VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
An intellectual biography of Abba Ahimeir

My thesis focuses on the ideological development of the Maximalist Revisionist Zionist leader Abba Ahimeir, and positions him more accurately within the contexts of the Zionist Right, the period of his political activity, and the Zionist movement in general.
Through an examination of his doctoral thesis on Oswald Spengler and first publications, I conclude that Spenglerian theory exerted a fundamental influence upon Ahimeir throughout his entire life, and that his embrace of Fascist ideology began six years earlier than is generally accepted. I thus contend that Ahimeir’s ideological path was already set in 1924, far earlier than is generally believed.
A survey of his journalistic output, while a member of the moderately socialist party HaPoel HaTzair, shows that Ahimeir’s apparent shift from Left to Right was not the radical defection that it is currently considered to be.
A study of primary source archival material allows me to demonstrate that as a leader of the Revisionist Youth Group Betar and instructor in its Leadership Training School, Ahimeir’s ideological influence upon Revisionist youth was far greater than is commonly accepted.
A discussion of more general intellectual-historical concepts – Spenglerian-, Fascist-, and Revolutionary- theory, Jewish Völkisch-nationalism, secular Messianism – allows me to re-weight certain ideological outlooks in the current body of research regarding Ahimeir, the Revisionist Party, and the Zionist Left. Notably, I suggest we view Ahimeir as a 'Revolutionary' who used Fascism merely as a modus operandi in the service of his revolution. This particularistic ideological outlook was exemplified in his semi-clandestine, anti-British resistance group Brit HaBiryonim, as a thorough examination of court documents from the group’s trial demonstrates.
The study provides the first intellectual biography of one of the most influential figures on the Zionist Right, and rights some historical wrongs that exist within Revisionist- and Labour-Zionist myths, and indeed, Israeli collective memory.

Keywords: Fascism
Zionist Ideology
Zionism
Nationalism
Revolution
Advisor: Penslar, D
Understanding the pathophysiology of aortic valve dysfunction using advantage CMR techniques: 4D flow in aortic valve disease

Aortic valve disease is common with early valve thickening (known as aortic sclerosis, ASC) affecting around 30% of those over 65 years of age, and nearly 3% of the population over 75 years old having haemodynamically significant aortic stenosis. During clinical follow up of aortic stenosis, little distinction has been made between those with congenitally bicuspid aortic valve disease (2% of the population) (BAV AS) and those with acquired degenerative disease (TAV AS), although these contribute roughly equal proportions of aortic valve surgery.
I demonstrated that ASC is more common than previously thought with a prevalence of 38.5% in the over 65 year old general population and was strongly related with age, hypertension and a history of ischaemic heart disease (all p&LT;0.05). In an age matched population without pre-existing hypertension but with ASC, I found those with ASC have a statistically significantly higher blood pressure than those without ASC (mean systolic blood pressure difference of 4.4mmHg; p=0.004). However, in a population with known hypertension and ASC, no prescribing differences in antihypertensive agents exist and no differences in the absolute level of hypertension were found.
In a CMR sub study, markers of aortic stiffness were more impaired in both ASC and established tricuspid AS disease to a similar degree, suggesting a fully expressed vascular phenotype exists before progression to valvular AS, when compared with control and BAV AS. However, there was a mean age difference of about 8 years between ASC and BAV AS and control groups, which confounds the result. After age adjustment, a faster pulse wave velocity between ASC and controls remained (19.02 m/s compared with 14.4 m/s, p=0.028).
TAV and BAV AS have distinct differences in aortic dimensions and turbulent kinetic energy formation was greater in BAV AS, implying irreversible pressure loss (p&LT;0.0001). Turbulent kinetic energy correlated to valve area (r=0.53, p=0.001) and very strongly to LV mass in a BAV AS population (r=0.83; p=0.0001), implying greater LV work may be required to compensate for the higher turbulent kinetic energy, particularly in the BAV group. The patterns of wall shear stress (WSS) on the aorta did not differ in intensity but did have differences in peak sites of the aortic wall in TAV and BAV AS. Impaired distensibility in the aorta was seen in both TAV and BAV AS, which appears to be more regional (confined to the ascending aorta) in BAV AS.
Turbulent kinetic energy emerged as a novel and interesting marker in AS, especially in BAV AS, showing moderate or strong correlation with LV mass, volumes, longitudinal strain and stroke work, and may go some way to explain the previously noted weaker than expected correlations between LV mass and valve area in AS. Future longitudinal studies to relate turbulent kinetic energy more precisely to LV function and outcome are warranted.

Advisor: Myerson, S
Prendergast, B
Mitigation in the law of damages

This thesis is the first monograph on mitigation in the English law of damages. Mitigation concerns the effect of the claimant's post-breach conduct on the assessment of damages. The leading texts propose that the doctrine consists of two main rules: first, the claimant cannot recover damages for losses that it could reasonably have avoided (the 'avoidable loss rule'); and second, the claimant cannot recover damages for losses that it has in fact avoided, except where the benefit did not 'arise out of the breach' (the 'avoided loss rule').
This thesis proposes a new descriptive and explanatory account of mitigation. It argues that the apparent distinction between the avoidable and avoided loss rules is illusory; instead, the rules of mitigation apply symmetrically to both harms and benefits. Contrary to the leading texts, it is argued that judges have been correct to explain mitigation as an aspect of causation. However, to understand why, we must move beyond the 'but-for' concept of causation and instead seek to apply the ordinary causal principles that people use outside the law.
The implications of the thesis extend beyond the law of mitigation. First, the rules of mitigation also explain the so-called 'market rule', the 'betterment' rule, and 'supervening acts by the claimant'. Second, the thesis shows why the rights-based model of damages has overstretched in claiming that the law provides a universal entitlement to 'substitutive damages' for the infringement of rights. Third, the thesis revives and defends key arguments from Hart and Honoré's seminal investigation into ordinary causal concepts, with implications for every area of law where causal reasoning is invoked.
Author also known as Andrew Summers

Keywords: Reasonableness
Loss
Compensation
Mitigation
Causation
Damages
Advisor: Peel, E
Functional genomics approaches to understanding heterogeneous tissues in health and disease

Functional genomics approaches offer an unparalleled window into cellular biology. It is particularly challenging to apply these methods to heterogeneous tissues, in which multiple cell types or transcriptomic identities co-exist. I applied single cell and bulk functional genomics approaches in an attempt to understand aspects of the biology underlying cerebral cortex and thymic epithelial cells. These are both extremely heterogeneous tissues but the nature of the heterogeneity differs: in cortex there are a large number of different cell types, whereas in thymic epithelial cells, despite a limited number of cell types, individual cells express virtually every gene in the transcriptome. In Chapter 1, I provide a general overview of the currently available functional genomics tools and briefly review relevant aspects of cortical and thymic biology. The first three results chapters examine functional genomics approaches to cerebral cortex. Chapter 2 details the application of single cell functional genomics techniques to examine the extent to which stem cell-derived cortical neurons resemble primary human cortical neurons. In Chapter 3, I use RNA sequencing in cortical neurons derived from wild-type or PSEN1 mutant stem cells in an attempt to identify an Alzheimer’s disease-relevant gene signature and to assess how much variability there is between batches of stem cell differentiation. Chapter 4 applies DNase-seq footprinting to primary brain tissue in order to understand how common variants associated with altered gene expression or susceptibility to neurological disease might exert their effects. The last two results chapters focus on thymic epithelial cells. In Chapter 5, I integrate multiple functional genomics datasets to identify a set of genes targeted by Foxn1, a criticial transcription factor in thymus development and function. Chapter 6 use single cell RNA-seq from mature medullary thymic epithelial cells to gain an insight into how promiscuous gene expression in the thymus is orchestrated at the level of individual cells. Finally, in Chapter 7, I summarise the implications of my findings for cortical and thymic biology and speculate on the potential directions that functional genomics may take in the future to better understand heterogeneous tissues.

Advisor: Ponting, C
Cader, Z
Hollander, G
Automated concurrency bug finding using partial-orders

Concurrent systems are ubiquitous, ranging from multi-core processors to large-scale distributed systems. Yet, the verification of concurrent systems remains a daunting task, and technological advances such as weak memory architectures greatly compound this problem. Such challenges have renewed interest in symbolic encodings of partial-order semantics of concurrency using propositional logic or decidable fragments of first-order logic. The impetus behind these partial-order encodings is the efficiency of evermore highly optimized decision procedures, such as Boolean satisfiability (SAT) and Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) solvers.
While methods to effectively use SAT/SMT solvers for automatically finding bugs in sequential software through symbolic techniques, such as bounded model checking or symbolic execution, are well known, this thesis gives theoretical and experimental results that highlight a new set of challenges faced by partial-order encoding techniques. Furthermore, it shows how different solutions to these problems emerge if partial-order encodings are restructured into three separate theory-specific parts. This separation opens up a fresh and fruitful algorithmic perspective on partial-order encodings, including a new partial-order encoding that can drastically reduce the run-time of the analysis prior to calling the SAT/SMT solver, and new insights into the exponential worst-case time complexity of partial-order encodings during SAT/SMT solving. These results are significant as they propose a paradigm shift in how to harness the computational power of SAT/SMT solvers for partial-order encodings.

Advisor: Kroening, D
Melham, T
Factors affecting hedgehog distribution and habitat selection in rural landscapes

The UK population of hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) has halved in rural areas between 2005 and 2015, and hedgehogs select urban areas over arable land. Explanations for the unsuitability of arable land for hedgehogs include: high predation risk by badgers (Meles meles), low prey densities, cold microclimates and low availability of nest sites. I investigated the reasons for hedgehog avoidance of arable land by measuring hedgehog habitat use, ranging behaviour, daily energy expenditure (DEE) and diet along a gradient of habitats from rural villages to arable farmland, under varying predation threat and temperatures. I also examined which factors affected hedgehog presence and abundance nationally. Hedgehogs preferentially selected urban habitats for both foraging and nesting, including gardens and buildings. A hedgehog’s mean distance to buildings over a season was positively correlated with home range size and DEE, conceivably due to higher prey availability in rural villages and the need for increased movement on arable land to achieve sufficient food intake. I found little evidence that the prey taxa hedgehogs consumed changed along the gradient from buildings to arable land, although all hedgehogs consumed pet food, suggesting that supplementary feeding is one reason hedgehogs are attracted to buildings. On sites where badgers were present hedgehogs stayed closer to edge habitats and buildings, had smaller home ranges, spent less time on arable land, and had a lower DEE. Badger presence is one likely cause of hedgehogs’ avoidance of arable land and their selection of rural villages, where badgers are found at lower densities. Nationally, badger abundance and fox (Vulpes vulpes) abundance was negatively associated with hedgehog abundance. Landowners on farms under Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) were more likely to report having seen hedgehogs than landowners on farms not under HLS. I conclude that rural villages are a key habitat for sustaining hedgehog numbers in the countryside and the connectivity between these island populations should be enhanced through the implementation of agri-environment schemes. Higher-tier schemes may also increase habitat complexity, which could potentially reduce the predation pressure from badgers, as well as enhancing hedgehogs’ invertebrate food supply.

Keywords: Diet
Hedgehogs
Mammal energetics
Radio-tracking
Predation
Doubly labelled water
Small mammal
Ranging behaviour
Advisor: Macdonald, D
Johnson, P
Moorhouse, T
New phenomenology from asymmetric dark matter

The properties of dark matter — its microphysical form, and its cosmological origin and history — are one of the most important mysteries in fundamental physics. So far, evidence for matter beyond the Standard Model comes entirely from gravitational effects. However, other experiments are reaching the point where the ‘simplest’ models of dark matter are coming into tension with data, and may be strongly constrained by medium-term observations. This, along with theoretical considerations, motivates the exploration of other possibilities for the history and composition of dark matter, especially those with the possibility of new, generic observational signatures. In this thesis, we explore some different classes of new dark matter models, focussing on regimes in which they may display approximately model-independent phenomenology.
Firstly, we look at a class of dark matter models featuring large-number, stable composite states, and investigate how these may be synthesised in the early universe. As the example of Standard Model nuclear physics and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis demonstrates, the properties of small-number composite states in strongly-coupled theories may be complicated, and sensitive to the precise details of the theory. However, it may reasonably be expected that the properties of large enough composite states will obey simple geometrical scaling laws. In this case, if large enough states are synthesised in the early universe, the overall results of the synthesis process may become broadly independent of the detailed parameters of the model, and of initial conditions. We model ‘dark nucleosynthesis’ in such a regime, and find that the late-time number distribution takes on one of two characteristic forms, in both cases with weak dependence on small-number initial conditions and behaviour.
Following on from this, we consider the scattering phenomenology that would result from dark matter being made up of such large composite states. This includes the coherent enhancement of scattering rates — for example, at direct detection experiments — compared to e.g. collider production processes. The spatially extended nature of composite dark matter states could also lead to characteristic momentum-dependent form factors in scattering processes, which may be identifiable in direct detection experiments. In addition, inelastic interactions between dark matter states may be important in astrophysical settings.
Illustrating the effects of dark-sector energy injections, we present calculations for dark matter halo modifications through velocity kicks. As an example application, we discuss a different class of asymmetric dark matter models, in which late-time decays of part of the dark matter can re-populate a symmetric component, giving annihilation signals in galactic halos. The velocity kicks arising from the decay process may modify the spatial profile of such signals, to the extent to eliminating them almost completely from low-escape-velocity systems such as dwarf galaxies.

Keywords: Dark matter
Advisor: March-Russell, J
A potent and selective inhibitor of a histone demethylase

Post-translational modifications (PTMs) to histone proteins play important roles in the regulation of gene expression. Histone lysine demethylases (KDMs) remove methyl groups from N&epsiv;-amino methylated lysine residues. There are two classes of human KDMs; the flavin adenosine dinucleotide-dependent demethylases (the KDM1 subfamily) and the 2-oxoglutarate- (2OG) dependent Jumonji C (JmjC) demethylases (KDM2–7). Misregulation and mutation of histone demethylases are associated with multiple human diseases including cancer. Hence potent and selective inhibitors are of interest for investigations into the biological roles of KDMs and their relevance as targets for drug discovery. JmjC KDM inhibitors have been reported in the literature but there are few subfamily selective examples. The aim of the work described in this thesis was to design and synthesise potent and subfamily selective inhibitors of human JmjC KDMs for use as chemical probes.
An aminomethyl pyridine-4-carboxylate series that was derived from a high throughput screening hit delivered a selective, submicromolar KDM2A inhibitor. X-ray crystallographic analyses demonstrated that the aminomethyl pyridine moiety bound the active site iron revealing a novel JmjC KDM inhibitor scaffold.
A known 2,2'-bipyridine-4-carboxylate scaffold was used as a starting point for the identification of a second, novel JmjC KDM inhibitor series that contains a triazolopyridine moiety as a replacement for the bipyridine system. The triazolopyridine core was shown to bind in the 2OG binding site of KDM4A by X-ray crystallography. Optimisation of the triazole substituent gave a selective inhibitor of KDM2A/7B that is significantly more potent (KDM2A IC50: 58 nM, KDM7B IC50: 150 nM) than reported KDM2/7 subfamily selective inhibitors. As for many other JmjC KDM inhibitors, this compound was not found to be efficacious in a cellular assay. A variety of strategies were pursued with the aim of improving the cellular efficacy. However, only a modest effect was observed in the cellular assay (less than 25% inhibition at 100 μM). A biotinylated analogue was immobilised onto streptavidin-coated beads for chemoproteomics experiments and was found to interact with KDM2A in cell lysate.
Overall, this work resulted in the identification of two new scaffolds for JmjC KDM inhibition and in a potent and selective inhibitor of KDM2A/7B.

Advisor: Schofield, C
Pride and virtue in the political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

This thesis examines the relationship between political virtue and moral virtue in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. After critically engaging with Rousseau's compelling yet complex theory of human sociability, focusing more particularly on the seminal relationship between the two forms of self-love, the "natural" amour de soi and "social" amour-propre, it is observed that the culmination of Rousseau's moral theory in Emile sees him espouse a particular kind of moral excellence called vertu, defined as a striving to master one's passions, and a particular type of freedom named liberté morale, inherent in the act of obeying the inner law originating in man's conscience. After further exploring Rousseau's conception of vertu, and insisting upon the ambitiousness of his moral theory, the thesis argues that Rousseau's political theory differs from it in "taking men as they are", and starting from the assumption that men are driven by their passions. That the hegemony of amour-propre is pre-supposed by Rousseau's political project is demonstrated through a detailed comparison of the civic education described in his prescriptive political writings with the moral education advocated in Emile. Finally, it draws the implications of the discrepancies between Rousseau's moral and political versions of virtue for his political theory, identifying a strong tension between two ideals that have generally been regarded as wedded within it, those of republican liberty and moral freedom.

Keywords: Virtue
Political Theory
Amour-Propre
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Advisor: Philp, M
Single-molecule fluorescence analysis of transcription factors in living bacteria

Super-resolution microscopy has become an important tool to image cells at ever increasing resolution. Specifically, localization microscopy, in which single emitters are localized with high accuracy, has allowed us to follow and track single-molecules in live cells. The technique has revealed aspects in the proteins’ real-time function that were impossible to study previously. Despite their extensive use in recent years, there are still possibilities to improve and validate the technique and the resulting data. This thesis presents the first tracking photo-activation localization microscopy (tracking PALM) on three transcription factors (TFs): the lac repressor (LacI), araC protein and the cAMP receptor protein (CRP). With this work I expand the range of applicability of localization methods and increase in detail an important part of cellular function.
TFs control the expression of genes so that cells can adapt to external conditions. In Escherichia coli (E. coli), previous studies have shown that more than 60% of TFs have less than 100 monomers per genome copy. For example LacI, involved in the lactose utilization control, exists in E. coli in around 40 monomers in contrast to other proteins that exist in the tens of thousands. To study such low-copy numbers we found it necessary increase the throughput of tracking PALM and this thesis summarises our efforts to increase throughput.
After constructing a setup capable of tracking PALM with a 3X increased throughput, I studied the diffusion and localization of LacI and LacI relative to its operators. By studying LacI, I found that there were a number of challenges related to low copy numbers, specifically background noise that leads to localisations that can affect the results. I characterized the background tracks and tested the ability of clustering to find a number of tandem operators. This knowledge allowed us to study other TFs: araC, involved in the control of arabinose utilization which also exists in low-copy numbers but functions in multiple genes; and the CRP, which both regulates multiple sites and exists in large copy numbers.
In addition I worked towards the understanding of TF binding by simulating the combination of non-specific binding and free diffusion that emulates the search process of TFs. I obtained insight into the analysis of the data generated from tracking PALM. Finally I focused on creating a strategy to use our existing data to extract blinking rates from the fluorescent protein.
Our insights into TFs diffusion and binding have shown that tracking PALM can yield important insights at this regime of protein concentrations. Our work can be applied to other TFs and proteins that function in low copy numbers.

Advisor: Kapanidis, A