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There is an apparent imbalance in the psychological literature towards research with young people. As the proportion of older people in the population increases, and as people live longer, this imbalance will have to be redressed. This thesis consists of three studies which were carried out to look at the early detection of skin cancer in older people. In Study I semistructured interviews were carried out with ten men and ten women aged 55 to 87 years. Qualitative analysis revealed a number of misconceptions, and a lack of awareness of the increased risk associated with increasing age. In Study II 265 men and women aged 55 to 90 years completed structured questionnaires based on an expanded health belief model (FIBM) which incorporated specific fmdings from Study I. Results show that the expanded FIBM explained a reasonable amount of variance in skin self-examination (SSE), but a negligible amount in treatment-seeking intentions. Path analysis showed that the HBM functioned as a model to some degree, but that the variables were actually working more or less independently rather than together. The future of the HBM is discussed in terms of alternative ways in which it can be tested, and considerations which need to be taken when applying it to particular samples, such as older people. In Study ifi a sample of forty-four GPs were presented with selected items from Study II, and asked to estimate how the sample of older people had responded. The results suggested that the GPs were not sensitive to the beliefs and behaviour of the older people. However, closer inspection of the results showed a strong response bias which limited the degree to which any conclusions could be drawn from the study. Overall, the research has shown that age-related factors need to be considered when looking at preventive health behaviour. The need to take a broader, less individualistic, approach to health behaviour is also discussed, in terms of both health promotion practice and the development of theoretical models of behaviour.

The concept of “talent” pervades American musical discourses. Although talent is recognized as a desirable attribute, its meaning is not fixed; as a signifier, it floats. In this dissertation, I contend that the privilege to determine what musical talent means—and who gets to be called talented—is an opportunity that reflects and grants social power, rendering the concept a highly consequential site of struggle. Across the dissertation’s four chapters, I analyze discourses from the last two centuries and bring previously disconnected musicological, educational, critical, and scientific literature into conversation. In the first chapter, “Defining Talent,” I disentangle the separate and often contradictory meanings the concept has accrued through a typology that parses its five core meanings: as a gift, as inheritance, as potentiality, as passion, and as speed. The remainder of the dissertation presents three case studies, using their triangulation to understand a broader American discursive terrain. In “Explaining Talent,” I examine receptions of the late nineteenth-century African American pianist Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins, whose performances exposed contradictions at the heart of racialized constructions of musicality during this era. In “Representing Talent,” I argue that the producers and judges of twenty-first century talent competition programs broadcast meanings of talent that foreground and manipulate affective responses while reinforcing myths of meritocracy. Finally, in “Teaching Talent,” I draw upon historical research and ethnographic fieldwork with two pedagogical communities (informed by the Suzuki and O’Connor methods, respectively) to demonstrate how differing beliefs about natural ability influence students’ access to social and cultural capital. Overall, the dissertation encourages scholars and educators to approach “musical talent” as a construction that is as heterogeneous and contingent as the concept of “music” itself.

This body of research focuses on improving microsensor arrays used as detectors in Si-microfabricated gas chromatographs (µGC) for the determination of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). By means of such improvements, µGC technology should find wider application in homeland security, disease diagnosis, and environmental monitoring. The microsensors considered here all employ thiolate-monolayer-protected gold nanoparticles (MPN) as vapor sorptive interface layers. The central hypothesis is that by altering the MPN ligand, core size, and/or the underlying transducer, the diversity of responses to VOCs provided by microsensor arrays with MPN interfaces can be improved. The first study evaluated a single transducer (ST) array of MPN-coated chemiresistors (CR) as a µGC detector for three semi-volatile markers of the explosive 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene in the presence of alkane interferences of similar volatility. The effects of flow rate and temperature on chromatographic resolution, sensitivity, and limits of detection (LOD) were assessed. Under optimized conditions, a complete analysis required < 2 minutes, targets were separated from interferences, unique response patterns were obtained, and LODs were ≤ 4 ng. In the second study, data from four MPN-coated CRs and four similarly coated thickness shear mode resonators (TSMR) were combined to compare ST and multi-transducer (MT) arrays with respect to response diversity for a set of five VOCs and their binary mixtures. Extended disjoint principal regression (EDPCR) analysis was coupled with Monte Carlo simulations to assess the performance of all possible combinations of CRs and TSMRs in terms of the recognition rate (RR). The best 4-MT arrays generally outperformed the best 4-ST arrays, but array composition was critical. In the third study, the plasmonic behavior of the MPN films was exploited by assessing the changes in the absorbance spectrum at three probing wavelengths. A set of seven MPN films of different ligand functionalities and Au core diameters between 4 and 40 nm was exposed to 6 individual vapors. Vapor discrimination was achieved both with single MPN films and arrays of just 2 films (RR > 95%). These types of sensor arrays can enhance the vapor discrimination of sorption-based detectors utilized in µGC technology, making the analysis of complex VOC mixtures possible.