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In this thesis and accompanying portfolio, I show how my compositional practice proposes the disembodied speaking voice as musical material that yields new compositional avenues. Unlike the singing voice, the speaking voice has an ambiguous connection to music. Does it suggest, even demand new musical material and forms, which deviate from dialectical and teleological musical structures? When this voice is no longer physical, but rather disembodied, does this compound the ambiguity? I explore three divergent approaches to selecting, generating, and structuring text for disembodied speaking voices, which unmoor the voice from the musical paradigms of literary, lyrical, and poetic texts; and from the linear narratives typically associated with music. My practice eschews these, investigating found text and lists; verbatim and paraphrased documentary material; and stream-of-consciousness free-writing; all of which might break with narrative or semantic meaning. The deployment of these texts calls into question the function of the disembodied voice. I thus trace an evolving view of the perception of the voice as a cinematic narrator, a radiophonic character, an apparently supernatural presence, an audio caption for the accompanying music, a material sonic object, or as the reflexive presence of the composer themselves. This leads towards a notion of sonic self-portrait in my most recent work, brought about through specific kinds of uses of recordings of my own voice. These approaches are preceded and contextualised by a framework in which I consider extra-musical models and theories from cinema and artists' film, radiophonic work and the everyday sphere of vox ex machina automated voices, with reference to a wide range of analogous and contrasting approaches in works by other composers and sound artists. A second layer of contextualisation is provided by my proposal of a categorisation of types of macro- and micro-structural relationships between speaking voices and music. These range from an entirely separate, discrete presentation of voice and musical material to scenarios in which the voice alone is presented as musical material.

This is a thesis on theoretical cosmology. The first and largest part is a study of cosmic strings, in particular their dynamics and signals in higher dimensional spacetimes. The second part is a study of black holes in a quintessence background. Cosmic strings are predicted by models of the early universe. They were thought to arise, originally, from Grand Unified Theories, and more recently from brane inflationary models based in string theory. In Chapter 3 we find exact solutions for cosmic string loop trajectories in higher dimensions, and find the regions of parameter space for which cusps exist. We find that winding the internal dimensions slows the average velocity of string loops, and conjecture that the periodicity of internal space may contribute to self-intersections. In Chapter 4, we calculate the gravitational wave signal from cosmic string cusps in higher dimensions, and find it is much reduced relative to the 4D case. The main reason for this is the large reduction in the probability of cusps occurring on loops in higher dimensions, as well as a slight reduction in signal from individual cusps. In Chapter 5, we study cosmic string trajectories in warped spacetimes, such as may be found in realistic brane inflation models. We find that contrary to claims in the literature, the warping of the internal space does not prevent the internal motion of strings. The energy associated with the warping of spacetime means that the energy of a loop appears to change over time from our 4D perspective. Finally, in Chapter 6, we find an analytic, general-relativistic solution describing a black hole in a quintessence universe. Quintessence is a model of late-time cosmic acceleration in which expansion is sourced by a scalar field. Our solution shows the interaction between this scalar field and a black hole. The scalar field is shown to continue its cosmological "rolling" behaviour everywhere, including on the black hole event horizon, and the black hole is shown slowly to accrete scalar field. This is a perturbative solution valid throughout all of space but only over a finite period of time.

Kir6.1 and Kir6.2 display several key differences in characteristics e.g. Kir6.2 can open spontaneously upon removal of inhibitory nucleotides while Kir6.1 cannot. Residues responsible for some of these disparate properties have been mapped to the N-terminus of Kir6.0. Mutant cDNAs for these subunits were created where amino acid(s) were taken from one isoform and replaced with the corresponding residue(s) from the other. The whole cell and inside-out patch clamp techniques were used to assess the current density, spontaneous opening, ATP sensitivity and unitary conductance of these mutant channels. All mutants showed similar current density to their parent channels, suggesting similar expression. One mutant, which exchanged residues 15-17 of Kir6.2 (TRL) for ARI, had significantly lower conductance than wild type, possibly due to allosteric modulation of the conduction pathway. Simultaneous mutation of a group of residues from Kir6.2 (S37A, K39S, N41A and V44L) reduced relative activation, a measure of spontaneous opening. However, mutation of these residues individually had no effect, suggesting that they interact to affect spontaneous opening in wild type channels. 14-3-3 are a family of chaperone and scaffold proteins shown to interact with several ion channels both functionally and during expression. 14-3-3 ε and ζ have been implicated in expression of KATP channels. To try and address the poor expression of Kir6.1-based channels, 14-3-3 ε and ζ were co-expressed with KATP channels. No effect was seen with any 14-3-3 isoforms co-expressed with Kir6.1. However, 14-3-3 ε significantly increased current density of Kir6.2/SUR2A channels. Co-expression of 14-3-3 ε and ζ attenuated this effect. The disparate effects of different combinations of these 14-3-3 isoforms suggest that their dimerisation may play a role in the effect seen here.

This thesis considers the Iron Age coinages found in hoards within a particular study area in northern East Anglia. The study area was widely defined to attempt to capture all the coins considered by previous scholars to belong to the Iron Age tribe, the Iceni. Other coins of the Iceni outside the study area found in hoards are also considered. The historical context and previous numismatic research on these coins is reviewed. All coin hoards within the study area are fully described and reviewed, and two hoards are presented as detailed case studies, including a die study on the largest number of Iron Age hoard coins yet undertaken. A classification of the coin series is given, with each coin type fully described, illustrated, and photographed. The distribution of the coin hoards within and outside the study area is considered, results discussed and conclusions drawn. A chronology is suggested for the coin types and for the deposition of the hoards. The manufacture and minting of the coins is discussed and suggestions for mint sites given. Finally, a number of detailed conclusions are drawn.

Global soils are the largest terrestrial store of carbon, and are sensitive to changes in the Earth's climate system due to anthropogenic emissions of CO₂. Predicted changes in soil carbon by Earth System Models (ESMs) represent the greatest uncertainty in quantifying future projections of land carbon storage under climate change. Reducing this uncertainty is vital to achieve accurate future projections of global climate change and to successfully mitigate against its effects. The Coupled-Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) includes the latest ESMs, as used within the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report (IPCC AR6). Model development since the previous CMIP generation (CMIP5) has aimed to improve the representation of soil carbon related processes within ESMs, and reduce the uncertainty associated with predicted soil carbon change. On top of model development, additional methods such as emergent constraints suggest promise to constrain future uncertainties associated with soil carbon under climate change. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate and analyse soil carbon in CMIP6 ESMs to help quantify future soil carbon changes, and to attempt to reduce uncertainty in future soil carbon projections. Although some improvements are found in CMIP6 compared to CMIP5, significant uncertainties still remain, especially in the below ground processes that determine the effective soil carbon turnover time (Varney et al., 2022). The uncertainty in projected soil carbon stocks is found to be result of counteracting terms due to increasing Net Primary Productivity (NPP) and reductions in soil carbon turnover time (τ), as well as a significant non-linearity between NPP and τ. In the research presented in this thesis, a novel spatial emergent constraint is developed to constrain the subsequent changes in soil carbon due to reductions in τ under global warming (Varney et al., 2020). Comparison to the more standard breakdown of carbon storage changes into linear terms representing the response to changes in CO₂ and global temperature, reveals that there are significant reductions in τ under increasing CO₂, even in the absence of climate change. This effect is traced to 'false priming', which is especially prevalent in the CMIP6 models, and acts to reduce the spread in projected soil carbon changes in CMIP6 compared to CMIP5. These findings suggest some promising avenues for future research.