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This thesis is a history of the flint glass makers and their unionAn the period between 1850 and 1880. The thesis attempts to throw light both on the flint glass makers and on the concept of Labour aristocraoy. Part one is an analysis of the flint glass makers at the point of production. After giving some account of the flint glass industry, the peculiarity of the work situation is examined; the produotion processq hours of workq methods of wage payments and other working conditions. Wage differentials between different groups of glass makers are analysed as a necessary condition for the formation of the Labour aristocracy. In particular, an attempt is made to reconstruct the life time experience of the glass makers. Special attention is paid to the relationship between glass makersp glass cutters and bottle makers. Part two comprises a detailed investigation of the structure and policies of the Flint Glass Makers Friendly Society in which it is argued that although the Society was a "New Model" Union as the Webbs labelled it, it did not always behave in accordance with Webbian notions of "New-Model" activities.

A theoretical and experimental study has been made of propagation in multimode optical fibre. The fibre used in the experiments mainly consists of a capillary of ME1 glass filled with hexachlorobuta-1,3-diene. The main topics considered in this thesis are single-mode propagation and mode conversion effects due to bending, undulation and stress or strain. A measured pulse dispersion of less than 0.4ns/km has been achieved. A contributing factor is the high-loss cladding which results in a preferential mode filtering of higher-order modes so that the pulse dispersion for a beam of high launching angular width is reduced for a relatively small increase in attenuation. Pulse dispersion and mode conversion are not strong functions of bending and undulation of the fibre, but strongly depend on stress or strain. The graded-index fibre has also been considered and its pulse dispersion is predicted to be half that of the pulse dispersion of the liquid-core fibre.

The extreme conditions of density and temperature make the Universe around the initial moment of the Big-Bang, an extraordinary laboratory for probing poorly understood physics, mixing quantum and general relativity phenomena. The physics of the early Universe can be studied through the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest observable "light'" in the Universe. The CMB temperature has been mapped recently with unprecedented precision by the Planck satellite. However, its full potential in testing fundamental physics lies in measurements of its polarization at high resolution and sensitivity. This will be unlocked for the first time with current and future ground-based and space-based observatories. The main goal is to discover the imprint of inflation, when the Universe expanded by an incredibly large factor during a fraction of a second around the time of the Big Bang. Inflation models predict the production of stochastic gravitational waves which distorted spacetime while propagating through the Universe, and generated an observable parity-violating signature in the polarization of the CMB, the so-called B-mode polarization. This nano-Kelvin signal is quantified by the tensor-to-scalar ratio parameter r. Current limits are given by the BICEP/Keck ground experiments, and the goal of the community is to achieve an accuracy at the level of 10-3 within a few years. The potential of primordial B-modes to help identify what prompted inflation, whilst also investigating physics at grand unification energy scales, makes the search for this faint CMB polarization signal one of the most compelling goals of modern cosmology. However, with the capabilities of next-generation experiments, the large leap in detector count and experiment complexity introduce challenges to current methods. Some of these challenges are intrinsically computational: to explore the enormous datasets, we must develop sufficiently reliable and efficient data analysis pipelines to extract features from the observations. Other challenges are algorithmic, including the selection of optimal ways to disentangle the CMB signal of interest from foregrounds and to mitigate systematic errors. This in turn imposes stringent requirements on the instrument design and calibration. Tackling these challenges is the focus of my research. This thesis presents several methods for foreground cleaning and mitigation of instrument systematics, that allow for unbiased measurements of the CMB B-mode polarisation power spectrum, that can be used for cosmological parameter estimation. These methods have been devised for the Simons Observatory (SO) and LiteBIRD satellite and are adaptable to a variety of CMB experiments. I present two new methods for component separation in the presence of spatial variations in Galactic foreground spectral properties and their impact on parameter inference: a moment expansion method and a hybrid method, which is an extension of the former. Both these methods account for spatial variability while recovering unbiased constraints on r in the presence of complex foregrounds and noise. Through the development of these methods, I also contributed significantly to the SO cross-spectrum analysis pipeline, which became SO's main Small Aperture Telescope forecast likelihood pipeline. This work led to the discovery that the moments-based method is currently the most promising avenue for SO. I also present a study on the precision of angular position measurement of the half-wave plate (HWP) polarisation modulation unit for LiteBIRD, for which I developed a simulation pipeline to mitigate the propagation of HWP systematic effects to final constraints. This study is part of an instrument systematic mitigation campaign that is crucial for the success of the next-generation CMB experiments.

In Hawai‘i, arsenic (As) is present in significant amounts in some soils due to past use of arsenical herbicides and pesticides. Soil physical properties and oxidation-reduction conditions strongly control the solubility and mobility of As, affecting leaching into ground and surface waters, plant uptake, and bioaccessibility. The solubility, phytoavailability, and mobility of arsenic under greater reducing conditions was investigated for two Hawai‘i soils high in As, an Ola‘a Andisol and Leilehua Ultisol. In an incubation experiment, solution arsenic and iron concentrations varied widely, and did not vary significantly according to soil, treatment, redox potential, pH, or time of incubation. Experimental error or microbial populations may have been responsible for the inconsistent concentrations measured. In an experiment assessing phytoavailability, watercress (Nasturtium officinale) grown in flooded soils high in arsenic contained significant amounts of As in the edible tissues. A leaching column experiment examined the effects of vermicompost, rock phosphate, and FeSO4 with lime on the mobility of As in a Leilehua Ultisol. Addition of rock phosphate and vermicompost increased solution As concentration compared to the control, while addition of FeSO4 with lime decreased solution As concentration.

Most of current and future Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation experiments are targeting the polarized B-mode signal. The small amplitude of this signal makes a successful measurement challenging for current technologies. Therefore, very accurate studies to mitigate and control possible systematic effects are vital to achieve a successful observation. An additional challenge is coming from the presence of polarized Galactic foreground signals that contaminate the cosmological signal. When they are combined, the foreground signals dominate the polarized CMB signal at almost every relevant frequency. Future experiments, like the LiteBIRD space-borne mission, aim at measuring the CMB B-mode signal with high accuracy to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio r at the 10−3 level. In this thesis, after briefly introducing the science case, the LiteBIRD mission and some of its key technologies, we focus on a few systematic effects concerning mostly the band-pass response. In this context we present novel studies to determine the impact of band-pass uncertainties on the data. Good control over the response of the superconductive detector is another key ingredient for the success of the mission. We present our modelling of the detector response and a framework to study non-linearity effects due to thermal and optical loading fluctuations. Lastly, we present results of detector characterization using a test-bed under development that will be used to further our understanding of the interaction between various telescope sub-systems.

Four different studies of acoustic liners and measurement techniques are presented in this thesis. The titles of these investigations are as follows:The possible use of bulk absorbers in engine nacelle linersThe effect of transwall sound propagation in the honeycomb core of an acoustic linerThe potential of piezzo-electric actuators to control the impedance of single layer linersThe development of the multi modal acoustic measurement technique in the flow duct A wide range of previously published work on physical and prediction models for bulk absorbers was studied. An empirical correlation of the impedance established by M. E. Delany and E. N. Bazley was chosen for the impedance computation. With this method, the impedance of bulk absorbers was computed with several configurations. Then, the sound suppression data for bulk absorbers in a fan-exhaust duct of a high bypass turbofan engine were calculated and compared to the corresponding suppression data for conventional liners.New liner samples were designed and fabricated to investigate the effects of the transwall sound propagation in the honeycomb core of a single layer acoustic liner. A method for impedance measurement with grazing incident sound was specifically developed for this investigation. This method is based on the two-dimensional wave propagation theory. Experiments were conducted to observe the validity of the new measurement method.The potential use of a piezzo-electric actuator device for active control of the acoustic impedance of a single layer acoustic liner was also studied. The absorption coefficient of the device was measured in the wave tube with phase differences between the incident sound and the device excitation signal. Results showed that the absorption coefficient could be improved by adjusting the phase and the amplitude of the excitation signal for the piezoelectric actuator.Finally, a multi modal measurement technique with 16 transducers was developed. This technique will be used for acoustic measurements in a flow duct apparatus. The method was tested in a prototype duct which had the same cross section as the flow duct. The sudden change of the energy flux at cut-on frequency and the energy reduction by the sound absorber were observed. As these results agreed with what was expected from theory, it was concluded that the method was properly established.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether N-3 fatty acids intake would correlate with a prevalence of mental distresses. The present study consisted of a comprehensive literature review and analysis of preexisting data that were relevant to this study. Two data were primarily used in the assessment. These were the 1994 study of Media and Markets by Simmons Market Research Bureau, Inc. for food intakes, and the report of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) for the prevalence of Frequent Mental Distress. Due to incompatibility of those two studies additional data- the U.S. population estimates for regions and states by selected age and sex group: annual series, July 1, 1990 -was included in order to make the first two data comparable. The data were independently analyzed for more sensitive analysis. From the descriptive results, the overall regional prevalence of Frequent Mental Distress was the lowest in the Midwest and highest in the West. The South region that exhibited the highest prevalence of mental distress showed the lowest in food intakes. The analysis of mental distress based on age-sex groups showed significant differences among regions except one age-sex group (Male aged 45 to 64 years). Thus, there were significant differences among regions in terms of the prevalence of mental distress, but I could not make a conclusion that the food consumptions might contribute to the regional differences in the prevalence of frequent mental distress because there were no correlation between them observed in this study.

Abe Tomoji (1903-1973) was a Japanese novelist who entered the literary field as a modernist. He had a strong background in English literature. This thesis concerns Tomoji's literary activities from 1925 through the late 1930s, in which his literary foundation of modernism, humanism and social criticism was established. The thesis consists of four chapters: an introduction to the man and his works, examination of early works, discussion of his literary theories of the 1930s, and an examination of Fuyu no yado (A Place to Winter), 1936. The appendices include my translation of his debut work, Nichi-Doku taiko kyogi ("The Japan-Germany Athletic Games”), written in 1930, as well as a full chronology of the author's life. The thesis centers on Tomoji's most important novel in the pre-war period, Fuyu no yado, which showcases the fruit of his literary activities until its appearance. It became the foundation upon which his post-war writings of humanistic social criticism arose.