VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Regulation of the erythropoietin gene

Erythropoietin (Epo) is a circulating hormone which regulates red blood cell production, and hence oxygen-carrying capacity. Three striking features of Epo gene expression are that it shows high level induction in response to hypoxia, that it is tightly tissue-restricted and that it is deficient in most forms of renal damage. Each of these aspects has been investigated in this thesis.
Chapter 3 concerns the hypoxic-sensing system which induces Epo gene expression via an enhancer element in cultured hepatoma cells. Transient transfection was used to examine a range of cell-lines, which did not produce Epo, for the presence of this oxygen-sensing system. It was demonstrated that such a system is widespread in mammalian cells. It is probable that it is involved in regulating the expression of other genes in response to hypoxia.
This widespread oxygen-sensing mechanism contrasts with the tightly tissue-restricted expression of the Epo gene. Transgenic experiments described in Chapters 4 and 5 provide data concerning the DNA sequences involved in this tissue specificity. Sequence from the mouse Epo locus was then used to direct expression of a marker protein, SV40 T antigen, to Epo-expressing cells. This led to identification of the Epo-producing cells in the kidney (Chapter 5) and liver (Chapter 6). In both organs a fibroblast-like population expresses the gene; the Ito cells in the liver and the Type 1 interstitial cells in the kidney. In the liver hepatocytes also produce Epo.
Further studies of Epo gene expression would be facilitated by the availability of Epo-producing cell lines. SV40 T antigen is a viral oncogene, and expression of this protein was used as a proliferative stimulus in vivo. The effects of this, and attempts to isolate these cells form the subject of Chapter 7. Chapter 7 also describes experiments in which renal injury was combined with visualisation of individual Epo-producing cells.
A homologous recombination at the Epo locus resulted in an allele which expressed the hormone at a greatly reduced level. The phenotype of animals homozygous for this allele is described in Chapter 8. Experiments designed to produce further modification of the Epo locus by this method, and to assess its utility in modifying the mouse genome are also described.
Studies in the demonstrative pronouns of early Greek

This study identifies and describes constituents, patterns and distribution of the system –or systems- of demonstratives of a representative selection of early Greek dialects, namely the “Arcado-Cyprian” group: Arcadian and Cyprian, including a short analysis of Pamphylian as well as a discussion of the particle νι/νυ and a brief note on Mycenaean; the “Aeolic” group: Lesbian, Boeotian and Thessalian; and a selection of West Greek dialects, including both “Doric” and “Northwest Greek” dialects: Elean, Cretan, Laconian, Cyrenaean and Theran. It also examines, describes and compares the syntactic functions and, where possible, pragmatic uses of the series of demonstratives in operation in the selected dialects, providing a classification capable of accounting for all uses cross-dialectically, as well as a succinct account of the evolution of the system of demonstratives from Indo-European to “Ancient Greek”. Additionally, it offers a glimpse of the way in which deixis and anaphora seem to have worked in early Greek dialectal inscriptions, addressing the issue of defining demonstrative pronouns, as well as deixis and anaphora in general terms. Finally, this thesis provides the basis for a cross-dialectal comparison of the structure and operation of the different systems of demonstratives, and corrects some general misconceptions about the scope, usage and inter-dialectal connections of some series of demonstratives, particularly with regard to Arcadian and Cyprian. The results of such a study might contribute towards the discussion of the classification and history of the evolution of early Greek dialects.

Keywords: Aeolic
Cretan
Homer
Greek inscriptions
Mycenaean
Theran
Thessalian
pronouns
Greek grammar
Indo-European
Pamphylian
Laconian
Greek dialects
Elean
deixis
Boeotian
Lesbian
Greek particles
Cyrenaean
demonstratives
Cyprian
Arcadian
anaphora
Advisor: Penney, J
And Yahweh appeared

This thesis examines the use of the motifs of "seeing God" and of "God's appearing" in Old Testament narratives. The frequency, distribution, and form of such references are presented in Chapter One which examines the semantic field of words for "see" in the Old Testament with special reference to "seeing with reference to God." An examination of works on Old Testament theophany suggests that these motifs have not been fully appreciated. They are generally considered only as they might be related to earlier forms of texts, e. g. cultic etiology; or divine appearing is equated with divine speaking. The significance they have for the narratives in which they are found is thus ignored. In Chapter Two the ancient Near Eastern backgrounds of these motifs are considered. An examination of the see vocabularies of extant Ugaritic and Akkadian literature reveals that, although rare, the motif of "seeing God" is found. However, the motif of God's appearing is not found.
The significance of these motifs for Old Testament narratives is then examined in Chapters Three to Five which are devoted to: 1) the Patriarchal Traditions of Genesis; 2) the Moses, Sinai, and Wilderness Traditions of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers; and 3) the Historical Writing of the Old Testament. Where possible attention is given to the use of these motifs at two levels: the level of the story as inherited material; and the level of the larger narratives in which the stories are found. Previous scholarly work on these texts is also discussed where relevant. Each chapter concludes with a summary of the variety of usages to which the motifs were put. Chapter Six presents a summary and conclusion and suggests areas where further research may prove fruitful.
Film cooling of turbine blade trailing edges

In modern gas turbine engines, film cooling is extensively used to cool the components exposed to the hot mainstream gas path. In implementing film cooling on modern gas turbine engines, the trailing edge film poses a particularly challenging design problem. From an aerodynamic point of view, the trailing edge of a blade is designed to be as thin as possible. However, this conflicts with the implementation of the cooling design. The most common method of film cooling the trailing edge is via late pressure surface discrete film cooling holes. Another method of cooling the trailing edge is by using discrete pressure surface slots. This thesis documents a comparative aerodynamic and heat transfer study of three trailing edge cooling configurations. The study was carried out using a large scale, low speed wind tunnel situated at the Southwell Laboratory. The three trailing edge cooling configurations considered were as follows. First is the common late pressure film cooling of the trailing edge via discrete film cooling holes. This configuration is designated as datum configuration. Second is the pressure surface slot coolant ejection. This configuration was designated as cast cutback configuration. The third is the pressure surface ejection via discrete film cooling holes within a step cutback. This configuration was designated the machined cutback configuration. The above configurations were incorporated into three flat plates manufactured using stereolithography. In the aerodynamic study, the static pressure distribution and discharge coefficient for the three configurations were compared. Furthermore, two dimensional total pressure measurements were carried out using a traverse mechanism downstream of the test plates. The total pressure measurements were used to compute the mixed out losses for the three configurations. It was found that the datum and machined cutback configurations have similar discharge coefficients and mixed out losses whilst the cast cutback configuration produces greater mixed out loss. The film effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient on the pressure surface downstream of the coolant ejection was obtained using a steady state heat transfer technique. The effectiveness measurements were compared with those from the literature and correlated against the two dimensional slot model. The heat transfer measurements show that the cast cutback configuration has the potential to give higher effectiveness at the trailing edge.

Keywords: Film Cooling
Mixed out loss
Heat Transfer
CFD
Trailing Edge
Advisor: Ireland, P
Jomes, T
Gillespie, D
Iterative Local Model Selection for tracking and mapping

The past decade has seen great progress in research on large scale mapping and perception in static environments. Real world perception requires handling uncertain situations with multiple possible interpretations: e.g. changing appearances, dynamic objects, and varying motion models. These aspects of perception have been largely avoided through the use of heuristics and preprocessing. This thesis is motivated by the challenge of including discrete reasoning directly into the estimation process.
We approach the problem by using Conditional Linear Gaussian Networks (CLGNs) as a generalization of least-squares estimation which allows the inclusion of discrete model selection variables. CLGNs are a powerful framework for modeling sparse multi-modal inference problems, but are difficult to solve efficiently. We propose the Iterative Local Model Selection (ILMS) algorithm as a general approximation strategy specifically geared towards the large scale problems encountered in tracking and mapping.
Chapter 4 introduces the ILMS algorithm and compares its performance to traditional approximate inference techniques for Switching Linear Dynamical Systems (SLDSs). These evaluations validate the characteristics of the algorithm which make it particularly attractive for applications in robot perception. Chief among these is reliability of convergence, consistent performance, and a reasonable trade off between accuracy and efficiency.
In Chapter 5, we show how the data association problem in multi-target tracking can be formulated as an SLDS and effectively solved using ILMS. The SLDS formulation allows the addition of additional discrete variables which model outliers and clutter in the scene. Evaluations on standard pedestrian tracking sequences demonstrates performance competitive with the state of the art.
Chapter 6 applies the ILMS algorithm to robust pose graph estimation. A non-linear CLGN is constructed by introducing outlier indicator variables for all loop closures. The standard Gauss-Newton optimization algorithm is modified to use ILMS as an inference algorithm in between linearizations. Experiments demonstrate a large improvement over state-of-the-art robust techniques.
The ILMS strategy presented in this thesis is simple and general, but still works surprisingly well. We argue that these properties are encouraging for wider applicability to problems in robot perception.

Keywords: data association
slds
inference
computer vision
robotics
mapping
slam
tracking
Advisor: Reid, I
Murphy, D
Anthracene-fused porphyrins

This thesis describes the synthesis of a novel family of porphyrins fused to anthracenes, together with investigations into their optical and electrochemical properties, as well as exploring their potential for application in dye-sensitised solar cells.
Chapter 1 gives an overview of the structure-property relationships of large planar pi- systems for organic electronic applications. Porphyrins are introduced as suitable building blocks for such systems, and approaches for extending the pi-conjugation of these macrocycles are presented.
A literature review of porphyrins fused to aromatic units is presented in Chapter 2, with a focus on the influence of structure on the optoelectronic properties of such systems. The chapter concludes with a summary of my previous work on the synthesis of anthracene-fused porphyrins, and the aims of this project are stated.
Chapter 3 describes the syntheses of fully and partially fused bis-anthracene porphyrin monomers and dimers. By varying peripheral substituents, it was possible to solve problems of aggregation encountered for these systems. Fusion of anthracene units to a porphyrin core was found to result in systems displaying strong absorption in the near-IR, small HOMO-LUMO gaps, and low oxidation potentials.
Chapter 4 explores the synthesis, crystal structure and optoelectronic properties of a porphyrin fused to four anthracenes, revealing this system to exhibit the longest wavelength absorption of any porphyrin monomer. The synthesis of a liquid crystalline tetra-anthracene-fused porphyrin was proposed, and attempts to synthesise the necessary anthracene precursors were undertaken.
Chapter 5 describes the molecular design and synthetic pathway to a mono-anthracene fused porphyrin, and its unfused analogue, for use in liquid electrolyte dye-sensitised solar cells. By varying the metal oxide layer or lithium ion concentration of the device, it was possible to achieve incident photon to current conversion efficiency (IPCE) responses at wavelengths beyond 1050 nm.
Chapter 6 details the experimental synthetic procedures and characterisation data for all the compounds synthesised during this project.

Keywords: anthracene
dye sensitised solar cells
porphyrin
Advisor: Anderson, H
Negotiating and constructing religious identities in English secondary schools: a study of the reported experiences of adolescent Christians, Jews, and Muslims

The increasing diversity of societies is one of the most important educational issues of the globalised era. However, while some attention has been paid to the schooling experiences of racial, ethnic and immigrant minorities in Western societies, little research has been conducted with religious adolescents.
This thesis explores the complexities of religious adolescents’ experiences of English secondary schools. As an exploratory study, I employed an emergent research design carrying out loosely-structured, group and single interviews at eleven places of worship to investigate the schooling experiences of 99 adolescent Christians, Jews and Muslims. In order to interpret their reported experiences, I applied a theoretical model based on the Students’ Multiple World Framework in conjunction with concepts of religious identity negotiation and construction.
The interview data show how Christians, Jews and Muslims negotiate their religious identities in the context of the numerous challenges presented by secondary schools in a religiously plural and largely secular society. In classroom worlds participants perceived their religious traditions to be distorted, inaccurately or unfairly represented. In peer worlds participants reported that they could experience prejudice, and criticism of their beliefs. Christians, Jews and Muslims reported two principal management strategies in the face of these challenges, either: declaring their religious identity openly, or by masking it in public.
The findings of this study are highly relevant to debates about the role of religion in education, including those concerning faith and Church schools and the nature and purpose of the curriculum subject Religious Education.

Keywords: negotiation
England
religious identity
formation
Jews
development
identity
faith
Christians
Muslims
construction
adolescents
religion
secondary school
Advisor: Lunt, I
Fancourt, N
Holographic quantum liquids

In this thesis, applications of Holography in the context of Condensed Matter Physics and in particular hydrodynamics, will be studied. Holog- raphy or gauge/gravity duality has been an enormously useful tool in studying strongly-coupled Field Theories with particular success in their low-frequency and large-wavelength fluctuation regime, i.e the hydrody- namical regime. Here, following a phenomenological approach, gravita- tional systems, simple enough to be properly examined, will be studied in order to derive as much information as possible about their dual theories, given that their exact form is not accessible in this way. After a review of the most important elements of standard Condensed Matter Theory, the gauge/gravity duality itself will be presented, along with some of its most important achievements. Having established the framework of this work, the main results of this thesis will be presented. Initially the sound channel of the theory dual to the anti-de Sitter Reissner–Nordstro ̈m black hole space-time will be studied, at finite temperature and finite chemical potential. Hydrodynamical properties of the boundary theory will be of major interest. Following that, focus will be shifted towards another grav- itational system, namely the Electron Star. There, the shear channel of the dual theory will be mainly examined. The goal will be, as before, to extract information about the hydrodynamical properties of the boundary theory.

Keywords: AdS/CFT
holography
Advisor: Starinets, A
Advances in the surgical management of early-onset spinal deformities (EOSD) 

Early-onset spinal deformity (EOSD) is characterised by detection of spinal deformity (scoliosis, kyphosis or multi-planar) in children at aged less than five years. The common causes could be classified under congenital, neuromuscular, syndromic and idiopathic etiologies. Early treatment is paramount in preventing rigid, severe and progressive deformities that can cause pulmonary compromise. The inability of lungs and thoracic cage to support normal ventilation at rest constitutes the pathophysiology in manifestation of thoracic insufficiency syndrome (TIS).
The treatment options have evolved from observation, serial casting, bracing to surgery. Early definitive spinal fusion is now obsolete and contra-indicated for EOSD. Growing rods (submuscular or subfascial) continues to be the standard of care in treating these challenging deformities. Vertebral expandable prosthetic titanium rib (VEPTR) continues to be an attractive option for TIS but is fraught with high complication rate.
I hereby present a theme on EOSD with a set of thirty three peer reviewed indexed publications and one surgical patent in treating such challenging conditions highlighting my original contribution as Consultant spinal surgeon spanning over two decades. My pioneering and ground-breaking research that has shaped the surgical management of EOSD and helped define 'standard of care' is presented. My novel and innovative concept of treating EOSD using magnet driven growing rod (MdGR) along with its preliminary results is discussed. MdGRs are an attractive alternative in eliminating need for repetitive anaesthesia facilitating normal cognitive development in comparison to growing rods (CGRs). They also improve pulmonary function in neuromuscular scoliosis. A brief one page summary of all my indexed publications with comments on originality and how they contributed to spinal surgery is enclosed at the end of each chapter. My current research update on MdGR project at Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (Stanmore), my surgical patent National institute of clinical excellence (NICE) position statement on MdGRs and clinical guidance documents are attached appendices I - III.

Keywords: Scoliosis
Advisor: Fairbank, J
Ultraselective nanocatalysts in fine chemical and pharmaceutical synthesis

Surface catalysed reactions play an important role in chemical productions. Developments of catalyst requiring high activity whilst improving on product selectivity can potentially have a profound effect in the chemical industry. Traditional catalyst modifications were focused on tuning the size, shape and foreign metal doping to form well defined metal nanoparticles of unique functionalities. Here, we show new approach to engineering of metal nanocatalysts via a subsurface approach can modify the chemisorption strength of adsorbates on the surface. Carbon modified nanoparticles were synthesised using glucose to stabilise Pd nanoparticles at a molecular level. Upon heat treatment, the carbonised glucose encapsulated the Pd nanoparticles with carbon atoms take residence in the octahedral holes (15 at.%). These materials were tested in liquid phase stereoselective hydrogenations of 3-hexyn-1-ol and 4-octyne. The former has importance in the fragrance industry towards the production of leaf fragrance alcohol. It was shown for the first time that the geometrically and electronically modified Pd with interstitial carbon atoms reduced the adsorption energy of alkenes, ultimately leading to higher reaction selectivity. Boron modified Pd nanoparticles was synthesised using BH3.THF in the liquid phase. The material possess high B interstitial saturation (20 at.%), which can be synthesised for the first time below 100°C. These materials were tested in the liquid phase selective hydrogenation of various alkynes and 2-chloronitrobenzene, of which the latter has importance in the pesticides industry. Kinetic modelling on the hydrogenation of 4-octyne suggests these subsurface occupied B does play a pivotal role on increasing the reaction selectivity, as removal of these species lead to decreased selectivity. Au nanoparticles were synthesised and characterised using H13COOH NMR. The new liquid NMR characterisation method is successfully applied to examine the chemisorption strength of metal nanoparticles. An attempt to synthesise PVP capped B modified Pd nanoparticles with the above NMR characterisation was investigated. It is believed the examples of subsurface atom modifications as shown here may offer future catalyst developments in this area.

Keywords: alkynes
liquid phase
formic acid
subsurface
interstitial
2-chloronitrobenzene
selective hydrogenation
heterogeneous catalyst
nuclear magnetic resonance
kinetic modelling
Advisor: Tsang, S
Cookson, J