VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Localisation using the appearance of prior structure

Accurate and robust localisation is a fundamental aspect of any autonomous mobile robot. However, if these are to become widespread, it must also be available at low-cost. In this thesis, we develop a new approach to localisation using monocular cameras by leveraging a coloured 3D pointcloud prior of the environment, captured previously by a survey vehicle. We make no assumptions about the external conditions during the robot's traversal relative to those experienced by the survey vehicle, nor do we make any assumptions about their relative sensor configurations.
Our method uses no extracted image features. Instead, it explicitly optimises for the pose which harmonises the information, in a Shannon sense, about the appearance of the scene from the captured images conditioned on the pose, with that of the prior. We use as our objective the Normalised Information Distance (NID), a true metric for information, and demonstrate as a consequence the robustness of our localisation formulation to illumination changes, occlusions and colourspace transformations. We present how, by construction of the joint distribution of the appearance of the scene from the prior and the live imagery, the gradients of the NID can be computed and how these can be used to efficiently solve our formulation using Quasi-Newton methods.
In order to reliably identify any localisation failures, we present a new classifier using the local shape of the NID about the candidate pose and demonstrate the performance gains of the complete system from its use. Finally, we detail the development of a real-time capable implementation of our approach using commodity GPUs and demonstrate that it outperforms a high-grade, commercial GPS-aided INS on 57km of driving in central Oxford, over a range of different conditions, times of day and year.

Keywords: robotics
computer vision
localisation
navigation
Advisor: Newman, P
Risk factors for haemorrhage in patients with haematological malignancies

Haematological malignancies and their treatment lead to prolonged periods of severe thrombocytopenia (platelet count ≤ 50 x 109/l). Despite the use of prophylactic platelet transfusions, haemorrhage remains an important complication during this thrombocytopenic period. Within a 30 day period up to 70% of patients have clinically significant haemorrhage (World Health Organization (WHO) grade 2 or above bleeding) and up to 10% have severe or life-threatening haemorrhage (WHO grade 3 or 4 bleeding). Hence our current management of these patients to prevent haemorrhage is sub-optimal. The aim of this thesis was to identify clinical and laboratory factors that may predict the risk of haemorrhage in patients with haematological malignancies and severe thrombocytopenia.
This was achieved via several different study designs and assessed the effect of clinical and laboratory factors on any or clinically significant haemorrhage and their effect on intracranial haemorrhage.
This thesis has demonstrated that there is no consensus on how bleeding is assessed and graded in this patient group. Also it showed that the absolute immature platelet number may be a better alternative to the total platelet count to guide administration of platelet transfusions. Female sex, a previous history of a fungal infection, a high C-reactive protein, a high white cell count, a low platelet count, anaemia, impaired renal function, and recent clinically significant haemorrhage were all found to be independent risk factors for haemorrhage. Patients who were in complete remission from their haematological malignancy had a much lower risk of bleeding.

Keywords: bleeding
transfusion
thrombocytopenia
haemorrhage
platelet
haematological malignancies
Advisor: Murphy, M
Stanworth, S
A cognitive approach to irritable bowel syndrome

Within this thesis the role of cognitive processes in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) will be examined. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the rate of psychiatric comorbidity in IBS participants, relative to controls, was performed. Evidence supported heightened rates of psychiatric disorder. A novel hypothesis regarding overlapping cognitive vulnerability to IBS and psychiatric disorders was found to fit well with the pattern of comorbidity. Competing hypotheses and the potential moderators were examined. Overall, no single model of psychiatric morbidity in IBS could fully account for the results of the meta-analysis. The implications of this meta-analysis for a cognitive approach to IBS are discussed.
Cognitive processes were directly investigated in two experiments. First, in a modified exogenous cueing task, which assessed attention to pain words, there was faster orienting towards, and engagement with pain words in IBS participants relative to controls. Next, participants completed a primed lexical decision task, which indexed interpretation biases by measuring response times to targets after ambiguous illness primes. Relative to controls, IBS participants’ responses were slower to target words presented after ambiguous illness primes, and demonstrated priming for targets related to the neutral meaning of the illness prime. In the second study, different IBS and healthy control participants completed an internet-based survey of autobiographical memory. Participants described and rated painful and emotional autobiographical events. IBS participants reported pain memories from a more observer perspective relative to controls, suggesting a possible coping strategy for pain content. Finally, three cognitive styles, alexithymia, rumination and self-blame, were evaluated using existing and novel self-report measures. Overall, when compared with healthy participants, IBS participants reported: less difficulty identifying feelings as indexed by the alexithymia measure; increased pain-focused rumination; and a general, negative self-blame. These results may imply a vigilance-avoidance model of cognitive processing in IBS.

Keywords: memory
episodic
interpretation
individual differences
cognitive science
comorbidity
attention
meta-analysis
mental disorders
irritable bowel syndrome
Advisor: Martin, M
Atomic scale characterisation of oxide dispersion strengthened steels for fusion applications

Reduced-activation ferritic steels are considered as the primary candidate materials for structural applications within nuclear fusion power plants. It is known that by mechanically alloying ferritic steel powder with Y (usually in the form of Y₂O₃) then consolidating the material by hot isostatic pressing, a nanoscale dispersion of oxygen rich nanoclusters as small as ~2nm is introduced into the microstructure. This vastly improves high temperature strength and creep resistance, and the nanoclusters also act as trapping sites for helium and point defects produced under irradiation.
In this thesis, the evolution of the oxide nanoclusters in a Fe-14Cr-2W-0.3Ti & 0.3Y₂O₃ ODS alloy was investigated primarily using atom probe tomography. The microstructure was characterised at various points during processing to give an insight into the factors influencing the formation of the nanoclusters. It was found that the nanoclusters nucleated during the mechanical alloying stage, then followed near classical nucleation and growth mechanisms keeping the same composition of ~8%Y, ~12%Ti,~25%O and ~45%Cr throughout. The formation and evolution of 5-15nm grain boundary oxides was also observed, and these were shown to form first as Cr₂O₃ particles that subsequently transform into a Y-Ti-O based oxide on further processing.
The influence of mechanical alloying with 0.5wt.%Fe₂Y rather than 0.3wt.%Y₂O₃ was also investigated, and this showed that there was no difference in the final microstructure produced provided the level of Ti in the starting powder was tightly controlled. Without sufficient Ti, the nanoclusters were Y-O based and ~6nm diameter. Both the Y-O and Y-Ti-O nanoclusters were moderately stable on annealing at 1200°C for up to 100 hours, with only minimal coarsening observed. Ti was found not to influence the coarsening rate of the nanoclusters significantly.
The stability of the oxide nanoclusters under irradiation was investigated by using Fe²⁺ ion irradiation to simulate displacement cascade damage in the ODS-Eurofer material (the official European candidate material for testing in the ITER fusion test reactor). Doses up to ~6 dpa at 400°C were used, and there was no significant change to the nanocluster distribution. However segregation of Mn to dislocations was observed after irradiation.
These results indicate that ODS steels are good candidate structural materials, as the microstructure is stable at high temperature and under irradiation. The starting powders, and processing parameters need to be tightly controlled in order to produce the optimal material for use in service.

Keywords: oxide-dispersion-stregthening
atom probe
steel
Advisor: Smith, G
Roberts, S
Marquis, E
Penelope differently: feminist re-visions of myth

This thesis examines feminist rewritings of the Penelope myth and the intersections between poetry, myth, and feminist theory. The theoretical framework develops from Rosi Braidotti’s theory of memory and subjectivity which has its roots in the work of Michel Foucault. In Braidotti’s understanding, subjectivity is constructed through narratives of the past including myth. In order to support new, minority, and dissident subjectivities, a re-remembering of mythical narratives needs to happen. This process is linked to Judith Butler’s recent work on narrating the self and to Adrienne Rich’s idea of “Re-vision”. What Butler’s theory adds to Braidotti’s is the notion of dispossession: that as subjects we do not own our identities. We are, instead, dependent on others for recognition. This co-dependence based notion of subjectivity has ethical implications for how we interact with one another and what kind of narratives we iterate and reiterate.
The writers discussed in this thesis, namely, Francisca Aguirre, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Gail Holst-Warhaft, and Margaret Atwood, not only rewrite Penelope, but perform Re-visions of the myth. They look back at it with a critical eye and remake it. This thesis further contends that Re-vision provides contemporary feminist writers with a reading and writing strategy that allows them to engage with myth in a way that parallels feminist theory’s efforts to construct new forms of subjectivity. Chapter 1 frames feminist appropriations of myth in a contemporary context and discusses Adrienne Rich’s theory of Re- vision. The next four chapters focus on specific writers who carry out a sustained dialogue with Penelope; they each take an element of the myth and tease it out towards a modern relevance. In looking at how Penelope is revised, this thesis demonstrates that women writers are engaged in a process of remaking canonical, mythic texts in such a way that speaks to contemporary issues of ethical subjectivity and self-making.

Keywords: classical reception
feminist
contemporary
Penelope
myth
poetry
Advisor: Papanikolaou, D
Ground-based near-infrared remote sounding of ice giant clouds and methane

The ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, are the two outermost planets in our solar system. With only one satellite flyby each in the late 1980’s, the ice giants are arguably the least understood of the planets orbiting the Sun. A better understanding of these planets’ atmospheres will not only help satisfy the natural scientific curiosity we have about these distant spheres of gas, but also might provide insight into the dynamics and meteorology of our own planet’s atmosphere. Two new ground-based, near-infrared datasets of the ice giants are studied. Both datasets provide data in a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that provides good constraint on the size of small scattering particles in the atmospheres’ clouds and haze layers. The broad extent of both telescopes’ spectral coverage allows characterisation of these small particles for a wide range of wavelengths. Both datasets also provide coverage of the 825 nm collision-induced hydrogen-absorption feature, allowing us to disentangle the latitudinal variation of CH4 abundance from the height and vertical extent of clouds in the upper troposphere. A two-cloud model is successfully fitted to IRTF SpeX Uranus data, parameterising both clouds with base altitude, fractional scale height, and total opacity. An optically thick, vertically thin cloud with a base pressure of 1.6 bar, tallest in the midlatitudes, shows strong preference for scattering particles of 1.35 μm radii. Above this cloud lies an optically thin, vertically extended haze extending upward from 1.0 bar and consistent with particles of 0.10 μm radii. An equatorial enrichment of methane abundance and a lower cloud of constant vertical thickness was shown to exist using two independent methods of analysis. Data from Palomar SWIFT of three different latitude regions (30

Keywords: Neptune (atmosphere)
atmospheres (composition)
atmospheres (structure)
Uranus (atmosphere)
data reduction techniques
Advisor: Irwin, P
Discourses of mourning in Dante, Petrarch, and Proust

This thesis interpolates medieval and modern authors and theorists, namely Dante, Petrarch, and Proust on the one hand, and Freud, Kristeva, and Derrida on the other. I propose that these writers are intimately connected and differentiated by their meditations on grief and loss. I compare, confront, and contrast these narratives of mourning in a discursive shuttling to and fro between medieval and modern, French and Italian, and literature and theory, in order to delineate the specificities of different forms of melancholia as legible in Dante’s Commedia, Petrarch’s Canzoniere, and Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, and as illuminated by Freudian melancholia, Kristeva’s Soleil noir, and Derrida’s concept of ‘demi-deuil’. I challenge the homogeny of the modern concept of melancholia and juxtapose it with the medieval sin of acedia in Dante (Inferno VII) and Petrarch (considering both the Secretum and the Canzoniere). From the examples of the treatment of the myth of Orpheus and the book of Lamentations, I argue that discourses of mourning are trapped in a fruitful tension between a desire for uniqueness or originality and a desire for legibility or the comfort of communality. In Girardian terms, I define literary representations of mourning as ‘mimetic’, that is, caught in a web of intertextual imitation and preoccupations of genre and tradition which are at odds with a quest for new forms of writing. Finally, I contend that the relationship between content and form is particularly close in grief-stricken texts, and characterise my chosen primary texts – including Dante’s Vita nuova – according to the twin poles of endlessness (which I equate with melancholia) and finitude (the teleological, closed nature of the work of mourning), with a Derridean alternative of unstable oscillation between the two (‘demi-deuil’).

Keywords: Proust
Kristeva
Petrarch
mourning
Freud
Dante
melancholia
Derrida
Advisor: Gragnolati, M
Maclachlan, I
Transition metal catalysis in the presence of fluorinating reagents

In this thesis, the effect of fluorinating reagents on a selection of transition metal-mediated organic transformations was investigated. The first four chapters are focused on gold-catalysed nucleophilic addition processes performed in the presence of “F⁺” sources.
Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to homogeneous gold catalysis and summarises the aims and objectives of the project.
The effect of the electrophilic fluorinating reagent Selectfluor (82) on the gold-catalysed rearrangement of propargyl acetates 85 is discussed in Chapter 2. α-Fluoroenones 92 resulting from fluorodeacetylation of an allenyl acetate intermediate were delivered as the major products of these reactions (Scheme i).
[Scheme i Gold-Catalysed Rearrangement-Fluorodeacetylation of Propargyl Acetates 85.]
By contrast, performing the gold(I)-catalysed cyclisation of allenoates 102 in the presence of Selectfluor (82) led to products of oxidative coupling. The “F⁺” source in these processes most likely acts as an external oxidant in an AuI
III redox cycle. In Chapter 3, the cascade cyclisation-intramolecular arylation of benzyl-substituted substrates is discussed whilst the extension of the methodology towards intermolecular homocoupling and intermolecular alkynylation is presented in Chapter 4 (Scheme ii).
[Scheme ii Gold-Catalysed Cyclisation-Oxidative Coupling of tert-Butyl Allenoates 102.]
In Chapter 5, the feasibility of palladium-catalysed allylic [18F]radiofluorination was investigated using high-specific-activity [18F]fluoride. This study led to the development of the first transition metal-mediated C-18F bond-forming process of relevance for the preparation of radiotracers for PET imaging (Scheme iii).
[Scheme iii Palladium-Catalysed Allylic [18F]Radiofluorination of Allylic Methyl Carbonate 227b.]
Chapter 6 gives full experimental procedures and characterisation data for all compounds.

Keywords: oxidative coupling
fluorine
radiochemistry
gold
homogeneous catalysis
Advisor: Gouverneur, V
The politics, capital and labour of railway-building in the Cape Colony, 1870-1885

This study examines the ambitions and requirements of British financial, manufacturing and other business interests, of different territorial and economic sectors of the colonial settlement in the Cape, and of the men who laboured on the railway works, and analyzes the changing economic and political relationships between them, as manifested in the agitations and arguments leading to the decision to build railways when and where they were built and in the process of railway-building itself between 1870 and 1885. It is argued that this first, major export of British capital to South Africa after 1870, mostly for railway building
(a) formed part of a wider shift in the direction of British capital investment towards parts of the Empire other than India;
(b) had important implications for the constitutional development of the Cape and its political relationship with Great Britain;
(c) enabled those colonial interests exercising power in the political system to determine the use made of British investments in Cape government securities, against the wishes of other colonists;
(d) conditioned the relationships between British and Afrikaner colonists in the Cape; and
(e) implied a new dimension to the demand for wage labour there.
These developments and their implications are studied here in their inter-relation. The conclusions of the study are finally related to recent writing about the way in which Imperial economic and political interests were promoted through the collaboration of white colonial settlers.
On the theory of disordered magnets

This thesis consists of three discrete parts. The first is concerned with the study of the ferromagnetic phase transition in the Ising spin ½ model, with random substitutional impurities. Series in the impurity concentration for the susceptibility are extended by one or two terms for the cubic, square and face-centred cubic lattices, using a set of rules which cuts the number of clusters to be considered. Closed analytic form for all terms in the series are obtained. An eight term series for the tetragonal zircon lattice is also developed. Phase boundaries and critical indices are obtained by use of ratio methods and Padé approximants. Comparison of the results, particularly for the critical index, with recent high temperature series work is made, and the single pole assumption usually made for the divergence of the susceptibility is critically examined. High temperature series for the dilute Ising model with a transverse field are also generated for the tetragonal zircon (7 terms) and face-centred cubic lattices (6 terms): the results for the former are compared with recent experimental work, and some general conclusions are drawn from the latter series about the shape of the phase surface in concentration, temperature and transverse field. Some features of the behaviour of the critical index are also examined.
In the second part the description of the two-magnon Raman scattering profile in dilute antiferromagnets is attempted by calculation of the first few moments. Using the Néel state as an approximation, the zeroth, first, second and third moments are calculated at zero temperature: the zeroth and second moments are also evaluated in the infinite temperature limit. As the profile at low temperatures is thought to consist of two peaks, various attempts are made to construct moments that will describe solely the two-magnon peak. Reasonable agreement with experiment at low and high temperatures is found, and some comparison with low temperature experiments on dilute MnF2 is made. Temperature and concentration dependent forms for the zeroth, first and second moments are also derived, using the constant coupling approximation to provide a consistent treatment of thermal averages of one and two spins, and comparison with experiment on pure NiF2 is made.
The third part is concerned with the location of the phase transition in more random systems: a CPA-like treatment for the Fourier transformed spin correlation function is developed and applied to the cubic Ising spin ½ model with next neighbour interactions randomly removed, with some degree of success. A more random model due to Handrich is also considered, and the transition temperature is found to rise as fluctuations in the interaction increase, if the average interaction is held constant. Comparison with a constant coupling theory due to Handrich which predicts the reverse is made.

Advisor: Elliott, R
The SPD, the Labour Party and the Foreign Office

After Hitler invaded France in 1940, the leadership of the German Social Democratic party, the SPD, decided to accept an official invitation from the British Labour party and come to England. In 1941 London became the recognised seat of the Executive, where there was also a rank and file membership. At first the SPD leaders were given considerable moral and financial support and they believed they would be able to aid the Allied war effort and influence British thinking on Germany. They also applied themselves to the construction of new policies to ensure the survival of the party and to enable it to direct German affairs if and when Hitler had been defeated.
By 1942, however, the SPD's work was not meeting with success. The Labour party began to adopt a hostile attitude towards it and, in marked contrast to its earlier practice, the Foreign Office no longer collaborated with German political exiles. The final challenge to the SPD came in 1943 from the German Communists who wished to create a unified Socialist party after Hitler. Faced with political extinction in London, the SPD nevertheless managed to survive. Although it was seriously weakened by 1945, it was strong enough to offer the young Federal Republic loyal support. The failure to cooperate successfully with British authorities during its exile, however, created many difficulties for post-war European Social Democracy.
A number of problems are explored in this thesis. They include the wisdom of both Foreign Office and Labour party policy towards the SPD and the people of Germany during the Second World War. Serious confusion was caused by first maintaining and then abandoning the distinction between Nazis and Germans. The nature of exile as a specific form of political activity is also examined especially in the light of the determination of the exiled leaders to return to Germany and achieve power there. Finally, some wider conclusions are drawn about the SPD, its survival in the War and its historical continuity.