VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Identification of genes involved in urogenital development

The mouse urogenital system comprises the gonads, mesonephroi, kidneys and adrenal glands. The indifferent gonad, or genital ridge, arises on the ventro-medial aspect of the mesonephros at approximately 10 days post coitum (dpc), and enlarges due to the influx of germ cells and migration of somatic cells from the coelomic epithelium and mesonephros. Male and female gonads are morphologically indistinguishable until 12.5 dpc when the expression of the testis-determining gene Sry in the gonadal supporting cell lineage results in the differentiation of Sertoli cells. This process initiates a cascade of gene expression leading to testis development and masculinisation of the embryo. In the absence of Sry the default ovarian pathway ensues.
This project aims to identify genes exhibiting a spatio-temporal expression pattern consistent with a role in the development of the murine reproductive organs, with the primary focus on genes involved in Sertoli cell development. The main resource exploited was a normalised mouse urogenital ridge (NMUR) cDNA library constructed from gonad-mesonephros pairs at 11.5 dpc and 12.5 dpc. This library was screened by two methods: the first screen used sample sequencing of 472 NMUR cDNA clones to identify clones displaying homology to known developmentally important genes. The second screen employed DNA microarray technology to identify genes displaying differential expression in male and female gonads. The expression of candidate clones from both screens was examined by wholemount in situ hybridisation to identify clones displaying male-specific expression. These clones were studied in more detail to determine their cell-type specificity and timing of onset of expression.
Two genes were found to display male-specific expression in Sertoli cells. One gene was the serine protease inhibitor, protease nexin 1 (Pn1); the other was a novel gene. The preliminary characterisation of this novel gene, termed Maestro (Mro), is presented.
Pn1 and Mro are both expressed in a male-specific fashion prior to overt sexual differentiation. This timing, together with their expression in Sertoli cells, makes these genes candidates for regulation by the known sex-determining transcription factors (SRY, SOX9 etc.). In order to study the regulation of Pn1 expression during gonad development, a LacZ reporter construct containing a genomic region immediately upstream of the Pn1 gene was used to generate transgenic mice. This fragment did not drive Sertoli-cell specific expression of the reporter gene; therefore, the minimal gonadal enhancer for Pn1 could not be identified.
Behavioural, electrophysiological and connectionist studies in inflectional morphology

Theories of generative linguistics hold that language processing occurs by means of the manipulation of symbols by explicit rules. The past 15 years have seen the development of a radical challenge to this view, derived from a form of computational modelling called Parallel Distributed Processing or connectionism. Connectionist linguistic theory holds that language processing takes place at a subsymbolic level, and that the appearance of rule-driven behaviour is formed by the abstraction of patterns from the environment.
The English past tense has become a critical arena of dissent between symbolic and subsymbolic theories of linguistics. There are two current dominant theories of past tense inflection: hybrid dual-route theory, championed by Pinker, posits a symbolic, explicit, default rule for the regularisation process, and an associative memory component for irregular exceptions; single-route theory maintains that regular and irregular inflectional morphology may both be accounted for within a single, subsymbolic, associative system which contains no explicit linguistic rules.
This doctoral thesis describes a new classification of phonological similarity between verbs ('neighbourhood density'), which is used to develop mutually-exclusive and empirically-testable hypotheses from the two dominant theoretical perspectives of English past tense inflectional morphology. Empirical research is conducted in the domains of experimental psychology, electrophysiology and Connectionist modelling: four novel verb elicitation tasks are performed on adults; two ERP studies investigate brain activity for regular, irregular and novel verb inflection; and five neural network simulations are built in order to compare human data with network performance. Data are reported which have implications for single- and dual-route theories of past tense processing.
Political corruption, public opinion and citizens' behaviour

This thesis involves the examination, using sophisticated statistical techniques, of whether political corruption measured at the national level, and individual level perceived corruption, can help explain a) levels and forms of political participation, and b) directions of partisanship and vote choice. It proposes that corruption creates conditions of distrust and disaffection towards political institutions and actors that has behavioural and partisan consequences. It finds that perceived corruption has limited influence: dampening turnout, although having only weak effects on extrainstitutional behaviour and on party support. Yet national level corruption is found to have highly salient contextual effects. It dampens turnout and induces higher levels of extra-institutional participation where corruption is particularly high, and particularly low, owed to citizen disillusionment in the former case, and elite responsiveness in the latter. Some nuanced theoretical explanations for the prowess of contextual effects over individual level effects, relating to the ability of contextual effects to entrench participatory forms, are offered. The same theme is analysed in regard to a British case study, and specialist data yields consistent results regarding perceived corruption. Important effects relating to perceptions of broader standards of public life determining party support in the UK are also found.
The thesis also addresses two other themes. By examining the nature of perceived corruption in the UK, it finds that citizens display significant attitudinal sophistication. They are well able to differentiate corruption from other impropriety, and develop their perceptions of corruption more from consideration of institutional performance than from engrained orientations produced by processes of socialisation. Second, the thesis provides discussion of the intellectual challenge of defining and measuring corruption, shedding light on the limits, as well as the potential, of applying quantitative techniques to such a complex field of study.
A study of the kinetics of copper vapour lasers

A 42 mm bore, 40 W copper vapour laser (CVL) has been set up in a test rig in order to measure the values of many of the parameters of the laser as a function of time in the laser pulse-delay cycle, and of radial position in the plasma tube, while at all times running under standard operating conditions. In this way it has been possible to obtain the world's first truly comprehensive parameter map of the CVL in which all of the measurements have been performed upon the same device, operating under identical conditions and with all times accurately referenced to a datum. It is intended that this set of data is primarily for the benefit of those involved in the computer modelling of the CVL plasma, however initial analysis of the results obtained has been undertaken.
All diagnostic techniques have been carefully selected as offering the highest possible level of accuracy and freedom from assumptions, and each one employed has been described in detail in terms of both theory and practical application. The hook method has been used for the measurement of the population density in the copper ground state, the upper and lower laser levels, one of the copper quartet levels, and one of the neon metastable levels, each with a time resolution of 5 ns, and a radial resolution of 2 mm. The electron density has been measured, also with a radial resolution of 2 mm and with nanosecond time resolution using a two colour interferometric technique employing the measurement of the refractive index of the plasma at 10.6 μm and 670 nm. Measurement has been made of the voltage on the laser electrodes and the current flowing in the laser during the discharge.
Ancillary experiments have been performed to study the CVL discharge which have yielded some unexpected results, and measurements have been performed on a 60 mm bore CVL to determine fully the mechanism of the time delay between the onset of lasing at the plasma tube wall and on axis, and novel observations have been made.
Pneumatics established : Francis Hauksbee and the air-pump

This thesis is about the English air-pump and the instrument-maker Francis Hauksbee (1660-1713). I focus on the development, practice, and various applications of his air-pumps in the period from 1700 to 1745, and show how this led to establishing pneumatics as a distinct field.
I describe Hauksbee's background, and claim that his ability to build well-functioning air-pumps was due to his earlier career as a maker of commercial cupping-pumps and anatomical instruments. I show that his air-pumps were based on such devices; that his first version was a single-barrelled pump; and that it was this pump that gave him the reputation of being an outstanding instrument-maker. The celebrated double-barrelled pump, which came later, played no role in his early engagement with the Royal Society. I also argue that the air-pump became instrumentally black-boxed with Hauksbee's single-barrelled model, and reached its stabilized form with the double-barrelled one. Further, I argue that the various applications of Hauksbee's air-pump and air-pump accessories led to an extended vacuum-concept, where the pump became regarded as an unproblematic tool; and where 'vacuum' became thought of as an object. Moreover, I discuss the various activities of Hauksbee and his followers, and show that they can be seen as a separate group of instrument-makers, which I describe as the 'Pneumaticians'. This group took part in public lecturing and supplied instruments to individuals who performed air-pump experiments at home, and I claim that a private market for air-pumps and air-pump accessories had formed in London already before 1720. Finally, and contradictory to modern opinions, I argue that the air-pump in this period was not used for demonstrations of known facts only, but also for basic and applied research, and as a manufacturing tool as well.
I show that all these activities contributed to form pneumatics into an established area within natural philosophy, to a state where it held its own accepted methods, terminology, literature, instruments, and craftsmen.
Graph-theoretic methods in discrimination and classification

This thesis is concerned with the graphical modelling of multivariate data. The main aim of graphical modelling is to provide an easy to understand visual representation of, often complex, data relationships by fitting graphs to data. The graphs consist of nodes denoting random variables and connecting lines or edges are used to depict variable dependencies. Equivalently, the absence of particular edges in a graph describe conditional independencies between random variables. The resulting structure is called a conditional independence graph.
The use of conditional independence graphs as a guide to discrete (mainly binary), normal and mixed conditional Gaussian model building is described. The problem of parameter estimation in fitting conditional Gaussian models is considered. A FORTRAN 77 program called CGM is developed and used to fit conditional Gaussian models. Submodel specification, model selection criteria and goodness-of-fit are explored.
A procedure for discriminating between groups is constructed using fitted conditional Gaussian models. A Bayesian classification procedure is considered and is used to compute posterior classification probabilities. Standard bias-correcting error rates are used to test the performance of estimated classification rules.
The graph-theoretic methodology described in this thesis is applied to a Scandinavian study of intrauterine foetal growth retardation also known as a small-for-gestational age (SGA) birth. Possible pre-pregnancy risk factors associated with SGA births are investigated using conditional independence graphs and an attempt is made to classify SGA births using fitted conditional Gaussian models.
Sites of salvage : science history between the wars

During the 1920s and 1930s, science history achieved widespread cultural success, featuring prominently in universities, museums and international expositions throughout Britain, America and much of the rest of the world. Maintaining that the broad advance of interwar science history cannot be sufficiently understood without reference to its broader cultural context, it is the main contention of this thesis that both the extent and diversity of interest in science history can be more productively examined in light of a common cultural memory -- the memory of war. In the wake of the Great War science history stood as a site of salvage, allowing for both continuity with the past by proclaiming the cultural and historical universality of science and the possibility of a better future in its accepted positivity. Although like other aspects of the past science could be implicated in the failure of the pre-war order and in wartime atrocities, its history could still stand as a positive seat of cultural memory from which a post-war future might be built -- a lieu de memoire sympathetic to both reflection and reconciliation. In this the post-Great War rise of science history was essentially a post-Great War phenomenon. In the aftermath of war, science history emerged offering hope to a fractured and uncertain world.
The spirit of Albion : an anthropological study of the Order of Bards, Ovates &amp; Druids

Since the 1990s, a new form of spirituality has been spreading throughout the western world. Called 'Druidry', this spirituality is based on what is known of ancient Celtic beliefs and practices. This spirituality is not merely archaising; rather, it seeks to incorporate the Zeitgeist of the ancient Celts into a new (and admittedly modern) practice that holds meaning for its adherents.
Ethnographic research for this work was conducted with one of the most prominent modern Druid organizations, the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids. This organization was chosen as it was founded by modern Druidry's progenitor, Ross Nichols. While many other Druid groups exist, this group is arguably the largest worldwide. Although modern Druidry is practiced in such geographically disparate regions as New Zealand, Australia, the United States and Europe, I focus on the movement in Britain, as it is the home of OBOD's international organization and it is arguably the country with the greatest number of Druid gatherings and the largest community of currently practicing members. Research was conducted with many different members of the organization, but concentrated on one of OBOD's 'groves', the Anderida Grove of the Seven Hills.
This thesis was conceived primarily as an ethnographic study of an emergent spirituality, with a particular emphasis on the continual confrontation within modern Druidry between the ancient and the modern. As such, the work focuses on describing and analysing modern Druid belief and practice, including discussions regarding such areas as ritual and myth. However, the modern Druid evidence can also lead anthropologists to a deeper understanding of certain key debates current within the discipline of anthropology. I have chosen to focus primarily on how nationalism and ethnicity are synthesised through the mechanism of the 'invention of tradition' to create what modern Druids refer to as 'the tribe'.
Theory of nuclear structure

Inelastic scattering of heavy ions to low-lying collective states is studied. Symmetries of the scattering amplitude are discussed and, in particular, the conditions for the validity of an approximate symmetry property are derived. One condition is that the excitation should be 'adiabatic'. The consequences of this approximate symmetry are given: these include zero vector polarization and a gamma-ray distribution that is symmetric about the direction of recoil.
In the more general case, and under strong absorption conditions, the full inelastic scattering amplitude is decomposed into components corresponding to waves turning in opposite directions about the scattering centre. It is shown that this allows a simple interpretation of cross-section structure, particularly in the quasi-classical limit, which is derived and explained. The polarization and γ-ray symmetry angle are also discussed in these terms, and conditions of weaker absorption and Coulomb excitation are considered using the same method.
A new proof of the asymptotic form of certain Clebsch-Gordan coefficients is given, and a useful property of spherical harmonics derived.
Origin of descending projections to identified sympathetic preganglionic neurons

Relatively little is known about the pathways that control the ultimate step in central vasomotor regulatory system, i.e. the sympathetic preganglionic neurons whose cell bodies lie in the thoracic spinal cord. My main aim was see if these cells receive a direct input from the vasomotor areas of the ventral medulla which are considered as the major source of descending sympatho-regulatory influences. Using a combination of anterograde and retrograde tract-tracing and electron microscopy the existence of monosynaptic projections from cells of three regions of the ventral medulla oblongata - ventromedial, ventrolateral-medial and ventrolateral-lateral part - onto identified sympathoadrenal preganglionic neurons were established. In further tract tracing studies the connections of the ventral medulla with other such brain areas was analysed which are also involved in central vasoregulation. My aim was to reach a better understanding about the role of the ventral medulla in vasoregulation via investigating its projection patterns and thus to learn more, however, indirectly, about the possible nature of the medullo-spinal vasoactive links. A direct connection from the ventrolateral medulla oblongata onto cells of the ventromedial medulla; and a monosynaptic projection from cells of the ventromedial medulla onto cells of the thoracic motoneuron-pool were demonstrated in the electron microscope. In light microscopic tract-tracing studies a projection of the ventrolateral medulla oblongata into limbic forebrain structures and a topographically arranged projection of the ventromedial medulla into the thoracic spinal cord were described. The widespread projection pattern of the ventral medulla with low density input into all of its investigated targets suggest that it provides a modulatory input to both higher vasoregulatory regions and the spinal output systems such as the sympathetic preganglionic neurons and thoracic motoneurons.
Mathematical models for the glass sheet redraw process

In this thesis we derive mathematical models for the glass sheet redraw process for the production of very thin glass sheets. In the redraw process, a prefabricated glass block is fed into a furnace, where it is heated and stretched by the application of draw rollers to reduce its thickness. Redrawn sheets may be used in various applications including smartphone and battery technology. Our aims are to investigate the factors determining the final thickness profile of a glass sheet produced by this process, as well as the growth of out-of-plane deformations in the sheet during redraw. Our method is to model the glass sheet using Navier–Stokes equations and free-surface conditions, and exploit small aspect ratios in the sheet to simplify and solve these equations using asymptotic expansions.
We first consider a simple two-dimensional sheet to determine which physical effects should be taken into account in modelling the redraw process. Next, we derive a mathematical model for redraw of a thin threedimensional sheet. We consider the limits in which the heater zone is either short or long compared with the sheet half-width. The resulting reduced models predict the thickness profile of the redrawn sheet and the initial shape required to redraw a product of uniform thickness. We then derive mathematical models for buckling of thin viscous sheets during redraw. For buckling of a two-dimensional glass sheet due to gravity-induced compression, we predict the evolution of the centreline and investigate the early- and late-time behaviour of the system. For a three-dimensional glass sheet undergoing redraw, we use numerical solutions to investigate the behaviour of the sheet mid-surface.

Keywords: thin viscous sheet
glass
mathematical modelling
asymptotics
industrial mathematics
Advisor: Griffiths, I
Howell, P
Breward, C
Lange, U
Synthesis and properties of oligonucleotides containing triazole backbone linkages and 2′-modifications for therapeutic applications

Antisense oligonucleotides are short strands of DNA, which bind to their complementary mRNA target to prevent protein translation. Although conceptually appealing, for their practical use as drugs, these oligonucleotides must have better cellular uptake, resistance to enzymatic degradation, and target selectivity. In this work, new synthetic chemistry is established to prepare a novel group of chemically modified oligonucleotides. The anionic phosphodiester backbone is partially replaced with a neutral triazole and, at the same time, the 2′-position of the ribose sugar is functionalised with pyrene, anthraquinone, or guanidine moieties. Being unnatural, the triazole backbone is inherently resistant to enzymatic degradation, while the reduced negative charge potentially improves cell penetration. The limitation of introduction of a triazole backbone into the antisense strand is its destabilising effect on the duplex formation with their complementary target. In this study, the 2′-modifications are used to restore the lost duplex stability and they have been found to be very efficient stabilising moieties. To evaluate the viability of this strategy, reporter gene assays based on spliceswitching model are used. Promisingly, these modified oligonucleotides have successfully shown antisense splice-switching activity, suggesting there is further scope for their improvement.

Keywords: Antisense nucleic acids
Advisor: Brown, T