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Osmotic pressure and diffusion coefficients were studied experimentally and theoretically in order to facilitate fully quantitative descriptions of ultrafiltration processes. These parameters may be incorporated in the solution of the equations for hydrodynamics and mass transfer in the filtration module. Theoretical descriptions are presented to allow calculation of osmotic pressure, taking account of the electrostatic repulsive interactions, London Van Der Waals forces, configurational entropy and additional interactions of unknown source. Approaches of constant zeta potential and charge regulation conditions were investigated for BSA, lactoferrin and silica colloidal dispersions. An experimental technique for measuring osmotic pressure was established and verified by comparison of the measured osmotic pressure with known data using BSA protein dispersions. The measured osmotic pressures of BSA solutions also agreed well with the theoretical predictions. Osmotic pressures of the commercially important protein lactoferrin solutions were also measured. Using the experimental results further refinement of the charge regulation model was made by modifying the expression of the extra attractive force, which is probably caused by interaction between sugar molecules on the protein surfaces. The refined model gives greatly improved prediction of osmotic pressure as well as ultra-filtration rate over a wide range of solution conditions. Osmotic pressures of silica dispersions were also measured and a charge regulation model was developed for the silica colloidal system. This model gives a good description of the experimental results over the conditions studied. The gradient diffusion coefficients of BSA solutions were measured by the modified Taylor's capillary method and compared with light scattering data. An analysis of electrokinetic effects in membrane pores containing electrolytes has also been carried out. The analysis uses a numerical solution of the non-linear Poisson-Boltzmaan equation and allows for the mobilities of anions and cations to be individually specified. It is shown that it is very important to use such an approach to calculate zeta-potentials from the basic electrokinetic data.

It is well known that the lack of robustness, reliability and fast processing of computer vision algorithms is a major barrier affecting the wide use of machine vision systems in industrial automation. To this end, the thesis evaluates many Hough transform related techniques and proposes several efficient algorithms suitable for object identification and inspection in industrial scenes. To detect multiple circular objects in a noisy image accurately, two schemes are proposed. The first scheme combines a labelling technique with the adaptive Hough transform for circle detection to resolve the ambiguities in locating peaks in the parameter space. In the second scheme an alternative transform equation is used to generate the parameter space and, for locating a cluster of three points on a circle, a set of rules is developed. Using this approach, the parameter space generated by the transform is more compact that that generated using conventional methods, and hence fast processing can be achieved. To validate the proposed approaches, several experiments are conducted to detect multiple circular objects in both synthetic and real images. The experiments show that the labelling adaptive Hough transform can produce good results when used to detect circular objects in good-contrast images, and the algorithm using an alternative transform equation performs very well, even in images contaminated by noise, with objects touching and/or overlapping each other. An improved technique is also presented for the detection of arbitrarily-shaped objects by incorporating a model-size-reduction scheme into an optimized, generalized Hough transform. For further speed-up of the algorithms developed in the thesis, their parallel implementation on transputer-based networks is investigated.

Few studies have systematically evaluated how the key dimensions of human resource management can facilitate successful mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in emerging economies. This research addresses this significant gap by exploring the role of training, line management and culture in the process of M&A in China. Drawing on the resourcebased view (RBV) of the firm perspective, the study explores the extent to which these HRM dimensions were utilised and deployed as resources that can contribute to the organisation's strategic goals and objectives such as M&As. This qualitative research adopts a case study approach and analyses documentary and interview evidence from a German multinational company, PumpCo based in China where the company experienced M&A in the past few years. The research findings suggest that the company's HRM plays a significant role in effective M&A. As the dynamic and complementary resources of the organisation, training, line managers and culture helped the achievement of the company's strategic goals for M&A, although some of the impacts, such as that of the culture, are more complicated than expected. The study shows that, if properly managed, training, line managers and culture can be the sources of competitive advantage for the case study company although future research is needed. Research contribution, implications and limitations are discussed.