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Taiwan has many high-level music colleges that prepare students for performance and teaching careers. These music colleges are competitive environments in which students are potentially learning to cope with musical performance anxiety (MPA). MPA has been widely researched in recent years. Studies have found that college musicians use their own unique coping strategies or rely on past experiences of coping with MPA to manage it. Nevertheless, literature that focuses on MPA self-management is still limited. The aim of this thesis is to fill this gap by investigating the ways in which MPA is self-managed by Taiwanese college musicians (TCMs). The research questions are: 1) How do TCMs define and perceive MPA? 2) How do TCMs self-manage MPA? 3) What strategies for managing MPA do the TCMs believe they will use with their students when they carry out teaching as part of their future portfolio careers? Fifty-three undergraduates were recruited from a music college in Taiwan. Each participant was interviewed before all of their performances taking place in one semester: formal concert, exam, and graduate recital. The data was analysed through a qualitative approach by using thematic analysis in order to examine the strategies used and the process of managing MPA. The findings are presented as four themes: 1) Strategies used in preparation for different types of performance, during different time periods of preparation and performance. 2) Strategies in context: people and places. 3) Understanding the strategies: metacognition in musical learning and managing MPA. 4) MPA self-management and the teaching-learning cycle. Results revealed that it is possible for TCMs to self-manage their MPA through developing metacognitive processes with support networks in the conservatoire environment and with various external resources. However, information on MPA-coping strategies are like pieces of a puzzle that are scattered rather than being coherently fitted together. Therefore, recommendations for further research and applications to practice are made.

Internal or Reflective attention can refer to our thoughts/reflections in order to make sense of our external world through our senses and perception. Reflective attention also includes the act of refreshing which is the act of thinking back and shifting internal attention towards previously activated mental representations. Previous research (M.R. Johnson et al., 2013) has shown that refreshing mirrors a striking similarity to that of inhibition of return (IOR) effect which inhibits visual attention to return to a previously cued location (Posner & Cohen, 1984; Posner, Rafal, Choate, & Vaughan, 1985). This IOR-like mechanism helps facilitate our thoughts (similarly to perception) by encouraging internal attention to move towards new information and avoid constant fixation on a single thought (M.R. Johnson et al., 2013) which was coined as reflective IOR (rIOR). The objective of the thesis investigates variables such as time duration and language during the production of rIOR mechanism. A total of seven experiments were conducted. The first set of experiments (Experiments 1 to 3) aimed to examine the time course of refreshing while the second set and (Experiments 4 to 7) examined the effect of language on reflective attention. In each experiment, participants were shown two stimuli, either in the form of pictures or English/Malay words. They were instructed to refresh by keeping one item (i.e., mental representation) active while ignoring the other. Results showed an attentional shift or bias towards the unrefreshed mental representation, more so in the experiments which used word stimuli rather than picture stimuli. The novelty of the current thesis is that early language processing (i.e., English and Malay words) in bilingual speakers was taken into account while investigating the reflective attention. This pattern was consistent whether the words were presented in English or Malay which are consistent with M. R. Johnson and colleagues’ finding that IOR mechanism shifts internal attention to new information However, if participants were presented with English stimuli, refreshed the English word but were then probed in the equivalent Malay word, a stronger priming effect emerged instead. The behavioural pattern implicated that asymmetrical cost during language switching could be reduced as a result of refreshing. The data also showed that while refreshing may cause a temporary inaccessibility to recently activated items, refreshed words were more memorable in a later recognition task. This suggested the role of refreshing plays an important role encoding and storing mental representations in later long term retrieval. Mental representations that were ignored or were not give n attention tended to fade away more quickly. The novelty of the thesis is that language processing was explored as a component to this mechanism by manipulating languages of the refreshed words presented. Participants were more likely to make false alarms when they were presented with an English equivalent word in the recognition task, when the original word had in fact been presented (i.e., previously refreshed) in Malay. Language models such as the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) ( Kroll and Stewart, 1990, 1994) were applied in examining refreshing in stronger or weaker languages that gave rise to poor memory performance. According to the RHM’s logic, words activated in non-dominant language would subsequently activate words in the dominant language in order to access the meaning of the word. In this language processing route, it is possible that refreshing a word in the weaker language would subsequently activate the similar word in the stronger language which is reflected as a false memory incident.

Yersinia pestis is a human pathogen and the causative agent of bubonic plague, responsible for causing three massive pandemics, resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths in the 14th century alone. Yersinia’s virulence stems from its ability to overcome host immune defences by the injection of six Yersinia outer proteins (Yops) into the host cells via its Type III secretion system. One of these Yops, YopO specifically disables the actin polymerization machinery, leading to the crippling of phagocytosis. YopO consists of a GDI domain which sequesters Rac and Rho, and a kinase domain, the activity of which is dependent on host actin. Little is known about the targets of the kinase domain and the mechanism of function of YopO remains incomplete. In this work, YopO was crystallized in complex with actin, revealing that YopO binds to actin on subdomain 4, away from the 'hotspot’ between subdomains 1 and 3 which is involved in binding most actin-binding proteins. The structure reveals how recruitment of YopO-bound actin monomers stalls actin polymerization by steric hindrance. The structure also demonstrates how YopO uses actin for self-activation and suggests that actin is being used by YopO as bait for recruitment into actin machineries. Using SILAC mass spectrometry, actin cytoskeletal machineries within macrophages that recruit YopO are identified and these include, amongst others: VASP family proteins, gelsolin family proteins, formins and WASP. Of these, VASP, EVL, diaphanous1, WASP and gelsolin have been identified to be phosphorylated by YopO and were validated by in vitro phosphorylation. This work demonstrates that YopO uses actin as a scaffold for selection of kinase substrates, enabling targeted phosphorylation of the actin machinery and provides insight into the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton by phosphorylation under non-pathogenic conditions.

Zonation, defined as biological distribution pattern along the vertical dimension, is the most obvious biological phenomenon in the intertidal zone throughout the shore globally. The formation of zonation involves many abiotic and biotic factors and underlying processes. Some early zonation schemes assumed that zonation patterns are merely controlled by tidal level, specifically" critical tidal levels". Later, based on observations of shores in different regions of the world, ecologists increasingly believed that "biological zones" would be more appropriate for describing zonation in the intertidal zone and this approach is accepted by most ecologists currently. But because of a lack of quantitative descriptions and criteria, "biological zones" cannot be assessed or described accurately for a practical guideline to be used in fieldwork around the world. Under the framework of hierarchical theory, different scales of sampling were conducted for revealing the zonation patterns by multivariate analysis techniques, including MDS, DCA and cluster analysis, based on a data set derived from a gentle sloping gravel flat in Daya bay, in South China. The results show that perception and interpretation of zonation is scale- dependent. A sampling grain (size of sample unit) along the vertical level which is greater than 10cm appears adequate to identify zonation on this shore. Based on these results, zones were grouped under different scale schemes with the best groupings being those at the scale which has the largest discrepancy between zones and the smallest discrepancy within zones. The spatial patterns of abiotic and biotic variables were revealed using classic statistical methods (standardized Moristia Index) and spatial analysis techniques (Mantel correlation). Most dominant species were found to be significantly patchy, as were the environmental factors (sediment, shore height, etc.) measured. However, environmental factors displayed significant correlations with community structure, while most of the dominant species were significant related to community structure, except for vertical height which showed a significant correlation with community structure for most sample lags and for all sampling periods. In order to evaluate the relative contribution of different factors and underlying processes to zonation, the Mantel coefficients between community structure and vertical height, biological factors and spatial autocorrelation were subjected to path analysis and partial path analysis models using a variance partitioning approach. Three basic components were found to be significantly correlated with community structure, represented by spatial, vertical height and biological matrices. Variation in community structure determined by vertical height (Z) is equivalent to "critical tidal level", variation in community structure determined by interactions between biological factors and vertical height (ZB) is equivalent to "biological zone". The value of Z and the value of ZB, zonation scheme of "biological zone" is stronger than that of "critical tidal level". The large value of SZ, variation of community structure determined by the interaction between spatial autocorrelation and vertical height, indicated that zonation cannot solely interpreted in terms of "biological zones" and that the underlying mechanisms of zonation need to be explored further.

A literature review suggested that seat transmissibility could be used to evaluate seat dynamic performance. Using a mathematical model to predict seat transmissibility may be useful, but no standard seat-person model has been developed. This study developed a standard seat-person model based on measured seat impedance and the apparent mass of the human body so as to predict the transmissibility of conventional car seats. There are three parts to this thesis: the development of a human body model, a seat model and a seatperson model. Many researchers have considered using a linear mathematical model to represent the seated body apparent mass, but researchers have not considered whether this model can represent the body apparent mass in a wide range of vibration environments. It has been reported that the body apparent mass is affected by sitting posture, footrests, vibration magnitude, vibration spectra and backrests, but some factors have not been investigated. Four experiments were conducted to investigate the influences of seat cushion inclination, hard and soft seats, seat backrests and vibration spectra on measured apparent mass. In each experiment, ten subjects were exposed to 60 seconds of random vibration with a frequency range from 0.5 to 25 Hz. The conclusions were: (i) the effects of seat inclination, hard and soft seat and vibration spectra on body apparent mass are not great and so a simple seated body mathematical model is useful, (ii) the seat backrest has a significant influence on apparent mass so the model parameters must be varied for different backrest conditions, (ill) a change of vibration magnitude revealed a non-linear response of the body, so model modifications are needed for different vibration magnitudes. Four linear models were developed to predict body apparent mass and encouraging results were obtained from two models. Fairley and Griffin (1986) proposed an indenter method to measure seat impedance. An experiment was conducted to compare this method with other seat test methods. It was concluded that an indenter can provide useful results, but the method requires development. There are many factors that may affect test results, such as vibration magnitude, pre-load force, seat cushion inclination, contact area and vibration spectra. Experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of these factors on foam impedance. Five foams were used in each experiment over the frequency range of 0.5 to 30 Hz. The conclusions were: (i) the influence of seat inclination, vibration magnitude and vibration spectra were small, (ii) the effect of pre-load and contact area were significant and must be specified to obtain useful measurements of seat impedance. A seat-person model was developed based on the above studies. Three experiments were conducted to compare measured and predicted seat transmissibilities. Eight subjects participated in a laboratory study with a seat and a foam over the frequency range from 1 to 30 Hz; six subjects participated in a field study with three car seats over the frequency range from 1 to 50 Hz. It was found that the seat-person model provided good predictions of seat transmissibilities. However a new model, which includes interaction between the seat backrest and the person, should provide improved predictions of seat transmissibility.