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Background: Inflammatory bowel disease is a chronic remitting-relapsing condition comprising mainly two different illnesses: Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Symptoms include abdominal pain, bloody diarrhoea, faecal urgency and/or incontinence, fatigue, and several extra intestinal manifestations, such as eye and joint inflammation. Over 40% of those with severe Crohn's disease develop perianal disease, with anal fistulae. There is no cure for inflammatory bowel disease, and treatment remains mainly symptomatic and aims at maintaining remission. Surgery is needed in 80% of those with ulcerative colitis, and 25% of those with Crohn's disease, leading in some cases to temporary or permanent stoma formation. Due to the unpredictability of the condition, the nature of the symptoms and stigma attached to it, patients have an array of worries and concerns. Literature review: For a better understanding of care needs, a qualitative review of the qualitative studies reporting on the illness experiences of people with Inflammatory bowel disease was performed, with the aim of identifying what areas lacked evidence, t were under-researched and required further investigation. A review of qualitative studies synthesised the evidence from 24 studies and 850 patients that met the inclusion criteria. The published review concluded that patients live in social isolation and with restrictions. Pain, fatigue, incontinence, body image and an uncertain future dominated their experiences. The need to address the psycho-emotional and social aspects of the condition was identified. Furthermore, issues related to intimacy and sexuality were not directly addressed in the literature, and inferred findings from the review suggested that these may be present. Young women aged 16-24 were the group with the poorest representation in the study, followed by ethnic minorities living with IBD. Aim of the thesis: No qualitative studies explored patient experiences behind these findings. Given the complexity of the components of sexual function, this is a gap in knowledge on this topic. Based on the findings from the literature review, aims of this study were formulated: · To explore the lived experiences of intimacy and sexuality of people living with inflammatory bowel disease; · To explore the lived experiences of discussing intimacy and sexuality with healthcare professionals, and the need for these discussions. Methodology: An interpretive phenomenological design guided by van Manen's framework was used. Data were collected from 43 participants via face-to-face and telephone interviews, as well as anonymous narratives collected via Google Forms. Thematic analysis based on reflection on four existential domains (body, relationships, time and space) was used for interpreting the data. Results: The results were presented in two parts reflecting the data analysis of each research aim. Sexuality as lived incompleteness was the overarching theme representing the essence of the experiences of intimacy and sexuality. This theme covered the four main themes: 'Otherness of the body, Interrupted connectedness, Missing out on life fullness' and 'Fragmented openness' that were found to be qualities of the experiences, with variations of each quality reflected in subthemes. Each theme covered an existential domain, as they were defined as a result of reflecting on the four existential domains. In lived 'body' the theme captured the challenges of the sex life when the ill body no longer functions as before the disease and becomes a separate entity in the eyes of the participants. 'Relationships' domain is thrown into chaos, and pressure strained some relationships. 'Time' domain was suggestive of lost opportunities, inability to experience the desired intimacy and impact on choice of partners, and family planning. The last existential domain, 'space', was experienced as restricted space, not just physical but emotional space as well, where participants were unable to disclose their condition to potential partners. The four domains were difficult to separate and a close inter-relationship between each domain was acknowledged. 'These discussions aren't happening' was the overarching theme for the experiences of discussing intimacy and sexuality with healthcare professionals in clinical setting. Barriers in discussing concerns, proposed ways to move forward and achieve holistic care, calls to break the silence and taboos surrounding these discussions as well as experiences of such conversations that reinforced the feelings that sex was not taken seriously, were all the findings presented in four themes: 'I can't imagine talking about my sex life, I'm a person not my IBD, We need to talk about sex' and 'Those who talked about sex, talked badly'. The findings concerning the discussions with healthcare professionals were published in a second paper included in the thesis. Conclusion: Intimacy and sexuality are important and integral aspects of quality of life and those living with inflammatory bowel disease are severely affected by the condition. Sexual well-being is largely not addressed in clinical practice and the study provided evidence that healthcare professionals have a less holistic approach to care. Healthcare professionals should routinely ask about intimacy and sexuality issues in the clinical settings. Existing variations in the quality of care should be addressed, to promote better access to sexual well-being information. Recommendations for further research are to explore the views of healthcare professionals on discussing sexuality in clinical settings, training needs of healthcare professionals to enable effective communication, and development of a tool to assess sexual well-being.

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that John Rawls’s conception of social justice should be revised to include duties that will require individuals to uphold social equality. Social equality, as I describe it, is characterised by the values of, at a minimum, respect-for-persons, civility and toleration. Informal social equality occurs when these values are upheld outside of a legal or official institutional context, such as through personal choice and within civil society. Rawls’s conception of justice, which focuses primarily on institutional justice, does not include fair personal choice as a requirement of justice. As choice, I will argue, affects the distribution of primary social goods such as the social basis of self-respect, if we want to describe a fair society, we should include a description of fair choice. If informal social equality is upheld, justice in choice will also be upheld. To correct the neglect of justice in choice, we can thus describe a fair society as one where (1) institutions would be fair and (2) individuals would fulfil duties of social equality. In the context of current debate on the role of individual behaviour in social justice, my thesis can be distinguished from what I refer to as the original ‘personal choice argument’. According to this argument, advocated by G. A. Cohen and Liam B. Murphy, for example, Rawls’s principles of justice for institutions should be applied to individuals so that fair personal choice becomes a requirement of distributive justice. Cohen and Murphy’s arguments are unconvincing, however, because (i) we could apply principles other than the institutional, for example, principles for individuals, to choice and (ii) we have good reason not to apply the institutional principles to choice, for example, because they do not properly address interferences with self-respect. Instead of applying the institutional principles of justice to individuals, I argue that Rawls’s principles for individuals should be revised according to the values of social equality: 1. the duty of mutual respect needs to be revised to include requirements for individuals and associations to comply with the demands of social equality, which are (i) respect-for-persons, (ii) civility and (iii) toleration; and 2. the duty of justice should be adapted to specify that individuals are required to help establish and to uphold informal (not merely formal) justice, thus to uphold justice in personal choice.

Individuals with autism spectrum development (ASD) often demonstrate atypical perception and production of biological motion (BM), a term for the movement patterns of animate beings. Given the importance of visual perceptual and motor skills for social interaction and communication, a fundamental concern for those with ASD, further investigation into these domains, their potential association and their underlying role in ASD is critical. This project aimed to examine performance in both domains using a common metric, the two-thirds power law (2/3 PL), a law of motion that characterizes many forms of human movement. Using a preferential looking paradigm, this study examined attentional patterns toward motion adhering to this law, as well as more traditional BM stimuli with temporal or spatial manipulations. The study also employed a novel task to assess adherence to the law and other kinematics during drawing movements on an iPad tablet. Measures of cognitive, motor and social functioning were collected to explore whether task-specific performance related to atypical functioning in these areas. While the study did not detect a significant relationship between domains with respect to the law, the tasks did reveal a number of atypicalities in perceptual and motor performance in autism, as well as some associations with broader social functioning. Limitations and future directions of this research are also discussed.

The widespread fragmentation of global supply chains (GSCs) poses considerable challenges for regulating severe forms of labour exploitation, collectively referred to as modern slavery. Recent responses to these challenges include the promulgation of modern slavery reporting (MSR) laws in the UK, California and Australia. In theory, these laws are a promising development geared towards leveraging corporate influence over GSCs to minimise, or where possible, eliminate modern slavery. However, commentators have criticised their design for lack of sanctions and inadequate reporting requirements. Despite this, MSR laws continue to proliferate internationally, underscoring a need for critical inquiry into the antecedents of their design and their practical effectiveness. To that end, this thesis poses the following overarching research question: How do policy-making process dynamics shape the design of modern slavery reporting laws, and how do external stakeholder pressure and actors internal to firms influence their effectiveness? To answer this question the thesis is organised into six chapters. Two introductory chapters define modern slavery and explore the literature on regulatory design. Following this, three empirical studies are presented, each occupying a single chapter. These studies apply policy change theory to explain MSR law design outcomes, stakeholder influence over reporting outcomes, and the how actors internal to the firm shape changes in policy and practice, respectively. The final chapter summarises the central conceptual and practice-related insights of the thesis. Regarding design, MSR law design is shown to be shaped primarily by coalitions of actors through deliberative, associational and ideological strategies throughout the policy change process. Regarding effectiveness, reporting quality is found to depend on the influence of various stakeholder groups, which varies significantly across institutional settings. In addition, policy and practice changes prompted by MSR laws are shown to be contingent on the extent to which organisations empower internal compliance professionals to promote and enact change and how third-party advisers define best practice. Overall, the findings of this study indicate that fulfilment of the aims of MSR laws is far from guaranteed. This will require changes to their regulatory design and more regulator commitment to steering corporate behaviour in the desired direction.

This thesis details the design of a modified MATSim agent-based simulation system that is driven by transit smart card data. A complete set of bus vehicle trajectories are reconstructed from the smart card transactions. The reconstructed trajectories are then used to estimate a number of regression models of the speed at which buses travel between stops. These models drive the simulation dynamics, along with a dwell time model which takes account of bus ridership, in a MATSim simulation where smart card transaction records have been transformed into an agent-based travel demand. Besides an exposition of the various elements of the data-driven system, as well as validation of the simulation output and a test case scenario, the thesis also covers a number of related topics, including a technique to improve simulation times for MATSim simulations in general, a method to distribute MATSim simulations across multiple computer nodes, a useful approach to perform parameter optimisation in MATSim using a Kriging meta-model, and ends with a technique to synthesise surrogate data that could be used to drive the simulation, while eliminating any associated privacy concerns.

Section 1 of this paper describes the Dutch Reformed Church in Namibia's (DRCN) problems, uncertainty, and loss of direction because neglects God's mission. As a rule, the DRCN has lost members and credibility and cares more about itself than the suffering Namibian society. Because and the DCRN lost its connection with the missio Dei, Namibian socio-economical problems increased and created a huge gap between the DRCN and Namibian society. The DCRN has little impact on major sociological issues. The DRCN can address these realities by rediscovering imago Dei theology and the missio Dei. This change will bridge the gap between the church and the suffering society. Sections 2 and 3 describe proposed solutions to the problem and this paper's thesis. The DRCN adopted the "missional church" as a solution; however, it operated wrong motives and points of departure and, as a result, became disconnected from missio Dei. This paper's thesis is that imago Dei as missio Dei will help the DRCN regain the missio Dei, extend its arms outside church, and proclaim the new humanity in Christ as God's message. Imago Dei as missio Dei is a fluid, fresh, fragrant, and fulfilling relational solution that reaches out with love to the people of Namibia. Section 4 of this paper describes the formation and structure of Imago Dei Incorporated and Association Not for Gain (Imago Dei) as a public organization. Imago Dei will serve as a bridge between the "Community of Need" and the "Community of Means." The association will help build a new humanity and bring wholeness, human dignity, and hope to the broken people of Namibia. Section 5 introduces the Imago Dei association's marketing plan. The marketing plan identifies the needs of target markets and the association's planned responses to actual and potential buyers of Imago Dei services. Imago Dei' s goal is to provide customer satisfaction effectively and efficiently. Section 6 summarizes of all the Imago Dei projects, and the appendix includes Imago Dei's marketing plan and letters from the Council of Churches in Namibia and the Dutch Reformed Church Namibia.