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Chinese female PhDs or nvboshi have been constantly stigmatised as the 'third gender' by the society and media in China. Previous studies have primarily focused on discussing their relationship and marriage within the 'leftover women' discourse. However, the exploration of their lived experiences has not attracted scholarly attention. This thesis aims at illustrating the real life of nvboshi in contemporary society. More specifically, this thesis examines the difficulties and barriers Chinese nvboshi face in their daily lives and their coping strategies accordingly. Drawing on Yan Yunxiang's work on Chinese individualisation, through conducting semi-structured interviews with thirty-three nvboshi, I explore their lived experiences in terms of their relationship and singleness, career barriers and development, as well as the negotiations between individual desires and family obligations. My findings reveal that there exists two different perceptions of singleness among these nvboshi: undesirable singleness and celebrated singleness. Instead of being left out in the marriage market, most of these nvboshi choose to embrace singleness and construct the individualised single lifestyles through self-reliance, which reflects these women's pursuit of living a life of one's own. Meanwhile, these nvboshi place a high value on their own career advancement and have navigated various strategies to deal with the structural constraints in the workplace. Moreover, facing the conflict between individual desires and family obligations, these nvboshi have strived to develop individual agency to seek a balance, rather than making a sacrifice for the family. By examining their experiences and practices, I find that these nvboshi have employed individual strategies and constant negotiations to navigate a patriarchal culture in ways that support their own development and individual desires in their lives. Therefore, I argue that these women have constructed a striving and desiring womanhood in contemporary Chinese society.

This study is among the first to investigate the dynamic value co-creation process in non-medical cancer support setting, it specifically examines the often-overlooked male cancer patients. The study explores the continuing value co-creation process and value outcomes, through patient's reflections and personal explanations of their lived experiences. Participants were accessed mainly from Maggie's Centres, a well-known cancer support charity in the UK. This research takes a mixed methods approach involving a systematic literature review, non-participant observation, interviews, a survey and a focus group. Thematic analysis was applied to study qualitative data, whereas multiple linear regression and multivariate regression were conducted to analyse quantitative data. The findings show that different value co-creation motivations and behaviours enhance different dimensions of male patients' well-being, in the non-medical setting. Particularly, this is the first study to identify that enjoyment, as a motivational factor for value co-creation, and responsible behaviour, as a behavioural factor, have a direct positive effect on all four dimensions of patients' well-being (psychological, social, existential and physical). Interestingly, this research reveals that when informants co-create value driven by their negative emotions, they experience a positive effect on their psychological well-being. Also, this study is the first to find that informants' motivations to co-create value with others can change over time, previous literature, in social support service settings in general, did not identify this possible change. In addition, this study discovers four emerging resources that informants co-create and perceive to be valuable for themselves. They are the ability to share personal feelings, opportunity to share those feelings, hope for longer and better life and knowledge to manage the illness. This study is the first to demonstrate that the co-created ability to share personal feelings by patients in the charity setting improves their communication skills, enabling them to talk about their illness and share their feelings in their everyday life. This research has four main theoretical contributions: it clearly shows the dynamic value co-creation process through consumers' active engagement and interaction with other actors while using complex and prolonged services; it also extends our understanding of how context; it identifies four emerging resources that are co-created by and for male patients in the social support setting, which is rarely explored in the literature. It also reveals the impact of the value co-creation motivations, behaviours and emerging resources on various dimensions of consumers' well-being and reveals how and why these dimensions are enhanced. The practical implications of this research allow charities and support organisations to understand how and why patients and other actors co-create value for patients in the social support setting and the impact of the value co-creation on patients' well-being.

Over the last four decades, meta-analysis has proven to be a vital analysis strategy in educational research for synthesizing research findings from different studies. When synthesizing studies in a meta-analysis, it is common to assume that the true underlying effect varies from study to study, as studies will differ in design, participants, interventions, or sample size that can lead to heterogeneity in their underlying effects. The magnitude of this heterogeneity between studies can be quantified as T[superscript 2] in a random-effects meta-analysis. Estimating the between-study heterogeneity (T[superscript 2]) becomes an important part of random effects meta-analysis reporting, since this quantity plays a vital role in understanding how the effect sizes in the studies are dispersed around the mean effect size. Unfortunately for practitioners, there are a multitude of T[superscript 2] estimators that have been derived. Moreover, there are few studies that have compared the different forms of T[superscript 2] estimators, thus understanding their differences and similarities is needed and the conditions under which observed T[superscript 2] values might vary among the different estimators. The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate the performance of five T[superscript 2] estimators commonly used in education-related random-effects meta-analysis. These five estimators are DerSimonian and Laird (DL), Two-step DerSimonian and Laird (DL2), Maximum Likelihood (ML), Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML), and Sidik and Jonkman (SJ). Estimator performance was operationalized in this dissertation as: (a) the magnitude of T[superscript 2], (b) bias, (c) mean squared error (MSE), and (d) the coverage of 95% confidence interval (CI). A Monte Carlo simulation study compared the performance of the five heterogeneity estimators varying the following experimental conditions: (1) number of studies included in a meta-analysis, (2) study sample size, and (3) level of heterogeneity among the enrolled studies. The data analysis was conducted using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multivariate logistic regression, followed by post-hoc analyses controlling for a family-wise type I error of 0.05.Findings in this study suggest that estimates of heterogeneity magnitude, bias, MSE and coverage derived from different estimators can be notably different as a function of experimental conditions. These findings have important implications for educational researchers who wish to report the between-study heterogeneity among studies via a T[superscript 2] estimator in random-effects meta-analysis. Recommendations for researchers on the selection of heterogeneity estimators and areas for future research about between-study heterogeneity estimation are discussed. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Developing reliable Fluid-Solid-Interaction models are important for understanding the tribological behaviour in compliant contacts in lubricated conditions. This is particularly important for applications such as seals and windscreen wipers, which play a significant role in e.g. the automobile industry. This thesis presents a thorough modelling and computational solution framework aimed at the numerical simulation of a wiper blade sliding against glass in a wide range of lubrication regimes in steady-state conditions. Three modules each containing a unique algorithm are demonstrated to handle the coupling between the fluid flow and the solid deformation and capture the transition between different lubrication regimes. Whilst the hydrodynamic pressure is obtained by solving the Reynolds equation with Finite Difference method and Gauss-Seidel iterative scheme, the interaction between asperities can be described using analytical formulations based on Persson's theory or the boundary element method (BEM) which solves the contact problem deterministically. As the latter provides more flexibility dealing with any given rough surfaces (measured or computer generated), it is employed here together with the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique and the Conjugate Gradient (CG) iterative method to determine the variation of the real contact areas and the interfacial separation with respect to the applied load. These relations are represented as fitted functions and act as solid solvers in the presented FSI model. The effect of the thermodynamic correction, the continuum correction, the fractal correction and the surface property Hurst exponent, which usually affects the accuracy of the numerical analysis, are assessed in a systematic manner to provide general guidance for the employment of the BEM. Elastic deformation, which is critical in determining the film thickness, is calculated by means of an innovative Reduced Stiffness Method, which is based on the finite element method and model condensation techniques. This approach has been validated for both linearly elastic and non-linearly elastic (hyper-elastic and viscoelastic) materials in static and sliding conditions. Depending whether the contact behaviour is associated with small or large strain deformations, the initial stiffness matrix or the deformed stiffness matrix can be extracted from the finite element model at a certain state and incorporated into the FSI model to account for the finite deformation of compliant solids due to geometric and material nonlinearity, respectively. The proposed model has been compared with experimental measurements and has shown a good agreement in terms of friction prediction for elastomer specimens of triangular cross-section. For real wiper blades, simulations have shown that the accuracy of model predictions is sensitive to quantities such as the roughness, the input configuration and the reduced stiffness matrix employed, which are evaluated regarding their relative importance. Suggestions on how to obtain improved performance and further investigations aimed at clarifying the behaviour of these complex systems in different scenarios have also been proposed.

Traditional supervised visual recognition methods require a great number of annotated examples for each concerned class. The collection and annotation of visual data (e.g., images and videos) could be laborious, tedious and time-consuming when the number of classes involved is very large. In addition, there are such situations where the test instances are from novel classes for which training examples are unavailable in the training stage. These issues can be addressed by zero-shot learning (ZSL), an emerging machine learning technique enabling the recognition of novel classes. The key issue in zero-shot visual recognition is the semantic gap between visual and semantic representations. We address this issue in this thesis from three different perspectives: visual representations, semantic representations and the learning models. We first propose a novel bidirectional latent embedding framework for zero-shot visual recognition. By learning a latent space from visual representations and labelling information of the training examples, instances of different classes can be mapped into the latent space with the preserving of both visual and semantic relatedness, hence the semantic gap can be bridged. We conduct experiments on both object and human action recognition benchmarks to validate the effectiveness of the proposed ZSL framework. Then we extend the ZSL to the multi-label scenarios for multi-label zero-shot human action recognition based on weakly annotated video data. We employ a long short term memory (LSTM) neural network to explore the multiple actions underlying the video data. A joint latent space is learned by two component models (i.e. the visual model and the semantic model) to bridge the semantic gap. The two component embedding models are trained alternately to optimize the ranking based objectives. Extensive experiments are carried out on two multi-label human action datasets to evaluate the proposed framework. Finally, we propose alternative semantic representations for human actions towards narrowing the semantic gap from the perspective of semantic representation. A simple yet effective solution based on the exploration of web data has been investigated to enhance the semantic representations for human actions. The novel semantic representations are proved to benefit the zero-shot human action recognition significantly compared to the traditional attributes and word vectors. In summary, we propose novel frameworks for zero-shot visual recognition towards narrowing and bridging the semantic gap, and achieve state-of-the-art performance in different settings on multiple benchmarks.

Recent research has shown that food and beverage perception can be influenced by means of aromas, shapes, colours, and even sounds (e.g. Auvray & Spence, 2008; Spence & Piqueras-Fiszman, 2014). Over-and-above any sounds involved in the eating process, various studies have begun to demonstrate the relationship between auditory attributes and taste/flavour perception. This thesis examines crossmodal correspondences - defined as the often-surprising associations between basic attributes of different sensory modalities - between sounds and tastes/flavours. The results reported here demonstrate that participants can make non-random matches between sound and a range of taste/flavour attributes including basic tastes, creaminess, spiciness, and even temperature. Moreover, soundtracks that are congruent with specific taste/flavours are demonstrated to influence food/drink evaluation (the "sonic seasoning" phenomenon). Most importantly, this thesis highlights the multiple pathways by which sonic seasoning might occur. Mirroring the role of food-related auditory cues (such as the sizzle of the steak), soundtracks that can shape our sensory expectations before tasting as well as focus our attention on specific tastes/flavours during tasting. In addition, the emotions evoked by the soundtracks can also be transferred to the food that one happens to be eating. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical implications, practical applications, and directions for future research.

Thermal management is crucial in many engineering applications because it affects the electrical, material, and other properties of the system. A recent study focuses on the use of heat pipes for battery thermal management in electric vehicles, which explores a new area for heat pipe applications. The battery, as one and only energy source in an EV, establishes a vital barrier for automotive industry because it can make the car more expensive and less reliable. The modelling methodology developed in this thesis is a one-dimensional electrochemical model, decoupled and coupled with a three-dimensional flow and heat transfer model. A prototype for 2-cell prismatic battery cooling and preheating using heat pipes is developed, and a full experimental characterisation has been performed. The experimental results characterised system thermal performance as well as validating material properties/parameters for simulation inputs. Two surrogate cells filled with atonal 324 were used in this experiment. The eligibility of substituting atonal 324 for lithium-ion battery electrolytes has been assessed and confirmed. The consistency demonstrated between the finite element analysis and the experiment facilitates BTM simulation at pack level, which is a scale-up model containing 30 lithium-ion batteries. The study shows that heat pipes can be very beneficial to reduce thermal stress on batteries leading to thermally homogenous packs. Additionally, an attempt of integrating biomimetic wicks for ultra-thin flat plate heat pipes is made in response to space limitations in microelectronics cooling. To date, no one has devised an ultra-thin FPHP with enough vapour space by constructing different wicks for each heat pipe segment, especially under anti-gravity condition. It is thus interesting to see whether a new type of wick structure can be made to achieve an optimum heat transfer potential.

Imaging based optical diagnostics have played an important role in combustion and fluids studies. However, most imaging techniques are two dimensional. The increasing interest in accurate whole field measurement has heightened the need for developing three dimensional methods. Furthermore, many flows are inherently 3D in nature. One aim of this study is to develop an innovative 3D schlieren/shadowgraph system based on conventional schlieren/shadowgraph techniques. Furthermore, several research issues related to fluid mechanics and combustion are investigated using multi optical methods, including high speed direct/schlieren imaging, stereo imaging and 3D reconstruction and PIV techniques, etc. Firstly, a stereoscopic shadowgraph system has been developed using two sets of conventional z-type schlieren configurations. The test volume is set at the intersection of two inclined converging beams formed by two pairs of parabolic mirrors. Two synchronised high speed cameras are used to record the shadowgraph image pairs simultaneously. A precisely etched metal mesh plate is used to calibrate the stereoscopic shadowgraph system. The fully developed MATLAB code is employed to obtain calibration parameters and 3D coordinates reconstruction. A crystal block with internal 3D images is acted as a static model for point reconstruction. The 3D coordinates obtained are in good agreement with the real dimensions. The technique has been subsequently applied to investigate the bursting dynamics of a bubble. The 3D curve reconstruction is also accomplished successfully. The stereoscopic shadowgraph technique has been shown to be an effective method for both 3D visualisation and quantitative measurement. Secondly, the spark induced hot gas jet of a gas turbine combustor igniter has been investigated using optical methods with the combination of high speed schlieren and stereo imaging. A spherical shockwave and a hot gas jet are observed after spark initiation. The 3D velocity vectors of the flying off metal bits are calculated by a stereo imaging and reconstruction algorithm. It has been found that the amount and velocity distributions of the eroded metal bits are very different even at a fixed input voltage to the igniter, which contrasts with the quite consistent hot gas jet development. The 3D structures of the interaction boundaries between hot gas and ambient air are reconstructed for the first time using stereoscopic shadowgraph technique. Thirdly, the vortex dynamics and structures of methane-air diffusion flames are investigated under different co-flow conditions. The schlieren and PIV images show that the visible flame flickering is dominated by the dynamics of the external toroidal vortices outside. The co-flow air is observed to push the initiation point of toroidal vortices beyond the visible flame height and suppress flame flickering completely. The velocity vectors and vorticity contours at different air flow rates are presented and analysed. The shedding frequency of the toroidal vortex is found to be consistent with the result obtained from a photomultiplier. The investigation indicates that co-flow helps to depress flame instability by changing the vortex evolution. Finally, a laminar diffusion flame is studied under external acoustic excitation at different frequencies (6 Hz-100 Hz). The flame structures and vortex evolutions are investigated using high-speed stereo/schlieren imaging and digital imaging processing techniques. The flame frequency shows obvious nonlinear response to both the excitation frequency and amplitude. Several typical nonlinear phenomena were observed and analysed, which may serve as proof for relevant numerical simulation.

Born in the political turmoil of the 1989 student movement, Chinese rock music is often understood as an ideological weapon to against the Communist principles due to its western origin. The movement pushed Chinese rock to an unprecedented height of cultural prominence in the. early 1990s. Chinese rock, however, lost this cultural prominence in the mid-1990s. The political suppression is generally regarded as the key reason causing the crisis, but the real reason is much more complicated and deep inside China's society. . The 1990s is a decade when China was profoundly transformed into a new nation in every dimension. The substantial economic growth hid other social problems, such as the unparalleled development between economy and culture. The crisis of Chinese rock is just evidence demonstrating how cultures are co-produced by multi-forces social movements rather than any single factors. Social powers and the political power are often mixed in previous studies. It is also incorrect to treat ordinary people as a passive group who actually had exerted their influences on the formation of Chinese rock in the 1990s. Qualitative data (such as the lyrics and comments) and quantitative data (such as the number ofrock album and economic figures) display why the crisis happened. The political-concentrated content and the purely artistic form are the two direct causes of the crisis, but digging deeper, social power, social classes, and cultural capital play vital roles. The immaturity of Chinese rock music itself is the direct reason, but the immaturity of China's society is the essential and primary reason for the crisis. The crisis of Chinese rock, however, does not mean its death, but a period when rockers, the music industries, the media, fans, and even the government needed to learn and accumulate adequate source and capital to develop this new culture. It cannot be an overnight task. The comeback of Chinese rock in the new millennium demonstrates that Chinese rock is a culture related to China. Its social significance and role likely differ from its western counterpart. Because China has been opened up to the outside world since 1979, the development of intercultural exchange is inevitable, which makes rock music develop in China in a together-in-difference situation.

Ownership is a fundamental human concern. It has been explored by various disciplines and within a variety of contexts. However, previous ownership researches focus primarily on physical objects such as toys, houses and stamps, while almost no research has been conducted about the psychological ownership toward digital entities. This dissertation studies the psychological aspects of digital ownership. A conceptual model of ownership and ownership indicators is summarized first. Next, ownership marking, a behavioral manifestation that is closely tied with psychological ownership, is introduced and discussed, followed by the presentation of two experimental studies that investigated the effects of digital ownership and ownership markers on owners/users. Study 1 examined how the similarities and differences between two of the most widely-used ownership markers--communicative and defensive markers--affect users' perception and performance. A 2 (communicative marker: present vs. absent) by 2 (defensive marker: present vs. absent) by 2 (gender of dyad: male vs. female), between-participants design (N = 88) was used for this study. Results show that ownership markers had a strong impact on users' behaviors and attitudes, and communicative markers influenced users' attitudes more than defensive markers did. Study 2 (N = 64) further investigated contextual factors that influenced the emergence and development of ownership. A 2 (social context: cooperation vs. competition) by 2 (ownership marker: present vs. absent) by 2 (gender of dyad: male vs. female), between-participants design was used. This second study identified the effects of similarity on users' behavior and attitudes between the competitive context and ownership markers. Markers had a strong negative impact on group collaboration. The dissertation ends with the discussion of implications for the design of computer-supported group work. Directions for future research are also suggested. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Despite the valuable contributions of research on teaching pre-set structures of argumentative writing to foster understanding of argumentation in English as a Foreign Language contexts, this dissertation research suggests that structural approaches alone may not provide students’ flexibility and choice as writers, readers, thinkers and meaning makers. Beyond structural concerns, argumentative writing includes consideration of how to write evidence-based arguments (and similarly how to identify and assess arguments during reading) that represents a significant challenge to both instructors and students. Such writing must be built systematically, including conflicting positions examined, links made between the writer’s and other ideas, evidence gathered and considered, audience considered, and essay structures understood and applied. One response to such challenges is to employ critical thinking, that is, an approach to teaching and learning argumentation and argumentative writing that assumes that students take critical positions in their writing that are supported with relevant and cogent evidence. This dissertation describes a project during which I investigated how an EFL writing teacher incorporated critical thinking into teaching argumentative writing in a Chinese college composition classroom, and how the students employed critical thinking in composing argumentative writing in response to a series of writing assignments. This research was grounded in a theoretical framework that views argumentation from a social perspective that considers the social practices and interactional dimensions of instruction. Qualitative data included field notes of class observations, audio recordings of instruction, interviews with the teacher and four focal students, and collection of students’ artifacts such a writing sample. Instructional chains and microethnographic discourse analysis were applied to analyze how the teacher’s instructional approach to argumentative writing as critical thinking and how the four case study students responded to the approach. The findings of the study show that the teacher applied questioning, thoughtful discussions, close reading, and mind mapping as the manifestation of his understanding of critical thinking to help students come to understandings of argumentative writing. In turn, the students gained deeper understanding of discussed topics and of reasoning processes through exchanging ideas in different classroom activities (e.g., group discussions and group presentation). Also, four case study students’ argumentative writing was shaped by the teacher’s explicit explanations and iterative feedback. This study brings a window onto the value of integrating critical thinking practices with argumentative writing practices in the process of teaching and learning in an EFL classroom. However, a key issue that emerged was the tension between argumentative writing as critical thinking and writing test-preparation practices. On the one hand, the instructor and the interactional context he established served to consider and extend his EFL students’ understandings of arguing as an exploration of complex topics and related issues. On the other hand, the instructor’s efforts to prepare his students for a standardized writing assessment as part of the College English Test Band Four, a national English as a foreign language test in the People's Republic of China, shifted his instructional focus away from arguing to learn and critical thinking to structural forms or learning to argue without connections to classroom discussions of topics and related issues. How these often-times conflicting goals might be integrated (e.g., shifting from learning to argue and arguing to learn) is a significant issue for teaching and learning argumentative writing and critical thinking as well as a topic for further research.

Air pollution has plagued cities around the world for years. Major metropolitan areas often install air pollution regulations that vary in stringency over time. Regulations on polluters are lax on days when the air quality is good. For days with high ambient air pollution, governments impose stricter measures to avoid exacerbating the already poor air quality. This study focuses specifically on the Heavy Air Pollution Emergency Plan (HAPEP) of Chengdu, China. During the winter months, Chengdu frequently faces periods of sustained, high levels of ambient particulate matter (PM). Importantly, these high levels of ambient PM are not ruled by temporary increases in the flow of PM being emitted each day. Instead, it is driven largely by the weather conditions. For example, during periods of stagnant wind conditions, the stock of PM grows in the air. This accumulation process continues until the weather conditions change -- i.e., the wind picks up -- and the stock of PM in the air is cleared out. This pollution pattern is representative of the cities which are in a closed basin terrain. The Chengdu HAPEP requires monitoring short-term PM forecasts. If the predicted PM exceeds certain concentration and duration thresholds, an air pollution alert is issued. Subsequently, a set of measures intended to lessen air pollution are imposed, including driving restrictions and production suspensions.In the first chapter, I develop a dynamic optimization framework taking into account the characteristics of PM pollution by directly modeling the stock nature of pollutants and the cleanup process of pollutants. The model leads to an important conclusion: the optimal amount of pollution emission should always increase over time if there is no pollutant dispersion. Although in reality pollution dissipation is never absolutely zero, this conclusion indicates an incentive to delay the pollution for social welfare improvement. However, the variations in expected pollution dissipation should also be incorporated when deciding the optimal action.In the second chapter, I empirically estimate the dynamic process of pollution dissipation by identifying how daily weather conditions drive the change in ambient PM levels from one day to the next. I also show that the weather conditions in the near future can be forecasted with high accuracy. By altering the timing of historical interventions according to both existing conditions and expected upcoming weather patterns, a 12.1% more PM pollution reduction and a 25.5% more bronchitis hospital visit reduction can be achieved within a period in 2018.In the third chapter, I estimate the health effects of PM pollution. I find that pollution exposures up to six days ago are associated with contemporaneous bronchitis hospitalization. I also assess the curvature of the response function of respiratory hospitalization to PM pollution. I fail to find any convincing evidence that supports the presence of nonlinearity. One caveat of this conclusion is that I only consider possible non-linear effects of the contemporaneous pollution concentration but ignore the possible non-linear effects of the lagged pollution concentration, due to the complexity of the specification and the difficulty in identification if both of them are incorporated. Although this simplification might introduce a bias in an unclear way, it is of less concern since prediction instead of specific point estimates is the focus of this analysis.

Abstract: The ppk20 (pickpocket 20) gene was identified from a two-step screen that was aimed at identifying genes relevant to Drosophila iron and heme homeostasis. Initially, our lab collaborated with two other labs and carried out a prothoracic gland (PG)-specific genome-wide screen of 12,500 RNA interference (RNAi) lines seeking genes that might be relevant to ecdysone synthesis. Ecdysone is an insect steroid hormone that regulates Drosophila development. This initial screen identified 1,906 RNAi lines with developmental defects, including different larval stage arrest/delay and pupal lethality. The secondary screen was conducted in our lab, using ~800 lines that showed development defects, but survived to the third instar stage. This strategy identified 13 RNAi lines that showed enlargement of the PG (no red autofluorescence) and 21 RNAi lines that exhibited enlarged PGs together with a red autofluorescence signal. Due to the high iron demand in PG associated with heme and ecdysone synthesis, our lab has used the PG phenotype to study poorly characterized aspects of Drosophila iron and heme homeostasis. The heme production pathway is a multi-step biosynthesis process, and it requires the incorporation of iron at the last step. Several heme precursors contain the porphyrin ring structure, making them autofluoresce a red colour when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light. The final product, heme, is a necessary cofactor for cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYPs) that are essential for Drosophila ecdysone biosynthesis. Ecdysone regulates all developmental transitions from embryonic to adult stages. Hence, an inappropriate drop in ecdysone concentration can lead to developmental defects. The PG maintains high iron levels to sustain heme production, thus supporting ecdysone biosynthesis. The red-fluorescing, protoporphyrin IX (PPIX), is the immediate precursor to heme, and without iron incorporation, it might halt and reduce heme production, causing PPIX to accumulate. In addition, interruption at other steps may result in the accumulation of other red-fluorescing precursors. Under UV light, the PG will fluoresce bright red with enough red-fluorescent precursor accumulation. Knocking down ppk20 in the PG causes developmental defects and red PG phenotype, possibly due to the lack of ecdysone and the accumulation of red-fluorescing precursors. PPK20 is a member of the epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) family, and some of its vertebrate homologs have been shown to exhibit sodium channel activity. No previous studies iii have shown the relevance of ppk20 or any other ppk genes in iron and heme homeostasis. In this thesis, I explored how ppk20 this possible relevance. Iron might be imported into the cells through the iron-containing proteins, transferrin (Tsf) and ferritin, or through a non-protein-binding form. In humans, primary iron intake involves importing Tsf via Tsf receptor-mediated endocytosis. However, there is no identified fly Tsf receptor. Heme feeding and human transferrin receptor (hTfR) cDNA expression, but not iron feeding, rescued the loss-of-ppk20 animals. When ppk20 function was impaired in the larval intestine, free iron uptake from the midgut was interrupted. Moreover, ferritin injection could partially rescue the ppk20-deficient animals. Interestingly, the larval tracheal necrotic phenotype was present in the loss-of-ppk20 animals, which indicates its role in tracheal function. Taken together, this thesis presents evidence that ppk20 may play a role in cellular iron import via regulating the free iron and Tsf import pathways due to its possible function as the Tsf receptor-like protein or sodium channel. Additionally, ppk20 might play a role in larval tracheal development and water clearance, contributing to the porphyria-like PG phenotype and developmental defects observed in the loss-of-ppk20 animals.

Shuffled linear regression concerns itself with linear models with an unknown correspondence between the input and the output. This correspondence is usually represented by a permutation matrix II*. The model we are interested in has one more complication which is that the design matrix is itself latent and is observed with noise. This is considered as a type of errors-in-variables (EIV) model. Our interest lies in the recovery of the permutation matrix. We propose an estimator for II* based on the total least squares (TLS) technique, a common method of estimation used in EIV model. The estimation problem can be viewed as approximating one matrix by another of lower rank and the quantity it seeks to minimize is the sum of the smallest singular values squared. Due to identifiability issue, we evaluate the proposed estimator by the normalized Procrustes quadratic loss which allows for an orthogonal rotation of the estimated design matrix. Our main result provides an upper bound on this quantity which states that it is required that the signal-to-noise ratio to go to infinity in order for the loss to go to zero. On the computational front, since the problem of permutation recovery is NP-hard to solve, we propose a simple and efficient algorithm named alternating LAP/TLS algorithm (ALTA) to approximate the estimator, and we use it to empirically examine the main result. The main idea of the algorithm is to alternate between estimating the unknown coefficient matrix using the TLS method and estimating the latent permutation matrix by solving a linear assignment problem (LAP) which runs in polynomial time. Lastly, we propose a hypothesis testing procedure based on graph matching which we apply in the field of digital humanities, on character social networks constructed from novel series.

The purpose of this study was to explore how mathematics teachers in urban schools serving disadvantaged communities develop their teaching self-efficacy and how teachers’ attribution beliefs were related to their interpretations of efficacy sources. Data from the semi-structured interviews indicated that mastery experiences and social persuasions paired with internal and controllable attributions were the most salient sources that positively influenced teachers’ teaching self-efficacy. Failures undermined teachers’ teaching self-efficacy only when they were attributed to internal and uncontrollable factors. When failures were attributed to internal and controllable factors, they did not undermine teaching self-efficacy. Considering social persuasions, when evaluative feedback was communicated in a hostile way and made teachers perceive uncontrollable attributions, it decreased mathematics teachers’ teaching self-efficacy. Vicarious experiences emerged as the third most influential source of teaching self-efficacy as vicarious experiences enabled struggling teachers to believe they could accomplish similar tasks. However, negative models lowered teachers’ self-efficacy when teachers perceived little control over the situation. The findings of the research revealed the processes and sources of teaching self-efficacy development as well as the intricate relationship between teaching self-efficacy and teachers’ attribution beliefs. The results not only advanced our understanding of teaching self-efficacy but also provided meaningful insights and practical implications for preparing and supporting teachers in schools serving disadvantaged urban communities. It also has important implications for policymaking regarding teacher retention and educational equity.

As a cutting-edge technology, blockchain has aroused great interest from an increasing number of economists and management scholars. However, most of the prior studies are constrained in relevant topics of cryptocurrencies and payment systems, using theoretical analysis but lacking empirical support. Also, little is known about public blockchain platforms and their built-on decentralized applications (DApps). This study focuses on the growth of DApps, especially examining the driving forces of DApps’ adoption. With the empirical test using the sample of DApps on six popular public blockchain platforms, this paper finds that prior transaction volumes have a positive impact on DApps’ adoption. Moreover, under the inner blockchain tradeoff between decentralization and scalability, a choice between transaction security and speed for DApps’ users, the research argues that higher transactions will boost users to choose DApps in more decentralized platforms.

The purpose of this multi-participant qualitative case study was to investigate effective teachings practices among highly-regarded second language teachers and how they developed during teacher education programs and in their careers. Furthermore, since COVID-19 has had a remarkable impact in every aspect of living worldwide, including in the field of education, this study also attempted to illustrate how highly-regarded second language teachers adapted to emergent remote teaching. The focal participates were six highly-regarded second language teachers, who were recommended by second language researchers, educators, and professional organization leaders as having outstanding and even innovative teaching practices. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed qualitatively. Activity Theory and Ambitious Teaching guided this study and were utilized as theoretical frameworks. Themes related to the theoretical frameworks and patterns that appeared among these highly-regarded teachers were discussed. In order to cultivate second language learning and create effective second language classes, highly-regarded language teachers nurtured student-centered classrooms, that were enriched with inspiring and encouraging activities, multimodule tools, diverse literature and teaching materials, constructive support systems from teachers, peers, and parents, and inquiry-based instruction. These second language teachers also commonly demonstrated the caring features which were observed as they “went beyond the classroom” to connect with students at both academic and personal levels. In regard to adapting to remote teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic, participants demonstrated the ability to be adaptive, and they were able to modify their lessons, strengthened with technological tools, and took advantage of students’ home learning environments.

In the absence of a focus on literary text translation in studies of machine translation (MT), this study aims at investigating some challenges of this application of the technology. First, the most commonly used types of MT are reviewed in chronological order of their development, and, for the purpose of identifying challenges for MT in literary text translation, the challenges human translators face in literary text translation are linked to corresponding aspects of MT. In investigating the research questions of the challenges that MT systems face in literary text translation, and whether equivalence can be established by MT in literary text translation, a qualitative method is used. Areas such as the challenges for MT in the establishment of corpora, achieving equivalence, and realisation of creativity in literary texts are examined in order to reveal some of the potential contributing factors to the difficulties faced in literary text translation by MT. Through text analysis on chosen sample literary texts on three online MT platforms (Google Translate, DeepL and Youdao Translate), all based on highly advanced neural machine translation engines, this study offers a pragmatic view on some challenging areas in literary text translation using these widely acclaimed online platforms, and offers insights on potential research opportunities in studies of literary text translation using MT.

Abstract: Cellular responses to stress are an integral part of cardiovascular physiology and pathology, and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is the key component in the development and progression of various heart diseases. However, the relative contribution of ER stress pathways to muscle damage and molecular mechanisms governing muscle ER stress regulation are still unclear. The objectives of this thesis were to investigate a role and regulation of IRE1α, an ER membrane associated stress sensor, in skeletal and cardiac muscle and to determine structural and function features of catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) related Casq2 mutants and their role in heart pathology. We identified two distinct pools of IRE1α in skeletal muscle fibers and in cardiomyocytes. One pool localized at the perinuclear ER membrane system and other at the junctional sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR). We also discovered that, at the junctional SR, calsequestrin interacts directly with the ER luminal domain of IRE1α preventing its dimerization, an initial step in activation IRE1α signaling. We generated a mouse model with cardiomyocyte specific, inducible deletion of the IRE1α gene. Heart with silenced IRE1α developed dilated cardiomyopathy and impaired cardiomyocyte Ca2+ transient indicating important role of IRE1α in the heart physiology and potential functional impact on muscle excitation-contraction coupling. Mutations in the gene encoding for cardiac calsequestrin, CASQ2, cause a stress-induced arrhythmia, CPVT. We carried out functional and structural analysis of six CPVT related CASQ2 mutations (R33Q, L167H, D307H, D351G, G332R, and P329S). The six mutations are distributed in diverse locations of the calsequestrin and impact on structure and function of the protein including folding, aggregation, and impaired or reduced Ca2+ binding. Remarkably these mutations are manifested in a similar phenotype in humans. Overall, in this thesis, we show that IRE1α is a new component of the junctional SR where it interacts with calsequestrin. This novel protein-protein interaction provides new insight into muscle specific regulatory mechanisms associated with IRE1α mediated UPR. We also provide the first direct evidence that IRE1α is required to maintain health of the heart. Finally, we provide the first evolutionary insights into the calsequestrin gene and showed that different Casq2 mutations may have distinct underlying molecular mechanisms leading to CPVT.

The first phase of 5G specification, Release-15, will be completed by April 2019, and our world will truly enter the 5G era. With the advent of 5G, the data transmission cost is expected to reduce significantly. Thus, it will support Edge Computing and Fog Computing feasibility in the future. To evaluate the cost of the new computing configuration, a new simulator called PFogSim was proposed in "PFogSim: A Simulator for Performance Evaluation of Mobile and Hierarchical Fog Computing Environments" [Shehenaz 2019]. As a participant of the PFogSim project, the PFogSim simulator will be discussed in this work. Compared to other simulators which support only a limited number of fog nodes, PFogSim not only supports simulation of a large-scale multi-layered fog design but also supports different orchestrators. It reports the simulation results with metrics. Users can test and evaluate their proposed fog architecture using these metrics accurately and efficiently. Besides, built-in orchestrators, PFogSim supports users to load customized orchestrators and verify their own fog architecture. To test the simulator, we ran several simulations with different numbers of mobile devices ranging from 500 to 5,000. The test results show that our simulator can provide various feedback information metrics to the user. By using this information, we use several MATLAB scripts to generate result graphs which help users evaluate their fog computing environment effectively and conveniently.

Decades of parenting research has shown that heightened stress may interrupt the parenting process and negatively affect the child and the family. However, most existing studies have primarily focused on how stress can undermine parenting, and relatively few have attended to the role of cognitive appraisal in shaping the interpretation and ultimate effects of stressful conditions on parenting behavior. Following theoretical recommendations associated with social cognitive theory as well as transactional theory of stress and coping, the current study examined the association of psychological stress to mothers’ use of inconsistent and permissive discipline, focusing particularly on the mediating role of parenting self-efficacy (PSE) in the link between perceived stress and parental discipline. Separate path analyses were conducted with survey data collected from a total of 540 mothers of young children in China (n = 113), Japan (n = 262) and the United States (n = 165). Results indicated significant associations among mothers’ perceived stress, PSE, as well as permissive and inconsistent discipline in all three samples, with exceptions in the Chinese sample. Furthermore, path models supported the mediating effect of PSE in the link between mothers perceived stress and the inconsistent parenting in all three samples. In the US and Japanese samples, PSE also mediated the relationship between stress and permissiveness. Overall, these findings suggest the important role of PSE in parents’ stress and coping processes across diverse contexts as well but also underscore the importance of examining relevant sociocultural factors that might also contribute to the salience and strength of certain associations.

Autonomous vehicle technology is a promising development for improving the safety, efficiency and environmental impact of on-road transportation systems. However, the task of guiding an autonomous vehicle by rapidly and systematically accommodating the plethora of changing constraints, e.g. of avoiding multiple stationary and moving obstacles, obeying traffic rules, signals and so on as well as the uncertain state observation due to sensor imperfections, remains a major challenge. This dissertation attempts to address this challenge via designing a robust and efficient predictive motion planning framework that can generate the appropriate vehicle maneuvers (selecting and tracking specific lanes, and related speed references) as well as the constituent motion trajectories while considering the differential vehicle kinematics of the controlled vehicle and other constraints of operating in public traffic. The main framework combines a finite state machine (FSM)-based maneuver decision module with a model predictive control (MPC)-based trajectory planner. Based on the prediction of the traffic environment, reference speeds are assigned to each lane in accordance with the detection of objects during measurement update. The lane selection decisions themselves are then incorporated within the MPC optimization. The on-line maneuver/motion planning effort for autonomous vehicles in public traffic is a non-convex problem due to the multiple collision avoidance constraints with overlapping areas, lane boundaries, and nonlinear vehicle-road dynamics constraints. This dissertation proposes and derives some remedies for these challenges within the planning framework to improve the feasibility and optimality of the solution. Specifically, it introduces vehicle grouping notions and derives conservative and smooth algebraic models to describe the overlapped space of several individual infeasible spaces and help prevent the optimization from falling into undesired local minima. Furthermore, in certain situations, a forced objective selection strategy is needed and adopted to help the optimization jump out of local minima. Furthermore, the dissertation considers stochastic uncertainties prevalent in dynamic and complex traffic and incorporate them with in the predictive planning and control framework. To this end, Bayesian filters are implemented to estimate the uncertainties in object motions and then propagate them into the prediction horizon. Then, a pair-wise probabilistic collision condition is defined for objects with non-negligible geometrical shape/sizes and computationally efficient and conservative forms are derived to efficiently and analytically approximate the involved multi-variate integrals. The probabilistic collision evaluation is then applied within a vehicle grouping algorithms to cluster the object vehicles with closeness in positions and speeds and eventually within the stochastic predictive maneuver planner framework to tighten the chanced-constraints given a deterministic confidence margin. It is argued that these steps make the planning problem tractable for real-time implementation on autonomously controlled vehicles.

RESEARCH QUESTION: How can the value of SGG projects be increased for all stakeholders and their communities through a co-design process? It is proposed that school ground greening has the potential to enhance children’s relationships with nature. This project takes an educational approach through involving landscape architects’ commitment to education and enhancing the health of local social and natural environments. Rationales for the resurgence in interest (over the last decade or so) in school gardens focus on perceptions adults have about modern childhood and schooling; for example, that children lack physical activity, are facing an obesity epidemic, and battling inflexible educational systems – raising concerns about children’s diminishing contact with nature and natural systems. Research on school ground greening projects (which is an overarching term including school gardens) has established that there are many benefits, due to increasing children’s connections with nature on a number of levels, such as developing earth guardianship responsibilities, learning where food comes from, learning about science and ecology, encouraging physical exercise and imaginative play. This project will investigate the claim that many school gardens have limitations in terms of their scope and children’s participation, especially in their planning and design. Instead they are frequently designed and constructed in an ad hoc manner by teachers and volunteers, missing the opportunity to both engage children in a process of learning about design (co-design) and to create ecologically richer school grounds that are ecologically-focused, creative, encouraging of indoor-outdoor connections, considerate of maintenance, and provide ecosystem services within communities. Research was conducted with 28 students from a west Auckland School who worked with this author to develop a greening plan for part of their school grounds. This process and results are presented here and indicate that students gained environmental and design knowledge, especially due to their sense of ownership, which the project espoused.

Abstract: The large-scale relay network is a promising component of future wireless systems, as it can improve the coverage and throughput of wireless communications. The large-scale scenario brings many new challenges. In this thesis, two of the fundamental problems are investigated, i.e., performance analysis and transmission design for large-scale relay networks. For performance analysis, this thesis studies both distributed relaying schemes, e.g., relay selection and distributed relay beamforming, and centralized relaying scheme, e.g., maximal-ratio combining/transmission (MRC/MRT). For best relay selection (BRS), closed-form expressions of the average received SNR and ergodic capacity are derived, {which provide} insights on the array gain and ergodic capacity behaviour of BRS. For distributed relay beamforming, the power allocation that maximizes the sum-rate is proposed. Then the asymptotic behaviour of the SNR is derived rigorously for the high transmit power regime. For MRC/MRT, a comprehensive performance scaling law and performance analysis is provided in a multi-user massive MIMO relay network with channel state information (CSI) error. The results show quantitatively the trade-off between the network parameters and their effects on the performance. In addition, a sufficient condition on the parameter scalings for the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) to be asymptotically deterministic {is} derived, which covers existing studies as special cases. Further, the scenario where the SINR increases linearly with the number of relay antennas is studied. The sufficient and necessary condition on the parameter scaling for this scenario is proved. The outage probability and average bit error rate (ABER) of the relay network in this case are analysed. Besides performance analysis, rank detection design is also investigated. Due to the spatial correlation and antenna coupling, the large-scale channel matrix usually has reduced rank. Accurate rank detection is crucial in the estimation of such channel matrices. Several rank detection methods are proposed, which provides higher rank detection rate than existing ones.

Abstract: Polycystin-2, encoded by the PKD2 gene, is mutated in ~15% of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, and functions as a Ca2+ permeable non-selective cation channel. It is mainly localized on the endoplasmic reticulum membrane, and is also present on the plasma membrane and primary cilium. Polycystin-2 is critical for cellular homeostasis and thus a tight regulation of its expression and function is needed. In Chapter 2, filamin-A, a large cytoskeletal actin-binding protein, was identified as a novel polycystin-2 binding partner. Their physical interaction was confirmed by different molecular biology techniques, e.g., yeast two-hybrid, GST pull-down, and co-immunoprecipitation. Filamin-A C terminal fragment (FLNAC) mediates the interaction with both N- and C- termini of polycystin-2. Functional study in lipid bilayer reconstitution system showed that filamin substantially inhibits polycystin-2 channel activity. This study indicates that filamin is an important regulator of polycystin-2 channel function, and further links actin cytoskeletal dynamics to the regulation of this channel. In Chapter 3, further effect of filamin on polycystin-2 stability was studied using filamin-deficient and filamin-A replete human melanoma cells, as well other human cell lines together with filamin-A siRNA/shRNA knockdown. Filamin-A was found to repress polycystin-2 degradation and enhance its total expression and plasma membrane targeting. FLNAC overexpression reduced the physical binding between full length filamin-A and polycystin-2, as well as the expression level of polycystin-2, presumably by competing with filamin-A for binding polycystin-2. Further, filamin-A mediated polycystin-2 binding with actin by forming complex polycystin-2–filamin-A–actin. Finally, the physical interaction of polycystin-2 and filamin-A was found to be Ca2+-dependent, i.e., Ca2+ depletion weakened their binding strength. Taken together, this study indicates that filamin anchors polycystin-2 to the actin cytoskeleton through the polycystin-2–filamin-A–actin complex to reduce degradation and increase stability, and possibly regulates polycystin-2 function in a Ca2+-dependent manner. The dynamic regulation and the net effect of filamin on polycystin-2 were explored in Chapter 4. First, we found that the Ca2+-dependent binding of filamin-A with polycystin-2 N- differs from that with C- terminus. In addition, lipid bilayer experiment showed that filamin does not exhibit an inhibitory effect on polycystin-2 channel activity in the absence of Ca2+. These data indicate that filamin regulates/inhibits polycystin-2 activity in a Ca2+-dependent manner, which is probably through adjusting their physical interaction. The net effect and physiological relevance of polycystin-2-filamin binding were tested by live cell Ca2+ imaging. We found that filamin-A has a net inhibitory effect on polycystin-2 channel function through a combination of expression and functional regulations that are both important in maintaining intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis. The physiological role of filamin-A on regulating polycystin-2 channel function will be further investigated in animal models such as zebrafish and mice in the future study. Epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) in the kidneys mediates Na reabsorption across the epithelium, which is critical for Na+ balance, extracellular volume, and blood pressure. Abnormal ENaC function is associated with pseudohypoaldosteronism type 1, and Liddle syndrome. The channel function of ENaC is known to be regulated by many factors, such as hormones, chemicals and binding partners. Chapter 5 is about the structural interaction and functional regulation of ENaC by filamin. In this study, ENaC-filamin binding was detected by different in vitro and in vivo methods. Biotinylation and co-immunoprecipitation combined assays together revealed the presence of the ENaC-filamin complex on the cell surface. Functional study using Xenopus oocyte expression system and the two-electrode voltage clamp electrophysiology showed that co-expression of an ENaC-binding domain of filamin FLNAC dramatically reduces ENaC channel function. Lipid bilayer electrophysiology further confirmed the inhibition by showing that FLNAC reduces ENaC single channel open probability. This study demonstrated that filamin reduces ENaC channel function through direct interaction on the cell surface. In summary, the studies described in this thesis demonstrated that several properties of channel proteins polycystin-2 and ENaC are regulated by cytoskeleton protein filamin.

Within the theoretical framework of agenda setting, this dissertation used granger causality analysis to examine the relationships between news agendas of the media outlets and opinion leaders on one Chinese social network platform—Weibo. It also utilized network analysis to compare agenda-setting effects between the media outlets and opinion leaders in crisis and non-crisis news. The study not only applied agenda setting to Chinese social media, but it also approached the agenda-setting effects of social media from a completely different perspective, recognizing and differentiating the segmented agendas on social media platforms. It examined more nuanced agenda-setting effects among the most influential groups on social media platforms, determining and comparing the news agendas of these groups. The results showed agenda-setting effects exist only between the opinion leaders and commercial media outlets rather than the official media in China. Although journalists and celebrities tended to be the most influential ones on Twitter, business elites were the most influential opinion leader on Weibo. Furthermore, the agenda-setting process among these opinion leaders changed in crisis and non-crisis news.

Art is a powerful form of communication between artists and audiences. In this thesis, I will explore two questions that emerge from the literature on art as a means of communication and connection between artist and audience: 1) how can technology be used to augment the sense of psychological connection between the audience and artist? and 2) why do we like sad art? To answer the first question, Chapters 2 and 3 present experimental data showing that listening to music while wearing haptic devices (versus no haptics) and headphones (versus speakers) increases empathy, parasocial bond, and loyalty towards the artist and also decreases feelings of loneliness in the listener. Results indicate that feelings of social presence mediate the relationship between these immersive technologies and these measures of psychological connection to the artist. To answer the second question, Chapter 4 presents data from five experiments. Studies 1 and 2 show that framing a text as art versus not-art increases liking for the negative emotions expressed in it. Study 3 showed that there was an effect of art/not-art on liking even after controlling for differences in perceived fictionality between art/not-art. Study 4 found that appropriation mediates the effect of art/not-art on liking and, thus, explains liking for sad art. Study 5 controlled for a possible confound in the study design and found that the results replicated. Together, this thesis explores art as a means of communication and connection by providing new insights on the use of technology to enhance connection with artists and by finding empirical evidence to support the philosophical debate on the enjoyment of sad art. These studies shed light on the ways in which art can be used to connect with others and also connect with ourselves and our own emotions.

In this study, I identify four structures in which a bare gradable adjective predicate can have either a positive or a comparative reading depending on the context. The four structures are the simple gradable adjective predications, the contrastive focus construction, and gen…xiangbi comparisons, and polar questions. This study makes contributions to the field of Chinese linguistics in the following two ways: First, to the best of my knowledge, the empirical data provided in this thesis is different from previous studies. This data set challenges the widespread assumption that a bare gradable adjective predicate in the above four structures can only have one reading in all contexts. This thesis cites empirical data and tests to suggest that the interpretation of a bare gradable adjective predicate depends on context in the above four structures. Second, different from previous studies, this thesis takes a focus-based pragmatic approach in analyzing the reported context dependency of the interpretation of a bare gradable adjective in the four target structures. In this thesis, I apply Roberts’ (1996/2012) QUD and question/answer congruence theory to capture the interaction between different contexts and the semantics of a bare gradable adjective predicate in the four target structures. In this study, the context dependency of a bare gradable adjective predicate’s interpretation is reduced to the identification of focus placement in an utterance. I observe that when the predicate is focused in the target structures, only the positive reading of a bare gradable adjective predicate will be permitted. In contrast, when the subject is focused, a gradable adjective can only allow for a comparative reading. In this study, I argue that focus placement in Mandarin Chinese presupposes the type of question it can answer. Following Roberts (1996/2012), I assume that a question sets up a partition over the context set and each cell in the context set corresponds to one possible answer of the question. Since questions are holes to presupposition (Kattunen 1973), all the possible answers, i.e., all the instantiations of the question, carry all of the question’s presuppositions. In this way, the context dependency of gradable adjective predicates’ interpretation is linked to the identification of the QUD’s presupposition.

In this thesis we contribute to the study of two large data problems within the realm of Hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations. The first result concerns the Relativistic Euler equations, which adequately describe fluid motion in the context of special relativity. The main result is the provision of a both necessary and sufficient condition on the initial data, uniformly away from vacuum, for the formation of singularities in finite time under the evolution of (1) in the case d = 1. This is joint work with Shengguo Zhu. The second project developed in this thesis shifts focus from the area of conservation laws to that of mathematical General Relativity. We provide, in joint work with Xinliang An, a trapped surface formation criterion for the Einstein-Maxwell system where the right-hand side corresponds to the Maxwell energy-momentum tensor that models electromagnetic effects.

High precision data from household travel survey (HTS) is extremely important for the transportation research, traffic models and policy formulation. Traditional methods of data collection were imprecise because they relied on people’s memories of trip information, such as date and location, and the remainder data had to be obtained by certain supplemental tools. The traditional methods suffered from intensive labor, large time consumption, and unsatisfactory data precision. Recent research trends to employ smartphone apps to collect HTS data. In this study, there are two goals to be addressed. First, a smartphone app is developed to realize a smartphone-based method only for data collection. Second, the researcher evaluates whether this method can supply or replace the traditional tools of HTS. Based on this premise, the smartphone app, TravelSurvey, is specially developed and used for this study. TravelSurvey is currently compatible with iPhone 4 or higher and iPhone Operating System (iOS) 6 or higher, except iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 plus and iOS 8. To evaluate the feasibility, eight individuals are recruited to participate in a pilot HTS. Afterwards, seven of them are involved in a semi-structured interview. The interview is designed to collect interviewees’ feedback directly, so the interview mainly concerns the users’ experience of TravelSurvey. Generally, the feedback is positive. In this study, the pilot HTS data is successfully uploaded to the server by the participants, and the interviewees prefer this smartphone-based method. Therefore, as a new tool, the smartphone-based method feasibly supports a typical HTS for data collection.

Cells in vivo are constantly exposed to mechanical stimuli originated from their extracellular environment, such as the contraction from cardiac muscle and the laminar shear from blood flow. These mechanical stimuli are essential for maintaining cellular functions and regulating cellular behaviors in many physiological processes. Hence, it is important to understand how mechanical stimuli induce cellular responses. This requires specific tools that can deliver controllable mechanical signals in magnitude, duration, frequency, and direction. To this end, many engineered cell loading tools have been developed for applying different types of mechanical loads to in vitro cultured cells to trigger different types of cellular responses. By using these tools, it has been demonstrated that cyclic mechanical loads can regulate cell alignment, migration, proliferation, apoptosis, and can affect stem cell differentiation. Nonetheless, current cell loading tools still have many limitations. For example, tools with conventional-scale loading sites are often with low throughput, since few loading site can be arranged onto the limited space of a tool. Moreover, the large loading site inevitably leads to unnecessary consumption of precious cells and reagents, especially when the study requires parallel and multiplexed loading parameters. Tools with miniaturized loading sites can largely increase the loading throughput. However, device fabrication and assembly are increasingly challenging when the dimension of the loading site decreases. Moreover, the magnitudes of the simultaneously applied mechanical loads at different loading sites are not well controllable, especially at the dynamic loading conditions. Besides, most of the tools are designed for loading 2D cultured cells, while specific tools for loading 3D cells are still in need.To address these limitations, this thesis describes the development of elastomeric-membrane-based cellular micromechanical stimulators for mechanobiological study. A cellular micromechanical stimulator with hydraulic-pressure-driven PDMS micro-membranes is first developed at a much lower fabrication complexity, and demonstrates its effectiveness in delivering controllable mechanical strain to 2D cultured cells. The loading membranes are then tailored with a contoured thickness profile for optimizing the homogeneity of the applied strain field towards delivering homogeneous equi-biaxial, which is validated by loading 2D cultured cells under dynamic loading conditions. Application of controlled mechanical loading on 3D cell aggregates is implemented by integrating polymeric micro-grippers onto the loading membranes. The effectiveness of the device in 3D cell loading is demonstrated by inducing stem cell differentiation. For increasing the loading throughput, microfluidic actuation systems that can simultaneously deliver a desired pattern of loading pressure at multiple loading membranes by a single pumping unit are devised. Such design allows further miniaturization of the cell mechanical stimulators for multiplexing and parallel cell stimulation assay at both static and dynamic loading conditions. By the simplicity of fabrication, ease of operation, capability for further miniaturization and high throughput actuation, availability for both 2D and 3D loading, and excellent controllability of loading strain at both static and dynamic loading conditions, the cell micromechanical stimulators reported in the thesis thus provide promising solutions for systematically investigating of the complex cascades of cellular mechanobiological events under a conventional biological laboratory environment.

Whey protein has numerous nutritional, physiological and functional benefits. It is therefore a perfect candidate for high protein beverage applications. Whey protein beverages are gaining popularity among athletes, bodybuilders and health conscientious individuals. In spite of the reasonable solubility of whey proteins in acidic beverages (pH 3.4-4.5), thermal processing and prolonged ambient storage can result in protein aggregation via hydrophobic and disulfide molecular interactions between denatured proteins, especially at relatively high protein concentration (>4.2%, w/v). Currently, whey protein acidic beverages available in the market contain at most 4% whey protein. To better deliver the nutritional quality and expand the commercial value, it is desirable to develop shelf stable high whey protein acidic beverages (>4.2% protein). It is also desirable to produce a less acidic beverage, to reduce undesirable sourness and astringency. We hypothesized that glycosylation of whey protein via early stage Maillard reaction results in higher net charge, enhanced thermal stability, increased structural rigidity, and reduced buffering capacity. Partially glycosylated whey protein (PGWP) can thus be used to produce high protein acidic beverages that are shelf stable with acceptable sensory quality. Therefore, our long term goal was to produce a partially glycosylated whey protein with enhanced solubility and thermal stability over a wide pH range, while maintaining nutritional and sensory quality. Glycosylation conditions were optimized to promote glycosylation of whey protein, while minimizing browning and maintaining nutritional quality. Unreacted dextran was removed using liquid chromatography, and the protein fractions, both non-reacted protein and glycosylated protein were collected and labeled as PGWP. Extent of glycosylation, browning, % lysine blockage, % loss in free amine, and in-vitro digestibility were monitored. Solubility and thermal stability of PGWP were compared to whey protein isolate (WPI), at 5-10% (w/v) protein concentration, pH 3.4, 4.5, 5.5 and/or 7.0, and pre and post thermal treatments. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and SDS-PAGE were employed to monitor onset of denaturation and polymerization, respectively. Exposure of sulfhydryl groups and surface hydrophobicity were monitored during heat treatment of 5% protein solutions at 75 °C for 60 min. The pI of PGWP was as well. For structural characterization mass spectrometry (MS) analysis and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) were used. The glycosylation site was determined using matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight MS (MALDI-TOF MS). Solutions (5% protein, w/v) of WPI and PGWP were analyzed by SERS to determine secondary and tertiary structural changes of the protein as affected by glycosylation, pH and heating. The sourness and astringency of protein acidic solutions/beverages formulated with PGWP and WPI at 5% protein and at different pHs were determined. The storage stability of the formulated solutions/beverages over 6-8 weeks was determined, by measuring solubility, turbidity, and protein aggregation using capillary electrophoresis (EC). Overall, results proved that the solubility and thermal stability of whey protein, at relative high protein concentrations, can be enhanced over a broad range of pH upon partial and limited Maillard-induced glycosylation. The enhanced solubility and thermal stability of PGWP was attributed to structural rigidity, unique glycosylation sites, resistance to denaturation, and shift to a more acidic pI, all of which contributed to reduced protein/protein interactions. The nutritional quality was maintained and advanced stages of Maillard reaction were not detected. Partial glycosylation of whey protein reduced its buffering capacity, and consequently less amount of acid was required to reach the targeted pH of the protein fortified solution/beverage. The reduced acidity of the PGWP fortified beverages, especially at pH 4, resulted in lower perceived sourness and astringency compared to the WPI fortified beverages. In addition, the solubility and turbidity of PGWP solution prepared at pH 4.5 were maintained fairly well during storage at or below 25 °C. Our findings demonstrate the possibility of using PGWP in the production of shelf stable high protein acidic beverages (> 4.2% protein) that can be less sour and astringent than what is currently present in the market. Our results also provided information that is essential to understand the structure/function relationship upon Maillard-induced glycosylation of whey proteins. This basic information is useful for directed structural modification research aiming at improving whey protein functionality.

Effective light trapping is critical for polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin-film solar cells to generate sufficiently high photocurrent. Glass substrate texturing is a standard and very effective light-trapping approach for poly-Si solar cells fabricated by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition but it cannot be applied to poly-Si cells deposited by electron beam (e-beam) evaporation, which is a preferred deposition process. Attempts to develop effective light trapping for e-beam poly-Si cells, by texturing of either glass substrate or poly-Si film itself has been studied in this thesis. A spray etching method is designed for glass texturing, but it is proved not to be suitable for producing light trapping textures. Light trapping is then implemented by texturing of the rear surface of e-beam poly-Si films deposited on planar glass. Water-based solutions of KOH, NH4F and NH4F/H2O2 are found to be able to texture poly-Si films and, thus, to significantly improve light-trapping. The related texturing processes and resulting textures are characterised by Si etching rates, the surface roughness versus removed Si thickness, texture angle distributions, optical absorption and spectral response enhancement. Both 2.5% KOH and NH4F-only texturing are found to provide roughness over 200 nm RMS, steep peak feature angles up to 20˚ and higher absorption enhancement of 30~40% compared to planar films. With a removed Si thickness of less than 2 µm, NH4F-only texturing provides more advantages than 2.5% KOH etching. In order to apply this etch-back texturing to functional e-beam cells, a new spin-on diffused back-surface-field (BSF) subsequent to the texturing process has been successfully developed and therefore the short-circuit current (Jsc) enhancement with various etch-back texturing can be compared. A 3.6 µm thick e-beam cell with KOH etch-back texturing was demonstrated ~21% Jsc enhancement compared to a reference planar cell with a rear reflector and a 3 µm thick e-beam cell with NH4F-based texturing is achieved even higher Jsc enhancement of 28%. Thus, it is demonstrated that a wet-chemical etch-back texturing is a very promising approach to light-trapping in e-beam cells on planar substrates.

This thesis presents the results of a research effort aimed at investigating the crash performance of w-beam guardrail barriers in vehicle-roadside crashes using the finite element method. The developed roadside barrier models can be used to assess the occupant injury risk, vehicle performance, and damage to guardrail barriers during a roadside accident. The finite element models of w-beam guardrail barriers may also help evaluate the crash performance of the w-beam barriers with minor damage in vehicle-barrier crashes. Thus, the results can be used to develop repair guidelines to assist highway personnel in identifying levels of minor barrier damage and deterioration. Finite element models of the weak post w-beam guardrail barriers were developed and simulated using LS-DYNA. The simulation results were validated against full scale crash tests of pickup trucks and passenger cars impacting w-beam guardrail barriers. The maximum dynamic deflection of the guardrail, exit velocity and angle of the vehicle, and occupant injury risk were calculated and compared to the tests. Kinematics of the vehicle and guardrail were assessed qualitatively as well as quantitatively. The analysis showed that simulation results were in good agreement with test data. Additionally, the models were validated against pendulum tests conducted the Federal Outdoor Impact Laboratory (FOIL). Simulation results of pendulum tests showed that the test section taken from the current full scale models performed very similarly to that in the real pendulum tests. The developed finite element models were subsequently used to examine the crash performance of weak post w-beam guardrail barriers with minor damage under vehicle impacts. Only rail/post deflection based minor damage to weak post w-beam guardrail barriers was considered in this study. Simulations were completed to obtain the damaged profiles of the guardrail systems; the damaged weak post guardrail barriers were impacted by the pickup model at mid-span for the second time. The impacting vehicle remained stable in all of these simulations. No conclusions could be drawn however whether these second impacts could have resulted in rail tearing or rupture.