VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A thousand wrecks!

This thesis examines the figure of the rake as portrayed in the eighteenth- century English novel, a character strangely neglected in critical studies.
The first chapter examines 'libertine' writers of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, notably Bernard de Mandeville; and the dilemma faced by educators of the day over the benefits of virtue on the one hand, and of worldly wisdom on the other. While Mandeville and other lesser defenders of the rake were very much a scandalous minority early in the eighteenth century, it appears that by about mid century a more moderate strain of libertinism received wider, but by no means universal acceptance (Johnson, Chesterfield, Smith, Hume).
The second chapter seeks to define the classic conception of the rake as a young upper-class prodigal, and the standard anti-libertine view that gentleman rakes, by their neglect of social and political duties, were a serious threat to established social and political order. The chapter concludes with various examples of the standard rake in minor eighteenth-century novels that both defend and vilify him.
Chapters III to V concentrate on each of the three principal novelists of mid century (Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett), and their par- ticular uses of and moral conclusions about the conventional rake. The sixth chapter suggests some conclusions to be drawn, mainly from the previous three chapters, and especially the ways in which Fielding, Richardson and Smollett com- ment on the rakes in each other's fiction; and examines the continued use of the rake topos right to the end of the century and at least into the early nineteenth, in differing types of fiction (novels of manners, of Sentiment and of radical ideas, the Gothic novel).
Robustness of multivariable feedback systems

The robustness of the stability property of multivariable feedback control systems with respect to model uncertainty is studied and discussed. By introducing a topological notion of arcwise connectivity, existing and new robust stability tests are combined and unified under a common framework. The new switching-type robust stability test is easy to apply, and does not require the nominal and perturbed plants to share the same number of closed right half-plane poles, or zeros, or both. It also highlights the importance of both the sensitivity matrix and the complementary sensitivity matrix in determining the robust stability of a feedback system. More specifically, it is shown that at those frequencies where there is a possibility of an uncertain pole crossing the jw-axis, robust stability is "maximized" by minimizing the maximum singular value of the sensitivity matrix. At frequencies where there is a likelihood of uncertain zeros crossing the imaginary axis, it is then desirable to minimize the maximum singular value of the complementary sensitivity matrix.
A robustness optimization problem is posed as a non-square H∞-optimization problem. All solutions to the optimization problem are derived, and parameterized by the solutions to an "equivalent" two-parameter interpolation problem. Motivated by improvements in disturbance rejection and robust stability, additional optimization objectives are introduced to arrive at the 'best' solution.

Advisor: Postlethwaite, I
Boundary properties and construction techniques in general topology

The aim of this thesis is twofold. First, we investigate spaces defined by asserting that their nowhere dense subsets have certain properties. Secondly, we develop some techniques for the construction of topological spaces.
We consider spaces where the nowhere dense sets are asserted to have some property P, calling such spaces boundary-P. We show that if there are no Lusin spaces then every compact boundary-metrizable space is metrizable. Boundary-separability is also studied and we show that if there are no L-spaces then every boundary-separable space is separable.
By adapting the absolute dimension function of Arhangel'skii, we define the new concept of cohesion. We show that every compact cohesive and every Hausdorff, sequential cohesive space is scattered. However, we construct regular, crowded spaces of all finite cohesions though there are no regular spaces of transfinite cohesion. We consider too the preservation of cohesion under various mappings and under the formation of products.
Turning to construction, we consider the class of compact monotonically normal spaces. It is well-known that it contains the class of spaces which are the continuous images of compact ordered spaces but it is still open as to whether they are actually distinct classes. Using Watson's resolutions, we give a method for constructing monotonically normal spaces. Though this also preserves continuous images of arcs, we show that it is because of a powerful result of Cornette rather than any trivial observation.
We also examine more closely monotone normality in images of compact ordered spaces using the Collins-Roscoe structuring mechanism. From this, we extract a strong instance of the mechanism, linear chain (F), which is held by all images of ordered compacta and all proto-metrizable spaces and implies Junnila's concept of utter normality.
Elementary submodels are an important tool in the construction of topological spaces. We develop a general method for applying them in varying circumstances and illustrate it by constructing three examples: Balogh's Q-set space, Rudin's normal but not collectionwise Hausdorff space and Balogh's small Dowker space.

Keywords: cohesion
analytic topology
elementary submodels
general topology
boundary properties
Advisor: Collins, P
Reed, G
Perceptions of health, illness and healing in a Sichuan village, China

This thesis explores attitudes to the body, illness and healing in contemporary rural China through the prism of Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus. It is divided in two parts. Part 1 aims to situate attitudes to the body in the specific social, cultural and political economic settings which have engendered them. I show that bodily dispositions articulate ways of engaging with one's surroundings and claims to authority and status. Past experiences equip different generations with different habitus (Bourdieu, 1977; 1990). At the same time, habitus is revised in light of engagements with new environments. As such, this section shows that habitus is made through daily practices, and that attitudes to the body are contingent and contested. Hierarchies with regard to what constitutes a desirable body or a healthy diet are not stable but always disputed. Negotiations surrounding them are informative of wider social processes and serve to reproduce or challenge social relations and values.
Part 2 examines bodily practices at times of illness through the case of oesophagus cancer, an illness prevalent in the area, and with specific reference to one case and brief comparisons to others (including some discussion of stomach cancer). This section aims to show that family relationships are produced and contested through various practices of care, and that such relations engender particular bodily attitudes. These practices are not enactments of an already given reality or relationship, but rather vital to producing them. Closer attention to practices during illness are therefore important for understanding how illness is experienced by all involved, but also how it intersects with family relations, attitudes to resources, strategies to secure them and invest them, and perceptions of the state and welfare provision. It shows that a study of social change and reproduction is central to understanding cancer. Conversely, practices surrounding cancer, such as decisions not to undergo surgery, also present ways in which social reproduction and change take place. Employing habitus allows a closer grasp of the intricate processes through which family relations are formed, why families opt for particular forms of treatment and how the effectiveness of therapy is produced.

Advisor: Hsu, E
Variation of oak wood properties influencing the maturation of whisky

Oak casks are used for the maturation of a wide variety of alcoholic beverages including Scotch whisky. The process of maturation has a profound but variable effect on the colour and flavour of the whisky, with cask wood playing an important role, particularly through the release of extractives to the distillate. This thesis examines variation in European oak wood (Quercus petraea Matt. Liebl. and Q. robur L.) of ellagitannins, oak lactones and other extractives, and physical wood properties. Investigations particularly sought to establish whether the properties and their effects on flavour can be predicted from either the species, the various forest origins, or identifiable wood or tree characters.
The treatment of wood after felling, through seasoning and particularly the toasting or charring of casks, has a major effect on the levels of many extractives. Heating reduces the concentrations of ellagitannins and increases levels of lignin-derived extractives. However, the effects are not such as to render variation in untreated wood inconsequential. Within trees, the concentration of soluble ellagitannins declines and the composition changes with heartwood age. When heartwood of a similar age is compared concentrations vary by up to ten times between different trees, making up to 14% of the heartwood dry weight. Concentrations of oak lactones appear to increase with heartwood age and are also very variable between trees.
Wood samples were taken from two different forests, corresponding to opposing types of French oak used for cooperage. Over 70% of the total variation of soluble tannins in the wood occurred between the forests. A difference between the two forests in the rate of tree growth and the heartwood age of samples could not explain all of the difference in the amounts of soluble tannins. After heating the wood, the concentrations of other extractives and the flavour and colour imparted to solutions, also varied significantly between the two forests and between trees within each site.
Studies on clonal, progeny and provenance material concluded that the concentration of ellagitannins, oak lactones and many physical properties of heartwood are under strong genetic control. However, a large proportion of this variation is attributable to variation between the two species Q. robur and Q. petraea. Q. robur is characterised by high concentrations of tannins and, after heating, of lignin-derived products, but low or negligible levels of oak lactones. Q. petraea has opposing extractive properties and after heating, imparts a more pleasant and complex flavour. Although there is large variation between trees within each species, this difference between the species is proposed as the main factor explaining the different flavour and extractive properties found in European oak wood from different origins.

Advisor: Savill, P
Universal moduli of parabolic sheaves on stable marked curves

The topic of this thesis is the moduli theory of (parabolic) sheaves on stable curves. Using geometric invariant theory (GIT), universal moduli spaces of semistable parabolic sheaves on stable marked curves are constructed: `universal' indicates that these are moduli spaces of pairs where the underlying marked curve may vary as well as the parabolic sheaf (as in the Pandharipande moduli space for pairs of stable curves and torsion-free sheaves without augmentations).
As an intermediate step in this construction, we construct moduli spaces of semistable parabolic sheaves on flat families of arbitrary projective schemes (of any dimension or singularity type): this is the technical core of this thesis. These moduli spaces are projective, since they are constructed as GIT quotients of projective parameter spaces. The stability condition for parabolic sheaves depends on a choice of polarisation and is derived from the Hilbert-Mumford criterion. It is not quite the same as traditional stability with respect to parabolic Hilbert polynomials, but it is closely related to it, and the resulting moduli spaces are always compactifications of moduli of slope-stable parabolic sheaves. The construction works over algebraically closed fields of arbitrary characteristic.

Keywords: moduli spaces
parabolic bundles
algebraic geometry
geometric invariant theory
parabolic sheaves
marked curves
Advisor: Kirwan, F
The calmodulin stimulated ATPase of Zea mays L

Maize coleoptile microsomal vesicles showing calmodulin-stimulated ATPase activity were isolated from 4.5 day old dark grown seedlings. Calmodulin-stiirmlated ATPase activity was maximal (8 nmoles min-1 (mg protein)-1) at 0.35 μM, inhibited by orthovanadate (Iso=20 μM), and specific for ATP.
Calmodulin affinity chromatography was used to purify this ATPase after solubilisation with Triton X-100. Calmodulin-stimulated ATPase activity was present in the purified fraction, maximal stimulation (340 nmoles min-1 (mg protein)-1) occurring at 0.3 μM calmodulin. After reconstitution into asolectin liposomes, maximal calmodulinstimulated ATPase activity (500 nmoles min-1 (mg protein)-1) occurred at 0.025 μM. Affinity chromatography using buffers containing asolectin produced true basal activities; maximal calmodulin stimulation was at 0.01 μM (100 nmoles min-1 (mg protein)-1). These results suggest that a calmodulin-stimulated ATPase was purified from the microsomal fraction.
Inclusion of protease inhibitors (PMSF, chymostatin) during purification and electrophoresis yielded a polypeptide of 140,000 Mr, similar to the Mr of erythrocyte calmodulin-stimulated, calcium-pumping ATPase (CSCPA). Polypeptides of Mr 91,000, 77-69,000, 51,000, and 40,000 were also present. A monospecific polyclonal antibody raised against erythrocyte CSCPA recognised the 140,000 Mr polypeptide from maize, giving strong evidence that maize cells may contain a polypeptide similar to erythrocyte CSCPA.
The reaction mechanism of the proposed maize CSCPA was investigated. After purification in the presence of PMSF phosphorylation was present at 140,000 Mr; this turned over rapidly, was sensitive to hydroxylamine, dependent on calcium, inhibited by lanthanum and stimulated by calmodulin. This was consistent with formation of an acyl-phosphate intermediate, indicating that maize CSCPA is a P-type ATPase, having a reaction mechanism similar to that of the erythrocyte CSCPA.
A monoclonal antibody (EA6) was raised to maize CSCPA purified without PMSF; this antibody recognised intact maize CSCPA and inhibited calmodulin-stimulated ATPase activity in microsomal fractions. This antibody also bound to other polypeptides present in microsomal and purified fractions, permitting tentative identification of proteolysis products.

Advisor: Dewey, F
The soliton of the effective chiral action in the two-point approximation

In this thesis, we study the "two-point approximation" for highly non-local effective actions, in the particular case of the Chiral Soliton Model of the nucleon. The nucleon in this model is regarded as being made of three valence quarks bound together by a meson field in a soliton form. Mesons are treated in mean field theory and the vacuum energy due to one-quark loops is included. The theory is defined with a finite cut-off in momentum space, consistent with an effective theory for the low-energy description of the strong interactions.
We use the two-point approximation to calculate the vacuum correction to the chiral soliton energy for a variety of soliton profile functions, investigating the effect of different regularisation schemes. Results are little influenced by the choice of the cut-off, and are within 20% of exact calculations, done with the full inclusion of the Dirac sea.
We then perform a dynamical calculation of the chiral soliton by including sea-quark effects self-consistently in the two-point approximation. We find a typical 20% (or less) deviation in the soliton energy from exact calculations. We apply a further "pole" approximation which leads to a significant algebraic simplification in the self-consistent equations. We show, in particular, that a simple numerical fit of the pole form to the two-point cut-off function yields essentially indistinguishable results from the latter.
We finally calculate some static nucleon observables in the two-point approximation and find general agreement with exact calculations.
In view of the results obtained, we may hope that the pole form of the twopoint approximation may prove to be a generally useful approach to similar problems involving highly non-local actions.

Advisor: Aitchison, I
Individualism reconsidered

Contemporary communitarians focus their critiques on liberal individualism and posit as a counterpoise to the self-sufficiency and priority of the liberal self their own conception of the self: the individ- ual-in-community. Selfhood, in their view, is inherently communal; one cannot know or define oneself, or be an individual, except in and through the community life in which each is raised.
This thesis presents, in contrast to the liberal and communitarian conceptions, a third conception of the self built from developmental psychology the self as compound individuality. Here the self is seen to develop through a series of levels, each level a world unto itself, but each also a part of a more inclusive whole. Both liberal individualism and the communitarian conception that challenges it are, in the light of the theory of compound individuality, seen to be half-right and half-wrong.
They gain coherence, and cogency, only when joined. Joining the two is difficult. At the center of the difficulty, and at the center of the liberal-communitarian debate, are competing notions of autonomy and of relationships. Some communitarians see autonomy as leading ineluctably to pernicious individualism. Liberals, on the other hand, argue that individual autonomy must be protected from any communal ends and relationships that might limit it.
The theory of compound individuality demonstrates that there is a level of self at which relationships do not threaten autonomy, but, on the contrary, help through autonomy to define the self. Autonomy, rather than jeopardizing relationships by emphasizing self-sufficiency, as the commun- itarians fear, here promotes a level of constitutive relationships.
This level of self beyond individualism might be engendered through increased, though restructured, social and political participation. But are the communitarians 1 concerns and their understanding of community fully embraced at this level? If liberal societies were to move beyond individualism, would those societies be any more communitarian and any less liberal? Those societies, as argued in this thesis, would cer- tainly be different from what communitarians envision and from liberal polities today.
Neoliberalism and education in Russia: global and local dynamics in Post-Soviet education reform

This dissertation examines the socio-cultural underpinnings of neoliberal educational reforms vis-à-vis the national educational settings in Russia.
By drawing upon NVivo-aided Discourse and Frame analysis as a methodological path, this study critically examines a corpus of state laws on education and official government statements from 1991 to 2012 in contrast to contemporary societal discourse on education, where novel and indigenous educational meanings have been contested and re-negotiated. This thesis shows how the conceptual mélange of global neoliberal ideas has been interpreted, institutionalised and resisted in Russia by exploring the semantics of key neoliberal reform ideas - ‘quality assurance,’ ‘educational standards,’ and ‘commercial educational service’ - at the micro-level of policy texts, political debates and public discussions.
This thesis shows that having heralded an educational revolution, the official reform narrative rhetorically endorsed neoliberal orthodoxy, while continuing in practice to discursively draw on pedagogical and administrative frameworks which it previously renounced as outdated. In communicating the spirit of radical neoliberal modernisation, the Russian government rhetoric has collectively embraced a number of contradictory concepts, slogans and directives that have never been harmonised in a unified reformatory framework.
The study also argues that the public interpretation of neoliberal concepts has been radically different from the intended conceptualisations offered by the global international stakeholders and conveyed by the Russian educational elite. It shows how, when interpreted through the lens of local pedagogical values, the semantics of global modernisation templates, such as ‘educational quality’ and ‘educational standardisation,’ took on unexpected, culturally-specific, meanings. It also finds that the newly introduced principles of entrepreneurship, self-interest, consumer choice, self-responsibility and competition, which underlie the neoliberal economic reform, remained in opposition to fundamental principles of Russian culture, such as communalism, egalitarianism, state paternalism and anti-monetarism. By unpacking opposing ideological and pedagogical frames, this thesis explains the cultural aspects of the widespread public resistance to post-1991 education reform in Russia.
This dissertation seeks to enhance the understanding of the policy formulation process and interpretation of global neoliberal ideas from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives. By advancing a culturalist approach to policy analysis, the present study addresses an overlooked piece of the long-standing puzzle of perceived post-Soviet educational crisis, supplementing the broader scholarly discussion on the successes and failures of neoliberal reforms in the post-Soviet space.

Keywords: Russian education
neoliberalism
education reform
neoliberal globalisation
Advisor: Johnson, D
A functional approach to backward stochastic dynamics

In this thesis, we consider a class of stochastic dynamics running backwards, so called backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs) in the literature. We demonstrate BSDEs can be reformulated as functional differential equations defined on path spaces, and therefore solving BSDEs is equivalent to solving the associated functional differential equations. With such observation we can solve BSDEs on general filtered probability space satisfying the usual conditions, and in particular without the requirement of the martingale representation. We further solve the above functional differential equations numerically, and propose a numerical scheme based on the time discretization and the Picard iteration. This in turn also helps us solve the associated BSDEs numerically.
In the second part of the thesis, we consider a class of BSDEs with quadratic growth (QBSDEs). By using the functional differential equation approach introduced in this thesis and the idea of the Cole-Hopf transformation, we first solve the scalar case of such QBSDEs on general filtered probability space satisfying the usual conditions. For a special class of QBSDE systems (not necessarily scalar) in Brownian setting, we do not use such Cole-Hopf transformation at all, and instead introduce the weak solution method, which is to use the strong solutions of forward backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs) to construct the weak solutions of such QBSDE systems. Finally we apply the weak solution method to a specific financial problem in the credit risk setting, where we modify the Merton's structural model for credit risk by using the idea of indifference pricing. The valuation and the hedging strategy are characterized by a class of QBSDEs, which we solve by the weak solution method.

Keywords: semimartingales
functional differential equations
backward stochastic dynamics
Advisor: Lyons, T
Qian, Z