Fano Kähler Einstein manifolds are constructed. This generalises work of Appleton and Stolarski. The method also applies to the Lü-Page-Pope set-up and allows to cover an optimal parameter range in the two summands case.
The Ricci soliton equation on manifolds foliated by torus bundles over products of Fano Kähler Einstein manifolds is discussed. A rigidity theorem is obtained and a preserved curvature condition is discovered.
The cohomogeneity one initial value problem is solved for m-quasi-Einstein metrics and complete metrics are described.
Lp-Poincaré inequalities for k-differentials on closed Riemann surfaces are shown. The estimates are uniform in the sense that the Poincaré constant only depends on p &GE;1, k ≥ 2 and the genus γ ≥ 2 of the surface but not on its complex structure. Examples show that the analogous estimate for 1-differentials cannot be uniform. This part is based on joint work with Melanie Rupflin.

Keywords: Differential Geometry
Poincare inequality
Ricci soliton
Einstein metric
Advisor: Dancer, A
Modelling of diffusional phenomena in structural alloys for high temperature applications

This thesis is concerned with the physical metallurgy/corrosion of high temperature structural alloys, of the type used for some of the most demanding engineering applications yet devised by mankind. Both iron-based steels and nickel-based superalloys are used for such applications; the common thread in this thesis from the science perspective is the role played by defects such as vacancies which lead to degradation due to diffusional phenomena such as oxidation and creep. Modelling for typical diffusional behaviour is carried out at various length scales in this work.
First, the vacancy formation free energy in fcc-nickel is calculated by using highly-accurate ab initio thermodynamics including relevant temperature effects such as phonon vibrations and magnetisms. Predictions show good agreement with experiments, with non-Arrhenius behaviour due to the anharmonicity suggested by calculations.
Second, the oxidation kinetics is predicted for the Ni-Cr-O system by coupling CALPHAD thermodynamics and diffusional kinetics. A general (oxidation) diffusion model coupled with the homogenisation model is applied, allowing the treatment of metal, oxide and metal/oxide interface to be unified. Predicted oxidation kinetics considering oxide phases (halite, corundum and spinel) and metallic phases (fcc and bcc) show reasonable agreement with experiments. Proposed quantification of entropy-production potentially allows the long-debated question concerning the rate-controlling steps (phases) in high temperature corrosion process to be answered.
Last, the failure (breakaway oxidation) mechanisms of a critical Fe9Cr1Mo nuclear component exposed to CO2 are studied by high-resolution characterisations. Based upon theories of carbon diffusion in ferrite and Boudouard surface reaction, the temperature-dependent lifetime — linked with carbon saturation in metal — is rationalised at accelerated conditions and is extrapolated to service conditions.

Advisor: Reed, R
Essays in econometrics

Chapter 1
I revisit claims in the literature about the relationship between financial development and economic growth. I find that the Solow-Swan growth determinants are important omitted variables in the existing empirical literature. The role for credit in determining growth is attenuated once one controls for investment. The positive relationship between growth and credit in the literature is explained by a combination of the well known positive relationship between growth and investment and a positive relationship between investment and credit. However, there is evidence for a negative relationship between growth and credit at levels of credit above 90% of output and this relationship is not explained by any declining effect of credit on investment at these high levels of credit.
Chapter 2
I present a model for describing the dependence of financial intermediary net worth on the term to maturity structure of nominal interest rates. Such a model can be used to predict the change in net worth caused by a change in nominal interest rates. I show how to quantify the uncertainty in this change in net worth that arises from term structure parameter estimation and measurement error in accounting data. I apply the methods to measure the exposure of US banks to changes in nominal interest rates.
Chapter 3
I consider a measure of serial dependence in stochastic processes based on the compressibility of samples under modern compression algorithms. I relate the measure, which depends on the entropy rate of the stochastic process, to traditional measures of dependence, including those based on entropy like Hong and White [2004]. I present numerical evidence on the finite and large sample distributions of the measure under serial independence, that can be used to choose critical values for hypothesis tests for dependence.

Advisor: Bond, S
From incorporation to fragmentation

Academic literature on Iran has prioritized the relationship between the Islamic Republic and 'popular' and informal sectors over industrial labour, yet without investigating the way in which such sectors contribute and participate in labour politics. The multidimensional position of labour, its complex relationship to political change, and its role in re-producing the legitimacy of the state, have been neglected.
This thesis relies on archival research, participant observation and interviews to argue that state-labour relations remain key to understanding processes of political change, development, and democratization in contemporary Iran. Employing critical juncture analysis, I contend that the absence of labour from the 2009 Green Movement was not only a product of the oft-quoted 'populism' of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, but can be traced back to longer dialectics of labour incorporation paired with political integration and dis-integration.
In the early post-revolutionary years, the state paid little attention to labour, partially because the elite could not agree on how to interact with workers and feared their independent power. This changed after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when the centrist Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani incorporated labour through welfare expansion, and employed corporatist-minded political organizations, notably the Workers’ House, to mobilize labour support for his government. With these labour organizations continuing to fulfil such mobilizing functions in alliance with the reformists after 1997, they gradually became semi-autonomous empires influencing enterprise unions, welfare institutions and other labour-related organizations.
The incorporation projects pursued by Rafsanjani and the reformists generated internal contradictions and political obstacles, including the Workers' House's 'imperialistic' tendencies, entrenched opposition, and class struggle within the ruling coalitions. As a result, labour increasingly moved in opposition to the reformist project, helping to bring to power the conservative Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad's subsequent attempts at extending welfare and building parallel corporatist organizations weakened and divided labour, fundamentally altering structures of political contestation.

Keywords: Labour
Middle east
Labour unions
Corporatism
Iran (Islamic Republic of)
State-society relations
Advisor: Katouzian, H
Herzig, E
Women staging the French Caribbean: history, memory, and authorship in the plays of Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé, Gerty Dambury, and Suzanne Dracius

This thesis analyses the themes of history, memory, and authorship in the works of four women playwrights from the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. In doing so, it aims to reveal the three levels of marginalization to which Caribbean women theatre practitioners are subjected: being a woman, being a French Caribbean woman, and being a French Caribbean woman who writes theatre.
The thesis seeks to contribute to the expansion of the field of French Caribbean literary and drama studies, endeavours to redress the gender balance in studies on French Caribbean literature, and aspires to add to the existing body of work on French Caribbean women's writing. Therefore, the thesis aims to reveal and to analyse the world of French Caribbean women's theatre and to study how the playwrights address socio-political issues that affect their communities and influence their own writings and careers. The corpus consists of plays by Gerty Dambury, Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé, and Suzanne Dracius from the 1980s to the early 2000s. While focussing on a different theme, each chapter rests its analysis on theatrical works of a similar genre. The analysis of the plays deploys theories of the theatre pertaining to postcolonial drama and gender.
The first chapter serves as an introduction to a group of female French Caribbean writers and their predecessors. The second chapter is a study of two historical plays, focussing on the collective experience of historical events and the role played by women in those events. The third chapter analyses plays that problematize the relationship between the collective and the individual. The fourth chapter looks at the image of the French Caribbean female artist and the multiple barriers she encounters in achieving creative independence.

Keywords: Guadeloupe
Gender
Martinique
Caribbean
Postcolonial
French
Playwriting
Theatre
Women
Advisor: Viala, A
Hiddleston, J
Generalized relations for compositional models of meaning

In this thesis, tools of categorical quantum mechanics are used to explain natural language from a cognitive point of view. Categories of generalized relations are developed for the task, examples are provided, and languages that are particularly tricky to describe using this approach are taken into consideration.

Keywords: Linguistics
Distributional models of meaning
Categorical Quantum Mechanics
Category theory
Advisor: Coecke, B
Marsden, D