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Embryonic movements play an important role in joint development. Multiple animal model studies on embryos have shown that absent or abnormal musculature affect aspects of skeletal development, such as joint shape formation, joint cavitation and mineralisation. However, joint morphogenesis is the least researched aspect of joint development. In this doctoral dissertation, embryonic mouse forelimbs and hindlimbs at developmental stage (Theiler Stage) TS23 with normal, reduced, or absent muscle, and embryonic forelimbs and hindlimbs at TS24 and TS27 with normal or absent muscle were imaged in three dimensions. Virtual segmentation of skeletal rudiments and rigid image registration to reliably align rudiments with each other were performed, enabling repeatable assessment and measurement of joint shape differences. The shoulder, elbow, hip and knee joint shapes between normal, reduced muscle and absent muscle groups at TS23 were assessed. So were the differences in joint shape and mineralisation between normal and absent muscle embryos at TS24 and TS27. Cavitation in normal and muscleless-limb joints at TS24 and TS27 was also studied. It was shown that joint shapes are differentially affected by reduced or absent skeletal muscle with the elbow joint being the most affected. Surprisingly, reduced muscle often affected joint shape more than absent muscle, highlighting a complex interplay between muscle mass and joint morphogenesis. Counter intuitively, it was found that - as development progressed - when skeletal muscle was absent, different joints had recovered their shapes at different degrees. Hindlimb joints had completely recovered and the proportion of mineralisation of the muscleless-limb rudiments was similar to that of the same stage control rudiments at TS27. Uncavitated muscleless-limb joints at TS24 had not cavitated much or at all at TS27. These findings uncover complex interactions between skeletal development and muscle contractions and are relevant to human developmental disorders of the skeleton implicating abnormal fetal movements.

The global economic system has undergone fundamental changes in the last two decades due to the proliferation of free trade agreements, the deepening of the European Union (EU) integration process and increased foreign direct investments (FDI) altering the economic landscape across and within countries. This thesis aims to improve our understanding of the effects of trade and outward FDI across three dimensions. By examining the effects on the domestic industry, and by detecting the regional footprint in terms of growth and the skill composition of labour markets, the empirical findings offer a multi-faceted and multi-level analysis with evidence from South America and the EU. This thesis is structured into an introductory chapter and three analytical papers. The first paper explores the effects of import competition on the manufacturing sector in Chile following the implementation of the country’s two most important Free Trade Agreements with the USA and China. The findings reveal that increased import penetration from China and USA has highly heterogeneous effects with Chinese trade creating more pronounced substitution effects for the domestic industry than trade with USA. The analysis sheds new light on the importance of foreign investment and export intensity – in reversing the negative import substitution effect - due to the opportunities offered from the participation in Global Value Chains. The second paper examines the link between trade and economic growth across the regional income distribution in Greece, during the period after the country joined the European Monetary Union (EMU) incorporating the global economic crisis period. The aim of the analysis is to identify heterogeneous trade effects across the regional income hierarchy. Among the original contributions of this study is that contrary to the prevailing view, EU trade appears negative for the more economically advanced regions and has insignificant effects on lower income regions; while global trade and EU trade differ significantly in their respective growth returns across the income distribution. Finally, the third paper empirically investigates the association between increased outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and the evolution of the occupational composition at the regional level for Greece, a small peripheral EU economy. The emergence of Greece as an international investor in the Balkan region constitutes an interesting setting of a peripheral EU country investing in peripheral new EU member states and reveals the strong spatial footprint on the occupational structure of home regions, offering valuable policy implications for countries in pre-EU accession phases.

The Balkans have always been the arena for war competitors, and diplomatic relations in which Western Europe has always played a crucial part. After the collapse of communism and the dividing wall between Western and Eastern Europe, the Balkans have been for one more time the "powder keg" of Europe. The Yugoslav crisis reveals the always existing nationalistic tensions and minority problems which in combination with the poor economy of the area prevented the ex-communist countries from an easy transition to democracy and a market economy. AlulOugh the EC/u reacted immediately to the crisis, it failed to prevent the conflict. The European institutions performed the initial diplomatic activities but the whole enterprise turned out to be something more than a "simple" conflict management, or the perfect opportunity for the EC/u to define its respective role in the changing international environment. A solution to the conflict was prevented not only because of the complexity of the conflict itself, but also because of the specific perceptions of the international actors who were involved. Therefore, in order to understand the management of the conflict it is important to decode the complex role performed by the ECIU. In order to understand this role (of the EU) we have to analyse the factors that influenced and shaped the interests and perceptions of the three main member states of EU, i.e. Britain, France and Germany. The theory that is used in order to explain this is the "rationalistic research tradition", which adopts three approaches (Neorealism, Institutionalism and liberal Intergovemmentalism) that will be applied to explain the European response to the Yugoslav conflict. Therefore, after a brief chronological account of the conflict, a theoretically-informed interpretation of the position of the European players in it is provided that illuminates in depth the contribution of the ECIU in the management of the conflict. The main core of this thesis is devoted to the analysis of the position of France, Britain and Germany in the debates over the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia and the military intervention that took place throughout the management of the conflict, bearing in mind three sets of influences on state interests and perceptions, i.e. the relative power, the influence of institutional membership within the European Union and the interaction between domestic and international constraints. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the explanatory power of the three approaches used in the analysis.

This thesis investigates the implementation of asynchronous circuits and asynchronous computer architectures. In the area of asynchronous circuits, it proposes the direct-mapped approach to control circuit design, originally devised by Hollaar, mapped to CMOS technology. In the area of asynchronous computer architecture, it investigates scalable, concurrent computer architectures, with the aim of solving the problems of scaling performance and utilising the increasing device count. The design and implementation of two hardware structures, Shared Register Files and mnet (micronet) architectures is detailed, together with their incorporation into the design of an asynchonous prototype processor, the A1 chip. The Shared Register File approach provides a scalable and segmented datapath by partitioning the conventional monolithic register file into multiple register files which physically share registers. Communication and synchronisation between the shared register files takes place via the shared register. This approach can be used to implement a clustered uniprocessor or a single-chip multiprocessor system. The shared register file approach allows for the exploitation of program level concurrency, where different parts of the same program or different programs can run on the different shared register file datapaths. The design and implementation of shared register files is presented. The mnet approach is a methodology for asynchronous processor design, which allows fine-grain instruction level parallelism to be exploited. It implements a processor architecture as a non-linear pipeline with inputs at every pipeline stage. In this way, a mnet architecture exploits more fine-grain parallelism than a conventional pipelined architecture. The design and implementation of generic, scalable mnet architecture is described and evaluated.

An experimental investigation was conducted to study rotor pitch damping in hover, axial flight (climb speed to tip speed ratios: 0 - 0.549), and low speed forward flight (advance ratios: 0.05 - 0.088), for a variation in rotor thrust coefficient 0.001 - 0.013, and for the range of flapping frequency ratios squared 1.0 - 1.11. The tests were conducted at the following oscillation ratio frequencies, (frequency of oscillation divided by rotor angular speed), 0.186 for hover and axial flight and 0.1068 for low speed forward flight and in hover for the case of flapping frequency equal to unity. The nature of the damping of the rig was investigated since it was found that frictional effects contaminated the estimates of the rotor aerodynamic damping. To do this a parameter estimation method, based on a nonlinear minimisation procedure, was developed that does not require a large amount of data to identify the viscous and frictional damping coefficients from the free response of the rotor. A theoretical model for low frequency coupled rotor body dynamics was developed and the effects of rotor and inflow degrees of freedom on rotor damping were investigated. Results indicate that both rotor and inflow degrees of freedom are required in the mathematical description of low frequency coupled rotor-body dynamics for the adequate estimation of rotor damping. The dynamic inflow degrees of freedom were described by using momentum theory and by assuming a nonuniform distribution for the steady induced velocity given by a Glauert wake. A blade flexibility study was conducted to define the flapping frequency for blade-linear spring configurations producing both time invariant and time dependent boundary conditions at the spring location. Comparison of theoretical damping estimates with the experimental data in hover and axial flight show that at oscillation ratio frequency 0.186, the no-inflow model is in reasonable agreement with the experimental data and that the inclusion of dynamic inflow theory produces no improvement in the experimental data correlation. In hover and in low speed forward flight at oscillation frequency ratio 0.1068, the inclusion of dynamic inflow theory provides an improvement in the experimental data correlation indicating that for these conditions inflow degrees of freedom are also required for the adequate prediction of rotor pitch damping.

Cultural body dissatisfaction concerns salient to ethnic minority women are often unrecognized or overlooked by researchers and healthcare providers conditioned to view body dissatisfaction as synonymous with weight dissatisfaction. A culturally-inclusive understanding of body dissatisfaction has broad implications for better identifying individuals at risk for developing eating disorders and comorbid conditions, reforming etiological frameworks of eating pathology and body image disturbance, increasing efficacy of preventative approaches and treatment interventions, and decreasing ethnic health disparities. The purposes of the current investigation are twofold; to illustrate the salience of cultural body dissatisfaction concerns and weight-focused body dissatisfaction concerns among a sample of Black, Latina, Asian, and White female undergraduate students, and to explore the extent to which ethnic group membership, BMI, sociocultural appearance-related pressure (i.e., family, peers, and media), weight-focused body dissatisfaction concerns, and cultural body dissatisfaction concerns predict eating disorder symptomology, body dysmorphia, and cosmetic surgery attitudes among ethnic minority participants. MANCOVA analyses and hierarchical linear regressions were used to analyze data obtained from online survey responses of 313 diverse undergraduate women. Results illustrated the presence of statistically significant differences in levels of endorsement on both cultural and weight-focused body dissatisfaction concerns between ethnic groups, specifically for cultural size and shape concerns, skin tone and facial features, the hourglass ideal, eye concerns, and thin ideal internalization. Both cultural and weight-focused body dissatisfaction concerns emerged as significant predictors for eating disorder symptomology, however, weight-focused concerns played no significant role in relation to body dysmorphia or cosmetic surgery attitudes among ethnic minority participants. The cultural concerns shown to be statistically significant predictors among participants of color for body dysmorphia and attitudes towards cosmetic surgery were cultural size and shape concerns and the hourglass ideal. The absence of cultural components from body image investigations and screening measures hinders the ability to reliably and holistically comprehend how body dissatisfaction presents and influences the actions, attitudes, and development of body and eating comorbidities affecting ethnically diverse women. Recognition of cultural body dissatisfaction concerns could help reduce ethnic health disparities in identification and treatment of body image disturbance and eating pathology impacting the American healthcare system.

Despite high reports of body-image related pathology in Latinas, how traditional cultural factors contribute to body dissatisfaction and eating disorder etiology is unknown. Current conceptualizations of eating disorder etiology, developed from studies on predominantly White women, reflect the Anglo-American experience. Examining the negotiation between Latino and American sociocultural ideals and influences is imperative to understanding culture’s impact on body-image pathology. A hierarchical regression will be utilized where acculturation and cultural values will serve as predictors of body dissatisfaction and eating disorder risk in a sample of Latina college students. Failure to understand culturally-specific Latino influences perpetuates under-identification of EDs and comorbidities as well as inability to develop culturally-competent interventions

Effects of mixing on fermentation kinetics