VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Listening to the voice of the graduate: an analysis of professional practice and training for ministry in Central Asia

This thesis examines the relationship between professional practice and professional training of Christian ministers in post-Communist Central Asia. It responds to the call for study of the phenomenon of Protestant theological education in the post-Soviet bloc. Theological education in Central Asia has been developed without any research-led evaluation and is often found unsatisfactory by the emerging church, which calls for a more relevant, field-driven and contextualised training of its leaders. This study also responds to the gap in the literature on attitude development of ministerial students.
This is a qualitative inquiry. Its primary emphasis is on in-depth semi-structured interviews of forty graduates of four major theological colleges in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, who had spent several years in pastoral ministry after graduation. This research seeks to identify the most common problems they face in professional practice; to identify the attitudes and capabilities underlying their problem-solving processes; and to analyse how their training enabled or failed to enable them to develop those qualities.
This thesis argues that theological education can be viewed as a special case of professional training, with a unique cluster of spiritual qualities that are of paramount importance for the success of ministers. It also argues that, despite the graduates’ generally positive appraisal of their training, there was little connection between the training and the capabilities that the graduates needed to succeed in their current practice. It therefore argues that the institutions in Central Asia have inherited the flaws of the "schooling" paradigm of theological education. A more integrated, context-specific and missional model is needed. By developing a model for investigating the practical knowledge of ministers, this study attempts to provide the training institutions in question with a framework of capabilities and attitudes. This will allow those institutions to have a useful starting point in the reformulation of their curricula.

Keywords: pastoral training
theological education
religion in Kazakhstan
practical knowledge
missional model
professional training
church in Central Asia
religion in Kyrgyzstan
post-Soviet education
professional attitudes
professional capabilities
Advisor: Ertl, H
Model checking data-independent systems with arrays

We say a program is data-independent with respect to a data type X if the operations it can perform on values of type X are restricted to just equality testing, although the system may also input, store and move around (via assignment) values of type X within its variables. This property can be exploited to give procedures for the automatic verification, called model checking, of such programs independently of the instance for the type X.
This thesis considers data-independent programs with arrays, which are useful for modelling memory systems such as cache protocols. The main question of interest is the following parameterised model-checking problem: whether a program satisfies its specification for all non-empty finite instances of its types.
In order to obtain these results, we present a UNITY-like programming language with arrays that is suited to the study of decidability of various modelchecking problems, whilst being useful for prototyping memory systems such as caches. Its semantics are given in terms of transition systems, and we use the modal μ-calculus, a branching-time temporal logic with recursion, as our specification language.
We describe a model-checking procedure for programs that use arrays indexed by one data-independent type X and storing values from another Y. This allows us to prove properties about parameterised systems: for example, that memory systems can be verified independently of memory size and data values.
This decidability result is shown to extend to data-independent programs with many types and multidimensional arrays which are acyclic, meaning it is not possible to form loops of types in the 'indexed by' relation. Conversely, it is shown that even reachability model-checking problems are undecidable for classes of programs that allow cyclic-array programs.
We give practical motivation for these decidability results by demonstrating how one could verify a fault-tolerant interface on a set of unreliable memories, and the cache protocol in the Pentium Pro processor. Significantly, the verifications are performed independently of many of these systems' parameters.
These case studies suggest two extensions to the language: an array reset instruction, which sets every element of an array to a particular value, and an array assignment or copy instruction. Both are shown to restrict decidability of model checking problems; however we can obtain some interesting decidability results for arrays with reset by restricting the number of arrays to just one, or by allowing the arrays only to store fixed finite types, such as the booleans.

Advisor: Roscoe, A
Lazić, R
Roscoe, B
Interpreting vision: a survey of patristic reception of the Transfiguration and its earliest depiction, with special reference to the Gospel of Luke

This thesis shows that patristic interpretation of the Transfiguration had a sensitivity to visionary and ecstatic motifs within the synoptic Transfiguration narratives, and particularly Luke’s, which prompted a rich breadth of hermeneutic interaction with our texts. I offer the evidence of my survey of the reception history of the Transfiguration in the first 900 years of Christian history as a way of filling a number of gaps in knowledge in modern biblical scholarship concerning the Transfiguration narratives.
This thesis begins, in Chapters 1, 2, and 3, with an appraisal of interpretation offered by modern biblical scholars, patrologists, and art historians. Critical comment often overlooks a series of ambiguities in the narratives, particularly the distinct characteristics of Luke’s version. These include the question of whether the disciples enter the overshadowing cloud, the presence of priestly or cultic imagery, visionary motifs frequently found in apocalyptic texts, such as the disciples’ drowsiness, and Peter’s confusion at not knowing what he said.
Chapters 4-7 examine the earliest reception in 2 Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Acts of Peter, explore at some length Origen’s and Tertullian’s interpretation, and also look at Latin and Greek comment after Origen. I show many ancient writers to understand the disciples as experiencing ecstatic vision. Some also use cultic language appertaining to the Jerusalem Temple in their exegesis of the Transfiguration. They also employ the narrative to interpret other prophetic or visionary texts. Many of these distinguishing features of interpretation frequently stem from their attentiveness to the Lucan narrative.
Chapter 8 examines the earliest artistic depictions of the Transfiguration from the sixth century onwards. This chapter indicates that many of the visionary and cultic themes we have outlined in previous chapters are frequently overlooked by art historians, and also that Luke’s narrative exercised a greater influence on representation of the Transfiguration than many people have imagined.
This thesis concludes with a reconsideration of the visionary character of the Transfiguration narratives. Many of the ambiguities, overlooked details, and distinctive traits we pointed to in our opening chapters will be seen to have had much greater significance through many centuries of early hermeneutic tradition and artistic depiction than is the case in modern historical critical scholarship.

Keywords: Transfiguration
reception history
Gospel of Luke
Advisor: Rowland, C
Connecting canals: exercises in recombinant ecology

Canals have created grooves through the landscape of England and Wales for over 250 years, but they were dismissed by modernity, and narratives of disenchantment linger. Whilst visitor numbers grow as canals experience a ‘Second Golden Age’ and attempts are made to promote these waterways as ecological resources, they remain overlooked within conservation and their futures are precarious. The linearity of canals generates ecological connection and safe passage, whilst these environments also enable expressive territories and tranquil atmospheres. This research highlights the capacity for canals to enchant and support liveliness, and situates discussions of socio-ecological management within growing national concerns for connectivity as an effective response to climatic change and habitat fragmentation. The twin aims of this research were explored empirically through a case study of the Basingstoke Canal and sought to consider the position of such waterways within conservation and address a neglect of water within human geography. In accompanying practitioners and experimenting with creative methodologies this research begins by demonstrating the possibilities for wonder, surprise, and attachment after the ontological loss of Nature. Subsequent chapters draw upon fieldwork encounters, interdisciplinarity alliances, and a reworking of concepts within ecology and multinatural geography to exercise recombination as the central mode of address of this research. In inflecting the term’s ecological salience with a materialist regard for multiplicity, repetition, and emergence this research challenges the position of canals and the presentation of corridors within conservation. The beguiling simplicity of connectivity has enabled its ready incorporation within conservation discourse, despite a paucity of empirical attention; whilst contributing to work addressing this lacuna this research also introduces a more nuanced notion of complexity into discussions of connectivity and interrogates the apparent separation of corridors and sites. Encounters with the ecologies and publics assembling and disassembling through the Basingstoke Canal demonstrate that linearity does not preclude interested gatherings or absolve management of the obligation to respond, and highlights the need for biosecurity practices which are more articulate and attuned to difference. Recombinant ecologies invite and demand response, but conservation remains spatially cautious and this is further foregrounded as the challenges of incorporating the watery, connective, environments of canals are traced.

Keywords: Canals; Human Geography; Materialism; Connectivity
Advisor: Whatmore, S
The mechanism of action of iminosugars as antiretrovirals

Iminosugars are a class of molecules that resemble sugars but for the substitution of a nitrogen for the oxygen in the hemiacetal ring. Several iminosugars are inhibitors of cellular glycosidase enzymes in the N-linked glycan processing pathway. Iminosugars inhibiting endoplasmic reticulum (ER) α-glucosidases are known to be antiviral against a broad range of enveloped viruses including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis C virus, dengue virus and influenza virus. This antiviral effect is believed to be due to the indispensability of the calnexin/calreticulin pathway, entry into which is dependent on the trimming of glucoses from N-linked glycans, for the correct folding of viral glycoproteins. Thus cells treated with these drugs are unable to correctly fold the envelope glycoproteins of viruses with the result that the secreted virions have diminished infectivity.
A long standing question arising from this hypothesis is how such a mechanism can prove to be damaging to such a wide range of viral glycoproteins yet not show any significant cytotoxicity. This thesis answers that question by demonstrating that, at antiviral concentrations, only a small proportion of viral glycoproteins are misfolded suggesting an amplification effect from protomer oligomerisation and clustering. This thesis also shows how α-glucosidase inhibition results in abnormal disulphide bond formation and isomerisation of the HIV envelope protein, gp120, during folding, as well as faster transit times through the secretory pathway, both potentially explaining the observed misfolding. A specific glycan, N241, is identified as the potential key for gp120/calnexin interaction.
α-glucosidase inhibitors have two effects on glycoproteins; inhibition of calnexin mediated folding but also on the structure of the resultant glycan. This thesis uses mannosidase inhibiting iminosugars to examine the comparative significance of each of these to the antiviral effects of iminosugars. This thesis confirms that failure to process glycans beyond glucose trimming can be substantially antiviral in at least one HIV isolate.
Finally this thesis looks at the potential for using α-glucosidase inhibiting iminosugars as antivirals against Ebola virus in a guinea pig model. These experiments show that iminosugars are safe, even at very high doses, when given intravenously in animals and that one of them, NB-DNJ, may offer partial protection against Ebola virus, allowing 1/4 guinea pigs to survive a lethal dose of the virus. Although preliminary, this is the first time that a licensed drug has been shown to be antiviral against Ebola virus and shows the potential utility of these drugs as protection against emerging viral infections for which specific therapies are not yet available.

Keywords: iminosugars
ebolavirus
HIV
N-butyl deoxynojirimycin
Env
NB-DNJ
gp160
AIDS
kifunensine
iminosugar
Ebola
calnexin
glucosidase
gp120
Advisor: Zitzmann, N
Political theory, public opinion and real politics

If we are interested in questions about how we ought to organize our political lives, what kind of weight, if any, should we give to evidence about what people actually think? The thesis explores this question about the role of public opinion in normative political theory. First, I disentangle a number of distinct justifications for taking account of public opinion. Specifically, the thesis evaluates four views of the status of public opinion: as an epistemic resource; a feasibility constraint; a means of democratizing political theory; or constitutive of moral and political ideals. I defend the epistemic argument, outlining two forms in which popular attitudes represent a valuable epistemic resource. The thesis criticizes the feasibility and democratic accounts of the role of public opinion as these are presented in the existing literature, but suggests more convincing ways of reconstructing these arguments. Finally, I reject the view that public opinion constitutes the ideal of justice, arguing that such an account is subject to a fundamental tension. As well as clarifying the status of popular attitudes, the thesis addresses the methodological difficulties that arise when we seek to bring public opinion to bear on ideas from political theory, whose meaning and status in everyday political thought and discourse is often limited or uncertain. I outline two approaches to integrating normative theory with the investigation of popular attitudes that mitigate the methodological problems that often confront such projects.
The second major aim is to situate the question of the role of public opinion in the context of wider debates about the aims and methods of contemporary political theory. In particular, I address recent demands for greater ‘realism’ in political theory, distinguishing two main strands of realist critique and drawing out their contrasting implications for the role of public opinion.

Keywords: Political theory
public opinion
Advisor: Swift, A
The use of active site mutants of cytochrome P450(cam) in chemical synthesis

This thesis describes a study of the substrate selectivity of active site mutants of the monooxygenase cytochrome P450cam. A range of mutants was constructed which replaced the phenolic side-chain at the Tyr-96 position by various hydrophobic amino acid residues. These 'hydrophobic mutants' were then combined with other mutations around the active site (Val-247, Phe-87, Ile-395 and Phe-193) which altered the space available at different positions in the active site. These mutants were then tested with an in vitro reconstituted P450cam system with a range of substrates related to diphenylmethane and phenylcylcohexane. All of these large compounds were poor substrates for the wild-type enzyme. It was found that it was necessary to increase both the space available in the active site and the active site hydrophobicity to achieve substrate turnover. The substrates were oxidised preferentially on the aliphatic cyclohexyl ring over the more constrained phenyl ring suggesting that the active site is predisposed to binding the cyclohexyl ring close to the haem. Hydroxylation using the in vitro reconstituted P450cam system is limited by catalyst lifetime and the need for the expensive cofactor NADH. For P450cam hydroxylation to become a viable synthetic method it is necessary to find ways to bypass the use of NADH. For this reason various self-sufficient P450cam system were constructed and expressed in E. coli. The best of these, despite limited protein expression, was found to turnover camphor with the wild-type P450cam enzyme and other substrates with the Y96A mutant. The in vivo catalytic system was then used to screen many P450cam mutants for the oxidation of natural products, monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes (e.g. limonene, pinene and valencene). Most of the target substrates are not oxidised by the wild-type enzyme but all are hydroxylated by some if not all of the P450cam mutants with different degrees of selectivity. Some of the products identified so far are important compounds in the field of flavour and fragrance chemistry (e.g. verbenol and nookatone).
Discontinuous Galerkin finite element approximation of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations with Cordes coefficients

We propose a discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DGFEM) for fully nonlinear elliptic Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman (HJB) partial differential equations (PDE) of second order with Cordes coefficients. Our analysis shows that the method is both consistent and stable, with arbitrarily high-order convergence rates for sufficiently regular solutions. Error bounds for solutions with minimal regularity show that the method is generally convergent under suitable choices of meshes and polynomial degrees. The method allows for a broad range of hp-refinement strategies on unstructured meshes with varying element sizes and orders of approximation, thus permitting up to exponential convergence rates, even for nonsmooth solutions. Numerical experiments on problems with nonsmooth solutions and strongly anisotropic diffusion coefficients demonstrate the significant gains in accuracy and computational efficiency over existing methods.
We then extend the DGFEM for elliptic HJB equations to a space-time DGFEM for parabolic HJB equations. The resulting method is consistent and unconditionally stable for varying time-steps, and we obtain error bounds for both rough and regular solutions, which show that the method is arbitrarily high-order with optimal convergence rates with respect to the mesh size, time-step size, and temporal polynomial degree, and possibly suboptimal by an order and a half in the spatial polynomial degree. Exponential convergence rates under combined hp- and τq-refinement are obtained in numerical experiments on problems with strongly anisotropic diffusion coefficients and early-time singularities.
Finally, we show that the combination of a semismooth Newton method with nonoverlapping domain decomposition preconditioners leads to efficient solvers for the discrete nonlinear problems. The semismooth Newton method has a superlinear convergence rate, and performs very effectively in computations. We analyse the spectral bounds of nonoverlapping domain decomposition preconditioners for a model problem, where we establish sharp bounds that are explicit in both the mesh sizes and polynomial degrees. We then go beyond the model problem and show computationally that these algorithms lead to efficient and competitive solvers in practical applications to fully nonlinear HJB equations.

Keywords: discontinuous Galerkin
Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations
Finite element methods
Cordes coefficients
Advisor: Suli, E
The cell cycle and DNA damage-dependent regulation of Cdt1 in schizosaccharomyces pombe

Cdt1 is a conserved and essential eukaryotic protein that is required for the licensing step of DNA replication. In order to control replication licensing and ensure a single round of DNA replication occurs per cell cycle, Cdt1 is subject to strict regulation. In Metazoa and S. pombe, Cdt1 is targeted for ubiquitylation and proteolysis in S phase and after DNA damage by the CRL4Cdt2 ubiquitin ligase. CRL4Cdt2 is activated in Metazoa by an unusual mechanism that requires an interaction between the substrate and chromatin-loaded proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA).
This study addressed the involvement of PCNA in S. pombe Cdt1 proteolysis. A mutational analysis was undertaken to establish whether the Cdt1-PCNA interaction is conserved in S. pombe and the extent to which it regulates CRL4Cdt2-dependent turnover of the protein. S. pombe Cdt1 was shown to interact with PCNA in vivo and two variant PCNA-interacting peptide (PIP) motifs were identified in the protein. The two motifs function near-redundantly to promote both the Cdt1-PCNA interaction and the CRL4Cdt2-dependent proteolysis of Cdt1 in S phase and after DNA damage. The mutational analysis also resulted in the characterisation of two in-frame AUG codons in the cdt1+ reading frame. The second in-frame AUG codon was shown to be the principal initiator codon and was required to maintain wildtype Cdt1 protein levels and cell viability.
CRL4Cdt2 is emerging as an important regulator of proteins that are involved in the control of cell cycle progression and the maintenance of genome stability. However, there are a number of outstanding questions regarding the mechanism and regulation of CRL4Cdt2. In order to address these questions, a genomics approach was taken to identify novel genes involved in Cdt1 regulation. A screen of non-essential S. pombe genes identified 17 candidate genes that, when inactivated, caused up-regulation of Cdt1. Unexpectedly, deletion of genes involved in homologous recombination resulted in a Rad3-dependent up-regulation of Cdt1. Further work is required to establish the biological significance of this finding.

Keywords: DNA repair
DNA replication
Schizosaccharomyces pombe
Advisor: Kearsey, S