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In this thesis, the most important argument is that cultural diplomacy can maintain, enhance and even create state trust, at the same time, the effectiveness of cultural diplomacy can influence state trust building. This research is an in-depth, empirical study of the linkage between cultural diplomacy and state trust, and this thesis aims to explore whether the effectiveness of cultural diplomacy could influence state trust building or not, particularly in the relationship between China and the UK. More generally, this research has three key themes: first, it establishes the conceptualisation of cultural diplomacy and state trust by discussing the thoughts from different schools and proposing new perspectives rather than simply looking at the arguments from scholars; second, it puts forward five indicators of existing state trust and five factors that influence the effectiveness of cultural diplomacy in state trust building; third, it explicitly explores the situation of state trust building by looking at the development and effectiveness of cultural diplomacy in both China and the UK. With the re-emergence of approaches towards soft power in global politics, there comes a growing interest in the potential power of cultural diplomacy. As it is being regarded as the emerging state with great power, China is trying to seek a “soft” path of facilitating harmonious development to thereafter shoulder the responsibility and reshape its national image. In addition, the United Kingdom was one of the earliest states to carry out programs of cultural diplomacy and has already achieved outstanding progress. Therefore, under the grand background of “Golden Era” (Xi, 2015) between China and the UK, improvements of their relationship could be witnessed from many areas. Also, it is a good opportunity to examine whether the state trust level between them might increase or otherwise by taking cultural diplomacy as the main contributor.

Millimetre and sub-millimetre wave systems have been applied in many areas, such as radio astronomy, remote sensing of the atmosphere, plasma diagnostics, material exploration. A Quasi-optical Network (QoN) is the most efficient approach to transport signals within such systems. The Gaussian beam summation method has proven to be a useful ray-tracing-based solution in designing the complex configurations of QoNs. An efficient approach, diffracted Gaussian beam analysis (DGBA) has been developed at Queen Mary, University of London. However, this version of DGBA can be only used for a 2.5-D analysis, for the following reasons: (1) the input Gaussian beams (GBs) should be stigmatic (circular); (2) all incident beams are approximated as normally incident, unable to treat oblique polar angles of incidence. So in this regard, there is a need to develop a 3D treatment of diffraction in DGBA. In this thesis, a 3D diffracted GB approach (3D-DGBA) to the analysis of multireflector QoNs is presented. This new approach expands the input beam/field into a set of elementary GBs by using windowed Fourier transforms (WFT). The ensuing GBs propagate to the reflector. Reflected and diffracted beams are respectively handled by a phase-matching method and a 3D GB diffraction method. In addition, it is modular and suitable for analysis of large, multi-element, QoNs. A specific design procedure of multi-path, multi-reflector, QoNs is presented and two different kinds of dual-path QoNs are built and assessed. By analysing one of these QoNs, the new 3D-DGBA approach is verified experimentally, as well as compared to the original DGBA and GRASP predictions. It is observed that 3D-DGBA is more accurate than the original DGBA. For example, in one of the simulated cases, the farfield deviation between 3D-DGBA and GRASP within 20˚ stays in the range of ±8.0 dB in comparison with ±23.0 dB of the original DGBA.

This thesis presents a comprehensive work on computerised analysis of fetal heart rate (FHR) features, including feature extraction, feature selection, analysis of influencing factors and setting up/validation of a computerised decision support system. Firstly, a novel feature – pattern readjustment – was extracted and tested. Clinical data were used to train a Support Vector Machine (SVM) to detect pattern readjustment. Then, the association of pattern readjustment and adverse labour outcome was investigated. The validation results with clinical experts show that the pattern readjustment can be accurately detected, while the study on labour outcome shows that the feature is related to fetal acidemia at birth. Secondly, Genetic Algorithms were employed as a feature selection method to select a best subset of FHR features and to use them to predict fetal acidemia with linear and nonlinear SVM. The diagnostic power of the classifier output using selected features was tested on the total set of 7,568 cases. As the classifier output increases, there is a consistent increase of the risk of fetal acidemia. Thirdly, an important influencing factor on FHR features - signal loss – was investigated. A bivariate model was built to estimate error based on signal loss. Validation results show that the bivariate model can accurately predict the error generated by signal loss. The influence of signal loss on labour outcome classification was also investigated. Finally, a computerised decision support system to estimate the risk of fetal acidemia was set up based on the above studies. The system was validated using new retrospective data. Validation results show that the system is capable of predicting adverse labour outcome and providing timely decision support. It is the first time an intrapartum computerised FHR decision support system has been built and validated on this size of dataset. With further improvements, such a system could be implemented clinically in the long term.