VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
On the geometric and analytic properties of some random fractals

The heat content of a domain D of &Ropf;d is defined as
E(s) = ∫D u(s,x)dx,
where u is the solution to the heat equation with zero initial condition and unit Dirichlet boundary condition. This thesis studies the behaviour of E(s) for small s with a particular emphasis on the case where D
is a planar domain whose boundary is a random Koch curve.
When ∂D is spatially homogeneous, we show that we can recover the upper and lower Minkowski dimensions of ∂D from E(s). Furthermore, in some cases where the Minkowski dimension does exist, finer fluctuations can be recovered and the heat content is controlled by sα exp{f (log(1/s)} for small s, for some positive α and some regularly varying function f.
When ∂D is statistically self-similar, the heat content asymptotics are studied using a law of large numbers for the general branching process, and we show that the Minkowski dimension and content of ∂D exist and can be recovered from E(s). More precisely the heat content has an almost sure expansion
E(s) = c1 sα N∞ + o(sα), a.s.
for small s, for some positive c1 and α and a positive random variable N∞ with unit expectation.
To study the fluctuations around these asymptotics, we prove a central limit theorem for the general branching process. The proof follows a standard Taylor expansion argument and relies on the independence built into the general branching process. The limiting distribution established here is reminiscent of those arising in central limit theorems for martingales.
When ∂D is a statistically self-similar Cantor subset of &Ropf;, we discuss examples where we have and fail to have a central limit theorem for the heat content. We conclude with an open question about the fluctuations of the heat content when ∂D is a statistically self-similar Koch curve.

Keywords: Probability
Fractals
Spectral Analysis
Advisor: Hambly, B
Statistical methods for studying the frequency of monitoring chronic conditions

Evidence for the timing and frequency of monitoring chronic conditions in primary care is often of low quality or absent. Recently, a methodology based upon repeated measures of monitoring tests has been developed to evaluate monitoring strategies which differ by frequency and the length of interval. In studies using this approach, it has been shown that there is potential for substantial over-detection and over-treatment through routine monitoring.
The aim of this thesis was to extend the existing methodology to outcomes with highly skewed distributions and tests that are interpreted as dichotomous or categorical states. These methods were applied to find evidence for the intervals of monitoring for microalbuminuria in people with type 1 diabetes and screening for diabetic retinopathy.
Statistical models were used to describe the progression of albuminuria and retinopathy and estimate the rates of false positive and false negative tests over time. Simulation was then used to create hypothetical cohorts of people being monitored and screening at different frequencies and for different baseline risk. The impact of changing the timing of tests within the programme was measured and evaluated.
The basic framework of the methodology can be usefully extended to tests that have categorical outcome or highly skewed distributions. More frequent monitoring of microalbuminuria in people with type 1 diabetes, and more frequent screening of diabetic retinopathy leads to disproportionate numbers of false positive results and potential over-treatment or referral to specialist services.
As with any other clinical intervention, monitoring and screening intervals should be based upon solid evidence. Monitoring for microalbuminuria and screening for diabetic retinopathy less frequently would reduce the rates of false positives tests but the implications of less surveillance need further investigation.

Keywords: Primary Care
diabetes
statistical models
monitoring
Advisor: Stevens, R
Matthews, D
Socio-religious functions of three Theban festivals in the New Kingdom: the festivals of Opet, the Valley, and the New Year

In addition to temple rituals performed for the god by the king, festivals incorporated a broader domain, where a wider public had access to the divine. The participants in feasts ranged from the royal, officials and priests to the non-elite and the dead. Theoretically and ideologically, individuals would have received fruits of the divine power through the king by taking part in celebrations to variable extent. This functioned a vehicle for the god and the king to maintain their authoritative credibility and, by extension, the world order. The circulation of the divine force formed a different appearance at each festival, such as material supplies, promotions, and juridical decrees. These divine conveyances would have more or less met people’s social and religious needs. By embracing modality, periodicity, and publicness, festivals provided participants and audiences with a public setting and a formal means, whereby they were able to seek their identity as part of society. This may or may not have been relevant to personal piety, allegiance, responsibilities, and goodness, but public celebrations at least brought the king’s subjects together to common grounds for official beliefs and social decorum.
In order to demonstrate such socio-religious functions of festivals, I will attempt to focus on and examine three Theban celebrations in the New Kingdom, namely, the Festivals of Opet, the Valley, and the New Year, about which a wealth of information has survived. The examination can hardly be possible without exploring the history of these feasts because their development from earlier times, to which part of this thesis is also devoted, shows the continuity of elements essential to Egyptian cult practices, particularly those associated with the mortuary cult.

Keywords: Thebes
ancient Egypt
festival
religion
Egyptology
Advisor: Smith, M
Exceptional preservation of cells in phosphate and the early evolution of the biosphere

The Proterozoic period saw some of the most fundamental revolutions in the biological and geological world. During this period, life diversified and set the stage for the radiation of multicellular life, altering the face of the planet in the process. The fossil record of this time is not yet fully understood, and a revisitation of a historically reported fossil deposit in the 1 Ga Torridon rocks of northwest Scotland shows that they host the fossils of the earliest non-marine eukaryotes, as well as a full and diverse fossil assemblage preserved in sedimentary phosphates and shales. Fine scale sedimentology of the fluvio-lacustrine rocks of the Torridon Group reveals them to be laid down in a laterally variable basin with distinctly different palaeoenvironments. The resident biota is seen to be similarly variable between lithofacies. New criteria for classifying taphonomic effects are presented, and used to characterise assemblages from different palaeoenvironments, with broader applications beyond this study. The Torridon rocks are also host to macrostructures on the surfaces and soles of beds, and these are interpreted as of likely biological origin, with their variability mapped between different lithofacies. High-resolution studies of both the preserved biota and the mineralogy of the preserving medium reveal in detail not only the fine scale structure of the fossil organisms, but also the reasons for their exceptional preservation. Phosphate is analysed in detail to explain its enigmatic occurrence in Proterozoic lakes. To place the Torridon deposits in context, both older and younger rocks were examined in comparison, from the 2 Ga Gunflint Formation of Ontario, Canada, and the Precambrian-Cambrian successions of eastern Newfoundland respectively. New finds of phosphate in these rocks help to reveal biochemical interactions and evolution on the early Earth, with implications for further understanding life on our own planet and elsewhere.

Keywords: palaeontology
prokaryote
phosphate
astrobiology
geobiology
eukaryote
proterozoic
Advisor: Brasier, M
Young people's experience of family and schooling

The thesis examines the extent to which 32 young people perceived that their family structure (intact nuclear, reordered nuclear, single-parent) influenced their experience of family and schooling. Through attempting to listen to the young people's voices on family, schooling and home-school issues, the thesis questions whether commonly used categories of family structure inform understanding of these young people's experience of family and schooling.
The thesis is an ethnography, with a broadly symbolic interactionist framework, of one mixed ability tutor group in a large urban comprehensive school in central England. Fieldwork was conducted over two years, from September, 1996 to July, 1998. The main period of data collection was from November, 1996 to July, 1997, when the young people were in Year Nine. The main methods of data construction were interviews and informal conversations with the young people and observation of their experience of schooling.
The literature review examines the large body of British quantitative research on outcomes (health, emotional and behavioural, and educational) according to family structure, and the much smaller corpus of British qualitative research focusing on the processes of family structure. It is highlighted that few British qualitative studies aim to access the voice of the child, focusing instead on adults' experience of family reordering or adults" perceptions of children's experience of reordering.
The thesis examines the diversity in experience of family reordering of young people in reordered nuclear and single-parent families, the similarities in experience of reordering across these two categories of family structure, and the experience of family reordering of young people in intact nuclear families. The thesis assesses the extent to which family structure was important in the young people's relationships with the following family members: mothers, fathers (natural resident, natural non-resident and step), siblings (natural, step and half) and the extended family. The thesis develops a model for the young people's experience of family, Networks of Conflict: Networks of Support.
The thesis examines the extent to which family structure, or other factors such as gender and school-related factors, were important in the young people's experience of the following aspects of schooling: friendship groups, behaviour, views on school, attainment and attendance. The thesis explores the extent to which family structure influenced parental involvement in their children's schooling and school intervention over homerelated issues. The extent to which the school's Health, Home and Community (HHC) curriculum tapped into the young people's expertise on family is examined.
The thesis concludes that, overall, commonly used categories of family structure do little to inform understanding of the experience of family and schooling of these 32 young people; the boundaries around the categories of family structure are permeable.
A new role for the spliceosome in the regulation of gene expression

Through a genome wide study of spliceosome recruitment in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we were able to identify a set of protein-coding genes that despite the fact that they contain no introns and their mRNA is not known to be spliced; their loci were occupied by the spliceosome. Bioinformatic analysis revealed the existence of splicing signals on these genes. Detailed analysis of BDF2, a representative gene, revealed that the spliceosome negatively regulates its mRNA levels through an unconventional one-step splicing reaction that cleaves BDF2 mRNA and targets the cleavage products for degradation. In an effort to clarify the mechanism of spliceosome recruitment to BDF2 locus, we identified that Bdf1, the redundant to Bdf2 factor, is required for the recruitment of the spliceosome at BDF2 and the subsequent down-regulation of its mRNA levels. The above led us to propose a new role for the spliceosome in the regulation of gene expression. Finally, we investigated the generality of this regulatory mechanism is S. cerevisiae and identified a set of genes which can be differentially spliced and whose physiological expression could be potentially regulated by the spliceosome.

Keywords: Splicing
Gene expression
Exosome
Spliceosome
Advisor: Vasilieva, L
Agrarian society and politics in the province of Badajoz under the Spanish Second Republic, 1931-1936

This thesis analyses rural social and political conflict in the province of Badajoz (Extremadura) during the Spanish Second Republic of 1931 to 1936. It takes a broad approach to social and political change in a province typical of southern Spain, but focusses particularly on the under-explored role of powerful agrarian elites opposed to the reforms introduced by the new liberal-democratic regime. The study begins with two complementary chapters covering the period 1870-1930; they consider the evolution of the autocratic rural order presided over by the elite and discuss the growth of the challenge to agrian power from organised rural labour. In the following chapters covering in detail the period 1931 to 1936 the partial transformat ion of the rural order that accompanied the transition to the Republic, the subsequent processes of social and political struggle, and the polarisation that followed are documented. A final epilogue considers the Civil War as a rural counter-revolution that involved the resurgence of agrarian autocracy in Badajoz. The thesis draws on a wide range of primary materials, from archives and printed sources to memoirs, and utilizes the relevant secondary literature. In general the study forms part of a movement to reach a deeper understanding of social and political change during the Republic and in particular offers new perspectives on the contribution of the 'agrarian question' to the breakdown of the regime and the origins of the Civil War.
Trustworthy services through attestation

Remote attestation is a promising mechanism for assurance of distributed systems. It allows users to identify the software running on a remote system before trusting it with an important task. This functionality is arriving at exactly the right time as security-critical systems, such as healthcare and financial services, are increasingly being hosted online. However, attestation has limitations and has been criticized for being impractical. Too much effort is required for too little reward: a large, rapidly-changing list of software must be maintained by users, who then have insufficient information to make a trust decision. As a result attestation is rarely used today.
This thesis evaluates attestation in a service-oriented context to determine whether it can be made practical for assurance of servers rather than client machines. There are reasons to expect that it can: servers run fewer programs and the overhead of integrity reporting is more appropriate on a server which may be protecting important assets. However, a literature review and new experiments show that problems remain, many stemming from the large trusted computing base as well as the lack of information linking software identity to expected behaviour.
Three novel solutions are proposed. Web service middleware is restructured to minimize the software running at the endpoint, thus lowering the effort for the relying party. A key advantage of the proposed two-tier structure is that strong integrity guarantees can be made without loss of conformance with service standards. Secondly, a program modelling approach is investigated to further automate the attestation and verification process and add more information about system behaviour. Several sets of programs are modelled, including the bootloader, a web service and a menu-based shell. Finally, service behaviour is attested through source code properties established during compilation. This provides a trustworthy and verifiable connection between the identity of the software on a service platform and its expected runtime behaviour. This approach is applicable to any programming language and verification method, and has the advantage of not requiring a runtime monitor. These contributions are evaluated using an example e-voting service to show the level of assurance attestation can provide.
Overall, this thesis demonstrates that attestation can be made significantly more practical through the described new techniques. Although some problem remain, with further improvements to operating systems and better software engineering methods, attestation may become a trustworthy and reliable assurance mechanism for web services.

Keywords: trustworthy systems
web services
attestation
assurance
trust
trusted computing
Advisor: Martin, A
Study of ceramide glucosyltransferase

Ceramide glucosyltransferase (CGT) is a key enzyme in glycosphingolipid (GSL) biosynthesis in eukaryotic cells. Inhibition of enzyme activity by an N-alkylated imino sugar, N-butyl-deoxynojirimycin (NB-DNJ), has been evaluated for the therapeutic treatment of inherited glycosphingolipid lysosomal storage diseases. To develop more selective drugs for potential clinical use, further investigation of possible side effects and the design of a more selective inhibitor is required.
One concern for clinical use of NB-DNJ is the potential activation of CGT in vivo. When rats were treated with various concentrations of NB-DNJ for 13 weeks to assess the depletion of glycosphingolipids and up-regulation of CGT activity, the reduction of ganglioside levels was observed following an increase in NB-DNJ dose level up to 180 mg/kg/day. However, CGT activity levels were not significantly affected by NB-DNJ treatment. The lack of CGT up-regulation while reducing GSLs by NB-DNJ would be desirable in the clinic to avoid a rapid accumulation of GSLs if patient treatment was concluded.
To aid in design of highly selective inhibitors for CGT, enzyme kinetic studies were performed using recombinant human CGT and five different imino sugars. The recombinant enzyme showed similar enzyme kinetics to a native enzyme from HL-60 cells. All the tested imino sugars showed a mixed-type inhibition for ceramide, and an increase in N-alkyl chain provided an improved uncompetitive inhibition. These data suggest that CGT may have two different sites for binding of imino sugars, and the N-alkyl chain length may affect the preference for binding site.
When the protein sequence of CGT was analysed using www server programs to predict protein structure, a Rossman fold was predicted in the nucleotide-binding domain as observed in other nucleotide-sugar glycosyltransferase structures. Also, a significant folding similarity to bacterial glycosyltransferase SpsA was predicted. Based on these observations, a possible inhibitor-binding mechanism is discussed that may aid the design of highly selective inhibitors for CGT.

Advisor: Butters, T
Martian dust lifting, transport and associated processes

The dust lifting capacity of the UK Mars General Circulation Model has been extended through the development of a new wind stress lifting parameterisation, and the simulation of a finite, variable surface dust layer. This second addition, which was represented by the use of lifting thresholds that were adjusted at each surface gridpoint in response to the removal or deposition of dust, led to enhanced variability in the timing and peak magnitude of major dust storms produced in the model. These dust storms were realistic in many respects, and the observed global dust storm frequency of occurrence of roughly one in every three years was approximately reproduced by the model, but an artificial threshold decrease rate was required to maintain dust lifting on a multiannual timescale - this was believed to be due to inaccuracies in the net cross-equatorial dust flux, which showed a strong bias towards the northern hemisphere. Significant changes were seen in model dust lifting rates when the influence of a heterogeneous surface roughness length was included in the wind stress scheme, and the need for more sophisticated sub-gridscale methods in future dust lifting schemes, to cope with this and other effects, was noted. The inclusion of radiatively active water clouds in model runs also affected dust lifting rates, particularly in the vicinity of the polar caps in autumn, winter and spring. The dynamics behind the formation of small, cap-edge dust storms during these periods were examined in detail, and it was found that a cessation in dust lifting activity that occurs around winter solstice does so due to a combination of the radiative effects of global dust loading and polar hood ice clouds, and zonal variations in midlatitude topography. The direct interaction between dust and ice, in the form of nucleation and scavenging, was investigated. It was found that scavenging by water ice, if it is suitably efficient, could significantly reduce the dust content of the winter polar regions. However, the dust and ice vertical profiles measured in the aphelion cloud belt by Mars Climate Sounder were not reproduced by the model with any of the possible scavenging efficiencies used. It appears that scavenging cannot provide an explanation for the existence of sharply defined, elevated dust layers at low latitudes.

Keywords: Fluid dynamics
Mars
Atmospheric physics
Advisor: Read, P
Lewis, S
Kerman in the late nineteenth century

This thesis explored the possibilities of regional history as a basis for understanding the development of society in Iran in the nineteenth century. It begins by defining some conceptual problems needing dis- cussion in order to embark on such a history. The choice of a regional society as the unit of study, and the selection of Kennan in particular are examined. The problem of source material is dealt with by a survey of the sources used in the study of nineteenth century Kennan. The emergence of the region as a geographical and historical entity is then summarised in order to clarify its identity as it appeared by the nineteenth century. The central section of the thesis is an examina- tion of the important aspects of material life in Kerman. The rural sector is discussed first as being dominant in economy and society, with a survey of crop production being followed by examination of rural technology and society, and then a discussion of landlord-cultivator relations. The urban sector is then analysed in terms of a survey of craft production and then of social organisation. A separate chapter examines the sphere of circulation linking urban and rural sectors, looking at urban-rural contacts especially as articulated by landlord- peasant relations, and also at the links between Kennan and other regions, and with international markets. There is an appendix on the special case of pastoral ism and nomadism. The last section of the thesis uses the understanding of society which has emerged in an analysis of politics. Discussion of useful definitions of this term is followed by examination of various levels of political life, and more specifically of the decade 1905-1915. Finally conclusions are drawn about the contribution of this regional study to better under- standing of history arid society in Iran,