Search

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a technique that applies light sources of multiple wavelengths within the object for non-invasive property detection. The current NIRS techniques include Continuous-Wave NIRS (CW-NIRS), Frequency-Domain NIRS (FD-NIRS), and Time-Domain NIRS (TD-NIRS). Both CW-NIRS and FD-NIRS apply constant or intensitymodulated photon-emitting light sources and photodiodes as sensors to detect the power of the light from the target in a certain time. Even though FD-NIRS uses a frequency sinusoidal function (MHz) for the modulation of the light source, which brings in more information than CW-NIRS, such as average intensity (DC), the amplitude of intensity (AC), and phase shift between the detected and emitted light, the sensitive nature of the frequency modulation and detection techniques employed makes the measurements susceptible to motion artefacts and environmental noise. These external factors can disrupt the phase and amplitude of the modulated signal, resulting in distortions that impact the accuracy of the reconstruction process and require careful consideration and mitigation strategies in the measurements. TD-NIRS applies lasers as light sources and single-photon sensors for light detection, which not only inherits the merits of CW-NIRS on the intensity measurement, but also provides up to picosecond time resolution for the average photon path length calculation and the chance to extract the absorption and scattering coefficient of the target for absolute haemoglobin concentration qualification based on the nature of the histograms. The research on TD-NIRS has been over 20 years, however, there are only few instruments in the market due to the complexity of the system and the high price, which hinders its application for clinical practices and daily care, and blocks the feedback from the actual usage. In recent years, high-resolution and high-frequency laser drivers and sources, and single-photon detectors have become more accessible and cheaper, which contributes to further research and development of TD-NIRS systems. This thesis targets to reduce the complexity and size of the TD-NIRS system while keeping the quality of spatial resolution, time resolution, and frame acquisition rate, utilising laser diodes, a Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) sensor, and a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based processing circuits. Different from previous publications, the Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) is moved out of the SPAD and implemented in an FPGA for cost-saving and system flexibility. A novel method is applied to the TDC by encoding the states of the delay lines instead of the thermometer code used in the conventional TDCs to improve the linearity. The achieved raw Differential Non-Linearity (DNL) which is the DNL without compensation and calibration, together with the zero empty bins, to our knowledge, exceeds previously reported of the FPGA-based TDCs. The TDC is applied to the TD-NIRS system, with the achieved system Impulse Response Function (IRF) of 165 ps at the maximum repetition rate of 20 Mhz. The concept of different lasers with a sync phase shift of 2 ns to generate multi-IRFs in one histogram frame was successfully proved, providing a high-speed and real-time solution for achieving high spatial resolution.

Agricultural expansion is a major source of tropical deforestation. In particular, export commodity crops are often associated with environmental and socioeconomic problems in producer countries. This thesis focused on natural rubber, applying a multi-disciplinary lens to study the potential for aligning ecological, economic, and social sustainability goals. Using quantitative spatial analyses methods, I identified strong trade-offs between biodiversity and economic interests for future rubber expansion in Africa, Asia, and New Guinea. There is little room for new plantations in the most suitable areas for growing rubber that do not also threaten vulnerable species. Next, I used a spatio-temporal economic model to study the interactions between market prices, agricultural rents, rubber expansion, and protected areas during the latest rubber price boom and bust cycle in mainland Southeast Asia. Agricultural rents, incorporating changes in market prices, explained much but not all of the rubber expansion patterns across all countries in the study, highlighting the influence of socio-political variables in land-use changes. Protected areas hindered rubber expansion, but even the strictest reserves could not fully prevent encroachment especially in the most suitable and accessible lands. Lastly, I examined the process and implications of more inclusive and participatory stakeholder engagement in a multi-stakeholder sustainability initiative for rubber. Using document analysis, I map out the evolution of inclusiveness in the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR). The qualitative case study highlighted changes in membership composition, geographical representation, governance of decision-making, and the quality of smallholder participation. I documented gradual improvements in each component of inclusiveness, but challenges remain around equity of pricing and full participation of smallholders. This thesis offers a diverse contribution of perspectives, demonstrating how deforestation, agricultural demand, and equitable livelihoods are inextricably linked and emphasising the importance of multi-disciplinary approaches in theory and practice.

This study explores how student nurses experience intercultural nursing care in their everyday clinical practice. It adopts a qualitative social constructionist approach to investigate their perceptions of and responses to positive experiences and the challenges they encountered in their nursing placements and to seek to understand intercultural competencies that are salient in facilitating effective intercultural communication. Several key findings emerged from the study: 1) Participants socially construct their intercultural care experience in the six domains: intercultural encounters, knowledge, skills, attitudes, engagement and outcomes; and consider intercultural competence is a continual development process. 2) Even though the individual scope of intercultural care encounters (ICEs) varies, the participants all valued the opportunity to be exposed to ICEs, as these allowed them to negotiate and adjust to different cultures, values and worldviews. 3) The participants observed how cultural beliefs and behaviours affect individual patients' interpretations or perceptions of their health condition, how they view its treatment and the efficacy of the medication. Without this essential knowledge, aside from the lack of understanding of a patient's cultural needs, the treatment and care maybe inadequate or inappropriate, which can seriously affect patient's outcomes. However, the data showed the gaps in this aspect of nursing education. 4) One of the biggest challenges the student nurses encountered in ICEs was linguistic barriers, since language affected not only the patients' ability to express their needs and understand the healthcare instructions, but also had nursing implications. 5) Participants reported positive and challenging attitudes in ICEs, which affected their learning, wellbeing, and intercultural communication performance. When workplace adversity persists, some participants even considered leaving the course. It was through personal resilience, accessing support from academics and peers that they decided to stay in their chosen career. 6) The motivations to engage intercultural care were affected by internal and external factors. 7) The participants highlighted that without considering outcomes for the care recipient (patient) and care provider (the student nurse), competence in intercultural care cannot be validated. An intercultural care competence ecological framework was developed, which provides a comprehensive view of intercultural care and highlights the dynamic nature of competence development. In these ways, this study complements existing cultural care theories. The study offers valuable insights for researchers, educationalists, practitioners and policymakers in the areas of intercultural communication and interactions in healthcare services.

This thesis investigates young women's motivations regarding beauty practices in contemporary China. It is based on 20 semi-structured interviews, 10 beauty diaries and 10 follow-up interviews with a sample of women aged 18-25. The research takes an interdisciplinary feminist approach to explore several themes in relation to the participants' negotiations of female beauty, including reasons for engaging in beauty practices, daily beauty routines and their understanding of what constitutes female beauty. In terms of the interventions of the thesis, a key issue is that most work regarding beauty practices has come from Western feminist scholars and is thus based on the experience of Western women. Therefore, to what extent these ideas and discussions translate to non-Western national contexts has not been examined. In doing so, this thesis seeks to address several gaps and omissions in feminist work on beauty culture. In particular, it intervenes in ways that question whether postfeminism is a transnational cultural discourse by examining how young Chinese women discuss their engagement in beauty practices. This analysis reveals that participants utilise postfeminist discourse regarding choice and pleasure when explaining their motivations. Furthermore, this thesis illustrates the importance of discourses of cultural specificity in beauty practices in so far as participants negotiate constructs of inner and outer beauty in ways which are shaped by a Chinese social and political context. This finding foregrounds the issues of cultural specificity within beauty culture studies. As such, this thesis argues that postfeminism can be seen as transnational discourse to understand Chinese women's experience within a global context. However, postfeminism offers a particular conceptual lens emerging from the Western context. It is, therefore, useful to be coupled with other perspectives formed from local dominant discourse and concepts to facilitate a suitable framework for studying Chinese beauty culture.

The Chinese banking sector has experienced significant reform since 2003. The main purpose of the reform was to improve corporate governance structures, improve risk management and enhance performance. The lack of comprehensive research on performance determinants in the Chinese banking sector is the main motive, therefore the thesis investigates the determinants of bank profitability and efficiency in the second chapter. This thesis focuses on significant changes in the Chinese banking sector in two areas: the new regulation Governing Capital Adequacy of Commercial banks and the Guidelines on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Both regulatory reforms implemented by the Chinese government in the early 2000s aim to improve corporate governance, enhance banking risk management and achieve long-term sustainable development. However, while most previous research studies have focused on the impact of capital on banking risk and efficiency, as well as the relationship between CSR and bank financial performance in developed markets, the lack of research into the Chinese banking sector is a gap that this thesis aims to fill. This study contains three parts. Firstly, using the panel data of Chinese banks from 2004 to 2018, this study contributes to the investigation of bank performance in China and explores the determinants that influenced Chinese banks' profitability and efficiency. Second, the thesis aims to examine the relationship between capital, risk and efficiency in the Chinese banking industry. Thirdly, the study investigates the relationship between adopting CSR and bank financial performance. A content analysis is adopted to measure the level of CSR for commercial banks. Different estimation methods are applied to examine the relationship. The findings show that credit risk is significantly and positively contributed to the NIM and Cost-efficiency, while liquidity risk makes a convincingly positive contribution to both the NIM and Cost-efficiency. Moreover, banks with a higher capital adequacy tended to exhibit higher levels of profitability. Non-interest income has a negative impact on all three performance measures. There is a bidirectional negative relationship between capitalisation and banking risk. The higher level of bank cost-efficiency appears to hold less capital. In addition, large banks tend to take less risks than smaller banks. Furthermore, the results show that banks engaging in CSR activities could increase their financial profits.

Developments in the ability to analyse online data of people's names have provided breakthroughs for social research, however, there are several existing challenges. This thesis proposes several novel approaches for identifying hidden properties and text diversity translation of people's names. We start by studying the hidden properties of people's names and found that there are limited existing methods to identify more than one hidden property of people's names at one time. We, therefore, propose a 'Hidden Property Bayes' model that achieves identifying more than one hidden property of people's names in Kanji and Hanzi at one time. In addition, our model performs better than an existing system on name origin identification. We then moved on to text diversity translation and found that translating romanised names to the original language is a challenge. Therefore, we propose two novel models to translate Pinyin names to Hanzi names. These two novel models perform better than 'google translate' on Mandarin name translation. We next investigated gender prediction of people's names and found that limited existing tools can predict and analyse the data in one process. Therefore, we propose a 'Name-Gender' tool that achieves predicting the gender of people's names and also provides a statistical graph directly. In addition, our tool has better performance than an existing system on predicting the genders of people's names in Latin and Hanzi characters. We also provide novel findings of gender analysis in computer science using our 'Name-Gender' tool approaches. Overall, our contributions provide effective novel approaches to support social researchers analysing online data sources of people's names to aid them in understanding real-world events.

Base station antennas have been developed in the past four decades due to the evolution of cellular communication technologies. This thesis focuses on the development of 5G base station antennas and addresses some of their challenges. When upgrading to higher frequency bands for 5G, it is challenging to realize a superior mobile network because the path loss and multipath effects become more severe, especially for the coverage. Since base station antennas are well established and matured, there is little room for further development with the traditional approach. When entering the 5G era, more wireless systems and applications become part of our daily lives and the global economy. A significant challenge is how to make the wireless systems multifunctional and reconfigurable over an ultra-wideband or multi-bands. Nevertheless, the development of new material has provided a new and promising path for further developing antennas. Both indoor and outdoor base station antennas are required to support 5G networks with better performance (wide bandwidth, stable radiation pattern, etc.) and coexist with the current 2G/3G/4G networks. Meanwhile, small size, low profile and less-cost antennas are preferred. Thus, this thesis makes four significant contributions to address the above-stated problems and challenges. They can be summarized as follow: 1. A novel compact quadruple band indoor base station antenna for 2G/3G/4G/5G mobile communication systems was presented, which covers 0.69 - 0.96 GHz, 1.7 - 2.7 GHz, 3.3 - 3.8 GHz and 4.8 - 5.0 GHz with a compact size. A new optimization method was employed to optimize the antenna. 2. Two wideband (3.3 - 5.0 GHz) and dual-band (3.3 - 3.8 GHz and 4.8 - 5.0 GHz) dual-polarized outdoor base station antennas were proposed for 5G applications. Both antennas cover the desired operating frequency bands. They have high port-to-port isolation, stable radiation pattern and compact size. 3. A compact dual-polarized ultra-wideband base station antenna based on new material was designed and simulated for 5G applications. The proposed antenna covers the frequency bands from 2.29 to 5.09 GHz with a compact size and has better isolation between the two ports. It also has a simple structure. 4. An ultra-wideband waveguide and a wideband cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna were designed based on the new material. The ultra-wideband waveguide is achieved by loading the new material, which covers 0.5 to 16 GHz with a simple construction. The dielectric resonator antenna has a simple structure and wide bandwidth.

With the rapid growth of mobile device users and mobile communication applications, the explosive traffic demand has brought many new challenges the network system. For matching the increasing traffic demand, cloud radio access network (C-RAN) is proposed as a solution in optimizing the energy efficiency and spectral efficiency which is made up of a centralized baseband signal processing unit (BBU) in the cloud center with a set of remote radio heads (RRHs) densely deployed. C-RAN can centralize the functions of computing, signal processing, and content caching on the cloud platform through the computational capabilities of the BBU pool. However, the full-centralized architecture of C-RAN also brings heavy burdens on the fronthaul which is used for connecting the BBU pool and RRHs. To solve these disadvantages and optimize system services, based on C-RAN architecture, the fog radio access network (F-RAN) is proposed. Different from the remote radio heads in CRAN, which is only responsible for transmitting signals, fog access points (F-APs) are applied in fog radio access network with functions of signal processing, resource management and local content storage. Therefore, by distributing the contents close to the content requested users, fog radio access network has been proposed as a promising paradigm for the 5th generation of mobile networks to improve the quality of service. Also, fog radio access network has a broad application prospect in improving spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency by making full use of centralized cooperation and edge cache technology.

Good ideas are more critical now than ever in a world faced with social, health, and environmental challenges that require creativity. In practice, it is often difficult to identify where an idea begins or ends or to know how ideas will develop over time. However, existing theories of creativity assume that ideas are distinct and recognizable entities that move through the creative process and that it is clear where an idea begins and ends. In this dissertation, I explore the role of ideas in the creative process using a critical literature review and two in-depth qualitative studies. The first essay reviews and synthesizes the literature on the meaning of the construct of an idea, from its roots in philosophy and psychology to contemporary usage in organizational studies. I demonstrate two distinct approaches to conceptualizing and measuring ideas in organizational creativity and innovation. In the second essay, I present a qualitative study of experimental circus groups to examine how groups develop ideas collaboratively. From my findings, I theorize a process of elaborative play through which groups use play to develop ideas and construct relationships between them. In the final essay, I conduct a qualitative study to examine how creative workers' personal experiences shape the way they engage with ideas and experience creative work. I discuss the implications of each study for theory and research.

This thesis investigates jet, spray and resulting combustion characteristics in the context of advanced compression ignition engines. Measurements are reported of mixing, scalar dissipation rate (SDR) and entrainment in a decaying non-reacting jet by planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) and particle image velocimetry (PIV). For the first time, joint statistics of mole fraction and SDR are reported and are closer to a Gumbel, rather than a lognormal, distribution. After the end of injection the SDR for the most reactive mixture fraction at the area near the nozzle exit implies that autoignition is unlikely occur there and contributes to increased unburned hydrocarbons and CO emissions. There is indirect evidence of an "entertainment wav". A novel method to describe the transient jet boundary provides direct evidence of this process, although peak entrainment is only 1.2 that of the steady jet, while theory suggests a factor of 2. A high pressure and temperature constant volume cell was used to study decaying liquid spray from commercial diesel injectors on the liquid penetration and dispersion rates. Measurements were made by Mie scattering of the liquid phase. The effects of conicity factor (CF), hydro-erosive (HE) rounding, hole length and hole outer diameter of the injector nozzle were investigated. The measured liquid penetration rate shows a transition away from linear at around a dimensionless value of time around unity: the rates are lower than the theory of Naber and Siebers. Higher CF leads to longer spray penetration and smaller cone angles, higher HE Rounding leads to wider sprays and shorter penetration distance , suggesting that the mixing and evaporation is promoted by high HE rounding. Computationally, a multi-zone computer program is developed to simulate a homogeneous charge compression ignition engine, with heat loss effects calibrated by using the motoring indicator diagram and measured in-cylinder temperature profiles. A detailed n-heptane mechanism and 10 zones provide good prediction of the measured indicator diagram. Agreeing with experiments, the simulation shows that intermediate or heavy internal exhaust gas recirlcuation (iEGR) allows operation at leaner conditions or lower inlet air temperature without misfire. The amount of NOx is negligibly small using iEGR at the fuel lean condition but there is little beneficial effect on the high level of CO and UHC emissions. This program is extended to partially premixed compression ignition engines, coupling an inter-zone mixing model in mixture fraction space and three ways are explored to extract temporal profiles of the SDR calculated from a stochastic code. The heat release rate (HRR) from simulations is much larger than measurements. Although indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) is over-predicted, both simulations and engine tests show that the IMEP is insensitive to injection pressure or injection timing but, as is expected, is increased by increased fuelling. The tendency that later injection leads to lower maximum PRR is found by both engine tests and simulation. However, the maximum PRR from simulations is much larger because of the higher HRR.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been considered as a promising technology in both military and civil communications. This thesis studies UAV-enabled wireless communications considering UAV propulsion consumption which has not been well studied in the existing literature. To this end, first, wireless power transfer (WPT) efficiency in UAV-enabled wireless powered communication networks (WPCNs) is studied, where a rotarywing UAV is dispatched as an energy carrier to charge the remote sensors after it is charged by a charging station such as a base station (BS). In the study, the propulsion consumption for different UAV manoeuvres has been taken into account. Two schemes for UAV-enabled WPT have been proposed and compared with the conventional scheme without using a UAV. By solving the energy equations, a distance threshold beyond which the new schemes show superiority over the conventional scheme is derived. Then, in order to maximize the sum-energy received by all sensors, the optimal strategy for UAV deployment is studied. In this study, the UAV power consumption, the radio frequency to direct current (RF-to-DC) energy conversion effciency and the BS charging process have all been taken into account. Both one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) topologies of sensors have been considered. By maximizing the sum-energy received by all sensors, the optimal locations for the UAV have been derived. Next, the use of UAVs in a WPCN as an energy transmitter and a data collector is investigated. In the study, the UAV is first charged from a BS before it flies to the sensors for data collection. Upon arrival, the UAV first charges the sensors via WPT in the down-link, followed by data transmission from the sensors in the up-link. After that, the UAV ies back to the BS to offload data to the BS. Both distance-dependent path loss and small-scale fading are considered. To maximize the amount of data offloaded to the BS given a fixed total time, the optimal time allocation in different phases has been derived. In the aforementioned studies, we focus on the full process of UAV-enabled WPCN where wireless charging from the BS to the UAV and the UAV return trip have been considered. To maximize the available energy when the UAV arrives at destinations, the optimum battery weight in UAV-enabled wireless communication networks is studied. Numerical results show that both vertical flight and horizontal flight speeds and the gross weight of the UAV have a great impact on the optimal battery weight. Motivated by studying the optimal battery weight, it is found that accurate and convenient energy consumption models (ECM) for rotary-wing UAVs are also, or even much more important for UAV-enabled wireless communications because energy is the guarantee of UAV operation. As a result, a simple and easy-to-use model with closed-form expression as a function of the initial velocity, acceleration and time duration is further studied. Numerical results show the validity and reliability of the new derived ECM.

Sketching is an essential part of the tradition and practice of design. However, despite the extensive literature on the subject, the roles of sketching in the design are still not fully understood. Therefore, this PhD study was carried out to understand the roles of sketching in the product design field and to develop the means to support the design sketching process. Hypotheses emerged from the review of the literature and led to three descriptive studies: a pilot study to identify the roles of sketching in design; a survey of design students; a survey of design professionals. Data collected from these studies were used to test and verify the hypotheses. It was found that the major roles of sketching in design were related to design ideation and design communication. The comparison between design students and professionals showed that they tend to perceive the major roles of sketching differently, but shared similar opinions on the major roles of talking sketches, sketching expertise and as a practical supporting tool. In addition, an Ideation Segment Model was proposed, which describes the process that sketching ideas evolve into final design outcomes and locates the potential supporting tools in the sketching process. Consequently, a practical supporting tool was developed to enhance understanding of design sketching, to provide external stimuli, and to improve sketching expertise. The supporting tool, entitled the PD-Sketching Primer and PD-Sketching Toolkit, was tested with education and positive feedback was received. This research has contributed towards understanding the roles of sketching in design, e.g. it is the first empirical study of 'non-working sketches' in the design field. It has generated new knowledge and tools to support the design sketching process. This supporting tool is one of only a few resources designed to support sketching activity and creative performance in the product design field.

Sensory consequences of one's own voluntary action are perceived as less intense than externally initiated sensations. This process is referred to as sensory attenuation. This sensory attenuation has been identified in humans and animals across various modalities, including visual, auditory and somatosensory domains. The auditory sensory attenuation is explored by comparing the auditory N/M100 amplitude between self- and external-initiated conditions. The focus of auditory sensory attenuation is mainly on the primary auditory cortex and the superior temporal cortex, while emerging evidence indicates that the sensory attenuation is present in broader brain area. Moreover, the generation of sensory attenuation relies upon the precise coordination of the motor system with sensory areas. However, sensory attenuation across the whole brain and the underlying neural interaction between brain areas remain underexplored. Importantly, failure in sensory attenuation is considered to play a role in clinical psychotic symptoms, such as auditory hallucination and illusion. This has been confirmed in chronic schizophrenia (ScZ), possibly resulting from disrupted frontal-temporal coordination during generating sensory attenuation. However, it currently remains unclear whether deficits in sensory attenuation emerge before the prodromal phase of psychosis, as well as what aberrant neural mechanism underlie emerging psychosis. Given previous studies based on electroencephalogram(EEG) technology, the current thesis aimed to employ magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine auditory M100 sensory attenuation. MEG-data were collected from 48 healthy controls (HC), 110 clinical high-risk psychosis (CHR), and 26 first-episode psychosis (FEP) participants during an auditory task in which pure tones were either elicited through a button press or passively presented. Auditory M100 event-related fields (ERFs) were recorded to assess auditory M100 sensory attenuation at the sensor- and source-level. The first aim was to map the sensory attenuation effect across the whole brain and further explore the association between motor-related activity and auditory sensory attenuation. Dynamic causal modelling (DCM) was also employed to determine the top-down and bottom-up modulation to determine the underpinning neural mechanism during sensory attenuation generation (Chapter 3). Subsequently, we focused on the auditory regions to address the sensory attenuation characteristics in emerging psychosis and its association with clinical features and cognitive functions. The goal was to address whether the sensory attenuation deficit could be regarded as a potential biomarker for early identification of psychosis (Chapter 4). Finally, DCM was employed to explore the alteration of neural interactions across the sensory attenuation network in emerging psychosis and investigate the aberrant neural mechanism of sensory attenuation (Chapter 5). The findings in Chapter 3 revealed that auditory M100 sensory attenuation was present in spatially distributed brain areas, involving various subcortical-cortical areas. In addition, the current results supported the modulation of motor-related activity with auditory sensory attenuation. The results from DCM further indicated the role of both top-down and bottom-up modulation of a thalamo-cortical network in generating auditory sensory attenuation. The results in Chapter 4 demonstrated impaired auditory M100 sensory attenuation in FEP and indicated that aberrant sensory attenuation emerged in the prodromal phase of psychosis. Moreover, the sensory attenuation effect in the auditory cortex was linearly associated with clinical symptom severity and cognitive performance. Finally, the DCM results in Chapter 5 suggested that the impaired sensory attenuation in FEP-participants originated from imprecise top-down control and subsequently enhanced bottom-up input (prediction error). The deficits in top-down control in CHR-individuals were not strong, while CHR participants were characterized by increased bottom-up inputs, which was intermediate between HC and FEP. Collectively, the results of this thesis suggested impaired auditory sensory attenuation in emerging psychosis, resulting from aberrant top-down and bottom-up interaction. This provides evidence that the auditory M100 sensory attenuation could be a potential candidate for the early detection of psychosis.

This thesis highlights the importance of corporate governance in the banking industry and investigates several research questions in the banking governance. This thesis first extends the existing literature on the role of CEO personal characteristics in bank risk-taking by showing that the economic conditions at the time when bank CEOs enter the labor market have a significant impact on risk-taking. The result indicates that banks managed by CEOs who started their careers during recessions (i.e., recession CEOs) take less risk than their non-recession counterparts do. In addition, recession CEOs are more likely to implement conservative bank policies, have a traditional bank business model, and are negatively related to bank opaqueness. Furthermore, banks with recession CEOs produce superior performance during the recent financial crisis, while they do not outperform those with non-recession CEOs in general or over the pre-crisis period. The second empirical research extends and complements the existing literature on the spillover effects of bank mergers on borrowing firms by showing that borrowers improve CSR performance in response to the potential changes of the existing lending relationship. The effects are stronger among borrowers more reliant on services from merging banks when mergers lead to larger changes in banks' monitoring and financing of borrowers. The positive effect of bank mergers on borrowers' CSR performance persists after addressing endogeneity concerns and is robust to the introduction of additional robustness checks. This thesis also investigates the effects of CSR investment in banks on their merger and acquisition payment method by showing that banks with better CSR performance are more likely to use the cash-dominated payment to finance their merger deals. Results also show that there exists a positive relationship between bank CSR performance and returns around the bank merger announcement. In addition, after examining long-term performance after the bank merger, results indicate the strategic choices of banks that conducting CSR actives. Overall, these findings in this thesis demonstrate the importance of CEOs' managerial characteristics in banks, impacts of bank mergers and bank CSR activities engagement, which providing implications to bank board when recruiting bank CEOs and bank policy-makings.

This thesis consists of three essays on banking and loan financing. In the first essay, we investigate loan price in mergers and acquisitions (M&As), using hand-matched loan information for a sample of 512 U.S. M&A transactions. We find the relative size of a deal constitutes a prominent determinant of the loan price measured by the all-in-drawn spread (AIDS). This result is robust to several specifications that address endogeneity concerns. Further analysis demonstrates higher AIDS is associated with lower post-transaction performance. We posit that deal size is a major concern for lenders because it involves greater information risk, greater business complexity, and more integration difficulties. Further, the loan price correctly factors in the risk of poor post-transaction performance. In the second essay, we investigate the relation between the bank competition and the tightness of financial covenants in the loan contracts. Using statewide bank branch intensity as the proxy of bank competition during 1995-2013, we find that the financial covenant tightness is positively associated with the bank competition. We explain the association as the banks offer credit to riskier borrowing firms under intensified competition and thus use more restrictive financial covenants to manage the risks of the loan portfolios. Our empirical evidence verifies the argument by showing negative association between the bank competition and the quality of borrowing firms. We also investigate the cross-sectional heterogeneities of the positive association between bank competition and the tightness of financial covenants. In the third essay, using data on the federal declaration of disasters in contiguous U.S. counties and the presence of brick and mortar bank branches in each county, we show that a greater presence of bank branches reduces the disasters' impairment on the number of employees, total annual payroll, and the number of establishments in the local business sector. The presence of bank branches also mitigates the disastrous impact on overall local employment and personal wealth. Our findings demonstrate that the physical presence of banking service enhances the resilience of a local economy to disasters significantly, in line with the findings of the previous literature that banks respond to the uprise in credit demand in disaster-affected areas.

Operational Research (OR) provides the methods and techniques by which firms can maximise their profits by taking smart decisions. The OR literature in the area of logistics, however, pays scant attention to the cash flows that the firm needs to fulfill its legal obligations. In particular, the thesis investigates how Value Added Tax (VAT) and Corporate Tax schemes work in the United Kingdom at the current time, and how these schemes interact with the logistics aspects of the firm. The thesis develops a methodology for constructing models that explicitly account for the impact of tax legislation on a series of classic operational research problems. It does this by expressing the future profits of the firm after tax as the Net Present Value or Annuity Stream Value of the cash-flow function associated with the activity for the firm, including these cash-flows exchanged with relevant third parties and the government that are needed in the context of ensuring compliance with tax legislation. Using current legislation in the United Kingdom, and also drawing from European Union directives on acquisitions and removals, the thesis established how to explicitly consider Value Added Tax (VAT) scheme, Corporate Tax (CT) scheme, and import duties and tariffs rules into decision models, and how these affect optimal decisions and profitability for a firm. The focus lies on OR decision models within the area of inventory management, including decisions about supplier and product selection, and optimal promotion strategy to influence the timing of demand. In particular, we look at four different aspects for handling tax and inventory management problems: (i) traditional economic order quantity (EOQ) models; (ii) the EOQ method in a context of cross-country supply chain activities; (iii) multi-products sourcing strategy; and, (iv) dynamic lot sizing problems. This work contributes to the body of OR theory supporting the tax-effective supply chain. Its contribution lies in proposing a method of how to account for UK/EU taxation rules into inventory and sourcing optimisation models by means of the Laplace transform of all relevant cash-flows, including those associated with taxes, and investigating the impact this has on optimal decisions. By comparison of these models with traditional OR models, it is demonstrated that not only the tax rates but also the tax schemes can be crucial determinants to operational decision making and profitability. To our knowledge, this is the first study to use this approach, and the first study to show the impact of the V.A.T.-scheme on inventory and supply decisions. The tax-adjusted inventory models in particular have a tendency to lead to operational decisions that become more synchronised with the tax points used in these taxation schemes, with savings in net profits that can amount to several percentages.

The thesis begins with a literature review on the thermal behaviours for an incumbent and a future lithium ion battery, which are Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) prismatic batteries and Lithium sulfur (Li-S) pouch batteries, respectively. Research gaps were identified for both types of batteries, requiring the development of novel experimental techniques and/or modelling approaches for each type. Lithium sulfur batteries are an important next generation high energy density battery technology. However, the phenomenon known as the polysulfide shuttle was identified as one of the most important challenges needing to be overcome. It causes accelerated degradation, reduced Coulombic efficiency and increased heat generation, particularly towards the end of charge. Research was conducted on how to track, quantify and therefore prevent the shuttle effect, in order to improve the safety and increase cycle life of Li-S batteries in real applications. This required the real-time detection of the onset of shuttle during charge. The diagnostic technique Differential Thermal Voltammetry (DTV) was used to track the shuttle effect during charging for the first time, and quantitative interpretations of the experimental DTV curves were performed by thermally-coupling a zero-dimensional Li-S model. The DTV technique, together with the model, is a promising tool for real-time detection of shuttle in applications, to inform control algorithms for deciding the end of charging, thus preventing excessive degradation and charge inefficiency. Lithium iron phosphate prismatic batteries are widely used in both sustainable transportation and stationary energy storage. However, system level thermal management for large format prismatic cells is rarely considered in the literature. Equivalent circuit models (ECM) were shortlisted, due to their ease of implementation and low complexity. The accuracy of an ECM is critical to the functionality and usefulness of the battery management system (BMS). However, their accuracy is limited by how easy they are parameterised, and therefore different experimental techniques and model parameter identification methods (PIM) have been widely studied. Yet, how to account for significant changes in time constants between operation under load and during relaxation has not been resolved. In this work a novel PIM and a modified ECM is presented that increases accuracy by 77.4% during drive cycle validation and 87.6% during constant current load validation for a large format LFP prismatic cell. The modified ECM uses switching RC network values for each phase, which is significant for this cell and particularly at low state-of-charge for all lithium ion batteries. Different characterisation tests and the corresponding experimental data have been trained together across a complete State-of-Charge (SoC) and temperature range, which enables a smooth transition between identified parameters. Ultimately, the model created using parameters captured by the proposed PIM shows an improved model accuracy in comparison with conventional PIM techniques. Large format prismatic cell’s thermal management is challenging due to the large internal heat generation rate, longer distance for internal battery core away from the heat exchange cooling interface and therefore larger thermal gradient across the cell. The standardised surface Cell Cooling Coefficient (CCC) can be used to quantify the degree of difficulty of a target cell to be thermally managed. Here, in this thesis, the novel metric surface CCC is introduced and implemented onto a large format LFP prismatic cell, with aluminium alloy prismatic casing. Further, based on developed PIM, a parameterised and discretised 3-dimentional Electro-Thermal Equivalent Circuit Model is developed. The developed model is validated using the experimental data through embedding corresponding boundary conditions, including drive cycle noisy load and constant current CCC square wave load, electrically and thermally at the same time. The study offers a quantitative guide of the trade-off between cell energy density and surface CCC, and also a casing selection analysis is conducted. The CCC metric together with proposed model enable the cell manufacturer and Original Equipment Makers (OEMs) to customise the cell design based on the casing material, single cell energy density, cell thickness and CCC/capability to be thermally managed. In the future cell design process, this study offers a cost-effective, time-efficient, convenient and quantitative way, in order to achieve a better and safe battery design (high capacity, power and longer lifetime) for wider application needs. Finally, it is concluded that, for both incumbent and future lithium ion batteries, understanding the thermal behaviour is the key for a safer, lighter, longer lifetime, longer range application. By using engineering customised experimental techniques together with empirical and/or physical simulations, enhanced understanding with quantitative battery optimisation and thermal management are achieved in this thesis. The findings in thesis are beneficial for wide range of communities including research community, industry OEMs, application engineers, battery management system developers, control engineers and electric vehicle end users.

Nowadays, content delivery has taken the place of host-to-host communication as the main purpose of the Internet. The growing percentage of traffic from mobile devices indicates mobile end-devices are playing more important roles in future networks. Therefore, some caching-based applications (e.g. Web Caching, Content Delivery Network, Peer-to-Peer caching) have been developed to enhance the performance of content delivery services by placing contents geographically closer to end-users. Meanwhile, the research for future generation network architectures with higher mobility, reliability, and scalability is motivated by the explosive development of state-of-the-art applications (e.g. Internet of Things) and heterogeneous transmission at the network edge. To this end, in-network caching, which enabling network-layer distributed caching techniques in the information-centric network (ICN), provides a promising solution for the arising content delivery requirement in innovative application scenarios. In this thesis, six caching design drivers are identified from existing in-network caching approaches, i.e. caching granularity, caching node placement, storage capacity allocation, caching timing, replica placement and replica eviction. However, conventional works are only focusing on partial design drivers, which are designed and evaluated for either general ubiquitous caching scenarios or specific transmission techniques. For trending application scenarios (e.g. user-generated content caching, edge/fog caching), there is still a lack of systematic distributed caching design oriented to the future network requirements. Therefore, four novel caching solutions are proposed in this Ph.D. thesis, which target on enhancing the content delivery services for the trending application scenarios in the future, by incorporating multiple identified design drivers. The proposed caching solutions are implemented and compared to popular benchmark techniques. For experimental scenarios, the content requesting traffic and network topologies are configured according to different application requirements, respectively. Four performance metrics are identified for experimental performance evaluation and analysis, which are latency, link load, cache hit ratio, and path stretch. Specifically, a caching scheme named SemiEdge is firstly proposed to take over conventional edge caching by introducing a hierarchical caching system to network fog. According to the simulation experimental evaluation results under realistic backbone network topology, further two proposed replica placement strategies of SemiEdge, named as SemiEdge Broadcast (SE-B) and SemiEdge Unicast (SE-U), perform better than the classic edge caching scheme, in all the four performance metrics. Secondly, an advanced full-time, cluster-based caching scheme is proposed based on SemiEdge. Through an adjustable fog caching system, this proposed scheme enables end-devices to participate in the caching system, as not only content receivers, but also content publishers and caching nodes. The experimental results indicate this scheme can defeat the majority of conventional benchmarks under the simulated internet-of-things (IoT) scenarios. Besides the replica placement solutions for the collaboration between multiple caching nodes, this thesis also covers the replica eviction enhancement for the individual caching node. Specifically, for the first time, operating system caching solution CLOCK is re-adapted to the in-network caching environment, which provides more chances for the replica before being discarded from the caching node. Also, even through the conventional literature has attempted to apply deep reinforcement learning (DRL), a state-of-the-art AI approach, to the replica eviction domain, there is still a lack of feasible framework which can integrate different DRL algorithms with caching design flexibly. Thus, a generic intelligent caching framework is proposed, which integrates an intelligence component with caching simulator Icarus. In this way, various DRL algorithms can be elastically implemented into the smart agents of caching nodes, so as to provide a feasible evaluation framework for DRL-based caching methodologies. To weaken the effect of irrelevant factors, the experiments for eviction purposes are simulated under a line-type topology with a single caching node. For a comprehensive analysis, two types of content requesting workload are generated in the simulation experiments, according to stationary methodology and realistic data, respectively.

In efforts to meet the targets of carbon emissions reduction in power systems, policy makers formulate measures for facilitating the integration of renewable energy sources and demand side carbon mitigation. Smart grid provides an opportunity for bidirectional communication among policy makers, generators and consumers. With the help of smart meters, increasing number of consumers is able to produce, store, and consume energy, giving them the new role of prosumers. This thesis aims to address how smart grid enables prosumers to be appropriately integrated into energy markets for decarbonising power systems. This thesis firstly proposes a Stackelberg game-theoretic model for dynamic negotiation of policy measures and determining optimal power profiles of generators and consumers in day-ahead market. Simulation results show that the proposed model is capable of saving electricity bills, reducing carbon emissions, and increasing the penetration of renewable energy sources. Secondly, a data-driven prosumer-centric energy scheduling tool is developed by using learning approaches to reduce computational complexity from model-based optimisation. This scheduling tool exploits convolutional neural networks to extract prosumption patterns, and uses scenarios to analyse possible variations of uncertainties caused by the intermittency of renewable energy sources and flexible demand. Case studies confirm that the proposed scheduling tool can accurately predict optimal scheduling decisions under various system scales and uncertain scenarios. Thirdly, a blockchain-based peer-to-peer trading framework is designed to trade energy and carbon allowance. The bidding/selling prices of individual prosumers can directly incentivise the reshaping of prosumption behaviours. Case studies demonstrate the execution of smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain and testify that the proposed trading framework outperforms the centralised trading and aggregator-based trading in terms of regional energy balance and reducing carbon emissions caused by long-distance transmissions.

Light is pervasive: it transmits information at celeritas lucis, interfaces with everyday electronics and offers a source of renewable energy. The optics and photonics which manage light should satisfy its growing prevalence. One organic polymer and Titanium hybrid is synthesised simply in two steps and is processable as a liquid at room temperature at low capital intensity. It exhibits a tunable refractive index with a large range of 1.5 to 2.0. Light management applications are explored, focusing on two forms of light propagation: free radiation and guided waves. All devices are fabricated from solution-processable materials. The behaviour of light is manipulated by periodic modulations of refractive index. Two directions of periodicity are investigated: parallel and perpendicular to light propagation. Thin-film multilayers form dielectric mirrors with parallel periodicity. The radiation of selected wavelengths are suppressed whilst others are enhanced. These are used to modify emission properties of a photoluminescent dye; a method towards improving efficiencies in optoelectronic devices without chemical alterations. Perpendicular periodicity is provided by thin-film diffraction gratings, enabling coupling between guided and freely radiating light; a key function of solar concentrators and wearable augmented-reality displays. An experimental system is developed to measure coupled light transmissions. To facilitate the design and assessment of these devices, Transfer Matrix Method (TMM) and Finite-Element Method (FEM) models are used. Refractive indices of thin-films are extracted by fitting transmittance and reflectance spectra to TMM. For dielectric mirrors, a phase reconstruction algorithm is extended to account for incoherent substrates. In doing so, information on band-gap positioning is extracted. Meanwhile, diffraction spectra are modelled using the Fraunhofer expression and modified by TMM to include thin-film interferences. This is utilised to fit grating dimensions, which support FEM calculations to identify guided transmissions. A variety of devices are fabricated from solution and characterised using the models developed.

Within translation studies, the topic of food and translation is still underresearched and the understanding of subtitling cookery programmes is also very limited. This research hopes to bridge the current research gap, by providing an overview of the classification of food-related texts and their embedded linguistic characteristics, thus expanding the knowledge in regard to this matter. The research also sets out to understand the nature of two specific linguistic items, sensory language and culture-specific references, as well as the translation strategies used in subtitling them. The methodological foundation of the thesis builds upon the framework of the Toury's(1995) notion of translation norms, realised by Pedersen's analytical model. In addition, the framework of product experience is also consulted to help contextualise sensory language and its classification. The analysis is carried out on a corpus of 480 minutes which includes two cookery programmes and represents two formats: the modern format, Jamie's 15-Minute Meals (Channel 4, 2012) and the cooking competition format, The Taste (Channel 4, 2014). All sensory language and culture-specific references present in the corpus have been identified and their translation from English into Traditional Chinese analysed from both quantitative and qualitative viewpoints in an attempt to reveal the prevalent translational trends.

This thesis examines the motivation to engage with entrepreneurship amongst undergraduate music students. Even though entrepreneurship education has been established as beneficial for helping music students prepare for their futures, there are still many challenges involved in encouraging them to engage with it. It is relatively unknown how music students become motivated or demotivated by entrepreneurship. Therefore, this project has set out to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon in the hopes of informing better practice that can encourage and enhance the entrepreneurial development of music students. The project consists of a main qualitative study supplemented by a quantitative study. The qualitative study was conducted with a group of 16 undergraduate music students at a UK university. Each participant was interviewed three times across the span of one calendar year using the semi-structured design. The quantitative study used the questionnaire method which was deployed once to capture a cross-sectional view. A total of 125 respondents took the questionnaire. Both studies attempted to map out the factors that may influence the development of entrepreneurial motivation from different perspectives. The results were triangulated for validity. The findings suggest that music students are motivated to engage with entrepreneurship if they: (1) perceive it to be compatible with their identity; (2) feel confident or assured that they can manage the task; and (3) are certain that it will be a rewarding or fulfilling experience. It is proposed that all three perceptions must be present for the students to become motivated. New suggestions for improving practice recommends that rather than emphasising entrepreneurship as a tool that is only useful for career preparation, it can have more appeal and value if presented as an opportunity for students to find their purpose and to learn to cope better with failure.

China has become the second largest pharmaceutical market since 2014 and its industry is highlighted as the most attractive in the emerging countries. However, its specialities are rooted in historic reasons and the current dynamic situation in addition to the uniqueness of the pharmaceutical industry, make it complicated and unclear to market participants. On the other side, a lack of serious and systematic academic research about the competitiveness of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, and the existent studies still wander at an entry level or dispersive areas further make those participants hardly stand at a higher position to draw out their strategy for a long-run. This research starts from the definitive discussion of competitive advantages in the pharmaceutical industry, and a review of various capabilities or competencies (classified as drivers to competitive advantage) at different stages of the drug lifecycle process especially related to the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Based on these, we designed the competitiveness conceptual framework by combining traditional competitive mechanism and 'environment-strategy-performance' model. A further study builds upon the mixed method approach with elite interviews and a structured survey. Qualitative analysis on the elite interview data provides a systematic description on the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, and also links the dispersive research results from previous studies about the competitiveness of this industry. Together with a chronological review on the evolution of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry since 1949, Pearson's chi-square analysis based on survey data draws out a broad picture about this industry, not only from a historic point of view and a static anatomy of current status: principles of its regulatory system, regulatory influence on innovation, safety and risk management, cost and availability; but also from the strategic group's perspective to explore the competitive landscape by their heterogeneities and homogeneities analysis on behaviour patterns, including major investment in the past five years, causes of today's success (failure), perception on future's challenges, as well as future strategy selection. Data from the survey also demonstrates how the mechanism operates and influences Chinese pharmaceutical firm's strategy selection for future development. Using principal component analysis (PCA) and multinomial logistic regression (MLR), this research builds a strategy selection model to identify these significant factors for each fundamental strategy that the Chinese pharmaceutical firms will select for their future, and to illustrate dynamic conduction among environmental factors, drivers to competitive advantage and strategy selection. This research commits to build a bridge on the gap between part and the whole of current academic research about the competitiveness of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, and the gap between the superficialness and depth of it also.

Affect plays a pivotal role in influencing the student's motivation and learning achievements. The ability of expert human tutors to achieve enhanced learning outcomes is widely attributed to their ability to sense the affect of their tutees and to continually adapt their tutoring strategies in response to the dynamically changing affect throughout the tutoring session. In this thesis, I explore the feasibility of building an Affective Tutoring System (ATS) which senses the student's affect on a moment-to-moment basis with the use of unobtrusive sensors in the context of computer programming tutoring. The novel use of keystrokes and mouse clicks for affect sensing is proposed here as they are ubiquitous and unobtrusive. I first establish the viability of using keystrokes and contextual logs for affect sensing first on a per exercise session level and then on a more granular basis of 30 seconds. Subsequently, I move on to investigate the use of multiple sensing channels e.g. facial, keystrokes, mouse clicks, contextual logs and head postures to enhance the availability and accuracy of sensing. The results indicated that it is viable to use keystrokes for affect sensing. In addition, the combination of multiple sensor modes enhances the accuracy of affect sensing. From the results, the sensor modes that are most significant for affect sensing are the head postures and facial modes. Nevertheless, keystrokes make up for the periods of unavailability of the former. With the affect sensing (both sensing of frustration and disengagement) in place, I moved on to architect and design the ATS and conducted an experimental study and a series of focus group discussions to evaluate the ATS. The results showed that the ATS is rated positively by the participants for usability and acceptance. The ATS is also effective in enhancing the learning of the students.

Terahertz-over-Fibre (ToF) is a promising photonic technology for the next generation high-data-rate wireless communication. The key to a successful ToF system is an integrated, compact and powerful terahertz (THz) source. Quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) have this potential at a range of THz frequency bands. However, a major challenge for a high-capacity wireless scheme at this high frequency is to achieve a multitude of optical channels and also requiring spectral agility. This thesis investigates the ToF technology by exploiting a computer-generated hologram, here working as an aperiodic photonic lattice, integrated within a QCL, providing electronically switchable lasing modes at multiple, pre-defined THz frequencies. For the first time, a transfer matrix method (TMM) has been employed to study nonlinear optics, focusing on sum- and difference-frequency generation, within such aperiodic lattice (AL) microcavities. As a foundation, before performing the nonlinear calculations, the microcavity linear optical response is studied. The results reveal that these holographically designed microcavities possess a multi-band spectra, containing both defect and band-edge photonic states. Furthermore, under the influence of the gain, it has been observed that the lasing solutions of the defect modes are insensitive to variations of the grating coupling strength; this outcome is particularly useful, as exemplified elsewhere, in relation to the fabrication imperfections during the ion milling of photonic lattices within THz QCLs. Remarkable spectral control over a wide bandwidth is also maintained under the influence of cavity feedback when an AL is integrated within a Fabry-PÂ ́erot (FP) QCL. The introduction of the AL to FP cavities gives rise to: (i) electronic switching and (ii) mode-dependant electronic fine-tuning, as verified by numerical and previous experimental demonstrations. Specifically, TMM has been used to model the cavity pulling effect at multiple lasing modes by employing the Kramers-Kronig principle. Proceeding from THz to telecom wavelengths, a multimode of THz emission has been up-converted to the telecom carrier as experimentally demonstrated in FP QCLs. TMM study of this up-conversion process revealed the interference fringes of the background FP cavity, which significantly enhances the signal power. Analysis of the cavity dispersion shows that a single frequency near-infrared (NIR) laser can up-convert THz modes spanning a bandwidth of 220 GHz, only limited by the group-index mismatch between the NIR and THz waves. Finally, a numerical model is developed for the ToF system based upon the computer-generated hologram studied here. The results show an enhancement of the photonic density of mode (DOM) at designed THz frequencies, as expected; but crucially, it also caused an analogous enhancement of signal power in the NIR with a straightforward one-to-one correspondence between the signal spectra and the hologram response function. The photonic lattice dispersion study revealed that each THz mode has its own effective modal index, allowing us to engineer them to phase-match to different optical pump frequencies. As a result, an electronically switchable sum- and difference-frequency generation process, at optical wavelengths, has been demonstrated in an aperiodic lattice laser. The nonlinear TMM study of the THz-NIR up- conversion also reveals that the phase-matching process could be electronically tuned over the entire telecom band, along with the inherent multi-band hologram response at the THz band, within a single-selection laser. Compared to previously published work, where multiple double-metal QCL waveguides were needed, the integrated hologram technique could be a key breakthrough for tunable multi-channel THz wireless communications.

This thesis explores the synthesis and self-assembly of nucleobase-containing acrylamide amphiphiles and investigates their self-assembly behaviors and potential applications in aqueous solutions. In Chapter 1, the synthesis and self-assembly of block copolymers are briefly introduced. Then the effect of H-bonding interactions on self-assembly behaviours is highlighted. Finally, an overview of the synthesis, self-assembly and applications of synthetic nucleobase-containing polymers is presented. Chapter 2 investigates the effect of complementary nucleobase interactions within micellar cores on the morphologies of self-assemblies in aqueous solutions. Self-assemblies with different core sizes of thymine are fabricated and their morphological transitions with introducing complementary copolymers are studied as well. Chapter 3 systematically explores the pathway-dependent and complementary chain-selective morphological transitions of micelles with a thymine core. In addition, the complementary H-bonding within micellar cores is utilized to prepare a series of worms with different lengths and widths in aqueous media. Chapter 4 builds on the knowledge obtained in the previous Chapters. A series of mixed corona micelles are fabricated through a simple supramolecular ‘grafting-to’ approach. By introducing protein ligands and environment-sensitive fluorophores at the end of corona, the reveal and concealment of functional groups on the micelle surface through heating and cooling are investigated. Chapter 5 reveals the synergetic H-bonding and thymine photodimerization give a novel polymer fluorescent dots. A number of factors are investigated on the observed fluorescent properties, including the effect of blocking H-bonding interactions and changing the degree of core-crosslinking. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes the conclusions of Chapters 2-5 and provides some insights and outlines for the future work.

The thesis examines the way writers use fiction as a rhetorical vehicle to thematise and to theorise the project of autobiography — a transformation of life into narrative that involves a negotiation between aesthetics and ethics. It analyses four fictional autobiographies, published since 1988, by Paul Auster, Julian Barnes, Lydia Davis, and Philip Roth. Each text presents an autodiegetic narrator narrating crucial moments in her/his life; they are ordered progressively according to the way each engages with the issue of narrative artifice on the narratorial and/or authorial level. I explore what makes the character narrator’s life-story work, that is, the way s/he negotiates the possible tension between form and ethics, the resolution of which is what I call narrative integrity. The double meaning of the word “integrity”, as a formal and an ethical quality, encapsulates the dual demands of formal coherence and ethical commitment inherent in the challenges of autobiography. This thesis discusses four forms of narrative integrity — contingency, consistency, coherence, and counterpoint — and suggests ways in which they are interpreted differently on the representational and the rhetorical level of the text. Adopting a rhetorical approach to fiction, I address the way the particular representation of autobiography in each text is used rhetorically, not autobiographically, by the author to theorise certain aspects of self-representation in general. I argue that integrity as a critical concept helps elucidate the complications involved in life writing by foregrounding the issue of form, which is necessary, if also potentially problematic, for the articulation of personal truths. This project situates itself within the broad field of ethical criticism in literary studies and explores the relationships between fiction, narrative ethics, and life writing.

The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the fundamental combustion process of ammonia-based fuels and the application on swirl-stabilised flames in the context of engineering type gas turbine combustion. The present study begins with a fundamental validation and mechanism reduction for chemical kinetics of ammonia/methane combustion. Different-sized reduced mechanisms of the well-known Konnov’s mechanism were compared at high-pressure conditions relevant to gas turbine devices. The reduced models can benefit the future simulation work with considerably less computational cost. Then characteristics of ignition delay time, laminar flame speed and emissions were obtained over a wide range of equivalence ratios and ammonia fractions. Prediction results showed a good potential of ammonia/methane to be used in gas turbine engines with relatively low emission. In the second part of this dissertation, in order to identify reaction mechanisms that can accurately represent ammonia/hydrogen kinetics at industrial conditions, various mechanisms were tested in terms of flame speed, combustion products and ignition delay against experimental data. It was preliminarily found that the Mathieu mechanism and Tian mechanism are the best suited for ammonia/hydrogen combustion chemistry under practical industrial conditions. Based on the Mathieu mechanism, an improved chemical mechanism was developed. Verification of the established model was quite satisfying, focusing particularly on elevated conditions which are encountered during gas turbine operation. Finally, a first assessment of the suitability of a chosen 70%NH3-30%H2 (%vol) blend was performed for utilisation within a gas turbine environment. It was found that stable flames can be produced with low NOx emissions at high equivalence ratios. Also, results showed that high inlet temperature conditions representative of real gas turbine conditions can significantly improve the combustion efficiency and reduce NOx emissions. A numerical gas turbine cycle calculation was performed indicating more research are required to enable higher efficiencies using ammonia/hydrogen.

To best comprehend cellular behaviour and how it determines cell migration in metastatic cancer, the research described here has focused on cell mechanics. The signalling pathway involving Rho-associated kinase (ROCK) has emerged as being the main regulator for the cellular cytoskeleton and actomyosin contractility that play key roles in metastatic cancer formation. In this thesis, an examination is made of how the cellular properties intertwine as ROCK is overexpressed. In research towards being able to measure and describe the viscoelastic properties of a cell that are associated with cell mechanics, over a wide range of timescales, a novel AFM force indentation data analysis method was applied. In particular, as part of this study, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells were overexpressed with ROCK, and the influence of ROCK activity on cell’s elastic and viscoelastic properties were quantified. It was found that when ROCK activity was overexpressed in cells, their elasticity decreased while their viscosity remained unchanged. These properties had a direct correlation with the activity of ADF/cofilin - the proteins downstream of ROCK. This meant that with overexpression, more stable actin bundles were present along with their inward stresses generated by the actomyosin contraction. This is consistent with an increased level of compressive forces within cells. Collective compressive forces between cell-cell are associated with the packing of cells that decreases cellular response. To further understand the role of ROCK activity in cancer invasion, a microfluidic device was created to mimic cell migration through tissue. The device consists of precisely defined microchannels with dimensions chosen to hinder and confine the cells in a manner similar to that found in a physiological environment. It was found that overexpressed ROCK1 cells in the confinement had notable decrease in cell size and motility. Along with this decrease in mechanical properties, observations also gave rise to questions about the connection between these properties that remain to be answered.

China’s transition from planned economy to market economy (economic liberalization) has catalyzed the private sector’s emergence and growth, as well as given birth to new forms of business associations within the private sector, such as Non-local Chambers of Commerce (NCCs, hereafter). NCCs emerged from mid-1990s, and have proliferated rapidly across China’s localities and industries. Unlike traditional official business associations, NCCs have significantly participated in local governance and demonstrated new types of state-society relations. However, they have not yet reached the attention of scholarly researchers, and have been understudied within and outside of China. At the same time, political scientists working on policy processes have begun to include China as a case to enrich their theory, but find it hard to adapt established models to China’s policymaking system. Research on the Chinese policy process have gone from elite politics in the 1950-1960s, to “fragmented authoritarianism” in the 1970-1980s, then to “fragmented authoritarianism 2.0” after 2000. During the evolution of these theories, it has been noticed that more and more non-bureaucratic actors have been involved into the policymaking process if not being the prominent actors. There have been studies on “policy entrepreneur”, environmental NGOs, international NGOs, Chinese think-tanks and different forms of business lobbying. However, within the spectrum of business lobbying, there is a gap in understanding business associations’ influence in policy processes, especially the new type of so claimed “grass-roots” business associations. This thesis sheds lights on this new type of private sector business association - NCCs and their influence in the local urban policy process. NCCs have been widely involved in local governance and political engagement. However, their political participation shows great variation due to differences in regions, organizational forms, industries and policy spheres. So the question of what lead to the variation of NCCs’ policy influence has become the highlights of this research project. By using the empirical materials from participant observation and interviews, this thesis aims to answer two main questions: How did NCCs influence the local policy process and what explains the difference in their policy influence? In this thesis, I develop a typology for NCCs by using the dimensions of “origins” and “networks”. Thus all the NCCs have been categorized into four types: “Dependent NCCs”, “Independent NCCs”, “Coupling NCCs” and “Decoupling NCCs”. Through in-depth case analysis, I argue that NCCs’ networks and their ability to mobilize resources within their networks determine their policy impact. In terms of NCCs’ network orientation, the state networks of NCCs directly affect their access to policy lobbying, while the business networks directly affect the resources for their lobbying, thus determine NCCs’ lobbying capacity in the local policy process. In terms of NCCs’ network strategy, network span influences policy making while network intensity influences policy implementations. To be specific, NCCs with network span strategy could influence more general policy agendas and policy spheres, while NCCs with network intensity strategy could exert more influence in specific policies especially in the policy implementation stage.

Additive manufactured porous titanium scaffolds have been extensively investigated for orthopaedic applications. The quantification of tissue response to the biomaterial implants is primarily achieved by analysing a two-dimensional (2D) stained histological section. More recently, three-dimensional X-ray micro-computed tomography (μCT) has become increasingly applied. Although histology is the gold standard, μCT allows non- destructive quantification of 3D tissue structures with minimal sample preparation and high contrast. A methodology to correlate information from both histology and μCT of a single sample might provide greater insights than either examining the results separately. However, this task is challenging because histology and μCT provide different types of information (stained tissue morphology vs. greyscale dependent on the X-ray absorption of material) and dimensionality (2D vs 3D). A semi-automated methodology was developed to directly quantify tissue formation and efficacy within an additive manufactured titanium implant using histology and μCT. This methodology was then extended to correlatively integrate nano-scale elemental information from nano- secondary ion mass spectroscopy (NanoSIMS). The correlative information was applied to investigate the impact of silver release on bone formation within a nano-silver coated additive manufactured implant. The correlative imaging methodology allowed for the quantification of the significant volumetric shrinkage (~15%) that occurs on histology slice preparation. It also demonstrated the importance of the location of the histological sectioning of the tissue and implant, revealing that up to 30% differences in bone ingrowth can be found along the entire length of the porous implant due to preferential bone ingrowth from the periphery to the centre. The quality and quantity of newly formed bone were found to be comparable between the uncoated and nano-silver coated Ti-implants, suggesting that the layer of silver nanoparticles on the Ti-implant does not negatively impact bone formation. Further, the newly formed bone at 2 weeks had a trabecula morphology with bone at the interface of Ti-implant as well as at a distant. This indicates that both contact (bone apposition on implant) and distance (bone ingrowth from host bone) osteogenesis were present in both types of implants. Finally, nanoscale elemental mapping showed silver was present primarily in the osseous tissue and was co-localised to sulphur suggesting that silver sulphide may have formed.