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Microplastics (commonly defined as plastic particles smaller than 5mm in size) are widely recognised as a global concern. However, studies of the occurrence of microplastics in freshwater systems, particularly in Malaysia, are limited. This study aims to assess the sources and levels of microplastic contamination within the Langat River Basin, Malaysia. This study presents the first comprehensive empirical assessment of the contribution of different sources of microplastic as well as the first systemic data on spatio-temporal variability in microplastic concentrations in a Malaysian river. Such data is crucial for the identification of contamination hotspots and, in turn, the development of management strategies. This study is also the first to evaluate the degree of correspondence between microplastics in river water and bed sediments, which is critical for monitoring and assessment of potential risks posed by microplastics to acquatic organisms and human health. A total of 656 water and sediment samples were collected from 33 sites spread across the Langat River Basin. The samples were treated with Fenton reagent to remove organic material and filtered onto glass microfiber filter papers before enumeration under a stereoscopic microscope. Road runoff, residential and industrial areas, atmospheric deposition and wastewater treatment plants were significant sources of microplastics in the Langat River, with road runoff being the main contributor. The Langat River had a mean concentration of 4.39±5.11 particles/L, which varied spatially (associated with differences in land-use) and temporally (associated with flow changes). Microplastic was deposited on the bed of the Langat with a mean of 6027.39±16585.87 particles/m2, which did not correspond to the concentrations in the water either at site-scale or patch-scale, suggesting that sampling designed to assess risks posed by microplastic should assess both concentrations in the water and on the bed. Efforts to reduce microplastic contamination should be focused on upstream intervention, including law enforcement, endorsing proper management systems and creating public awareness. Such efforts are sorely needed in Malaysia, due to the rapid pace of development set against limited awareness and poor waste management.

This study focuses on two different types of learning that can be derived from astronomy: machine learning to examine galaxies and inform their evolution, and using astronomy as an inspiring vehicle to develop skills useful to underrepresented audiences. Upcoming large-area narrow-band photometric surveys will observe a large number of galaxies efficiently. However, it will be computationally challenging to analyse the stellar populations of galaxies from such big data to investigate their formation and evolutionary histories. We have applied a convolutional neural network (CNN) technique to retrieve the metallicity and age from narrow-band data efficiently. The CNN was trained using synthetic photometry from the integral field unit spectra and the age and metallicity obtained from spectral analysis. We show that our CNN model can recover age and metallicity from narrow-band data. We also find that the diversity of the dataset for training the CNN has a significant impact on the accuracy of its predictions. Hence, future applications of CNNs require high quality spectroscopic data from a diverse population of galaxies. This study also presents a way to use astronomy to engage with the novel audience of jobseekers to co-create a mutually beneficial method of engagement. We worked with people looking for work in the cultural sector. We ran an online survey to assess participants' interest in science and what career-relevant skills they desired. We found that many of the skills which our participants are interested in are aligned with skills needed for astronomy research. Though our participants felt disconnected from science they still maintained an interest in learning about astronomy. We also ran a co-creation session to collaboratively create a skills-focused astronomy pilot workshop. We find three themes arising from the co-creation session, which have implications for effective engagement with audiences who feel disconnected from science.

Since the late 1970s, the role of property markets has increasingly been emphasised within regeneration policies. The academic debates concerning the state-market relations in property and the performance of regeneration markets for attracting institutional investment are important and relevant topics. However, literatures of these two themes are mostly disengaged. Consequently, there is little attention given to the endeavours that intend to link these two aspects in the context of market sustainability. This research aims to explore whether urban policy fosters economic sustainability of the regeneration real estate market by strengthening the scope of its maturity, resilience and competitiveness with the influence of municipal planning instruments and political leadership through regeneration policies. The methodological design of this research employs a mixed method that encompasses a quantitative measurement by using the index analysis, a case study approach and semi-structured interviews which are analysed from a qualitative perspective. The empirical evidence denotes that regeneration policies debatably have an indirect but positive impact on the evolution of the office market in Manchester from 1967 to 2017. First, the research findings conclude that 'vision-led' regeneration policies effectively shape the development of the property market to achieve a higher level of market sustainability with a robust co-operation between the state and private actors. Second, to attract institutional investment into regeneration, a clear and viable vision of how to regenerate the deprived areas in a city from a local authority is deemed an essential factor. Third, the effectiveness of regeneration strategic frameworks utilised by Manchester City Council (MCC) proves a plausible approach to effectuate this aim by enhancing certainty and reducing risks with4 the backing of MCC to boost confidence and competitiveness for property development and investment.

Background: The disease course of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) varies widely between patients, and various therapeutic options are available. However, none are universally effective, all have a risk of side-effects and currently, all are prescribed on a "trial and error" basis, based on escalating cost and not precision medicine targeted to patient endotype. Previous work has shown that circulating drug concentration levels of tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi, a class of drug used to treat RA and other autoimmune conditions) are associated with response to treatment. This thesis hypothesised that biological factors, such as protein expression, contribute to variability in circulating drug levels and treatment response to biologic agents in patients with RA. Methods: A population pharmacokinetic (popPK) study was carried out in patients with RA starting either Amgevita or Benepali, which are biosimilar agents for the TNFi agents adalimumab and etanercept, respectively. Model parameter estimates from the popPK study were used to simulate altered dosing intervals of these drugs. Proteomics data was obtained on all patients in the popPK study, as well as an additional cohort of patients with RA starting etanercept, using Sequential Window Acquisition of All Theoretical Mass Spectra (SWATH-MS). Protein expression was regressed against RA clinical outcome measures to determine any associations between protein expression and treatment response. Protein expression was also analysed alongside paired genotype data to determine whether any protein quantitative trait loci (pQTLs) existed. Significant pQTLs were then used to construct a polygenic risk score (PRS) for treatment non-response. Results: 16 patients were recruited to the popPK study; PK parameters were successfully estimated and used to simulate the effect of altered dosing intervals. SWATH-MS was used to generate proteomics data in serum samples from 180 selected patients commencing etanercept recruited to the Biologics in RA Genetics and Genomics Study Syndicate, a prospective multi-centre UK-based observational cohort. Proteomics analysis identified 52 proteins associated with RA clinical outcome measures. A pQTL analysis was carried out using 147 patients from the etanercept sub-cohort. 104 pQTLs were identified, 14 of which overlapped with significant proteins from the regression analysis. A PRS was generated using significant pQTLs, but was not found to be statistically significantly predictive of poor treatment response. Conclusions: The popPK study has provided proof-of-concept for future personalised dosing trials in patients with RA starting TNFi. This thesis has identified several proteins associated with RA clinical outcome measures that also have a genetic basis. Findings require external validation with replication studies in an independent cohort, but once confirmed, this could pave the way for future biomarker and/or drug target development.

Brain insults that occur early in life often lead to cognitive impairments, and sustained attention is highly vulnerable to the initial event as well as to the altered structural and functional brain development that follows. Sustained attention impairments are associated with neural changes in specific brain networks - default mode network (DMN) and central executive network (CEN) - that are crucial for proper attention functioning in healthy populations. Prior studies have, however, typically focused on adult cohorts, which is not applicable to understanding structural and functional changes in the developing brain. There are relatively few studies that have examined these networks in children with an early life injury with advanced quantitative neuroimaging techniques (structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional MRI). Thus, the current thesis used these methods to investigate DMN and CEN changes following an early life brain insult in children with traumatic brain injury (TBI), epilepsy, or heterogeneous brain insults with the aim to identify shared neural changes in heterogeneous patient cohorts that underpin common attention impairments. The current thesis has reported reduced functional connectivity in the DMN regions (posterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex) in children with TBI, and in the left parietal lobe in children with focal epilepsy as compared to controls at 2-years post-injury. Children with epilepsy however showed no differences in the structural covariance network when compared to controls. Children with heterogeneous brain insults also showed no significant functional and structural connectivity changes when imaging data were acquired in the acute post-insult period. This thesis is however limited by the lack of behavioural measures, and future studies should integrate neuropsychology and neuroimaging to better understand the relationships between the brain connectivity changes and attention deficits, therefore allowing the identification of children who would benefit most from early interventions that could improve their long-term neurocognitive outcomes.

Background: Clinical mentoring in pre-registration nursing students is an important but under researched aspect, particularly in Hong Kong. A review of relevant literature revealed that clinical mentoring is mainly portrayed from a single perspective of either clinicians, educators or students. Research has been carried out mainly in western settings. Clinical mentoring is co-constructed by the interactions between the people, environment and organisations. It was useful to qualitatively explore the social process of mentoring in hospital placements. Aim: to explore the social process of mentoring within the context of pre-registration nursing clinical placements in hospital settings in Hong Kong Method: This study adopted the methodology of constructivist grounded theory. Participants, including organisers of clinical placements, clinical instructors, clinical mentors and students were recruited by purposive sampling initially; theoretical sampling was adopted later. 19 individual face-to-face intensive interviews were conducted and analysed using constant comparison. Relevant documents sampled from different organisations were also included in the data analysis. Strategies recommended for use in constructivist grounded theory were adopted to ensure the rigour of the study. The study received ethical approval from the relevant authorities and followed the required ethical guidelines to protect participants and assure research integrity. Findings: The social process of clinical mentoring was co-constructed by multiple core interactions process within the organisational and cultural context. Clinical instructors/ mentors and students underwent an expectation-impression-social judgment-feedback cycle within the core interactive mentoring process. Expectations of students were influenced by various official guidelines, clinical instructors'/ mentors' past experiences and the organisational context. Clinical instructors/ mentors assess their students by different assessment strategies and formed their impression of students. They made social judgment and provided feedback accordingly. Feedback was designed to shape students' actions in subsequent interactions. Three types of feedback were identified, and this could bring impacts to students' competence and confidence. Discussion: Clinical mentoring was predominantly influenced by the clinical rather than educational organisations involved. Mandatory clinical assessments were formalised and conducted ceremonially in the form of rituals which emphasised symbolic meaning of action instead of evidence-based practice. Clinical instructors/ mentors used destructive feedback to manage poor student performance, errors and mistakes often with negative consequences. A theoretical framework of clinical mentoring process was constructed based on the data. This could be best understood by using a dramaturgical approach. The current practice of clinical mentoring thus failed to adequately foster critical thinking, produced inadequate clinical mentoring, failed in adequately performing its role as a gatekeeper, and produced negative impacts on students. Conclusion: A theoretical framework explaining the social process of clinical mentoring illustrated how different people interacted in the environment of a hospital setting within clinical mentoring. This study confirmed findings from previous literature and provide new insights about the importance of the clinical learning environment to the development of constructive clinical mentoring.

As a small state with ambiguous national status and diplomatic limitations, Taiwan has long practised cultural diplomacy (CD) to increase its international visibility. This thesis examines the Taiwanese government's CD policymaking and implementation (from 2012 to 2019) by studying three cases of government-funded contemporary art exhibitions in the US and Europe. As CD relies on non-state actors such as individual artists, independent curators, and non-Taiwanese museum practitioners, this thesis explores how various actors interact to make decisions jointly for policy implementation, and it highlights how state actors negotiate and collaborate with non- state actors to organise overseas art exhibitions by applying governance theories in public policy and administration. Understanding CD policymaking and implementation from the perspective of public policy has so far been a rarity in scholarship. This thesis is the first and only study dedicated to analysing the actual making of Taiwanese overseas contemporary art exhibitions as an instrument of CD. Its interdisciplinary approach will shed light on the instrumental use of visual arts exhibitions for CD and the politics of decision making in the CD policy process. The thesis will review the Taiwanese government's overall CD policy discourse and the governance of CD under the framework of cultural and public policy, and examine policy implementation via empirical case studies: 'Power, Haunting, and Resilience' (2017), Lee Mingwei's solo exhibitions (2015, 2017, 2018), and the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1995-2019). It is found that Taiwan's international politics come first in decision making during the policy process. Nonetheless, two domestic variables play a significant role in shaping CD practices: firstly, contested identity construction leads to dynamic interactions among various actors and multifaceted national images; and secondly, hierarchy and bureaucracy embedded in government organisations and administration have hampered the state actors' ability to build and sustain public-private collaboration for policy implementation. The case studies demonstrate that, under the international and domestic considerations, state actors collaborate with non-state actors in different ways through hierarchical commands, interdependency, and negotiating consent to construct Taiwan's national images jointly. When organising overseas art exhibitions as CD practices in the context of informal diplomacy, the thesis suggests that the best strategy for state actors should be grounded in professionalisation, network governance, and contextualised practices.

Early diagnosis is crucial for facilitating treatment and limiting progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Current diagnostic approaches mainly focus on blood tests. However, blood analysis is invasive and requires trained personnel and specialised equipment. Hence, this thesis sought to use ATR-FTIR spectroscopy to detect components in non-invasive biofluids (urine and saliva) as early diagnostic tools. APRT-deficiency is characterised by the presence of typical crystalline 2,8 dihydroxyadenine (DHA) in the kidney and/or in urine which is currently detected by phase-contrast microscopy or more complex blood analysis of APRT enzyme activity. In this study, an optimised ATR-FTIR spectroscopy protocol for the detection of DHA was developed and used to analyse urine samples from patients with APRT-deficiency. The spectra showed typical crystalline DHA can be identified in urine and distinguished from other urinary crystals. The concentration of typical crystalline DHA was also quantitated using a calibration curve. Further, this study identified a different form of DHA in some of patients' urine. Imaging of different forms of DHA showed differences in appearance and structure between the two forms. A method for purification of endogenous typical crystalline DHA from patient urine was developed. In vitro treatment of human proximal tubular epithelial cells (HKC-8) with the different forms of DHA (0-200 µM) showed all forms of DHA induced a dose-dependent increase in expression of inflammatory genes (TNF-a, MCP-1, Kim-1). ATR-FTIR spectroscopy was also used to quantitate salivary urea in CKD patients to determine whether salivary urea can provide an indicator of CKD stage. The data showed an increase in salivary urea in CKD3-5 compared to healthy controls. A positive correlation between blood urea and salivary urea suggested that salivary urea could be an additional parameter for CKD diagnosis. Renal cells are shed into urine and the populations of cells are likely to vary with disease. The third part of the study explored the potential utility of urinary cells as biomarkers of kidney disease. Normal urine (N=18) contains low numbers of viable cells (1000-4000 cells/100 mL). Normal urinary cells exhibited limited in vitro growth with inadequate numbers for downstream analyses of cell type-specific markers. Analysis of freshly isolated cells showed wide variation in RNA yield and in expression of renal cell type-specific markers confounding comparisons of normal and diseased urines. Further investigations are required to determine the wider utility of this approach. Studies in this thesis showed that ATR-FTIR spectroscopy provides a simple, cost-effective method for detecting urinary DHA and salivary urea for diagnosis of APRT deficiency and CKD, respectively, with wider application to analysis of other urinary components. Both the method and instrumentation can be adapted for clinical use as a point-of-care screening tool.

High-dimensional data are omnipresent. Although many statistical methods developed for analysing high-dimensional data adopt the normality assumption, the Gaussian distribution could be a poor approximation of real data in many applications. In this thesis, we investigate how to properly analyse such high-dimensional non-Gaussian data. As quantifying sample relationships, such as measuring the inter-sample proximity and determining neighbours for samples, is an important step in numerous statistical approaches, this thesis develops three methods for analysing different high-dimensional non-Gaussian data types based on the sample relationship: dimension reduction for single cell RNA-sequencing data with missingness with a proposed proximity measure, dimension reduction for data of small counts with a developed proximity measure, and modelling skewed survival data with a proposed procedure of identifying neighbours for samples. In chapter 3, I develop an unbiased estimator of the Gram matrix, which characterises the proximity between samples. The proposed estimator improves a broad spectrum of dimension reduction methods when applied to single cell RNA-sequencing data with missingness. In addition, the consequences of directly applying existing dimension reduction methods to data with missingness are empirically and theoretically clarified. In chapter 4, I develop a dissimilarity measure for count data with an excess of zeros based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence and the empirical Bayes estimators. The proposed measure is shown to have better discriminative power compared with other popular measures. The proposed measure boosts the performance of standard dimension reduction methods on count data containing many zeros. In chapter 5, I clarify that graphs derived from features themselves can be beneficial for the analysis of high-dimensional survival data when used in graph convolutional networks. Besides, a sequential forward floating selection algorithm is proposed to simultaneously perform survival analysis and unveil the local neighbourhoods of samples with the aid of graph convolutional networks.

As a result of following a 'principle of numerus clausus', contemporary property systems are frequently described as static, rigid and formalistic. Under this principle, the number and content of property rights are limited by the law. This creates two sources of rigidity: first, it denies private parties the freedom to create new property forms by contract, and second, it restricts the power of courts to develop the property system. Despite this, modern property systems seem largely capable of accommodating the demands created by a vast array of external changes without undergoing noticeable transformations. This dissertation aims to contribute to the solution of this paradox through a comparative research of English and German property law. Contrary to recent views arguing for the relaxation of the numerus clausus principle and the expansion of the list of property rights to keep property law in step with society, this thesis puts forward that the numerus clausus provides property law with an 'internal' structure that can accommodate new realities without the need of constant reform. The core of this argument is that the restrictions that the numerus clausus imposes on the free creation of property rights ensure that property law retains a modular structure that preserves the liberty of third parties to 'functionally transform' the object of their property rights in the face of changing circumstances. To develop this argument, the dissertation relies on the distinction between trespassory and successor liability recently advanced in Anglo-American scholarship. By noticing that the numerus clausus has different effects in limiting the creation of duties that will affect all strangers and duties that will only affect successors in title to the thing, this dissertation brings to light the doctrinal and functional structures that allow contemporary German and English property law to accommodate real-world changes with limited legislative reforms.

Perennial crops, such as oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) have a long breeding cycle (typically 20 years per cycle) and inherently heterogeneous populations. Oil palm is the most productive and traded vegetable oil globally compared to other oil crops such as soybean, rapeseed etc, but it has only undergone four generations of selection since breeding started 80 years ago. No doubt genome-enabled biology in oil palm breeding is crucial yet genetics and crop improvement have been actively pursued in research but with limited deployment in the industry. Further, the oil yield has stagnated for many years, hence the realistic approach of genome-based breeding is needed. High resolution genetic map maximizes discoveries of recombination events and thus empowers comparative genomic and quantitative trait locus (QTL) studies. The present study aims to develop multiple ultra-dense linkage maps using high density marker panel and integrate these with physical genome map of oil palm. To improve the current genome assembly, more of the previously unplaced genomic scaffolds can now anchored to chromosomes using mapped markers from the genetic maps. Linkage maps generated using three populations contained 11,421 transferable markers - consolidate each and the total maps span, on average, 1,355.64 cM with the lowest average marker intervals of 0.04 cM. These are by far the densest linkage maps reported in oil palm. The creation of a consensus linkage maps from combinations of different mapping populations provides essential information about the consistency of marker order and genetic distance among oil palm populations, while increasing map precision and resolution. The published oil palm physical genome size is 657.98 Mb while the assembled scaffolds add up to 1.53 Gb. The coverage of the assembled physical genome still leaves more than 60% to be fully covered. The estimation of genome-wide recombination rates revealed varying degrees of genetic exchange across different populations and between chromosomes. The integration of the high-density linkage maps with the published oil palm genome could potentially improve the current genome for utilisation in oil palm improvement programmes. The outcome of this study has significantly improved the assembly of oil palm genome by anchoring more genome sequence scaffolds to chromosomes, resulting in 1.2 Gb equivalent to extension of 79% of the publicly available genome version. The creation of the most complete genome map within palm species here, allows comprehensive comparative genomic studies. Applications of genome information in oil palm breeding through genome-wide association study (GWAS) and genomic selection (GS) and their combinations will pave the way for crop improvement not only in oil palm but also the exploration of economically important traits within palm species generally.

A new and novel GPU accelerated method has been developed for solving the Navier-Stokes equations for bodies of arbitrary geometry in both 2D and 3D. The present method utilises the vortex particles to discretize the governing equations in the Lagrangian frame. Those particles act as vorticity carriers which translate in accordance with the local velocity field. Vorticity information is thus propagated from the vorticity source to the rest of the flow domain in mimicking the advection and diffusion processes of the real flow. In the high-fidelity method, vorticity generation can take place around the bodies. The no-slip condition produces a boundary flux which is subsequently diffused to the neighbouring particles. The new method has been successfully validated by simulating the flow field of an impulsively started cylinder. The calculated drag curve matches well with the theoretical prediction and other numerical results in the literature. To extend the applicability of the code to wind-turbine applications, a simplified re-meshing strategy is adopted which is found to produce small numerical inaccuracies. In the engineering method, a simplified hybrid approach has been developed which decouples the advection and diffusion processes. The viscous effects are ignored on the bodies and are recovered in the wake. For this purpose, the Laplace equation that resulted from the irrotational assumption of the flow has been solved using the boundary element method. The solution produces a dipole distribution that is subsequently converted to viscous particles by employing the Hess' equivalence principle. In addition, an accurate interpolation scheme has been developed to evaluate the dipole gradient across the distorted wake geometry. To reduce the simulation time, the fast multipole method has been implemented on the GPU in 2D and 3D. To parallelize the implementation, a novel data construction algorithm has been proposed. Furthermore, an analytical expression for the velocity strain has been derived. The new developed methods have been applied to problems involving aerofoils and vertical axis wind turbines. Comparisons with experimental data have shown that the new techniques are accurate and can be used with confidence for a wide variety of wind turbine applications.

While deep neural networks have been successfully applied in several different domains, they exhibit vulnerabilities to artificially-crafted perturbations in data. Moreover, these perturbations have been shown to be transferable across different networks where the same perturbations can be transferred between different models. In response to this problem, many robust learning approaches have emerged. Adversarial training is regarded as a mainstream approach to enhance the robustness of deep neural networks with respect to norm-constrained perturbations. However, adversarial training requires a large number of perturbed examples (e.g., over 100,000 examples are required for MNIST dataset) trained on the deep neural networks before robustness can be considerably enhanced. This is problematic due to the large computational cost of obtaining attacks. Developing computationally effective approaches while retaining robustness against norm-constrained perturbations remains a challenge in the literature. In this research we present two novel robust training algorithms based on Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) [1] to enhance robustness under norm-constrained perturbations [2, 3]. The first algorithm searches potential candidates with Scale Invariant Feature Transform method and makes decisions with Monte-Carlo Tree Search method [2]. The second algorithm adopts Decision Tree Search method (DTS) to accelerate the search process while maintaining efficiency [3]. Our overarching objective is to provide computationally effective approaches that can be deployed to train deep neural networks robust against perturbations in data. We illustrate the robustness with these algorithms by studying the resistances to adversarial examples obtained in the context of the MNIST and CIFAR10 datasets. For MNIST, the results showed an average training efforts saving of 21.1\% when compared to Projected Gradient Descent (PGD) and 28.3\% when compared to Fast Gradient Sign Methods (FGSM). For CIFAR10, we obtained an average improvement of efficiency of 9.8\% compared to PGD and 13.8\% compared to FGSM. The results suggest that these two methods here introduced are not only robust to norm-constrained perturbations but also efficient during training. In regards to transferability of defences, our experiments [4] reveal that across different network architectures, across a variety of attack methods from white-box to black-box and across various datasets including MNIST and CIFAR10, our algorithms outperform other state-of-the-art methods, e.g., PGD and FGSM. Furthermore, the derived attacks and robust models obtained on our framework are reusable in the sense that the same norm-constrained perturbations can facilitate robust training across different networks. Lastly, we investigate the robustness of intra-technique and cross-technique transferability and the relations with different impact factors from adversarial strength to network capacity. The results suggest that known attacks on the resulting models are less transferable than those models trained by other state-of-the-art attack algorithms. Our results suggest that exploiting these tree search frameworks can result in significant improvements in the robustness of deep neural networks while saving computational cost on robust training. This paves the way for several future directions, both algorithmic and theoretical, as well as numerous applications to establish the robustness of deep neural networks with increasing trust and safety.

Personalised marketing is more persuasive than traditional techniques aimed at the masses, however marketers do not always have access to consumers' private attributes in order to apply these insights. The effect of personalisation is based on an established theory in consumer psychology - self-congruity theory - which posits that individuals prefer products, brands and advertisements that embody characteristics that match with their self-concepts. Self-congruence not only enhances marketing effectiveness, it can also be used to improve consumer well-being. While it has been established that consumers who spend in a way that is more congruent with their personality are happier, clarifications around the types of individuals who are more or less likely to engage in self-congruent spending, as well as the moderating effects on the benefit in happiness from such consumption could inform policy for improving happiness at a collective level. This thesis contributes to a growing body of research which attempts to understand how consumption patterns are related to consumers' characteristics, its applications in advertising, as well as consumer well-being. By using a dataset containing more than 1 million transactions recorded over a period of 12-months, the thesis demonstrates the value of the digital footprint in the form of bank transactions for enriching our understanding of key questions in consumer research, underpinned by the theory of self-congruity. This thesis combines methods from computational social science with personality psychology to test research questions on consumer preferences. Two components of the thesis focused on the predictive utility of transaction records in inferring consumer attributes with which to personalise advertising, as well as the use of transaction records in examining self-congruence in overall consumption patterns and its relationship with happiness. Through five empirical studies, this work suggests that consumer attributes such as age and financial distress can be reliably inferred from consumption patterns reflected in transaction records (Chapter 3 and 5). The inferred age can be used to personalise advertisements in order to increase their appeal (Chapter 4). Using an objective measure of self-congruence in overall consumption pattern computed from transaction records and panel ratings, the thesis shows that individuals differ in their tendency to spend in a way that is congruent with their personality based on their levels of materialism and financial distress (Chapter 6). As the most important predictor of self-congruent spending, financial distress moderates the relationship between self-congruent spending and happiness (Chapter 7). These findings contribute insights into how consumption patterns are related to consumer attributes and usefulness for personalisation in marketing, as well as policy recommendations for improving well-being by targeting consumption patterns in financially distressed individuals. In addition, this thesis also showcases the value of machine learning and large-scale behavioural field data in the study of consumer psychology. Privacy and ethical concerns surrounding automated profiling and microtargeting are also cautioned.

The UK wastewater sector is facing increasing challenges such as regulatory pressure, population growth and climate change when making investment decisions. This has resulted in a growing demand for assessment tools that informs the selection of suitable wastewater treatment processes and technologies from the sustainability perspective. The objective of this research was to develop a sustainability assessment tool for a water company in the UK to compare wastewater treatment processes and inform its investment decisions given its unique combination of challenges and needs. The development of the assessment tool encompassed several phases with an underlying pragmatic research paradigm. The first stage utilised an exploratory case study to understand the current decision drivers and the organisational context. The case study specifically involved a round of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and thematic analyses. The findings then informed the methodological design of the assessment tool. A suite of assessment criteria and indicators were selected based on literature review and findings from the case study. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) was selected as the assessment methodology as it was considered suitable and useful to incorporate the Three- Pillars model of sustainability. The assessment methodology was applied to two pilot studies to test its feasibility and robustness. Once the methodology had been confirmed, the assessment methodology was built into a 'tool' with a user interface, culminating in a round of usability testing with end-users in the organisation to examine its overall utility and ease of use. The results of testing suggest the assessment tool is easy to use and understand and offered useful insights into the sustainability credentials of wastewater treatment alternatives. This research also proposed a provisional framework for developing a multi- criteria sustainability tool in a corporate environment, which can be extrapolated for wider applications. The research also demonstrated the significance of pragmatic research in developing a practical solution for industrial-based research whilst highlighting the potential synergy between sustainability assessment, MCDA and decision support systems. The findings and insights of this research will accelerate the practical integration of MCDA into the corporate decision-making process for performing sustainability assessments.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rare fatal disease characterised by endothelial dysfunction and obliteration of small pulmonary arteries. The resulting increase in pulmonary arterial pressure and right ventricular afterload ultimately causes death by right heart failure. Current available treatments show little impact on patient mortality and there is thus an urgent need to better understand the causes of PAH pathology to derive new transformative therapies. Recently, a whole-genome sequencing study of >1000 idiopathic PAH patients identified pathogenic mutations in several new genes. In a small subset of patients, rare heterozygous variants in the SOX17 gene, predicted to be functionally deleterious, were significantly associated with PAH. SOX17 is an essential transcription factor involved in the development of the pulmonary vasculature and is highly expressed in endothelial cells. The aims of the studies underlying this thesis were to explore how SOX17 deficiency may compromise endothelial integrity and cause dysregulated vascular functions. To achieve this, I used SOX17-specific silencing RNA (siSOX17) to knock down SOX17 in pulmonary arterial endothelial cells (PAECs). siSOX17-transfected PAECs express only 10-20% of endogenous SOX17, without significant effects on the expression levels of other SOX family members including SOX2, SOX4, SOX7 and SOX18. SOX17-deficient PAECs exhibited decreased proliferation rates and transcriptional analysis suggested this to be a result of decreased cyclin A (CCNA1) and cyclin B (CCNB1) expression and increased expression of p15 (CDKN2B), a cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor. Additionally, siSOX17-transfected PAECs showed reduced monolayer permeability and impaired cellular angiogenesis, namely through horseradish peroxidase (HRP) permeability assay as well as tube-network and bead-sprouting assays, respectively. In parallel, to recapitulate the discrete manner in which a patient-specific mutation in SOX17 may initiate PAH disease development, a heterozygous mutation found in patients was introduced into human wild-type (C2 SOX17+/+) induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), resulting in the generation of the C2 SOX17+/R140P iPSC line via CRISPR-Cas9 and homologous recombination. The R140P mutation, replacing the amino acid arginine (R) to proline (P) at position 140, was chosen as it is predicted to substantially impair the DNA binding capacity of SOX17. To assess the impact on endothelial cell development, the gene-edited iPSCs were subsequently differentiated into iPSC-derived endothelial cells (iPSC-ECs). In mutant C2 SOX17+/R140P iPSC-ECs, the SOX17 mRNA expression level was substantially lower than in C2 SOX17+/+ iPSC-ECs, suggesting the mutation may impair a SOX17 autoregulatory positive feedback loop. Furthermore, transcriptional analysis of arteriovenous gene expression revealed a significant reduction in the arterial markers, NOTCH, HEY1 and EPHNB2 in mutant C2 SOX17+/R140P iPSC-ECs compared to C2 SOX17+/+ cells. Additionally, two SOX17 iPSC lines, SOX17147Δ8del and SOX17145Δ18del, containing an 8bp and 18bp deletion at amino acid position 147 and 145 respectively, were obtained via non-homologous end joining and studied in parallel to the C2 SOX17+/R140P iPSCs. Moreover, the effects of SOX17 mutations on protein biochemistry, namely SOX17 DNA binding capability and localisation, were also investigated in this study. WT SOX17 localised to the nucleus of both PAECs and C2 iPSC-ECs. Interestingly, C2 SOX17+/R140P iPSC-ECs exhibited nuclear SOX17 staining, while SOX17147Δ8del and SOX17145Δ18del iPSC-ECs demonstrated partial non-nuclear staining. Nuclear localisation site (NLS) prediction algorithms consistently identified a monopartite NLS within the SOX17 transcript at amino acid position 146-151. The deleted regions in both SOX17147Δ8del and SOX17145Δ18del overlapped with this predicted NLS, supporting the localisation data. To assess SOX17 DNA binding ability, a SOX17 luciferase reporter system was generated, though current data suggest further optimisations are required to increase specificity and remove confounding factors. Lastly, in vivo assessment of pulmonary haemodynamics in Sox17+/GFP mice showed Sox17 haploinsufficiency alone did not lead to PAH but may require pulmonary-artery specific deletion of Sox17 or additional stimulus such as hypoxia to precipitate PAH. Total RNA extraction for transcriptional analysis and immunohistochemistry for assessment of vascular remodelling are currently underway.

China's economy and its sporting industry have grown substantially following the success of its open-door economic reform and the ensuing globalization and transnational flow of cultures since the early 2000s. Further coupled with their many recent achievements in international competitions, Chinese athletes are increasingly being recognized in the global sporting arena. Yet, the subject of Chinese sportspeople's identities is still under theorized in the literature, in which only Western epistemological understandings-especially the long-held stereotypical views stemming from the axis of the "Eastern collectivists vs. Western individualists" binary-are utilized to frame the common discourses in describing Chinese athletes. To address such a stereotype and fill this research gap, this thesis examines how Chinese sportsmen, through their direct reflections of embodied behaviours and actions revealed in their daily lived domains, understand their identities and the related processes of their identification in line with discourses associated with the traditional cultural ideal of Confucianism and contemporary cultural notions of post-structuralism and late-modernism. Drawing on semi-structured interviews (n=40) that were conducted with male Chinese badminton players from provincial professional and university teams in North, Central and South China, along with observations of their team training sessions, this study seeks to elucidate how the athletes identify with collectivism and individualization in their day-to-day circumstances of their everyday lives and also in the context of race and masculinity, which are so significantly interlinked with sports. Contrary to studies which position Chinese individuals' identities as predominantly collective in nature, I put forward the argument that Chinese sportsmen-and perhaps even applicable to Chinese people in China in general-are also individualists; they possess and perform their dual forms of identities, which operate along the binary axis of collectivism and individualization, in their daily lives.

The widespread use of social media and digital cameras in people's daily lives has reshaped how visitors experience museums. The continuous development of smartphones with built-in cameras has encouraged more and more people to use photography to engage with exhibition content, to document their museum experiences, and to communicate their thoughts about these experiences. The museum experience has been transformed even more dynamically through the ability to share photos via social media. Visitor photography is increasingly becoming an important part of the museum experience, but limited research has been conducted to investigate this phenomenon. This research, thus, sets out to understand how visitors use Instagram to convey information about their museum social photography experiences at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London. In order to comprehensively explore and understand visitors' social photographic behaviours in the museum visiting experience, mixed methods research was designed to explore this phenomenon from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Additionally, service design methods were employed to facilitate the research process, further interpret the collected dataset, and gain an in-depth understanding of this complex issue from a design perspective. Overall, the research findings revealed how and why visitors captured and shared these photographs to communicate information about their museum experiences, as well as what roles visitors' social photography play in the museum experience. In the process of exploring visitors' photographic engagement with museum context and with other visitors, the stakeholders and the complex online and offline interactions they formed within this museum experience were analysed and discussed. More importantly, by integrating different findings from quantitative and qualitative studies, a theoretical framework was proposed to coherently and systematically explain the correlation between social photography and the fundamental components that constitute a museum experience. Collectively, the research findings can be used to inform current museum practice and provide an alternative research approach for exploring social photography and museum experience related studies.

The beta 2 adrenergic receptor (β2AR) is a transmembrane, G protein-coupled receptor that can be modified post-translationally by phosphorylation, ubiquitination, palmitoylation and glycosylation. These modifications regulate β2AR signalling and desensitisation. SUMOylation is a post-translational modification that is related to ubiquitin, hence the name "SUMO" (small ubiquitin-like modifier). SUMO is a small protein which is covalently attached to substrate proteins on lysine residues following activation of specific SUMO enzyme cascades. Following the discovery that the cardiac signalling protein sarcoplasmic Reticulum Ca2+ ATPase 2a (SERCA2a) could be modified by SUMO and since there are more than 1000 SUMO substrates in nature (Hay, 2013), it is possible that SERCAR2a may not be the only cardiac protein that could be SUMOylated. The Baillie group has used peptide array technology to identify putative SUMOylation sites by inducing in vitro SUMOylation of 15 mer peptides which contained potential SUMO conjugation motifs (Frank, 2002). Baillie group has confirmed putative SUMOylation sites on multiple cardiac specific proteins such as ryanodine receptor (RyR), L-type Ca2+ channel (LTCC), myosin binding protein C, cardiac troponin I (cTnI) and β2AR via the consensus motif ψKxE/D. Therefore, I hypothesised that the β2AR could also be SUMOylated and that this action is a novel point of regulation for β2AR receptor signalling. In my thesis, 1. I confirm that β2AR is a substrate for SUMOylation and that β2AR SUMOylation can be promoted by the SUMO E3 ligase PIASγ. 2. I show that enhanced SUMOylation driven by PIASγ overexpression rapidly declined after agonist treatment suggesting that SUMOylation is involved in early signalling events. 3. I compare the physiological responses of WT and SUMOylation-null mutants of β2AR in NRVMs using adenoviral gene transfer. Following transfection of the receptors to NRVMs I evaluated five different parameters of contractility using the CellOPTIQ® platform. Using these techniques, I report that untransfected NRVMs displayed expected short-term enhancements in the contractile response to isoproterenol. However, NRVMs transfected with WT and mutant β2AR did not respond as expected. Counter-intuitive data resulting from excessive levels of over-expression of WT and a SUMOylation-null mutant of β2AR was recorded. Conclusively, I report the novel finding that β2AR is a substrate of SUMOylation and β2AR SUMOylation can be promoted by the SUMO E3 ligase PIASγ. A first-in-class SUMO-β2 antibody was tested in my work in different cells and tissues confirming that SUMOylation is ubiquitous. I also reported that SUMOylation is engaged in early β2AR signalling events. However, using a variety of different model systems and techniques I was unable to definitively characterise the function of this modification. Functional studies via adenovirus vector in animal models to study the role of β2AR SUMOylation in heart failure are the future direction to this project.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) are humans' stomach-dwelling bacteria that pose high mutation and recombination rates. These features allow them to achieve great genetic diversity and adapt to a wide range of within-host environments with different selective pressures, including presence of antibiotics. This study focused on the H. pylori population in Cape Verde, an archipelago that was first inhabited in the 15th century by Portuguese colonists and African slaves, followed by their extensive admixture. The high prevalence of H. pylori infection and crowded living environment facilitate cross infection and genetic exchange between divergent strains, which promote rapid evolution of the bacteria. This thesis aimed to study between-host and within-host genomic variation and evolution of H. pylori from asymptomatic individuals in Cape Verde. The genetic architecture and evolution of antibiotic resistance of H. pylori in Cape Verde were also investigated. Population genetic analyses based on whole genome data discovered that the main axis of genetic variation of H. pylori in Cape Verde was not due to admixture as in their hosts, but presence of four populations groups, two of which were highly differentiated from African and European ancestral strains and were likely to represent recent clonal expansions. Evidence of within-host genetic exchange through recombination was found between strains within-host, regardless of the presence of multiple strains, the presence of mixed ancestry and the ancestry/ancestry combinations. Resistance mechanisms of four antibiotics (Amoxicillin, Clarithromycin, Metronidazole and Tetracycline) of H. pylori in Cape Verde were only partially explained by known resistance-associated mutations. Significantly associated variants identified using GWASs included both established and novel variants. The understanding of this H. pylori population from asymptomatic hosts will serve as a major step towards establishment of Cape Verde as a model population for studying co-evolutionary trajectories of human hosts and bacteria.

Perception is subjective and context-dependent. Size and position perception are no exceptions. Studies have shown that apparent object size is represented by the retinotopic location of peak response in V1. Such representation is likely supported by a combination of V1 architecture and top-down driven retinotopic reorganisation. Are apparent object size and position encoded via a common mechanism? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a model-based reconstruction technique, the first part of this thesis sets out to test if retinotopic encoding of size percepts can be generalised to apparent position representation and whether neural signatures could be used to predict an individual's perceptual experience. Here, I present evidence that static apparent position - induced by a dot-variant Muller-Lyer illusion - is represented retinotopically in V1. However, there is mixed evidence for retinotopic representation of motion-induced position shifts (e.g. curveball illusion) in early visual areas. My findings could be reconciled by assuming dual representation of veridical and percept-based information in early visual areas, which is consistent with the larger framework of predictive coding. The second part of the thesis sets out to compare different psychophysical methods for measuring size perception in the Ebbinghaus illusion. Consistent with the idea that psychophysical methods are not equally susceptible to cognitive factors, my experiments reveal a consistent discrepancy in illusion magnitude estimates between a traditional forced choice (2AFC) task and a novel perceptual matching (PM) task - a variant of a comparison-of-comparisons (CoC) task, a design widely seen as the gold standard in psychophysics. Further investigation reveals the difference was not driven by greater 2AFC susceptibility to cognitive factors, but a tendency for PM to skew illusion magnitude estimates towards the underlying stimulus distribution. I show that this dependency can be largely corrected using adaptive stimulus sampling.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed various industries, including the tourism and hospitality industry. AI Assistants are one example of AI adoption in the tourism and hospitality industry. AI assistants can aid travellers in searching for information and simplify their travel planning process. They can also help travel companies to deliver personalised, efficient, and effective customer service. Though research has hinted about how AI systems are transforming travel experiences, little research to-date has focused on how travellers evaluate the use of AI Assistants. Therefore, this research aimed to identify the determinants of user satisfaction of and behavioural intentions towards AI Assistants in the context of travel. Specifically, this thesis explored which factors determine user satisfaction of Human-AI Assistant interaction process and outcomes, and the willingness to adopt and use AI Assistants in the future for travel purposes. Following a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design, this thesis consists of four distinct studies, including: Study 1: systematic literature review (n = 18), Study 2: a qualitative study using content analysis (interviews, n = 42), Study 3: laboratory experiments (n = 70), and Study 4: online surveys utilising Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) (n = 1066). The four studies are interrelated. Considering the context of the study is relatively new, this thesis applies abductive approach to provide better insights into the use of AI Assistants. The conceptual model was developed based on the findings from qualitative phases, the updated IS Success Model, and the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2). The findings indicated that perceived, perceived safety, and expectancy are core determinants of user satisfaction with information, while perceived safety and expectancy have significant influence on user satisfaction with interaction process. The results confirmed the important positive role of user satisfaction in user behavioural intentions.

This research discusses the concept of guanxi, and how guanxi affects international co-operation between Chinese and UK higher education institutions in the arts. This study uses Foucault's philosophy of dispositif to build a new theoretical model called the guanxi dispositif (GD) model, which is an original idea that comprises a combination of Western and Eastern philosophies and discourse analysis. The research questions posed are: RQ1. How deep is the involvement of guanxi in co-operative categories in arts related HEIs? RQ2. How widely of guanxi's involvement in the area? RQ3. How do higher education organisations use guanxi in their relationships with their partner institutions in the Arts and Humanities? In order to answer these questions, pragmatic paradigm and Methods-Strands Matrix (MM) research designs were used to build the fieldwork of this research, which was largely composed of questionnaires and interviews employed in a quality-quantity-quality process to analyse meta-inference. The findings suggest that: 1) guanxi exists in most forms of international co-operation conducted by Chinese people in higher education institutions; 2) guanxi increase the efficiency of co-operation, especially in relationship setup; 3) Chinese people tend to use guanxi in international co-operation, and Western practitioners prove willing to use it more during China-related collaborations; 4) guanxi exists in a simplified but not weakened form in modern China. Future studies should continue to test the theoretical framework of the guanxi dispositif (GD) model formulated by this research.

The emotional wellbeing of adolescents remains a concern in the Hong Kong community. The prevalence of emotional problems for adolescents with special educational needs (SEN) is higher than their mainstream peers. Adolescents may experience stress and emotional disturbance when going through the transitional change from school to post-school. A movement-based emotional self-regulation (ESR) programme was proposed to improve adolescents' mental wellbeing by enhancing their emotional self-regulation at transition. This research investigates the impact of a movement-based ESR programme on adolescents (N=51) with mild intellectual disabilities (ID) in Hong Kong during their transition. The programme includes eight one-hour fifteen minutes weekly sessions. The research adopts a mixed methods design. A standardised questionnaire was used to compare the intervention and control cohorts at post intervention and 14 weeks follow-up stage. Focus groups were conducted after the intervention to gather qualitative data. Quantitative results for the intervention cohort revealed that among the five measured variables: 'emotion symptoms', 'conduct problems', 'hyperactivity/inattention', 'peer relationship problems' and 'prosocial behaviours' only the 'conduct problems' was statistically significant in the t-test analysis at 14 weeks follow-up (p < 0.05) but was not statistically significant at the post intervention when compared to the control cohort. The results implied that the difference between the cohorts was due to the impact of the intervention programme. The mean difference of the variables in the 14 weeks follow-up had a bigger decrease of symptoms than the results of the post intervention and the control cohorts. The qualitative findings discovered seven main themes: 'emotion', 'body shape', 'facial expression', 'speech', 'emotional awareness', and 'emotional regulation strategies' by employing content thematic analysis of the verbatim transcription collected from the focus groups. Asking for help from people was found to be the most important emotional regulation strategy. Good practices of this programme indicated that adolescents who participated in the intervention programme not only gained bodily awareness, emotional awareness and emotional regulation strategies but also experienced emotional regulation practices from a holistic perspective. To summarise, this study sheds light on our understanding of the process of emotional regulation in adolescents with SEN from the implementation of a programme based on dance movement therapy/psychotherapy and self-determination theory. The knowledge and experiences gained from this study will facilitate a better design a research project and to pave the way for a structured evaluation and appraisal of movement-based ESR programmes. Some limitations of the study were the small sample size and the limited verbal expression of the participants with SEN. Future studies would be benefit from increasing the sample size and extending the programme to mainstream adolescents prior to transitions. The study has contributed to the fields of social science and education.

My thesis concerns the fate of the spiritual capacities of human beings in the time of digital media systems in relation to the work of Bernard Stiegler. Stiegler's framing of the problem is situated within his ambigious, or pharmacological, approach to technology, in which it is simultaneously poison and cure. It is also founded on his notion of 'originary technicity', in which humanity and technology 'invent' each other. Both avoid a reductive reading of human-technological relations. Stiegler's account of subjectivity is one founded on the linguistic, philosophical and sociological notions of agency whereby the self is conceived as a performance within the symbolic and aesthetic order of culture. This performance necessitates a public stage akin to that of the Greek tragic age that allows its audience to reflect upon and question their society in order for the society to remain ethically reflexive. Yet, the growth of mass culture and global consumerism threatens this reflexivity and must be recovered. The generalized proletarianization of the consumer age is one that compromises the acting out of spirit due to the exhaustion of human drives. Furthermore, the social fabric, as with the fabric of the self, is a composition of tendencies, a 'weaving' of social bonds that is created by society and its individuals. Therefore, as with the reflexive public stage, society must have the requisite knowledge and ability to interpret and create this production of the social. In a digital age, this must now be a society of 'image-readers'. By looking at Stiegler's theorizing of a new contributive economy, I examine the elevating possibilities that can come out of the disindividuating processes of hyper-industrial, consumer-driven technology, and, therefore, what spiritually expressive and transformative performances of self, and society, digital media enable. I argue the aesthetic performance of the self must be one in which the individual is an amateur artist aware of the reflexive social stage that digital platforms provide.

Objective: The internal eating disorder voice (EDV) has been implicated in the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). However, limited research has examined interventions for this phenomenon. This study expanded the literature by exploring the acceptability of using such interventions by exploring how women with a diagnosis of AN experienced the voice dialogue method as a way of understanding and managing their EDV. Method: Nine women participated in the study. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews upon the completion of a single voice dialogue intervention. Thematic Analysis (TA) was used to understand how participants experienced the voice dialogue method and its relevance for treating AN. Results: Three main themes were identified: "externalizing and separating from the EDV", "better understanding of the EDV" and "recovery: hopeful, motivated and afraid". Conclusions: Participants found voice dialogue to be an acceptable approach for working with their EDV. Preliminary results suggest that voice dialogue might hold promise in the treatment of AN. However, more research is needed to verify these findings and determine the effectiveness of voice dialogue in treating AN. Implications for addressing the EDV using voice focused interventions are explored.

The term 'giftedness' has existed in research spanning multiple decades. This concept has engendered polemical debates in the literature and was once used historically in reference to individuals with a higher level of academic intellect. Over time, such narrow conceptualisations of giftedness have been replaced by a diversified understanding, whereby giftedness refers to individuals who demonstrate a higher level of skill in a particular area, such as performance, creativity, intellect, or artistic ability. As society has consistently attempted to identify these individuals, there have been some challenges as to how children, who are classified as gifted, should proceed through their education. This lack of consensus in the literature and within policy circles, is a function of the dearth of empirical research that can inform teachers, parents and the government on how to properly support and nurture gifted children by harnessing their needs. Studies that evaluate such questions via the lens of gifted children themselves, and that can therefore provide nuanced insight into the support they require as part of the learning environment, are also lacking. Against this backdrop, this study examines the views of young, gifted children (aged 5-7) and their parents via semi-structured interviews, focusing on their constructions of giftedness and the support they require in the learning environment, specifically, the preschool and primary settings. This research is situated within the context of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a city that has demonstrated strong educational policies and has produced scholars that have impressive backgrounds in education, the arts, and performance; yet it is currently experiencing a period of transition that makes it imperative for researchers to prioritise the voice of the children currently growing up. Aside from the leveraging of semi-structured interviews, the sample of children in this study has produced drawings linked to the interview process and giftedness, following a pilot study. Findings from the main study suggest that children were able to identify a range of social and academic learning needs that they felt were important for their own learning experience. There were many instances where the children wanted to demonstrate a high level of performance, mainly in academics, though in other areas (such as music or art) as well. Elements of the findings demonstrate consistency with more recent literature, specifically in relation to some of the more prominent models that have been created related to giftedness. As a result, this research project has implications for future policy changes because teachers and educationists can leverage the findings of this research, based on the subjective experiences of gifted children, to influence pedagogical approaches and curriculum designs, ensuring that these directly address their learning needs and empower them to take charge of their learning.

Based on a one-year multi-sited ethnography with businesswomen in Shenzhen and Hefei and three-years' working experiences in an online educational platform economy, this thesis makes two main contributions. Theoretically, by using my concept of burnout market feminism, it unravels the puzzle of why women in China thrive in business in the Internet age during a state crackdown on feminism. Burnout market feminism is a critical theoretical combination of Chinese feminist Li Xiaojiang's market feminism and Korean-German cultural theorist Han Byung-Chul's Burnout Society. While Li's market feminism contributes the Chinese local perspective with empowerment and contexts at its centre to allow gendered subjectivities and solidarity to burgeon from the market, Han warns us that the Internet age has made us voluntarily self-exploit and burn out. In short, women burn out for market feminism. Empirically, it demonstrates the multiplicities and nuances of businesswomen's lived experiences and negotiations with patriarchy in different social-culture locations. Businesswomen's negotiation with patriarchy in the Internet age is shaped by the intersectionality of place, gender, age, class and migration trajectory. I compare business ideas, business practices and especially in terms of the well-researched male-centred guanxi practices, and intimacy as well as family practices in three different groups of women. In doing so, I avoid a yes or no monolithic answer to questions such as "are women empowered by the Internet?" and show instead nuanced diversified presences of my interlocutors empowered by their materialistic advancements.

Cities have evolved as centers of economic growth but are also responsible for high resource consumption and greenhouse gases emission. Rapid urbanisation due to increasing human population and resource-intensive economic activities draw concerns on urban sustainability issues in future development. In the urban metabolism framework, cities are often described as open systems where the intake of resources is heavily dependent on flows imported from the external environment to sustain economic growth. However, this raises a key question: how much of the resource available in cities is effectively consumed? To investigate the effectiveness of urban resource use, an ecological-thermodynamic approach is taken to develop an open system network effectiveness analysis (OSNEA) framework as a novel tool for urban sustainability assessment. The contributions of resources imported are maximised when the usefulness of the energy available, namely exergy, is fully utilised by destroying exergy through energy conversion processes or exported to other regions in exchange for generated capital flows into the city. Meanwhile, only a minimal amount of low-quality energy is rejected out of the system as waste. In this aspect, OSNEA introduces a set of effectiveness performance metrics to assess the ability of a system to utilise high exergy (high quality energy) and convert the resources available into economic benefits. Having incorporated the techniques from material flow analysis, ecological flow analysis, input-output analysis, exergy analysis and extended-exergy analysis, the framework formulates and translates the incoming flows into a network based on the material exchanges between different urban processes and economic activities in order to account for the metabolism of the whole system. On the downside, the use of exergy as a metric for resource effectiveness is open to challenge as it is an extensive thermodynamic property derived from the study of energy systems and may be regarded as metaphorical and not literally applicable to physical processes in reality. The thesis first presents an initial case study of the cities in England and Wales in Chapter 3 to investigate intra-city metabolism of the urban economies (monetary exchanges between economic sectors) by showing the degree of consumption-control and production-dependency relationships in their hierarchical structure. The case study addresses the shortcomings of existing urban metabolism methods when using input-output monetary transactions as resource supply and use to account for the metabolic activities in cities. However, a framework that considers the differentials in energy and material intakes through urban systems is absent from the existing assessments. OSNEA has been developed to fill this gap, Chapter 4 outlines details of the development workflow and data requirements of this new method demonstrated in this work. To verify and validate the framework, Chapter 5 demonstrates the application of OSNEA in a case study of Singapore representing a single-city model to account for the effectiveness of resource use in the city-state. The trajectory of effectiveness results throughout the years suggests a trade-off relationship between the producers and consumers to balance the production and consumption of resources in the city. Chapter 6 extends the application of OSNEA to study the urban systems of Great Britain as a multi-city model and develop a clustering taxonomy of resource use behaviours of the cities across the whole systems of cities. Next, Chapter 7 provides a synthesis of the key findings and discussion from all studies. Finally, Chapter 8 gives a conclusion and recommendations for further work. The essence of this work is the introduction of effectiveness indicators as a set of novel performance metrics to evaluate the states of resource use in the network based on the differential in resource quantity and quality between the cross-boundary inflows and outflows of the system. OSNEA promotes strategic resource management and transition to circular economy by enabling greater understanding of the sectoral interdependencies within the economy based on their supplies and demands to facilitate flow redirection to where the resources can be utilised effectively. The goal is to provide pathways for retaining and circulating resources in flow cycles for as long as possible to promote higher utilisation rate and reduce the demand for new material extraction. This will help in driving national and urban development towards the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals for Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11) and Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG 12).

People with Personality Disorders (PD) often experience challenges to employment. Being prepared for work may be an essential part of overcoming these challenges. Identifying the obstacles and the extent one is ready for work may help in the planning of employment support for people with PD. The purpose of this thesis was to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Preparedness for Employment Scale for people with Personality Disorders (PES-PD); the first employment-related scale for measuring preparedness for employment for PD. Chapter 1 presents background literature on PD and employment, including PD employment interventions and the importance of validated measures. The first study was a systematic review (Chapter 2) assessing the literature for PD and employment scales; the results showed a lack of appropriate PD scales. Consequently, this thesis conducted two studies; focus groups and an e-Delphi to develop the underlying construct of preparedness for employment and explore potential content to inform a new scale (Chapter 3). A 57-item version of the PES-PD was produced and then piloted (n=109) for its content and face validity in Study 4 (Chapter 4). The results of the pilot study provided a 35-item PES-PD. The final study conducted construct validity and internal consistency on the 35-item PES-PD (n=650) (Chapter 5). The results demonstrated a 3- factor model: Interpersonal (IV), Emotional Regulation (ER), Vitality (V), with good construct validity and internal consistency (Cronbach’s a = .74 [full scale], a = .85 , a = .74, and a = .77 [subscales respectively]). These findings suggest a promising self-report scale demonstrating promising psychometric properties. The PES-PD should be considered for use as an outcome measure, in the planning of employment treatment for PD, and to identify appropriate timing into work. Future research will involve further psychometric evaluation and assessing the clinical utility of the PES-PD.

There is a limited amount of literature that has discussed ways in which older adult learners could be motivated to engage in lifelong learning activities, particularly those in the age groups identified by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) as Stage 3, 50-74 and Stage 4, 75+ (Schuller and Watson, 2010). Currently learners in the UK may face an issue when seeking to join an activity as there is a lack of any collaborative or coherent model of delivery in this sector. This is caused by the fact that providers, such as further and higher education institutions, as well as community and care home providers all operate within separate systems and there is little or no joint provision. Moreover, the rationale of this study argues that, within the context of an ageing society, engaging in learning activities at Stages 3 and 4 can provide older adults with a stimulating experience, which enables them not only to meet their personal growth needs through a positive and meaningful experience of ageing, but also increase their sense of well-being. This study develops a collaborative model of teaching and learning for this age group, based on detailed feedback from learners and educational professionals, which will enable teachers, facilitators and providers to work in a novel collaborative way to improve their learners’ motivation. The study seeks to obtain a fuller understanding of older adults’ learning motivation in the context of Art activities through inductive and evaluative methods. The initial findings revealed that these learners were willing to engage in Art activities with the learning and teaching Model. The benefits from socialising are significant for society, as it enables learners both at Stages 3 and 4 to relax physically and also improve their mental health, for instance by preventing loneliness.

There is an increasing care demand for care home workers have a significant role in meeting residents’ care needs from the admission to a care home up to the end of life. However, there is persistent high care home worker turnover that can negatively impact the quality of care residents receive and care workers’ wellbeing. This thesis aimed to explore care home workers’ perceptions, experiences, and motivations of continuing their work role through the lens of self-determination theory (SDT). The first qualitative study (n=22) explored care workers’ perceptions and experiences of providing care for residents from the admission to the care home up to the end of life. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Participants’ accounts reflected that social interaction had a significant role in facilitating the development of their work identities and encouraging them to remain employed in the care homes. The second study (quantitative, n=207) that built on the findings of study 1 investigated how care home workers’ perceptions towards their work roles, psychosocial attributes, psychological needs, and motivation influence their organisational commitment and job satisfaction using structural equation modelling. The study suggested a contextual significance of satisfying care workers’ psychological needs which then shapes their motivation and influences their organisational commitment and job satisfaction. The third study (qualitative, n=10) that complimented the findings of study 1 and 2 was to understand managers’ perspectives on care workers’ support needs and how they provide support to their care workers in the care homes using thematic analysis. Participants’ accounts reflected that meeting care workers’ autonomy need and enhance the effectiveness of communication between managers and care workers helped convey care home values and the meanings of care work to care workers, foster a positive work environment, and improve teamwork. This thesis contributes to the theoretical understanding of care workers’ work identities and motivations of continuing their care worker role. As a career that is dominated by people and interactions with people, social interaction has a significant role in facilitating care workers to establish their work identities and implement role expectations and the meanings of care work in their care practice, satisfying their psychological needs at work, and experiencing a higher organisational commitment and job satisfaction. This thesis highlights the significance of the consistency in management practices which helps eliminate the incongruences care home workers experienced between their work identities and the real job of caring and facilitate the development and maintenance of a stable and positive care home culture. This thesis has the potential to inform or devise interventions with evidence-based information to enhance care workers’ retention and wellbeing.

This thesis examines three major aspects of international convertible bond offerings, particularly the market reaction and its determinants, the determinants of bookrunner selection in underwriting market and the outcomes of bookrunner selection. These issues are important for a corporate firm to design the best features of convertible bond underwriting contracts to enhance shareholders' wealth and mitigate asymmetric information. These are relevant to the underwriters to understand whether informational advantage gained via reputation and geographic proximity could equip them if more competitive advantage in delivering better underwriting services. Furthermore, financial regulators are benefited from this study to better understand the underwriting market in convertible bond offerings. My research focuses on an overall sample size of 11,350 convertible bond offerings worldwide issued between 1984 and 2015. I analyse the market reaction for different countries, industrial classifications and stated purpose of proceeds following the announcements of convertible bond offerings. I regress the stock price reactions against firm-specific, issue-specific, market-specific, country-specific and investor protection-specific factors. I examine the determinants of domestic, regional and reputable bookrunner selection by regressing them on firm-specific, issue-specific and market-specific. I also examine whether bookrunners with economies of scale advantage are more likely to gain underwriting contracts in convertible bonds. The bookrunner performance is analysed based on the stock price reactions, underwriting fees and offering yields-at-issue. I further explore to investigate the outcome of bookrunner selection across different regions. The findings of this study have important implications for various strands of academic literature. I contribute to reveal that the stock prices of convertible bond issuers react differently to different countries, industrial classifications and stated purpose of proceeds. My results from regression analysis show that the different market reactions are significantly associated by firm-specific, issue-specific, market specific, country-specific and legal system factors. I also contribute to identify the underwriting preferences by corporate treasurers in hiring domestic, regional and reputable bookrunners. This helps underwriters to effectively gain underwriting contracts. This study contributes to two dominant literature on geographic proximate and reputable bookrunner selections in international convertible bond offerings. My findings provides important policy suggestions for issuers and investors to make a better evaluation on the outcomes of both geographical proximate and reputable bookrunners simultaneously in international convertible bond offerings.

AmpB is a polyene macrolide with broad spectrum antifungal activity. Oral delivery of AmpB is desirable because it provides a more patient-friendly mode of administration compared to the current delivery approach akin with the present AmpB formulation. However, none of the attempts to realise this desirability has materialised as yet due to the challenging physicochemical characteristics of AmpB. The advantages of encapsulating a drug within NLCs are well-documented and coupled with the above goal of delivering AmpB orally, a logical addition would be to employ a gastrointestinal retention modality to the NLCs in order to delay transit and maximise absorption. This is in line with the present work which focuses on the formulation and characterisation of a mucoadhesive AmpB-loaded NLC system. The particle size of the uncoated AmpB NLC was 163.1 ± 0.7 nm with a narrow PDI value of 0.19 ± 0.01 and ζ of -42.4 ± 1.2 mV. Upon adsorption of the chitosan coating, the resulting ChiAmpB NLC observed a two-fold increase in particle size, to 348.0 ± 12 nm and reversion of the ζ towards positivity, +24.3 ± 1.4 mV. The adsorption of the chitosan coating was further ascertained through FTIR-ATR analysis which presented two distinctive peaks akin to amide I and II from the chitosan at 1635 and 1539 cm-1 respectively. The NLCs were spherical and well-dispersed under the STEM. The aggregation states and EE of AmpB were dependent on the mode of incorporation of the AmpB during the formulation process. Incorporation of undissolved AmpB during the initial stage of formulation resulted in a higher EE, 83.4 ± 0.7 % and exhibited safer configuration compared to NLC prepared with dissolved AmpB incorporated the final phase of formulation. Furthermore, at 50 mg loading, the ChiAmpB NLC exhibited slow and sustained release of AmpB and with minimal changes in its physical properties upon exposure to different pH conditions compared to the uncoated formulation. The particle size of ChiAmpB NLC remained unchanged upon incubation at pH 1.2 for 2 hours (p = 0.138), whereas AmpB NLC demonstrated 3.8-fold increase in particle size. In contrast to AmpB NLC, ChiAmpB NLC exhibited a higher retention of of AmpB upon exposure to pH 5.8 to 6.8, showing 63.9 ± 2.8 and 56.1 ± 1.8 %, respectively. The mucoadhesion properties of ChiAmpB NLC were evaluated in porcine mucin and based on i) turbidimetric assay and ii) changes in ζ values. ChiAmpB NLC showed positive mucoadhesion results in both assays by virtue of electrostatic interactions with mucin. The ex vivo mucoadhesive study further confirmed the mucoadhesion properties of ChiAmpB NLC with 84.2 ± 5.1 % bound nanoparticles to the rat intestinal tissue, 28.4 % higher than the uncoated AmpB NLC. The antifungal property of AmpB against Candida albicans was enhanced through ChiAmpB NLC and AmpB NLC, showing lower fungal viabilities at low concentration of AmpB. There were no signs of any acute haemolytic effects in both developed formulations in contrast to pure AmpB and Amphotret® formulations. Moreover, the cytotoxicity assay also revealed that the ChiAmpB NLC was relatively non-toxic to HT-29 cells as 99.1 ± 13.4 % of the cells remained viable upon 24-hour incubation. Orally administered ChiAmpB NLC demonstrated a two-fold increase in the AUC0-∞ values as compared to the uncoated AmpB NLC and Amphotret® via the same route of administration. The enhancement in systemic bioavailability of the AmpB following oral administration suggests the possibility of prolonged retention at the small intestine through the mucoadhesive effect and a subsequent absorption through the lymphatic pathway. The ChiAmpB NLC formulation presents potentially a lower risk of nephrotoxicity with higher accumulation in the liver and spleen thus, the limitations of the current formulation of AmpB have not only been addressed but also opens up the possibility of utilising this approach as a targeting strategy to the desired organs for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis disease.

The purpose of this study was to develop a framework for enhancing internship programme in order to improve accounting graduates’ improvisation capacity i.e. the ability to deal with complex and unexpected situations in a creative, entrepreneurial, contextual and professional manner, ability to orient and act in conditions of complexity and temporariness, ability to identify opportunities, and try new approaches on the spot from the perspectives of employer, institution and student. All these dimensions are very important to student and organisation as part of the skills required in order to sustain in high competition business world. The first research gap of this study was to look at the micro perspective i.e. student’s improvisation capacity in internship. The effectiveness of internship has been focussed in worldwide but the researches are mainly focus on the perspectives of the employers, understand effectiveness of internship programme from student’s perspective, identify and explore variations in interns etc. However, there was limited study to look into micro level which is how internship can improve a student’s improvisation capacity. The second research gap identified in the study was lack of empirical study on investigates the factors affecting student/individual/employer improvisation from there perspectives i.e. employer, institution and students. There was a critical need to uncover other factors by studying this problem through different key and how the findings would provide better strategies to improve individual/employers’ capacity on improvisation and hence enhance the effectiveness of internship programme. The last research gap is there is limited published research on develop of framework for enhancing internship programme in Malaysia for accounting students. The literature review on effectiveness of internship programme and some critical reviews of existing internship models have been done. Factors affected individual/employer improvisation also been analysed. This study had successfully produced an initial framework to enhance the effectiveness of internship programme for accounting student in Malaysia which will involve the interaction of three perspectives i.e. employer, institution and student on individual/employer improvisation capacity. iv The sequential mix-methods approach was conducted by exploratory qualitative study on employer and institution, following by quantitative study from accounting graduates who had completed their internship programme. In the qualitative phase, in-depth interviews have been conducted to explore and validate the proposed model of the accounting graduates’ internship effectiveness framework. By incorporating the findings from the qualitative phase, a validated framework, hypotheses and survey instrument will be developed to determine the relationship between the factors and student/employer improvisation from students’ perspective. An online survey has been conducted among accounting students. The data has been analysed using Partial Least Square-Structured Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings of the research will postulate an effective internship model for accounting students in Malaysia.

In this thesis, two kinds of novel overgrowth approaches to achieving high-quality non-polar III-nitrides have been presented, novel multiple-colour structures and non-polar InGaN/GaN LEDs based on the patterned templates have been obtained. Detailed investigation of structure and optical performance have been performed for further validation of our high quality and multiple-function patterned templates.

The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), one of the hallmarks of cancer, is a set of biochemical changes that allow epithelial cells to lose their polarization to transform into mobile mesenchymal cells. Epithelial splicing regulatory proteins 1 and 2 (ESRP1 and 2) are RNA-binding proteins that act as splice factors and regulate a large number of transcripts that promote epithelial characteristics in the cell. Among the genes regulated by ESRPs, fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2) is well-known that has two mutually exclusive exons switching in the EMT. ESRPs were identified as key regulators of EMT during cancer progress. The aim of my project is to reveal ESRPs’ role in prostate cancer. To explore ESRPs’ functions in tumours, I constructed stable PC3 cell lines overexpressing either ESRP1, or ESRP2, or both ESRP1 and 2. These cells were injected in nude mice subcutaneously to grow xenografts, and tumour sizes were measured by calliper. Functional properties of these cells such as cell growth, migration rate, and EMT properties were also measured. As ESRPs regulate splicing of FGFR2 in EMT, I have used a biochromatic reporter whose fluorescent output is dependent on the inclusion/exclusion of FGFR2 exon IIIc. Compounds from the LOPAC library were screened using HEK293 cells with the reporter to find hits that promote exclusion of exon IIIc in FGFR2 splicing and possibly block EMT. Several assays were carried out including cell growth assay, EMT markers staining, cell migration and proliferation assays in vitro. While in vivo, xenografts were developed by injecting PC3 cells in nude mice subcutaneously, and then treated with one of the hit compounds to explore whether it could affect tumour growth. Three chemicals were selected that switch splicing of FGFR2, verified as modulators of EMT by increasing E-cadherin expression and junctional localization, showed different activities in cell functional assays in vitro, and one of them significantly decreased tumour growth in vivo in prostate cancer xenografts mouse models. I have also found that ESRPs overexpression may suppress tumour growth in vivo in prostate cancer xenografts mouse models.

Programmed protein assembly has vast potential in applications as diverse as bioreactors, smart materials and drug delivery. However, to realise this potential, exact control of the assembly process is required. Thus, this thesis describes generic genetically controlled methods to engineer the self-assembly of geometrically designed protein fusions to form user-defined structures. In particular, it shows how designed fusion proteins can be reacted to form fibres and encapsulations via split-intein mediated native chemical ligation in both one-pot and stepwise syntheses. When compatible fusions are mixed, they react quickly via a split-intein mediated native chemical ligation (NCL) to produce peptide bonded products in high yields (75 % yield). The correctly formed products can be purified to high homogeny and were shown to form the intended user-defined structures.

Background/Objectives: According to census statistics of the United Kingdom (UK), people who identify as black Africans are now the largest black community group in Britain as opposed to those who identify as African Caribbean (ONS, 2015) and 2.3% of UK immigrants are Nigerian-born (Migration Observatory, 2017). Previous research reported that BME mothers in the UK do not access clinical and psychological services. Whilst there are a few studies exploring BME mothers’ experiences of Postnatal Depression (PND), there has been no research to date that has exclusively investigated the ‘lived’ experiences of the First Generation Nigerian Mothers (FGNMs) in relation to PND. This study is the first to investigate FGNMs’ postnatal depression experience in the UK. The study aimed to explore how FGNMs living in the UK experience PND, their experiences of available resources/treatment and the way they manage and cope with postnatal depression. Design/Method: A verbatim account of semi-structured interview data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The participants included six FGNMs aged between 30 and 45 who reported being formally diagnosed with PND by their GPs. Findings: Three main themes were generated in the process of the analysis: Sociocultural Factors (this talks about cultural expectations, perceptions of PND and adjusting to a different culture), Neglected Nurturer (this discusses the experiences of treatment) and Loneliness and Coping (this refers to lack of support and explores how PND was managed). Conclusions: The study suggests that the FGNMs encountered difficulties with their diagnosis, treatment and access to service for PND. All mothers felt a sense of cultural pressure and expectation to present as strong and resilient which impacted on early help-seeking. The mothers narrated concerns and negative experiences about how they were treated by healthcare professionals when they sought help and how their psychological needs were neglected, which contradicts previous research suggesting that BME groups do not seek support and are hard to engage. These findings could promote understanding and inform professionals about how to better support these mothers. Implication for clinical practice: The findings of the study suggest the need for healthcare professionals to provide equal and unbiased services and follow guidelines for care and referral in order to effectively treat the FGNMs. There is also need for a culturally-specific and psychosocial intervention rather than a predominantly medical model for supporting the mothers.

Urban surveillance systems will be more demanding in the future towards smart city to improve the intelligence of cities. Big data analytics and processing for urban surveillance systems become increasingly important research areas because of infinite generation of massive data volumes all over the world. This thesis focused on solving several challenging big data issues in urban surveillance systems. First, we proposed several simple yet efficient video data recoding algorithms to be used in urban surveillance systems. The key idea is to record the important video frames when cutting the number of unimportant video frames. Second, since the DCT based JPEG standard encounters problems such as block artifacts, we proposed a very simple but effective method which results in better quality than widely used filters while consuming much less computer CPU resources. Third, we designed a novel filter to detect either the vehicle license plates or the vehicles from the images captured by the digital camera imaging sensors. We are the first to design this kind of filter to detect the vehicle/license plate objects. Fourth, we proposed novel grate filter to identify whether there are objects in these images captured by the cameras. In this way the background images can be updated from time to time when no object is detected. Finally, we combined image hash with our novel density scan method to solve the problem of retrieving similar duplicate images.

Carbon based thin films, such as graphene and graphite are promising materials for environmental sensing due to their chemical and mechanical stability, low-toxicity and selectivity towards certain environmental parameters. The scope of environmental sensing for this project will be limited to sensing of humidity and oxidizing gases for environmental monitoring applications. The most widely used methods to fabricate carbon based thin films rely on either physical transfer of CVD grown graphene films, or the deposition of graphene flakes onto substrates. However, such methods are less compatible with standard semiconductor manufacturing processes. The variations caused by the film transfer (wrinkling, defects, different flake sizes etc) could cause variance in sensing performance which is not ideal. Therefore, we proposed the use of nanocrystalline graphite/graphene (NCG) films deposited with plasma-enhanced CVD (PECVD) onto large area substrate as a potential solution. The PECVD deposited NCG has high grain boundary concentrations, which makes it ideal for sensing applications as the sensing effect is thought to lie in the grain boundaries. At the boundaries, charge transport barrier is formed between two or more conductive nanocrystals. Interactions between elements in the environment may alter the charge transport barrier significantly, thus, causing a measurable change in the conductivity of the film. The PECVD method for NCG deposition was studied with NCG deposited at different substrate temperature to obtain the Arrhenius deposition rate. Electrical characterization and surface characterization were done on each sample to study the effect of deposition temperature on the fabrication of the film. The deposition rate between wafer scale deposition and sample scale deposition was studied, and it was found that on sample scale deposition, the deposition rate is slower than the wafer scale process due to the temperature difference introduced by a carrier wafer in the sample scale production process. The uniformity of the deposition was investigated using ellipsometry. AFM and FESEM images of the deposited films shown that the films consists of graphitic grains which are about 20-40 nm. Here, the sensing behaviour of PECVD NCG towards different gas type is reported for the first time. The sensitivity of NCG towards 3 different gases, NO2, NH3, and CO was shown. The resistance of a strip (30 μm by 3000 μm, with thickness of 34 nm) decreases by 0.663% upon exposure to 10 ppm of NO2, increases by 0.14% upon exposure to CO and increases by 0.1% upon exposure to NH3. The desorption rate for the gas is observed to be slow. The characteristics of resistance change matches that of a p-type semiconducting gas sensor. Using Hall effect measurements, the majority carrier was found to be holes instead of electrons. The humidity sensing performance of PECVD NCG was also demonstrated for the first time in this thesis. Upon exposure to humid air (95% relative humidity), the resistance of the sensor drops 3% (Sensor dimensions 10 μm by 20 mm meandered strip, with thickness of 200 nm). The effect of different geometrical designs on the sensing performance of the NCG humidity sensor was also investigated. A potential application of this device is to incorporate such a sensor in a smart breath monitoring mask which monitors the wearer’s respiration patterns continuously for applications such as health monitoring during physical activities or rest. Tests were carried out to investigate the effects of bodily fluids such as human perspiration and saliva on the reliability of the sensor. The sensor shows great recovery and virtually no degradation to its sensing performance after exposure to KCl solutions.

Glycerin pitch (GP) with an average chemical oxygen demand (COD) of 973,750 mg/L produced from the oleo chemical industries have raised serious disposal problem. GP is the waste collected at the bottom of a distillation column that purifies crude glycerin. In some plants, this waste is mixed with 30% oleo chemical effluent (OCE) before treatment. Costly incineration or slow dosing of GP into conventional wastewater treatment plants are the only currently available treatment methods for GP. No study has been reported on using GP as co-substrate in anaerobic co-digestion (ACD) with OCE in addressing the disposal problem which formed the novelty of this study. Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop a cost effective ACD of GP with OCE. The research conducted including feasibility study, comparison study of ACD of GP with OCE at different digestion ratios, different reactor configurations and pre-treatment of substrate. The results revealed that continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) at an organic loading rate of (OLR) 4 g COD/L.day is chosen as the best option for co-digestion of GP with OCE treatment due to its great enhancement in the reduction of COD, oil and grease (O&G) and other parameters. COD removal of 70% is reported as the maximum degradation efficiency. The excellent performance is well beyond the target set >50% COD removal by the industry. It is concluded that GP as ACD substrate represents a cost-effective alternative to the current waste management technology.

Decidualisation of the endometrium is essential for successful implantation and pregnancy. Central to this is the progesterone-driven differentiation of human endometrial stromal cells (hESC) to secretory decidual cells which is dependent on the up-regulation of the Forkhead box O1 (FOXO1) transcription factor. Vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF) is essential for vascular remodelling in the endometrium and perturbation of VEGF activity can lead to infertility, recurrent miscarriage and preeclampsia. However, little is known about the factors that regulate VEGF activity during ESC decidualisation. To investigate this, primary hESC and the St-T1b cell line were differentiated in vitro to decidual cells, confirmed by the up-regulation of decidual markers including FOXO1. VEGF mRNA and protein production was strongly induced with decidualisation leading to increased angiogenic activity. Interestingly, secretion of soluble Flt-1 receptor (sFlt-1), the physiological inhibitor of VEGF, decreased significantly upon hESC decidualisation. FOXO knock-down or over-expression in hESC showed that FOXO1 up-regulates VEGF, whilst FOXO3A inhibits its expression. FOXO1 increased VEGF promoter activity and in chromatin immunoprecipitation assays bound directly to three sites identified in the VEGF gene promoter in decidual hESC. In contrast, FOXO3A bound the same regions in the VEGF promoter in proliferative and decidual hESC. The Flt-1 receptor was detected on the surface of hESC and maintained during decidualisation. VEGF induced Akt and MAPK kinase signalling and promoted hESC migration and invasion. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that the increased VEGF activity of decidual hESC is a result of FOXO1-driven VEGF expression and concomitant decrease in sFlt-1 secretion. They also highlight an antagonist relationship between FOXO1 and FOXO3A in the control of VEGF expression which may have implications for endometrial and pregnancy-associated disorders.

This thesis consists of three standalone empirical studies examining the operation and intertwining of accounting in the UK television industry. The first study examines the enrolment of auditing during a series of scandals involving the mishandling of premium rate services in UK television. Through a textual analysis of media coverage of the premium rate scandals, the study traces the mobilisation of an audit investigation commissioned by UK broadcaster ITV in the immediate aftermath of the press revelations. Using t'Hart's (1993) framework of symbolic actions, the study illustrates that throughout key phases in the scandal process, ITV strategically used the audit investigation to control the official narrative of the scandals whilst protecting itself from further critical scrutiny. The study contributes to the literature on the role of auditing in crisis management, and how this role is implicated in the construction of organisational scandals and wrongdoing in domains other than financial accounting. The second study turns to the long-lasting consequences of the audit-based responses to the 2007 premium rate scandal. Through an in-depth field study of audience vote verification in the 2017 National Television Awards (NTA), the study explores how audit and assurance ideals are appropriated by agents outside the professional audit field to create a new infrastructure of trust. In doing so, the study draws on Giddens (1990, 1991) to argue that the NTA case can be understood as a mimetic adoption of the expert system of audit. It also elaborates on the implications of expert systems, showing that on the one hand, the dis-embedded nature of audit expertise facilitates its expansion into new domains. On the other hand, it could also result in audit expertise becoming more context dependent and thus more reliant on personal trust rather than systems trust. The third study examines how calculative practices are implicated in understanding and shaping television audiences and their viewing behaviour. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with UK television broadcasters, the study traces the interlinkages between recent Big Data-driven innovations in audience measurement and the desire by broadcasters to exercise control over an increasingly fragmented media audience. It focuses on the practices of enumeration, categorisation and calculation involved in producing knowledge of viewer behaviour, as well as the consumerist ethos underpinning such practices. The study's empirical context of cultural consumption in the everyday private sphere lends itself to a relatively novel application of the governmentality thesis by Miller and Rose (1990). Taken together, the three studies in this thesis illustrate how issues of accounting are deeply implicated in the shaping of contemporary television. In so doing, they seek to further an understanding of accounting and the social. They also highlight the significant governance potential of media content and events, and the role of accounting therein.

Haemophilia A is an X-linked monogenic disorder which has showcased the significant potential of gene therapy with long term Factor VIII (FVIII) expression following a single intravenous administration of adeno-associated Virus (AAV). There remains a critical unmet need in patients who develop neutralising antibodies to Factor VIII (FVIII) (inhibitors), resulting in significant morbidity and mortality and for whom current AAV gene therapies are unsuitable. Using the sequence of emicizumab, a bispecific full-length IgG4 antibody which acts as an activated FVIII (FVIIIa) mimetic, I generated a novel bispecific structure utilising single chain variable fragments linked in tandem ('Bit8'). In vitro testing of Bit8 confirmed functional activity as demonstrated by the conversion of Factor X (FX) into activated FX (FXa), which persisted in the presence of FVIII inhibitors. Iterative optimisation through inter-scFv linker and heavy-light chain rearrangements identified a lead candidate with enhanced FXa generation and was further characterised using thrombin generation and chromogenic assays and by SPR. The optimal Bit8 construct was inserted into an AAV expression cassette with resulting transduction in the HUH7 hepatoma cell line demonstrating both secretion and functional activity. Wild type and haemophilia A knockout mice were injected with AAV-Bit8 constructs demonstrating successful transduction into liver and protein expression in vivo. However tail clip assays failed to show significant reductions in bleeding which may be related to relatively low levels of protein expression and is further explained therein. Despite the advances in gene therapy for haemophilia A, additional strategies for making this revolutionary treatment are needed, and this work shows exciting promise as a pilot study in haemophilia in preclinical studies, with new scientific challenges to overcome.

This dissertation positions itself in relation to the long-running dialogue between philosophy and literature as it has evolved in recent decades. It is a study of how the kind of sometimes immersive, sometimes perplexing uncertainty involved in reading literary texts can be seen as exemplary of and an analogue to the mystery of lived experience, embodied as it is in the human other; and how a critical engagement with this aspect of the reading process might inform the way we conduct our ethical relations. Refracting this matter through the lens of aesthetic form, I draw on the work of a range of thinkers-including Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Simone Weil, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Roland Barthes-to read the novels of Iris Murdoch, Ann Quin, Aidan Higgins, Alan Hollinghurst, and Ali Smith. Through a discussion of these fictional works of romantic love, I posit a new kind of ethical, loving attention to the world that respects and responds to the mystery inherent in experience. The thesis begins by redefining ethics, in light of modern intellectual thought, as always exceeding morality. This facilitates the adjustment of the parameters of ethical inquiry in order to reclaim space for the aesthetic. Framing ethics as a problem of aesthetic form, the thesis goes on to consider the implications of this proposition by examining what constitutes an ethical image. Concluding that an aspect of blindness is essential to ethical perspective, the potential of literary works to illuminate this notion of blindness-as-seeing is then considered and a category of literature, blind literature, is proposed as a kind of writing which exemplifies it. The thesis concludes by considering how this newly defined ethical perspective might be seen to constitute an aesthetic activity that takes place in part in the dark and is a formal accomplishment of beauty.