VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The effects of childbearing on women's body mass index, and on the risk of diabetes mellitus, or ischaemic heart disease after the menopause

Background: Excess adiposity, diabetes mellitus, and ischaemic heart disease are common important causes of morbidity and premature mortality in postmenopausal women in the UK. A large amount of data exists on known risk factors for these conditions, and for risk factors men and women share there is little evidence to suggest sex-based differences. It has been suggested that factors unique to women (such as parity and breastfeeding) may also influence risk. The nature of the relationship between childbearing and these conditions remains to be clarified. In this thesis I explore the association between women’s childbearing histories and their adiposity, and risk of diabetes or ischaemic heart disease after the menopause, to provide evidence on the character, repeatability and public health relevance of the associations.
Aim: To explore the hypothesis that childbearing (specifically parity and breastfeeding) is associated with women’s body weight and risk of excess adiposity, and also with women’s risk of diabetes mellitus, and ischaemic heart disease after the menopause.
Methods: Data are analysed from a large population-based cohort of middle-aged UK women recruited in 1996 to 2001 (the Million Women Study) with complete childbearing information, and who had baseline anthropometry, and were followed for incident diabetes or ischaemic heart disease through repeat survey questionnaires, hospital admission records, and central registry databases.
Results: In a large ethnically homogeneous population of postmenopausal UK women increasing parity was associated with an increase in BMI, however this increase was offset in women who breastfed. The associations between parity, breastfeeding and BMI were of a similar order of magnitude to established risk factors known to be associated with BMI, for example smoking, and physical activity. The associations between childbearing and women’s risk of diabetes mellitus after the menopause appear to be largely due to the effects of childbearing on maternal BMI. There is only limited evidence to suggest a direct effect of childbearing on women’s risk of diabetes after the menopause. There is statistically significant evidence of an association between childbearing and women’s risk of ischaemic heart disease after the menopause. Parity was associated with a modest increase in risk whereas breastfeeding was associated with a small decrease in risk, however the effects were small in comparison to known important risk factors.
Conclusions In a large population of UK women childbearing was found to have a persistent influence on women’s mean BMI after the menopause, and through this postmenopausal risk of diabetes mellitus. Childbearing was also found to be mod-estly associated with women’s risk of ischaemic heart disease after the menopause.

Keywords: ischaemic heart disease
breastfeeding
obesity
BMI
parity
women
diabetes mellitus
Advisor: Beral, V
Quigley, M
Development of an intense optically pumped laser of narrow bandwidth in the far infrared

This thesis describes an experimental study of high intensity, pulsed, optically pumped, far-infrared (FIR) lasers. The work was motivated by the need for a radiation source for the measurement of the ion temperature in magnetically confined, high temperature plasmas (e.g. tokamak plasmas), using Thomson scattering. Constraints imposed by the plasma parameters, the scattering geometry and available detector sensitivities lead to the requirement of a radiation source wavelength between 30andnbsp;andmu;m and 1andnbsp;mm and a source power and#x2273;andnbsp;1 MW in a bandwidth and#x2272;andnbsp;60andnbsp;MHz.
Results are presented for a 496andnbsp;andmu;m, 500andnbsp;watt, methyl fluoride (CH3F) cavity laser, with a bandwidth of andlt;andnbsp;30andnbsp;MHz, which was optically pumped by a 9.55andnbsp;andmu;m CO2 laser. Results are also presented for an optically excited mirrorless, super-radiant, CH3F laser, which generated over 0.6andnbsp;MW of FIR radiation within a bandwidth of about 300andnbsp;MHz. The performance of this laser has also been simulated by a computer model, which allows the optimum operating parameters to be predicted.
An assembly constructed on the principle of the injection laser, in which low power narrow-band oscillator radiation is used to control the output of a super-radiant system, has been used to generate 250 kW of 496 andmu;m radiation, with a bandwidth of andlt;andnbsp;60andnbsp;MHz.
Investigations of the FIR output from heavy water vapour (D2O) in a super-radiant laser assembly, optically excited by several different CO2 laser wavelengths, have resulted in the generation of 60andnbsp;ns (FWHM) pulses of FIR radiation with average powers of 1.3, 9.2 and 15.8andnbsp;MW, at wavelengths of 385, 119 and 66andnbsp;andmu;m, respectively. All these lasers were found to have a higher CO2 to FIR photon conversion efficiency than the 496andnbsp;andmu;m CH3F laser. In addition, the energy level spacing in D2O is such that the molecule can generate narrow bandwidth radiation more readily than the CH3F molecule. From this work it is concluded that an injection laser assembly, similar to that used with CH3F, but containing D2O vapour, optically pumped by a 9.26andnbsp;andmu;m CO2 laser and generating several megawatts of 385andnbsp;andmu;m radiation, would satisfy the source requirements mentioned above.
Arrangements of convenience: violent non-state actor relationships and citizen security in the shared borderlands of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela

Borderlands are critical security zones but remain poorly understood. In regions plagued by drug violence and conflict, violent groups compete for territorial control, cooperate in illegal cross-border activities, and substitute for the functions of the state in these areas. Despite undermining physical security, fuelling fear, and challenging the state’s sovereignty, the exact modi operandi of these groups are little known.
Against this backdrop, this thesis explores how different interactions among violent non-state actors (VNSAs) in the Colombian-Ecuadorian and Colombian-Venezuelan borderlands impact on citizen security. These border areas attract rebels, paramilitaries and criminal organisations alike: they constitute geo-strategic corridors for the global cocaine industry and are sites of supply and operation for the major actors involved in Colombia’s decades-long armed internal conflict.
Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis consolidates the literature on conflict, security and organised crime, borders and borderlands, and anthropological approaches to fear and violence. It integrates theories of cooperation among social actors with original empirical research. It is based on a comparative, multi-sited case-study design, using ethnographic methods complemented by quantitative data. The research involved over twelve months of fieldwork with 433 interviews and participant observation on both sides of the crisis-affected Colombia-Ecuador and Colombia-Venezuela borders, and in Bogotá, Caracas and Quito.
Developing a typology of VNSA interactions, I argue that these create not only physical violence but also less visible types of insecurity: when VNSAs fight each other, citizens are exposed to violence but follow the rules imposed by the opposing parties. Fragile alliances produce uncertainty among communities and erode the social fabric by fuelling interpersonal mistrust. Where VNSAs provide security and are socially recognised, "shadow citizen security" arises: security based on undemocratic means. I show that the geography of borderlands reinforces the distinct impacts of VNSA arrangements on citizen security yet renders them less visible.

Keywords: Ecuador
Colombia
security
transnational organised crime
Venezuela
borderlands
drug trade
conflict
Violent non-state actors
civil war
Advisor: Betts, A
Tickner, A
The destiny of humanity

This thesis intends to make a contribution to the understanding of human destiny with reference to Wolfhart Pannenberg. Our research is best described as a theological anthropology in a historical perspective as opposed to Pannenberg's secular anthropology in a theological perspective. We present history as a way to map out the movement of humanity over the course of its history to its common destiny from creation (chapter 2) through sin (chapter 4) and ethics to eschatology (chapter 5). Anthropology has been taken here as only the starting point for our study, which presents openness to the world or exocentricity (chapter 3) as an anthropological constant to historicity. Chapter 2 evaluates Pannenberg's assertion, based on Herder, that the full image of God is realised not from the beginning but only through the destiny of humanity, which lies yet in the future. However, we argue that Pannenberg differentiates himself from Herder in a crucial respect in that Pannenberg grounds Herder's anthropology on a christological foundation in order to present a salvific, rather than a providential, account of the renewal of the imago Dei. Chapter 3 delineates the reasons for the original human state being characterised by openness toward one's supernatural fulfilment, which is already present as a future destiny, and corresponds to the single saving event of Jesus Christ in history. Openness to God becomes, for Pannenberg, the bridge out of the poverty of the natural beginning point of humanity into the full realisation of human destiny. The aim of chapter 4 is to argue the case for defining sin explicitly in relation to human destiny, namely, as passivity to destiny. In our sin, we are robbed of our true identity, and the separation of sinners from God means at the same time our separation from our own destiny, which is communion with God. Chapter 5 opens with a more detailed examination of eschatology, and examines the deep structure of the later Pannenberg's system of ethics, which he now explicitly argues for an anthropological foundation, with a claim of universal validity. The final chapter concludes with arguments leading to the uniting of nature, essence and destiny of humanity as one.

Advisor: Webster, J
The relationship between engagement and learning in school students’ interactions with technology-driven multimodal exhibits in museums

This thesis reports a qualitative study of the use of multimodal technologies in museums— specifically, it examines the relationship between visitor engagement and learning, focusing on the use of multimodal technologies during school trips.
The study was conducted in the Natural History Museum and the Churchill Museum, both in London, with participants from several secondary schools. These sites were chosen due to their concern for the added value of learning and public engagement, including their education-orientated investments in technology, museum activities, and architecture. In the course of data collection, visits were made to six schools and both museum sites; the participants included 117 students, 18 teachers, three museum educators, and eight museum curators and media designers.
The study used a combination of video data analysis, stimulated recall interviews, document analysis, and engaging students in talk and reflection about their visit both at the museum and afterwards. The qualitative approach and multimodal analysis identify how the students’ social interactions help them construct learning through decontextualised bodily movements, which trigger contextualised discussion.
The study demonstrates how multimodal analysis can be used in research to capture a wide scope of information, while maintaining a micro-level of analysis and understanding—here, capturing the detail of students’ interactions and perceptions. The findings suggest that the learning experience in museums is produced through multiple layers of interaction and through the exchange of physical and psychological behaviour among people, resources, and space. Here, the multimodal technologies with which the students engaged essentially acted as initial platforms for sensory stimuli and social interaction, supporting their peer communication and motivating them to further explore both the given topic and their own understanding of their learning methods. It was the students’ further conversation, observation, and participation, however, that created a more meaningful and entertaining learning experience in the museums.

Keywords: hands-on technologies
multimodal analysis
museum learning
science learning
history learning
multi-sensory technologies
Advisor: Davies, C
Higher order QCD corrections to diboson production at hadron colliders

Hadronic collider experiments have played a major role in particle physics phenomenology over the last few decades. Data recorded at the Tevatron at Fermilab is still of interest, and its successor, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, has recently announced the discovery of a particle consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson. Hadronic colliders look set to guide the field for the next fifteen years or more, with the discovery of more particles anticipated.
The discovery and detailed study of new particles relies crucially on the availability of high-precision theoretical predictions for both the signal and background processes. This requires observables to be calculated to next-to-leading order (NLO) in perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Many hadroproduction processes of interest contain multiple particles in the final state. Until recently, this caused a bottleneck in NLO QCD calculations, due to the difficulty in calculating one-loop corrections to processes involving three or more final state particles. Spectacular developments in on-shell methods over the last six years have made these calculations feasible, allowing highly accurate predictions for final state observables at the Tevatron and LHC.
A particular realisation of on-shell methods, generalised unitarity, is used to compute the NLO QCD cross-sections and distributions for two processes: the hadroproduction of W+ W-jj, and the hadroproduction of W+ W-jj. The NLO corrections to both processes serve to reduce the scale dependence of the results significantly, while having a moderate effect on the central scale choice cross-sections, and leaving the shapes of the kinematic distributions mostly unchanged. Additionally, the gluon fusion contribution to the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD corrections to W+ W-j productions are studied. These contributions are found to be highly depen- dent on the kinematic cuts used. For cuts used in Higgs searches, the gluon fusion effect can be as large as the NLO scale uncertainty, and should not be neglected. All of the higher-order QCD corrections increase the accuracy and reliability of the theoretical predictions at hadronic colliders.

Keywords: collider phenomenology
Hadronic colliders
QCD
NLO computations
Advisor: Zanderighi, G
Ross, G
Implications of global warming for African climate

A 2°C increase in global mean temperature (ΔTg) has been widely adopted as a benchmark for dangerous climate change. However, there has been a lack of research into the implications of 2°C, or any other degree of warming, for Africa. In this thesis changes in African temperature and precipitation associated with 1°C, 2°C, 3°C, 4°C, and beyond are investigated for the first time, using output from 350 climate model experiments: a collection of simulations from international modelling centres (CMIP3), two Perturbed Physics Ensembles (PPEs), and a group of five regional models. The models project temperature and precipitation anomalies which increase in magnitude and spatial extent as global temperature rises, including a wet signal in East Africa, and drier conditions for African rainforests. The models consistently show that the evolution of change with global warming is gradual, even at 4°C and beyond; but the amplitude and direction of precipitation change at each ΔTg increment vary between models and between datasets. The PPEs project precipitation signals which are not represented by CMIP3, in particular a large drying (>0.5 mm day-1 °C-1) of western Africa. There are also important differences between global and regional models, especially in southern and West Africa (>1 mm day-1). Analysis of atmospheric circulation responses suggests that the higher resolution projections are no more credible in this case. Some of the variation between models can be understood as the result of untrustworthy simulations, leading to constraints on the PPEs, and casting doubt on the strong drying of west Sahel; but model evaluation is found to be limited by observations in the case of the Congo Basin. The implications of global warming are different depending on which models are consulted. The findings emphasise that caution should be exercised in the application of climate model data to inform mitigation debates.

Keywords: global warming
African rainfall
climate model projections
climate change
Advisor: Washington, R
A study of surface receptors on rat T lymphocytes

A double immunolabelling technique was developed to study microscopically the interactions between CD4, CD45 and the T cell receptor on the surface of rat T cells induced by the phenomenon of co-capping.
It was found that both CD4 and CD45 passively co-cap with the actively capped T cell receptor, that the T cell receptor and CD45 passively co-cap with CD4, but that neither CD4 nor the T cell receptor co-cap with CD45. Co-crosslinking and active capping of CD45 with either the T cell receptor or CD4 prevented CD4 or the T cell receptor respectively, from passively co-capping.
These experiments were extended to study the effects of particular antibody crosslinking conditions on T cell proliferation and tyrosine phosphorylation. A correlation was found to exist between receptor distribution and the effects of particular antibody combinations on proliferation and tyrosine phosphorylation. The significance of this with respect to T cell activation is discussed.
Finally, an observation is reported concerning the failure of some cell lines to cap antibody-crosslinked surface molecules. Preliminary investgations into the nature and extent of the phenomenon are described.

Advisor: Newton, M
Martin, B
Getting everybody back on the same team

The thesis examines the reactions of policy-making managements of large industrial firms to the challenges to their power and authority accompanying the organization of relatively strong unions in the later 1930s and 1940s.
It describes and explains the transformation in its approach to labour relations forced upon, American management during this period, setting this against a background account of the indus- trial relations strategies large firms followed in the pre-union era. It relates in detail the problems of labour relations American business encountered in the war period and immediately after, and examines the ideology and world-view of management as revealed in its perceptions of its problems.
The second half of the thesis describes a successful 'recovery of the initiative' in industrial relations policy and practice by American management. It examines the contributions of large corporations and their pressure-groups to the reorientation of public policy towards organized labour which culminated in the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. It goes on to discuss the collective bargaining strategies of large manufacturers (particularly in the automotive industry) in the late 1940s, arguing that they acted with realism and conscious purpose to stabilize in-plant labour relations on terms acceptable to themselves. Management accepted unions - but acted to restrict their power, and compelled them to behave 'responsibly'.
The final chapters examine other means by which management aimed to outflank and undermine unions, and to restore its own power and prestige - methods which .have usually been neglected by business and labour historians alike. The objectives and rationales of personnel administration, 'welfare capitalism' , in-plant propaganda, and public relations are analysed.
Throughout, the emphasis is on managerial motivation, and on the ideological bases of business policy, as much as on actual practice. This is partly because the sources of the study include the rhetoric of the business community as well as the records of its behaviour. The work is, however, more than a partial intellectual history of American business: it concent- rates on practical men's perceptions and analyses of problems which confronted them, and on the rationales they produced for the actions they took.
Towards infrared image understanding

An extensive literature survey has revealed that the majority of previous work in infrared image processing has ignored the processes leading to the formation of infrared images. Processing has normally either been restricted to simple lowlevel image enhancement convolutions or has consisted of algorithms copied from computer vision without regard for the inherent differences between infrared and visible images. In this thesis, we address the problem of infrared image formation and derive an irradiance equation for simple infrared scenes. We consider the complications caused by mutual illumination of one or more bodies and indicate how the infrared irradiance equation can also be specified for more complex scenes. The infrared irradiance equation we derive is solved in closed form for some simple geometries for both Lambertian and non-Lambertian surfaces. An infrared imager has been built and is described. Images taken with the imager of a variety of scene geometries show that the experimental results compare favourably with the theoretically derived equations, indicating the validity of the theoretical analysis. We describe how a knowledge of the formation of infrared images can be used to predict the image irradiance pattern of a particular object. We also show how, with a knowledge of the radiance properties and surface geometry of the object, it is possible to detect instances of that object in a scene. Examples are given of successful object detection based on an understanding of the image irradiance. We present a brief history of infrared imagers and a description of the principles on which modern infrared imagers are based. In addition to the survey of the literature published on infrared image processing, a brief summary of some techniques from the computer vision literature and their suitability to infrared image processing is given. A selection of vision techniques are applied to both infrared and visible images to verify conclusions reached in the thesis.

Advisor: Brady, M