VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Lafzon ka Guldasta: an exploratory study of Urdu vocabulary development in grades 1-3

Urdu is a member of the Indo-European language family. When children understand words and how schools promote children’s vocabulary development has important educational implications both in terms of vocabulary growth, and the inter-connectedness of vocabulary and literacy domains like reading comprehension. This study aimed to explore Urdu vocabulary development by assessing the age of acquisition ratings of words derived from a child-directed print corpus of first to third-grade textbooks. A related aim was investigating the associations between the rated age of acquisition and other psycholinguistic variables, such as frequency, number of letters and syllables, and orthographic transparency. A secondary aim was to analyze activities included in the same first to third-grade Urdu textbooks for their promotion of morphological and orthographic awareness.
A word corpus of 1,968 words was created by digitizing connected text (i.e. poems, stories, etc.) found in nine children’s textbooks. The corpus was annotated for word classes and orthographic transparency. After inter-rater reliability was assessed for these annotations, the frequencies of six word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, and postpositions) in the word corpus were calculated. A word list of 600 words representing the same proportions of word classes as the word corpus was extracted for an online AoA study. Ten teachers responded to three questionnaires on Qualtrics containing 200 words each. The first and third-grade textbooks were analyzed using Vagh & Nag’s (2014) template for South Asian languages after appropriate amendments were made to reflect Urdu’s linguistic properties.
Results reveal that, on average, teachers think children acquire words in the word list between the ages of three and five years. Consensus analysis revealed strong inter-rater reliability for all word classes except conjunctions. According to teachers, conjunctions and nouns are acquired later than other word classes, high frequency content words were acquired earlier than low frequency content words, and vowelized nouns are acquired earlier than semi-vowelized or un-vowelized nouns. The textbook analysis revealed main effects of component skills in the morphological and orthographic domains with a higher proportion of activities coded for vocabulary and letter knowledge than other component skills in the domain. Qualitative analysis suggests a restricted range of activities in both grade levels although the types of activities differ by publisher. Instructional implications for vocabulary development and other component skills are discussed and the need for future experimental research is emphasized.

Keywords: Urdu
Age of Acquisition
Language development
Advisor: Nag, S
Balancing acts? Relational responses to trauma in twenty-first century French and Spanish women's writings

This thesis focuses on contemporary French and Spanish intergenerational stories in the wake of traumatic loss. Through the lens of these texts, it engages with Paul John Eakin’s theory of ‘relational lives’ and with current conceptions of what constitutes an ‘ethical’ representation of the multiple, interlocking stories in a family history. By drawing the French and Spanish traditions of life-writing into the discussion of relational lives, which has focused primarily on Anglo-American examples, my thesis expands the parameters in terms of geography as well as genre. While French women writers have been at the centre of output and innovation in European life-writing, contributions by their Spanish counterparts are considerably less prominent. The dialogue my study instigates, however, demonstrates that contemporary women writers are in fact grappling with similar questions when giving voice to traumatic experience; the Spanish texts simply tend towards more fictional strategies of representation.
I argue on this basis that the fictional or autofictional staging of intergenerational stories offers as much insight into what it means to write a relational life as do more overtly autobiographical accounts. At the heart of this question are the ethical challenges that the texts in my corpus address and the narrative solutions they offer in response. These texts put questions to the notions of ownership, appropriation, displacement and ventriloquism which pervade existing discussions of ethics in life-writing and trauma theory, and which are inclined to portray the relationship between subjects as fixed and predetermined. In their place emerges a more malleable conception of ethical practice, one which perceives subject positions to be forged instead in the act of telling the story. This thesis seeks to re-describe ‘relational lives’ accordingly as a specific mode of writing and so to clarify why it should be distinguished from the claim that all life-writing is ‘relational’.

Keywords: relational lives
narrative voice
women's writing
intergenerational trauma
Advisor: Killeen, M
Omlor, D
Smuggling and its impact on the grand strategy of the Spanish Empire, XIV-XVII centuries

This thesis studies the impact of contraband on the Spanish Empire at the strategic level where it impacted national policy, as well as its impact at the law enforcement and administrative levels. It includes necessarily applicable definitions of concepts such as smuggling, contraband and grand strategy, the difference between tactics, strategy and grand strategy and their applications within Spanish governmental institutions and private organizations.
The thesis proposes that the Spanish government’s preoccupation with its grand strategy of becoming the primary political and religious hegemonic power in Europe hindered the development of adequate policies designed to support it. Thus, Spanish monarchs invested more time in seeking to conquer Europe than in developing a feasible economic policy capable of finance that project of conquest. This concern reduced Spain’s ability to advance its primary objectives.
Spanish monarchs developed a grand strategy based on several major elements: monarchia universalis, religion, diplomacy, international law, military, naval and maritime policy. The efforts to achieve these objectives were habitually blended into policies designed to achieve a monopoly over the use of national power, both domestically and abroad.
The study concludes that illicit economic activity was carried out to such an extent that it detached enough from the Crown’s overall income to significantly hinder Spain’s ability to implement its grand strategy. The importance of the study is that it demonstrates, in the context of the XVI and XVII centuries, what the level of contraband implied to the Spanish rule of law. The high level of fraude robbed the Spanish Crown of more than half of its potential tax income from the Indies, thus interfering with its grand strategy in Europe.

Keywords: grand strategy
contraband
smuggling
Spain
Advisor: Deas, MD
Offence to religious belief and international law

Offence to religious belief is any form of expression deemed insulting to the religious belief of a person or a group of persons. Blasphemy and apostasy are notable examples of such offences, which are at times regarded as an affront to social and religious morals, but can also be deemed as an infringement of the law or even a violation of human rights. Despite being essentially intangible, such offences have led to prosecutions, arrests, riots, and deaths throughout history. Nevertheless, there is limited research on the legal nature of these offences, as well as little clarity on the terminology used to characterise offence to religious belief. This perplexing scenario is further aggravated by the lack of direction from international adjudicating bodies dealing with expressions deemed offensive to religious belief. Consequently, the issue in question remains highly contentious worldwide.
This thesis seeks to answer the following question: what are the normative underpinnings that international human rights courts and treaty bodies should take into consideration when deciding cases of offence to religious belief? To answer this question, the thesis will be divided into six chapters. The first chapter briefly scrutinises the foundations of prohibitions of offence to religious belief and proposes a re-examination of contemporary concepts related to such offences in order to test their compatibility with international human rights law. Chapters two to six examine structural and jurisprudential issues regarding offence to religious belief in international human rights law, to determine what are the normative principles that can be employed by international human rights courts and treaty bodies to resolve issues related to such offences. Therefore, this thesis addresses issues regarding offence to religious belief from a legal perspective, in order to provide greater legal certainty in such cases and a more holistic protection of human rights to every person.

Keywords: incitement to hatred
freedom of expression
freedom of religion or belief
hate speech
offence to religious belief
human rights
non-refoulement
freedom of assembly
blasphemy
apostasy
Advisor: Ghanea, N
Investigating the stability of perovskite light-emitting diodes

Metal halide perovskite semiconductors have recently attracted significant attention as a class of materials with huge potential for a wide array of optoelectronic applications. They have shown great promise as emitters in light-emitting diodes where they demonstrate emission wavelength tunability across the entire visible spectrum, narrow emission spectra and high EQEEL in excess of 20%. Despite this excellent performance they have poor operational stability, resulting in lifetimes of 250 hours in the best case.
In this thesis, I first investigate factors which govern the fabrication of efficient green-emitting perovskite LEDs through the implementation and study of different device structures and passivation strategies for green emitting perovskite LEDs. Following this, I investigate the use of 2D/3D perovskite heterostructures as a strategy for efficient green-emitting perovskite LEDs. I systematically alter composition and examine changes in carrier recombination and device performance. Additionally, I study the effect of different experimental protocols on reproducibility of 2D/3D devices which leads to the development of a novel hole injection layer which affords efficient and highly reproducible devices.
In the final experimental chapter, I study the effect of the composition of 2D/3D perovskite LEDs on stability. I demonstrate that the introduction of the cation phenylethylammonium into the perovskite is highly detrimental to operational stability. This leads to investigations into the drivers behind poor operational stability where I reveal that changes to radiative efficiency and charge injection are the primary factors, which is attributed to increased ionic mobility.

Keywords: light emission
LEDs
stability
perovskite
Advisor: Snaith, H
Kassite letters: communicating orders and networking within the administration of Kassite Babylonia

In this DPhil thesis the language, style, structure, epistolary function and content of 314 Kassite period letters from Nippur, which were available to the author, are analysed. Nippur yielded the largest number of Kassite period letters in comparison with other Kassite period findspots. The Kassite letters not only prove that the governor of Nippur had an elevated status, but also supraregional influence. He was involved in the collection of levies for the king, and in the supraregional distribution of resources, which are tasks ascribed to the royal administration. Provincial officials, such as ḫazannus, from other provinces reported to the šandabakku, because the šandabakku, as the highest official under the king, was involved in the collection of levies for the royal administration. Further, the Kassite letters show that the town of Nippur was surrounded by sub-units called pīḫatus, and that the province of Nippur stretched northeast up until Dūr-Enlilē. The šandabakku had the command over temples in Nippur. Levies of temple grants were collected by provincial officials, and temples were referred to as the šandabakku’s own household. Nippur’s network reached south through Isin and the Sealand to Dilmun, and in the north to Bīt-Pere-Amurru. In the northeast regular communication with Upī, Dēr and Akkade is attested. The involvement of Nippurean officials in distant provinces can be explained through the involvement of the šandabakku of Nippur in the management of temple lands in different provinces.

Keywords: governance
governor
Middle Babylonian period
letter
Kassite letters
provincial structure
Nippur
Kassite kingdom
Kassite
administration
state organisation
Advisor: Dahl, JL
Sensitivity and accuracy limits of molecular imaging in fluorescence guided surgery

Fluorescence guided surgery (FGS) is an emerging imaging modality seeking to improve optical contrast in the near infrared (NIR). FGS offers real time imaging capabilities to help surgeons identify tissues of interest with higher precision and specificity during surgery. The increased contrast is provided by fluorescence emission from non-specific or specific fluorescent markers.
Many commercial imagers have been developed for FGS, with several achieving FDA approval for clinical use. However, little information is available regarding absolute sensitivity of the detection systems or amount of excitation light produced in physical units. In light of this, attempts have been made to formulate a calibration standard. Previously published calibration methods have involved the use of composite phantoms, which require chemical preparation, may suffer from inner filter effects* and have a limited shelf life. This work outlines a new electronic calibration device for FGS, consisting of a light emitting module and a light detection module. Their purpose is to measure the detection sensitivity to NIR photons for various NIR wavelengths (in SI units of photons/s/cm2) and to measure the excitation light available as a function of working distance (in SI units of mW/cm2).
The second part of this work is concerned with the development of a novel ex-vivo FGS imager. This ex-vivo imager seeks to potentially improve outcomes of FGS surgical procedures by evaluating surgical margins following tissue resection. This will help the surgeon to quickly determine whether further surgery is needed. The ex-vivo imager uses a custom designed excitation light source to maximise fluorophore excitation at numerous wavelengths and employs a low readout noise chilled NIR-sensitive camera. Furthermore, spectral unmixing approaches may be explored to remove confounding autofluorescence signals. These features of the imager are designed to maximise imaging contrast and tumour-to-background ratio.
* Inner filter effects involve the process of absorption of fluorescence emission within the composite phantom following excitation by the FGS imager being calibrated.

Advisor: Vojnovic, B
Hamdy, F
Development of 3D-printed droplet networks as a platform to build functional synthetic tissues

The development of synthetic multicellular systems that can mimic complex cooperative behaviour of living tissues represents a major challenge for bottom-up synthetic biology. Tissue-like systems would allow the design of devices and materials that can communicate with living tissues and monitor, control or complement their biological activity. Networks of 3D-printed aqueous droplets in oil joined by droplet interface bilayers (DIBs) represent a powerful platform from which soft-electronic devices and synthetic tissues have been developed. Precise control of droplet packing to produce constructs with predictable 3D architectures, assembly of functional constructs of dimensions relevant to biomedical applications, and transfer of functional constructs to aqueous environment will enable design of increasingly sophisticated systems. Here, we achieve highly regular droplet packing in 3D-printed synthetic tissues by controlling the equilibrium contact angle θDIB at the droplet-droplet interface. As a result, we fabricate synthetic tissues with single-droplet precision in three dimensions. We also build larger and modular synthetic tissues by assembling building blocks constructed independently. Lastly, we employ a novel strategy to transfer 3D-printed droplet networks to aqueous bulk phase, forming a functional lipid bilayer at the interface with the aqueous bulk while retaining the architecture and the functionality of the internal lipid bilayers. Using this method, we generate synthetic tissues that can communicate with their environment, as a fundamental step towards interface with living tissues in physiological conditions.

Keywords: Biomimetics
Chemical Biology
Nanopores
3D-printing
Droplet Interface Bilayers
Synthetic Biology
Lipids
DIB
Bioinspired Materials
Synthetic Tissues
Contact Angle
Advisor: Bayley, H
Accessible adaptive optics and super-resolution microscopy to enable improved imaging

Many of the recent innovations in biological imaging have revolved around the quest for greater resolving power, ultimately culminating in the advent of super-resolution microscopy techniques. However, all microscopy techniques are vulnerable to optical aberrations which distort the light wavefront. This leads to a gulf between theoretical and practical resolution for an imaging system. For super-resolution techniques, this can lead to reconstruction artifacts or the failure of the imaging technique entirely.
Implementing adaptive optics (AO) in microscopy has already been shown to be highly effective at reducing these aberrations and yielding significant improvements to image quality and resolution in numerous proof of principle systems. Despite this, AO technology has yet to be widely adopted in microscopy. This is for two principle reasons. Firstly, AO implementations to date have not been robust or generalised which makes transferring them between microscopy systems, imaging modalities and sample type troublesome to impossible. Secondly, AO implementations to date have not been accessible to typical microscope users and instead have been the purview of AO microscopy specialists.
This thesis presents a generalised, robust implementation for AO; Microscope-AOtools. This implementation has all the necessary methods for setting up and operating an adaptive element in microscopy. It has a flexible, modular design which allows for easy transfer between imaging systems, modalities, hardware configurations and sample types. These methods are integrated into Microscope-Cockpit for user accessibility. The evidence of these claims are substantiated by a detailed description of Microscope-AOtools’ successful deployment on both a spinning disk confocal system and a bespoke, upright structured illumination microscope with a range of sample types.

Keywords: Microscopy
Adaptive Optics
Super-resolution
Advisor: Dobbie, I
Booth, M
Davis, I
Physical layer security for visible light communication systems subject to eavesdropper location uncertainty

The past few decades have witnessed the acceleration in the development of groundbreaking information technology applications, such as smartphones/tablets, Internet of Things devices, virtual reality devices, etc. These new applications require a significant amount of data traffic to be conveyed wirelessly. Furthermore, the growing number of devices imposes a big challenge of providing seamless and low-delay communication. To satisfy these requirements, visible light communication (VLC) systems have gained considerable popularity thanks to its inherent advantages, such as unlicensed wide bandwidth, high area spectral efficiency, and high security. At the same time, in VLC systems, network security remains a significant challenge. Even with the inherent wireless communication security of VLC systems, there is still a possibility that an eavesdropper can wiretap important/private information in large open spaces. Therefore, this research investigates physical layer security (PLS) to secure the VLC indoor transmission in the presence of randomly located eavesdroppers, proposing three different beamforming and jamming strategies for different VLC system scenarios. PLS is a set of techniques that enable a transmitter and a legitimate receiver to securely transmit and receive important data, eliminating the possibility of eavesdropping by utilizing the randomness of a channel between transmitter and receiver. Dealing with the random locations of eavesdroppers by using tools from stochastic geometry, the proposed PLS schemes do not require precise locations or channel state information of eavesdroppers. Numerical and Monte Carlo simulation results are provided to verify the performances of the proposed schemes.

Keywords: beamforming
visible light communication
stochastic geometry
Physical layer security
Advisor: Coon, JP
Psychiatric illnesses in general hospital inpatients

Background: Psychiatric illnesses are problematic in the medically ill, particularly amongst those admitted to general hospitals. An admission to a general hospital provides the opportunity to identify and, where appropriate, treat these conditions. To achieve this by better psychiatric service provision, we first need to know how common psychiatric illnesses are in general hospital inpatients.
Research aim: The overall aim of this thesis was therefore to determine the prevalence of psychiatric illnesses in general hospital inpatients.
Methods: I conducted: (1) a meta-review of the prevalence of psychiatric illnesses in general hospital inpatients; (2) a systematic review of the prevalence of anxiety disorders in general hospital inpatients; and (3) a cross-sectional study of the prevalence and associations of clinically significant anxiety, depression and cognitive impairment in older general hospital inpatients.
Results: The main findings of this thesis are as follows:
(1) Meta-review: The prevalence of diagnosed: depression ranged from 2% to 56% in general hospital inpatients (mean prevalence of 12%); delirium ranged from 10% to 31% in medical inpatients at admission to hospital; and dementia ranged from 2.8% to 63.0% in older general hospital inpatients. I did not find a systematic review of the prevalence of anxiety in the whole population of general hospital inpatients; therefore, I systematically reviewed this literature.
(2) Systematic review: The mean prevalence of panic disorder was 2% and generalised anxiety disorder was 7% in general medical and surgical inpatients.
(3) Cross-sectional study: The prevalence of clinically significant anxiety, depression and cognitive impairment was 41.8%, 43.6% and 64.1% respectively in older general hospital inpatients. I found evidence to suggest psychiatric illnesses were especially common in the “sickest” patients and those without a spouse or partner. Patients with clinically significant anxiety or depression also appeared to be more likely to experience symptoms of other psychiatric illnesses.
Conclusion: The finding that psychiatric illnesses are highly prevalent in general hospital inpatients has important implications for clinical care and healthcare policy. In particular, it suggests that general hospital services must address the needs of patients suffering from both medical and psychiatric illnesses. Better psychiatric care provision in general hospitals has the potential to improve outcomes for these patients.

Keywords: Systematic review
Cross-sectional
Psychiatric Disorder
Inpatient
Older adult
Mental Illness
Depression
Dementia
Prevalence
Alcohol
Phobia
Cognitive Impairment
Substance Abuse
Panic
Meta-analysis
Meta-review
Mental Disorder
Elderly
Psychiatric Illness
Delirium
Anxiety
General hospital
Advisor: Walker, J
Sharpe, M