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This thesis adopts the literary form approach to the analysis of the Zhuangzi. I argue that the literary forms deployed in the Zhuangzi are not neutral and empty but philosophically meaningful. The leading question dealt in the thesis is how form and content are connected in the Zhuangzi. On the macro level, I provide a characterisation for the methodology to which I refer as the relaxed literary form approach. It is a modified version of the past literary form approach. On the micro level, I study the forms-including narrative, irony, and paradox-in detail, showing how these forms contribute to the meaning construction of the Zhuangzi. I argue that the form of narrative is to construct the "constellation of perspectives"; the form of irony is to bring about the experience of uncertainty and not-knowing; the form of paradox is to put the text in an ever-drifting dynamic. This investigation leads to a fundamental reconceptualisation of the Zhuangzi and the dao: instead of being represented the dao is performed in the text, and thus the Zhuangzi is a dao-performance.

The thesis consists of two main themes: the eye-drop study for dry eye syndrome and the antibiotic study for antibiotic resistance. Hyaluronic acid (HA) has been commonly used in eyedrop formulations. A difficulty has been its short residence time on ocular surfaces due to ocular clearance mechanisms which remove the polysaccharide almost immediately. To prolong its retention time, tamarind seed gum polysaccharide (TSP) is mixed as a helper biopolymer with HA. Here I look at the hydrodynamic characteristics of HA and TSP (weight average molar mass Mw and viscosity [η]) and then explore the compatibility of these polymers, including the possibility of potentially harmful aggregation effects. The research is based on a novel combination of three methods: sedimentation velocity in the analytical ultracentrifuge (SV-AUC), size-exclusion chromatography coupled to multiangle light scattering (SEC-MALS) and capillary viscometry. For the mixed HA-TSP systems, SEC-MALS indicates the possibility of a weak interaction. However, further investigation using sedimentation coefficient (s) distributions obtained from SV-AUC measurements together with intrinsic viscosity demonstrated no evidence of any significant aggregation phenomenon, reassuring in terms of eye-drop formulation technology involving these substances. The other topic is about the natural glycopeptide antibiotic teicoplanin used for the treatment of serious Gram-positive related bacterial infections and it can be administered intravenously, intramuscularly, topically (ocular infections), or orally. The hydrodynamic properties of teicoplanin A2 (M1 = 1879.7 g/mol) were examined in phosphate chloride buffer using sedimentation velocity and sedimentation equilibrium in an analytical ultracentrifuge together with capillary (rolling ball) viscometry. In the concentration range, 0-10 mg/mL teicoplanin A2 was found to self-associate plateauing > 1 mg/mL to give a molar mass of (35400 ± 1000) g/mol corresponding to ~ (19 ± 1) mers, with a sedimentation coefficient s20, w = ~ 4.65 S. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and enterococci have managed to avoid the antimicrobial activity of glycan antibiotics. Aggregations of antibiotics with mucins lead to long exposure and selection pressure to push forward further increases in resistant species in microbes. This study was focused on any potential interactions of teicoplanin with bovine submaxillary mucin (BSM) as an ocular mucin model, based on the relatively novel combination of hydrodynamic and microscopic techniques: SV-AUC, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM). For the mixture of teicoplanin with the lowest concentration (0.125 mg/mL) and BSM, SV-AUC showed no interactions, while for higher concentrations (1.25 mg/mL and 12.5 mg/mL), teicoplanin was shown to have weak interactions with BSM and aggregates in the distributions of both sedimentation coefficients by SV-AUC and hydrodynamic radii by DLS.

The influence of theology on Bible translation is a phenomenon that has been increasingly acknowledged by Bible translation scholars in recent decades, yet for various reasons including the long-established secular-sacred divide in modern academia, it has remained an underexplored subject in both the fields of Translation Studies (TS) and biblical translation studies (BTS). To address this gap, this study is the first study that examines the influence of the translators' theology on Bible translation by a comparative study of two New Testament translations in their entirety, and it is also the first study of this kind on both the Chinese Union Version (CUV) and the Chinese Recovery Version (CRV), with the CUV being the most popular and influential Chinese Bible over the last hundred years. By adopting a new theoretical framework for studying theological influence in Bible translation, by following a methodology that minimizes the researcher's subjectivity and overcomes the difficulties inherent in such a study, and by analyzing and presenting the empirical findings according to the main subjects of systematic theology, this study discovered that the translators' understandings of what God's overall plan is for mankind exerted the most dominant and overarching influence on their Bible translations in the cases of the CUV and the CRV. Besides revealing many other new insights concerning how the translators' theology may influence Bible translation, this study also offers both methodological and theoretical contributions to the fields of BTS and TS, illuminates the way and importance of conducting similar studies on other Bible translations, points to the need of charting a new sub-field called 'biblical translator studies', and shows that to understand and speak about any Bible translation, we must thoroughly understand the translators' theology.

This study explores how student nurses experience intercultural nursing care in their everyday clinical practice. It adopts a qualitative social constructionist approach to investigate their perceptions of and responses to positive experiences and the challenges they encountered in their nursing placements and to seek to understand intercultural competencies that are salient in facilitating effective intercultural communication. Several key findings emerged from the study: 1) Participants socially construct their intercultural care experience in the six domains: intercultural encounters, knowledge, skills, attitudes, engagement and outcomes; and consider intercultural competence is a continual development process. 2) Even though the individual scope of intercultural care encounters (ICEs) varies, the participants all valued the opportunity to be exposed to ICEs, as these allowed them to negotiate and adjust to different cultures, values and worldviews. 3) The participants observed how cultural beliefs and behaviours affect individual patients' interpretations or perceptions of their health condition, how they view its treatment and the efficacy of the medication. Without this essential knowledge, aside from the lack of understanding of a patient's cultural needs, the treatment and care maybe inadequate or inappropriate, which can seriously affect patient's outcomes. However, the data showed the gaps in this aspect of nursing education. 4) One of the biggest challenges the student nurses encountered in ICEs was linguistic barriers, since language affected not only the patients' ability to express their needs and understand the healthcare instructions, but also had nursing implications. 5) Participants reported positive and challenging attitudes in ICEs, which affected their learning, wellbeing, and intercultural communication performance. When workplace adversity persists, some participants even considered leaving the course. It was through personal resilience, accessing support from academics and peers that they decided to stay in their chosen career. 6) The motivations to engage intercultural care were affected by internal and external factors. 7) The participants highlighted that without considering outcomes for the care recipient (patient) and care provider (the student nurse), competence in intercultural care cannot be validated. An intercultural care competence ecological framework was developed, which provides a comprehensive view of intercultural care and highlights the dynamic nature of competence development. In these ways, this study complements existing cultural care theories. The study offers valuable insights for researchers, educationalists, practitioners and policymakers in the areas of intercultural communication and interactions in healthcare services.

This PhD investigates how to reinterpret English chinoiserie from a postcolonial and personal/Taiwanese perspective through art practice. I explore aspects of history to scrutinise British/European receptions of China and Chineseness as a visual language in eighteenth-century English chinoiserie. This leads me to investigate eighteenth-century Sino-British/East-Europe historiographies to interrogate how to review relevant pre-colonial Sino-British contact. I also review Chineseness as an identity in relation to Taiwanese history, diaspora and my art practice. My findings reject a uniform insider Chineseness and instead point to plurality and subjectivity. That is multiple and personal perspectives from which to revisit history - which informs my approach in which to respond to chinoiserie. I create notional interlocution, a new postcolonial strategy of fictional (auto)ethnography, through contextualising concepts of constructivism, poststructualism, art-based research, and aspects of postcolonial theory. Via this new methodological framework, I make three artist films regarding the chinoiserie collections at the three chosen cultural heritage sites: This is China ... explores the chinoiserie interior at the Royal Pavilion Brighton; Another beautiful dream investigates the Chinese wallpaper at Harewood House; and A note on Delftware interrogates the Delftware vases at Chatsworth House. My films are open-ended, yet critical and philosophical, and create new spaces in which to revisit chinoiserie. The films form a trilogy for their shared exploration of English chinoiserie but can be considered independently and seen as independent works.

This study explores the perception of nursing students using health technology during clinical training and examines the impact of health technology related to the Clinical Learning Environment (CLE). As there is an increasing demand for quality care from patients and the challenges posed by a high turnover rate of nurses, nurses struggle to work and adapt in this changeable setting. This study aims to develop an insight into an understanding of the CLE. It includes the perceptions of nursing students regarding health technology and the impact on their learning as nursing students. It uses a case study methodology, using a survey of the Clinical Learning Environment, Supervision and Nurse Teacher Scale (CLES+T) and interviews with nursing students, graduated nurses and academic university mentors. The study utilises the theoretical work of Kolb's learning process, behaviourism and constructionism learning theories, and a facilitation/supervision model. Findings suggest that nursing students lack practice opportunities. Further, additional factors relate to issues of leaderships, ward atmosphere, supervisory relationships, learning opportunities, and nurse teachers interwoven in a health technology integrated setting. Nursing students specifically reflected on their concerns about health technology dependency and how this potentially limits their critical thinking skills. Further still, limitations to access password integrated health technology restricted students' learning, their practice opportunities rely on a good supervisory relationship and a positive ward atmosphere. To some extent, students indicated that the managerial staff could shape the CLE and affect their learning opportunities regarding their supervision and mentoring. This study contributes to the emerging knowledge about the impact of health technology on the learning of nursing students in the clinical setting during training. It provides an understanding of the challenges posed by both health care providers and educational institutions who should coordinate more measures to facilitate students' learning in the health technology integrated CLE. This study helps to address the issues related to health technology in clinical settings and its impact on the practice of nurses including academic staff which, in turn, affect students' learning.

This study offers a critical evaluation of HR analytics. Specifically, the ideas and concepts surrounding HR analytics, such as what is HR analytics, the development of HR analytics in organizations and how it may impact organizational performance. To advance and answer these research questions, this study relied on systematic reviews, logistic regression, interaction effect analysis, and interviews with the European Company Survey (ECS) to assess the interrelationship between HR analytics and organizational factors. Based on the findings, certain key areas are addressed. Firstly, research question 1 has succeeded in developing a more systematic and coherent definition of HR analytics and artificial intelligence in HR. It has also successfully identified some factors that influence the use of HR analytics in organisations. In particular, the results of study two found that factors such as firm age, firm size, the complexity of the firm process and the type of variable pay systems have been shown to be key indicators of why certain companies use HR analytics while others do not. Furthermore, the results for study three also provided a bigger picture of how organizational factors might be the reasons for explaining firms' financial returns when examining the relationship between variables. In particular, factors such as employee motivation, the use of HR analytics, and variable pay systems are also believed to be critical in determining which factors affect a company's financial returns. In addition, the study provides additional knowledge for five specific areas in analytics and artificial intelligence in HR, namely firm characteristics, challenges, key reasons to adopt HR software, new trends and user traits.

This study challenges a common academic notion that, in Taiwan's presidential elections, national identity is an issue independent of other campaign discourses. Previous studies have only recognised and checked how often candidates present visible appeals to national identity in Taiwan's election campaign advertising. However, I argue that to avoid alienating independent voters, candidates might not always explicitly reveal their national identities in campaign communications. Rather, they often show their stance implicitly or even dramatically through symbols such as public policy statements and specific signs, scenes, songs and languages in campaign materials. This argument is supported by content analysis, discourse analysis, and indepth interviews in this study. This study aims to answer two questions that have not been fully examined in previous studies on Taiwan's identity politics. First, in Taiwan's presidential elections, what were the symbolic representations of KMT and DPP candidates' national identity appeals in the election campaign videos? Second, what were the rationales behind the arrangements of those symbolic representations? From 2012 to 2020, the DPP candidates almost exclusively expressed a Taiwanese identity in campaign videos. However, in her 2020 presidential campaign, DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen presented 'R.O.C. Taiwan' as a new national identity in order to maximise support from those professing a Taiwanese identity, a R.O.C. identity or both. This is the newest development in Taiwan's identity politics. To compete with the DPP, the KMT's presidential candidates also frequently have identified as Taiwanese in campaign videos, although for the KMT, Taiwanese identity is by necessity a provincial identity. In addition, the KMT's candidates have used symbols like the image of R.O.C.'s founding father, R.O.C. flag, the anthem of R.O.C. flag, and KMT's party emblem to imply the R.O.C. national identity in campaign videos. Overall, this study has several research findings which are original and contribute to the study of Taiwan's identity politics. First, in Taiwan's presidential elections, at least from 2012 to 2020, both the KMT and DPP candidates used a synthesis of visual and audial symbolic representations to imply their national or provincial identities in campaign videos. Second, the use of such symbols is influenced by candidates' perceptions of the political, social, economic and cross- Strait contexts in a given election year. In other words, in Taiwan's presidential elections, the appeal to national identity has been actually a compromise between candidates' party stances and some contextual factors in Taiwanese society. Third, in the campaign videos, candidates have elaborated the meanings of national identity from economic, social, cultural, and communicative perspectives to earn the greatest support from the public. Fourth, KMT candidates have emphasised the compatibility of Taiwanese identity and the R.O.C. identity in their campaign videos but, to get more votes from Taiwanese people, have used more symbols to imply Taiwanese identity. In Taiwan's 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, DPP's candidate Tsai Ingwen only implied Taiwanese national identity in her campaign videos. However, in Taiwan's 2020 presidential election, to counterattack the KMT's accusation concerning her avoidance of R.O.C. identity, Tsai has started to include symbols like the R.O.C. flag in campaign videos to represent the R.O.C. identity. Thus, it is clear that, for both KMT and DPP's presidential candidates, the appeals to national identity entail dynamic and strategic considerations in campaign communications.

The Template Attack introduced by Chari, Rao, and Rohatgi has been widely used in Side-Channel Attacks on cryptographic algorithms running on microcontrollers. In 2014, Choudary and Kuhn successfully optimized a variant of this technique, based on Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), to reconstruct the actual values of a byte handled by a single microcontroller machine instruction, instead of only its Hamming weight. While their attack targeted single LOAD instructions, I believe this method can be even more powerful when attackers target intermediate values inside a cryptographic algorithm, for such values can be related to more than single instructions, and further mathematical tools can be applied for value enumeration or error correction when multiple target values can be checked against one another. In my dissertation, I first describe how I successfully built LDA-based templates for full-state recovery on target intermediate bytes in the SHA3-512 hash function implemented on an 8-bit device, which I combined with a three-layer enumeration technique for error correction to recover all the input values of this hash function from a single trace recording. To demonstrate an alternative technique, I also combined these template recovery results with a modified belief-propagation procedure for error recovery, adapting a 2020 design by Kannwischer et al. In combination, these techniques reached success rates near 100% in recovering all SHA3-512 input bytes. Secondly, I introduce the fragment template attack to make this technique feasible for targeting 32-bit microcontrollers. It cuts a 32-bit intermediate value into smaller pieces, applying the LDA-based template attack by independently building templates for these pieces. For a SHA-3 implementation on a 32-bit device, the quality of these fragment templates is good enough that their predictions can reconstruct the full arbitrary-length SHA-3 or SHAKE inputs with a very high success rate when combined with belief propagation. Thirdly, I also show that a combination of fragment template attack, belief propagation, and key enumeration can recover the key used in an Ascon-128 implementation. My experiments show how LDA-based templates can pose a threat to cryptographic algorithms once it is combined with belief propagation and key enumeration, even when they are implemented on a 32-bit device and in applications where keys are only used once. Therefore, we should not underestimate these risks and it is important to analyze the resilience against template attacks, in addition to DPA-style correlation attacks, when designing or implementing cryptographic algorithms and evaluating their security level.

Online data stream learning requires to process each training example upon arrival. Machine learning algorithms designed to process data in this manner are particularly suitable for this digital era, as the volume and the incoming speed of data are growing everyday. However, the environments of most real-world applications in online data stream learning are usually non-stationary, meaning that their underlying distribution may change over time (concept drift). Also, in real-world classification task, the number of examples from different classes are unlikely to be equal (class imbalance). Existing literature of concept drift adaptation and class imbalanced learning have been well-established in the last years. Yet, there still exists little work to address the joint challenge of them. This thesis contributes to this area of study by investigating how to deal with concept drift from a memory perspective and investigating how to create synthetic examples to aid in learning the skewed class while able to adapt to concept drift in class imbalanced data streams. The main contributions of this thesis are: - A study of the impact of different memory management strategies to the predictive performance. - A novel diversity-based memory management strategy that can maximise the chance of having relevant past knowledge to exploit in dealing with concept drift. - A novel framework called Concept Drift Handling Based on Clustering in the Model Space (CDCMS), which can deal with multiple types of concept drifts in class balanced data streams by exploiting relevant past knowledge. - A set of novel memory strategies for class imbalanced learning that can maintain and recover relevant past knowledge to deal with concept drift in class imbalanced data stream. From that, a novel framework called Concept Drift Handling Based on Clustering in the Model Space for Class Imbalanced Learning (CDCMS.CIL) is proposed. - A novel approach called Synthetic Minority Oversampling based on Stream Clustering (SMOClust), which creates synthetic examples based on stream clustering to aid in learning the skewed class, while able to adapt to concept drifts.

Soft robotic systems offer advantages against rigid robot systems in applications that involve physical robot-human interactions, unstructured or extreme environments, and manipulating delicate objects. Soft robots can offer inherently safe operation and adapt to unknown geometry of the environment or object. The current soft robot development approach is an empirical approach starting from a type of soft actuation technology, whereas the development of rigid robots can start from a top-level task in a System Engineering framework. The rigid robot developer can select from well-defined components to construct the task-orientated system. Soft robots are relatively novel systems compared with rigid robots and do not have well-defined components due to a wide range of soft actuation technologies. The initial choice of soft actuation technology places constraints on the system to perform the task. Soft robotic systems are not widely used despite the advantages compared to rigid robots. In this thesis, I study an abstraction approach to enable a System Engineering framework to develop soft robotic systems. My research focus is on an energy-based approach that encompasses the multi-domain nature of soft robotic systems. The impact on the final system from the energy transfer characteristics of the initial choice of the soft actuator has not been fully explored in the literature. I study how energy, and rate of energy transfer (power), can describe different components of each type of soft actuation and how the total energy can model the top-level system. This thesis includes (i) a literature review of soft robots; (ii) an abstraction approach based on bond-graph theory applied to soft actuation technologies; (iii) a port-Hamiltonian theory to describe the top-level soft robotic system, and (iv) an experimental application of the approach on a type of soft actuation technology. In summary, I explore how energy and rate of energy transfer can provide the abstraction approach and in time provide the well-defined components necessary for task-orientated design approaches in a System Engineering framework. In particular, I applied the approach to soft pneumatic systems for additional insights relevant to the development of future task-orientated soft robotic systems.

The compromise effect in consumer choice is widely observed and has been extensively studied. Standard choice theories typically assume that this context-dependent behaviour will disappear if decision makers have a chance to explore all options to learn their true preferences. If this is true, firms will not be able to exploit consumers at equilibrium. This thesis investigates whether, and under what conditions, the compromise effect may exist in equilibrium in repeated markets even when consumers have extensive market experience. It also studies whether the compromise effect can emerge without attribute trade-offs by focusing on one-dimensional cases. Motivated by relative rank theory and the idea of contextual inference, this thesis develops two psychological models in which consumers' judgements and corresponding choices are influenced both by their "true" preferences and by information that consumers derive from available options in the market. According to relative rank theory, consumers' evaluations of each option are rank-based and constructed from binary ordinal comparisons within the choice set. Using the two different models, this thesis shows that the one-dimensional compromise effect may arise in equilibrium in repeated markets due to consumers' perceptions of their own relative position in the population. Computer simulations of the models show that, under certain conditions, a monopolist may be incentivised to exploit consumers by manipulating the context of market options to take advantage of the compromise effect displayed by consumers. This thesis also reports an experiment to test the basic assumptions of the models. It is concluded that existing models of the compromise effect are inadequate in that they typically fail to allow for the possibility that the compromise effect may persist even in equilibrium when consumers have extensive experience and no attribute trade-off occurs.

In this project, interdisciplinary methods are applied to study abundant submarine landslide valleys, sediment wave trains and volcaniclastic deposits in submarine parts of Azores volcanic islands to assess the sedimentary processes, characteristics of deposits and their hazard implications. Marine geophysical data help to characterise geomorphological features of submarine topography. Sedimentary structures, morphometric parameters, geochemical compositions of volcanic particles and bulk sediments, and chronostratigraphy are derived from marine sediments. Statistical methods are used to find relationships between data sets. Numerical calculations help to assess the sedimentary processes induced by external forces (e.g., ground motion, wave-induced stress and oceanic current). Four key findings are found. 1. More than 1200 submarine slope valleys have been found around the central Azores, mostly caused by landslides. Thirteen landslides would likely have generated tsunamis with heights of 1-7 m at source, hence potentially hazardous. Higher landslide volumes of submarine slopes in Terceira and São Jorge Islands compared to Faial and Pico Islands may result from more frequent large earthquakes beneath Faial and Pico. 2. Sediment wave trains are twice as abundant on northern island slopes compared with their southern slopes. This asymmetry is associated with greater wave energy arising from the northwest, leading to greater coastal erosion and wave-induced bed stress, encouraging sediment suspension and redeposition on the slopes and eventually initiating sediment gravity flows. (3) A wide range of information is integrated to discriminate tephra fallout and primary and secondary volcaniclastic turbidites in four gravity cores collected nearby the Azores islands. Sediment type discrimination suggests that two-thirds of volcaniclastic beds originate from eruptions and only one-third are from submarine landslides. (4) Modelling of turbidite volumes in the basins suggests only sediments from the largest landslides and eruptions have been deposited in the basins. Age-depth models built from ¹⁴C dates of foraminifera from hemipelagic intervals and tephra bed correlation suggest the emplacement ages and the frequencies of large submarine landslides and volcanic eruptions are both > 1 ky.

Haematopoietic stem cell progenitor cells (HSPCs) have substantial research and therapeutic value, but the in vitro production of HSPCs from pluripotent stem cells remains elusive. A novel 3D culture method, known as a gastruloid, can mimic gastrulation in embryogenesis, which is crucial to the emergence of HSPC precursors, highlighting the potential to develop this protocol as an in vitro platform for haematopoietic research. This project aims to adapt the previously published gastruloid culture protocol and develop it into a haemogenic gastruloid protocol to produce HSPCs from mouse ES cells and model haematopoiesis which occurs at the aorta-gonad-mesonephros (AGM) region of the mouse embryo. In this project, the gastruloid culture protocol is modified to maintain a gastruloid (gastrulation organoid) for up to 216 hr by introducing a 2iLIF pretreatment and a panel of cytokines throughout the culture. Under the new culture conditions, gastruloids can generate haemogenic endothelium and pro- and pre-HSCs in sequential order, as detected by a combination of markers in flow cytometry assays (Flk-1, c-Kit, CD41 and CD45). Concomitant use of cytokines VEGF and FGF2 can facilitate the emergence of cells with the property of haemogenic endothelial cells, pro-HSCs and type 1 pre-HSCs from 96 to 144 hr. Applying Shh, Flt-3l, TPO, and SCF accordingly can promote the formation CD45+ cells, which is indicative of the formation of type 2 pre-HSCs at 192 and 216 hr. The emergence of these haematopoietic makers suggests stepwise haematopoiesis is recapitulated in the haemogenic gastruloid. The AGM-like haematopoietic clusters are observed at 192 and 216 hr under confocal imaging, further suggesting that definitive haematopoiesis likely occurs in the gastruloid under the optimised protocol. The CFC assay shows that gastruloid cells have the potential to form multipotential myeloid and lymphoid haematopoietic progenitors. The CD45+ cells from the 216 hr gastruloids can occasionally be enriched in OP9 co-culture, and they can also sometimes form committed B-cell linage progenitors with OP9 cells. The chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay and mouse transplantation experiments imply that the haemogenic gastruloid cells may possess engraftment capability. Single cell SMART sequencing data confirms that gastruloids have haematopoietic gene expression profiles similar to the AGM region of the mouse embryo and captures successive progenitors with erythroid, myeloid-lymphoid and HSC-like signatures. Finally, this haemogenic gastruloid protocol has been applied to other mouse ES cell lines to generate gastruloids, and they can also recapitulate stepwise haematopoiesis. This study has successfully developed a haemogenic gastruloid protocol with a cocktail of haematopoietic cytokines. This haemogenic gastruloid is able to form AGM-like haematopoietic clusters and recapitulate stepwise definitive haematopoiesis to produce haematopoietic progenitors. In the future, this protocol could be developed to validate and reduce the use of animals in scientific research. The results from this study could also be useful preliminary data for developing a human haemogenic gastruloid protocol. Finally, this protocol could be applied as a drug screening or disease modelling tool, such as an infant leukaemia disease model.

Assurance was a central issue for the eminent Scottish theologian-pastor Thomas Boston (1676-1732) long before it emerged as a focal point of the theological debate in the Marrow Controversy. Despite the sensation sparked by the republication of The Marrow of Modern Divinity and its enduring influence on Boston and Scottish church history, scholarship until now has not systematically examined the theology of the Marrow, let alone cross-analyzed it with Boston's massive notes. While past studies have rightly stressed Boston's federal theology and the fourfold state, they have not sufficiently underscored the centrality of union and communion with Christ in his theology, much less studied how this controlling theme impinges upon his doctrine of assurance and other theological structures. Scholars moreover have focused on assurance's relation to faith, leaving other critical dimensions of assurance underexplored or even unexplored in the case of his sacramentology and its instrumentality for assurance. By situating Boston in his historical-especially his often overlooked intellectual and theological-milieu, this research presents the first full-length, multidimensional study of Boston's theology of assurance in its Scottish context. This thesis argues that Boston's doctrine of assurance is as eclectic as it is Christocentric, centered on union and communion with Christ, the architectonic principle of his theology. This study challenges the common, if uncritical, conception that Boston's theology merely follows Calvin, the Scots Confession, the Marrow, the Westminster Standards, and Scottish federalism. Although Boston's theology in broad strokes is Calvinistic and Westminsterian, exhibiting features of the Marrow, English Puritanism, and Scottish Presbyterianism, this study will demonstrate that Boston, nonetheless, unapologetically diverges from all these sources at crucial junctures. As such, he influences theologians contemporary with and after him. Boston, most strikingly, holds in tension assurance as intrinsic to faith-itself a gift from God's sovereignty in election-while insisting on self-examination as a human responsibility. This salient mark of his doctrine of assurance originates from his assertion that Christ died for the elect alone but all-elect or not- have a warrant to receive Christ, who is, in Boston's appropriation of the Marrow, the Father's "deed of gift and grant to mankind lost." As such, assurance is, theologically, a divine gift and, pastorally, a human endeavor. Certainty is thus both extra nos and intra nos. Given his eclectic, poised view on certainty, Boston may justifiably be seen as a theologian and pastor of assurance. This study presents original research of Boston's theology of assurance in five chapters. Chapter 1 is a first-ever intellectual biography of Boston. It furnishes a fresh and rounded picture of Boston in his Scottish context and controversies, situating him in his historical-especially his often neglected intellectual and theological-milieu. Chapter 2 cross-studies the theology of the Marrow with Boston's notes, tracing for the first time the eighteenth-century Scottish Marrow Controversy to its seventeenth-century English roots. It offers new insights into the points of continuity and discontinuity between Boston's theology and the Marrow. The bulk of the thesis is a pioneering, systematic-theological analysis of the various dimensions of Boston's notion of assurance. Chapter 3 deals with the trinitarian, covenantal, and Christological dimensions, probing Boston's understanding of the covenants of redemption, works, and grace and their interaction with union and communion with Christ, leading to an alternative interpretation of the Marrow Controversy through the lens of union with Christ rather than federal theology. Chapter 4 explores the soteriological dimension entailing election, effectual calling, regeneration, conversion, faith, repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification. It studies how Boston employs marks and theological syllogism as means of assurance. It also positions assurance as never before among the forensic, relational, transformative, and eschatological elements of Boston's ordo salutis. Chapter 5 considers the ecclesiastical and sacramental dimensions of Boston's theology of assurance, hitherto unresearched, delineating how he views baptism and the Lord's Supper as visible aids of assurance. Boston, this thesis reveals, has a potent and enduring power to speak on the perennial issue of assurance, rooted in union and communion with Christ, whom he considers as being the covenant itself.

As Chinese enterprises expand into other Asian countries, a relatively new form of cross-cultural management-labour relations is emerging in the context of Chinese expatriate managers and Asian employees. Because China and its neighbouring Asian countries are tentatively believed to be similar in terms of cultural orientations developed by scholars such as Hofstede, research on this form of management-labour relations remains underdeveloped. Examining such, this research adds a significant perspective by using legal culture as an approach to investigate the pre-learnt social constructs, culturally influenced forces, and mismatches in expectations which may contribute to tensions, while refraining from seeing culture as a monolith. This study is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a Chinese-invested garment factory in Myanmar, which includes participant observation of factory operations, semi-structured interviews with factory members, and document analysis. Using ethnographic methods, this study identifies important contextual variables and concepts that are explored and linked to relevant scholarship. This study challenges the belief that Chinese and Burmese people share many 'similarities' in terms of cultural orientation. Examining the interaction between Chinese expatriate managers and Burmese workers, it argues there are subtle yet important differences in their contextually contingent perceptions, visions, and expectations - how good leadership and governance should work, how hierarchical distinctions and leader-follower distance should be maintained, and what principles of reciprocity, fairness, and work ethic should be upheld. The cross-cultural workplace is analysed through the intersection of multi-layered individual perceptions and broader sociocultural aspects associated with traditions and historical influences. This study further examines the functions of Burmese supervisors and Chinese-Burmese interpreters, revealing their role in bridging cultural barriers, their internal tensions of engaging in established local interaction with role-based identities, and their decisions to place organisational objectives and collective interest of the factory before cohesion of relationships. It suggests their roles are constrained by the dynamics of organisational power and the social controls set by management.

Researchers have suggested that proof is essential for the learning of mathematics and should be placed at the centre of school mathematics. Yet, many studies suggest that teachers have counterproductive beliefs and attitudes towards teaching proof in school mathematics, which are constraints on making proof central to school mathematics. This study developed an intervention of short duration that promotes preservice teachers' more productive beliefs and attitudes towards teaching proof, which in turn can support preservice teachers' future teaching of proof. Design-based research methodology was used to develop the intervention, which involved four research cycles of implementation, evaluation, and revision. The intervention comprised three weekly two-hour workshops. Preservice teachers who enrolled in different initial teacher training programmes of different universities in Hong Kong were recruited to participate in the intervention. Data were collected from multiple sources, including a questionnaire, individual semi-structured interviews, and fieldnotes and recordings of the intervention. In Research Cycles 1‒3, data were used to assess changes in preservice teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards teaching proof in school mathematics and evaluate early versions of the intervention, which in turn informed refinements of the intervention. In this thesis, I report the findings of Research Cycle 4. The results indicated that, after the intervention, the preservice teachers developed more productive beliefs and attitudes towards teaching proof in school mathematics, namely, enhanced beliefs about the importance of proof in school mathematics, greater enjoyment and interest in proof, less anxiety about proof, and less negative responses when failing to prove, and became more open and felt more prepared to implement proof in their future teaching. Components of the intervention that facilitated the change in the preservice teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards teaching proof have also been investigated. This study can extend our understanding of multifaceted beliefs and attitudes which influence whether and how preservice teachers plan to implement proof in their future teaching, particularly from an East-Asian perspective, and the design principles for facilitating change in beliefs and attitudes towards teaching proof in school mathematics. In practice, the intervention developed in this study can promote preservice teachers' more productive beliefs and attitudes towards teaching proof in school mathematics in a relatively short period.

Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability globally, with China bearing the largest stroke burden in the world. Global strokes can be halved through primary prevention strategies including the use of risk prediction models to identify individuals with high risk of stroke. However, the models advocated for in current international guidelines have been derived mainly in high-income countries, and their clinical utility in a contemporary Chinese population is uncertain. Moreover, these models generally do not account for the heterogeneity between ischaemic stroke (IS) and haemorrhagic stroke (HS) pathological types as well as further aetiological subtypes of IS. The investigations in this thesis describe the assessment of existing risk prediction methods and development of novel models for evaluating primary stroke risk in the China Kadoorie Biobank - a prospective cohort study of 0.5 million Chinese adults recruited from 10 areas in China in 2004-2008. First, we evaluated the 2017 Framingham Stroke Risk Profile in CKB, and used a similar Cox modelling approach to develop novel models for 9-year risk prediction of total stroke that yielded a 6%-8% increase in area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and >90% reduction in the calibration χ^2 test statistic. Risk prediction models for IS and HS were developed with similar results. Second, machine learning approaches including logistic regression, support vector machines, random survival forests, gradient boosted trees (GBT), and multilayer perceptrons were compared for 9-year risk prediction of total stroke. We also developed an ensemble approach combining Cox and GBT predictions, which identified individuals at high-risk of stroke with higher accuracy, specificity, and precision than any single-model approach. Third, we explored the utility of single versus sequential measurements of risk factors for prediction of stroke, and did not find any substantial improvements from sequential risk factor measurements. Fourth, we developed models to assess differential risk of IS and HS and estimated reductions in events and fatalities using optimised statin therapy policies informed by such models. Finally, we characterised the heterogeneity of IS aetiological subtypes and developed models to classify 24% of CKB's primary IS events that were previously characterised as having undetermined aetiology by the existing Causative Classification System (CCS) for Ischemic Stroke. The contributions of this thesis advance the understanding and prevention of stroke in China.

This study examines the three food oil crises that occurred in Taiwan between 2013 and 2014, when over a thousand food products were recalled and more than two hundred supermarkets, restaurants and food makers were affected; these crises led the Taiwanese government to revise food production regulations. The main purpose of this study is to explore how the Taiwanese government, the three companies involved (the Chang Chi company, the Chang Guann company, and the Ting Hsin company), and the Taiwanese media framed the crises and what crisis response strategies were embedded in the frames. This study draws upon crisis communication theories and framing theory to develop a theoretical framework, and applies a qualitative framing analysis method to examine the three companies' and the Taiwanese government's official press releases and three Taiwanese daily newspapers. Five frames have been identified in the public communication of the three main actors during the crises: 'health', 'economy', 'responsibility', 'denial', and 'blame'. The study finds that the three edible oil companies intensely relied on the 'denial', 'blame' and 'responsibility' frames to respond to the crises. The Taiwanese government focused on the 'blame', 'health' 'responsibility' and 'economy' frames when framing the crises. Besides, the 'blame', 'health' and 'economy' frames were presented in the media reports. In addition, the study finds that the three main actors in this study adjusted their crisis response on the basis of other actors' crisis responses. Finally, the study suggests redefining the crisis response strategy of 'apology', and including 'silence' as a crisis response strategy when research is based on Taiwanese or Chinese culture.

After the 1997 handover, policymakers in Hong Kong have instituted a series of language policies that emphasise the importance of the Chinese language to rebrand the postcolonial city as a 'biliterate and trilingual' financial hub in Asia. One unintended consequence, however, is that a burgeoning population of linguistically and culturally diverse students struggles to learn Chinese - i.e., Cantonese as the spoken code and Standard Written Chinese as the written code - as an additional language (CAL), which has escalated into a notable language education issue because later-life prospects are increasingly dependent upon their proficiency in Chinese as a majority language. Informed by findings of a systematic review carried out as part of the present study, and the Douglas Fir Group's (2016) call for a transdisciplinary framework encompassing the micro, meso, and macro levels of additional language learning in a given milieu, a multi-dimensional, mixed-methods design was adopted to problematise CAL provision for ethnolinguistic minority students with CAL needs as the focal language policy and planning (LPP) phenomenon in post-1997 Hong Kong, as well as to particularise local realities with a cross-section of CAL instructional spaces and key participants therein. Through uniting both emic and etic paradigms, exploratory light was shone on the following dimensions of the existing phase of CAL provision (i.e., from 2014 onwards): (i) CAL policy intentions; (ii) CAL policy enactments; and (iii) experiences of CAL students and teachers who have lived through the current policy ecology. Five methods - qualitative content analysis, language assessments, questionnaires, lesson observations, and phenomenological interviews - were employed. Concerning CAL policy intentions (i.e., the 'Policy' domain), textual data from a sample of 173 policy documents published since 1997 were gathered and analysed using the method of qualitative content analysis. As for CAL policy enactments (i.e., the 'Practice' domain), two primary schools and two secondary counterparts were purposively recruited to explore CAL instruction vis-à-vis the primary-secondary interface. Data from this domain consisted of (i) student data drawn from having administered language assessments and questionnaires with 101 students, and (ii) classroom data from having observed 24 lessons (i.e., 1394 minutes) taught by four CAL teachers. To further triangulate policy and practice data, phenomenological interviews (i.e., the 'Phenomenology' domain) were administered with a subsample of 15 CAL students from the four CAL settings observed, as well as their four teachers. At the macro level of policy, the current phase of CAL provision is largely intended as decentralised programmes of policy measures at K-12 levels, which is further supported by CAL measures aiming to strengthening the infrastructural and/or nonformal aspects of CAL provision (e.g., research and resources). Despite demonstrably enhanced CAL provision since the introduction of 'Chinese Language Curriculum Second Language Learning Framework' in 2014, results of the analysis point to the existence of policy incongruities: on one hand, the government intends to facilitate CAL students' integration into the mainstream curriculum; on the other hand, the government authorises and subsidises CAL students to seek alternative qualifications in Chinese. At the micro level of policy enactment across the primarysecondary interface, classroom data demonstrate, among other findings, that CAL instruction at secondary levels is associated with a narrower range of CAL talk and task characteristics, with noticeable alignment with overseas Chinese-as-a-foreignlanguage assessments (i.e., prioritising alternative arrangements). Yet, this pattern of instructional alignment is not identified among CAL settings at primary levels, with classroom data pointing to their orientation towards the mainstream curriculum, as well as the affordances of adopting mixed-abilities grouping and differentiated materials to manage CAL learner diversity. Apart from corroborating findings gleaned from the classrooms, interview data offer additional insights into the diverse realities experienced by CAL teachers and their minority students, especially in areas relating to CAL curriculum development and implementation, CAL learning experiences in postcolonial Hong Kong, and their respective identity trajectories. Taken together, although CAL provision for ethnolinguistic minority students has received ample policy attention and been accordingly enhanced from 2014 onwards (e.g., increased commitments of recurrent funds, and CAL measures targeting the kindergarten sector), it has all along been subject to the ecological influences of a laissez-faire policy ecology favouring school-based management and loose coupling (see Weick, 1976), as well as the broader examination-driven culture. Against this backdrop of CAL decision-making (e.g., curriculum development and resource allocation) devolved to frontline practitioners situated at various key K-12 stages, it is argued that secondary CAL teachers' agentive actions instantiate what Cummins (2000) refers to as 'the narrowing of the curriculum brought about by teaching to the test' (p.248). In other words, CAL instructional spaces lack coordination between primary levels and secondary counterparts. The tight coupling formed between CAL instruction at secondary levels and overseas Chinese assessments (i.e., short-term CAL goals) might possibly undercut the intended efficacy of existing CAL provision as a whole. Potential future research avenues are explored with implications for further policy optimisation that attends to the constraining effects of the policy ecology (e.g., the lack of a sound assessment-cum-accountability system) on local actions, in hopes that more efforts will be purposively channelled towards the longterm and worthwhile CAL goals of mainstreaming and socially just integration.

Computer simulations continue to have an increasing importance in engineering design. Despite advances in computing power, simulation models that capture complex physical phenomena at high fidelities remain intractable for design tasks requiring repeated evaluations of quantities of interest. In these cases, engineers can benefit from developing design insights---a deep understanding of the underlying design space through visualisation and isolating physically significant input parameters. In this thesis, we explore the use of orthogonal polynomial ridge approximations to construct surrogate models. These models enable rapid evaluations and facilitate a deeper, physically-intuitive understanding of the quantities of interest. For modelling smoothly varying functions, the use of orthogonal polynomials has seen considerable research that establishes its efficacy for surrogate modelling, especially in applications such as uncertainty quantification. Meanwhile, ridge approximations provide low-dimensional representations of functions via techniques from model-based dimension reduction. By expressing high-dimensional functions via a much smaller parameter space, ridge approximations enable the visualisation of functional behaviour and can massively speed up computations. The interplay between these two classes of methods is explored through novel algorithms presented in this thesis. First, the application of polynomial ridge approximations to the sensitivity analysis of parameterised models is studied. It is shown that polynomial ridge approximations are competitive against other sparse approximation methods for evaluating moment-based sensitivity indices. Moreover, a polynomial-based set of indices---extremum Sobol' indices---is proposed for extremum sensitivity analysis, which is aimed at revealing input parameters responsible for driving the output near extrema. These indices are compared against those based on skewness decomposition, revealing qualitative similarities. Following this, new methods to form ridge approximations for multi-objective (vector-valued) functions are proposed and studied. The focus of this study is on how ridge approximations of individual objectives can be combined while accounting for relations between the multiple outputs under different situations. First, assuming the underlying objectives represent a scalar field (such as a fluid flow field or finite element mesh), physical properties of the underlying field can facilitate ridge approximations of the field itself and associated quantities of interest. In this work, heuristics grouped under embedded ridge approximations are proposed, which allow emulators of scalar fields to be constructed with efficiency in both computational load and storage space. Using embedded ridge approximations, the storage size of the pressure field around an airfoil can be reduced by over 70% with a small mean squared error of 0.002 times the output variance. Second, techniques for keeping multiple objectives constant through invariant subspaces are proposed. While the finding of invariant subspaces has been established for single objectives as a consequence of existing ridge approximation methods, the extension of this to multiple objectives is relatively new. Depending on the characteristics of the objectives, two different methods---the intersection approach and the vector-valued approach---are discussed. Both of these methods are then applied as part of the computational backbone for blade envelopes, which is a novel computational framework for designing performance-based tolerance bounds of bladed components in turbomachinery. During manufacturing and in-service use, blades inevitably suffer from geometric deviations away from design intent. Blade envelopes provide a guideline for judging whether geometric variations are likely to lead to performance degradation without explicitly solving for the resultant flow field. They are created by quantifying the statistical distribution of permissible geometries first through sampling parametric multi-objective invariant subspaces, which are then lifted into the parameter-free geometric space via the Mahalanobis distance. The resultant framework is able to accommodate multiple scalar- and vector-valued objectives, and assist the robust design of blades through enabling inverse design and visualisation.

This thesis undertakes detailed analysis to determine drivers for the global momentum and value anomalies. The objectives of this thesis are: first, to examine the effectiveness of Asness et al.'s (2013) model to explain international momentum and value profits; second, to investigate the role of cross-cultural attention on investor overconfidence and global momentum profits; and third, to study the impact of overconfidence on global value profits. We provide the first investigation into the explanatory power of Asness et al.'s (2013) model for momentum and value in a comprehensive range of markets characterised by different cultures, geographical regions and levels of market development, finding unique and challenging evidence against the model's effectiveness. Our evidence suggests that market development explains the weaker explanatory power of their model in our stock universe, implying market inefficiency. Motivated by the notion of market inefficiency, we are the first to examine the impact of cross-cultural attention on global momentum profits by considering market states and market dynamics. We find supporting evidence for the relevance of cross-cultural attention to global overconfidence and momentum profits, showing that momentum returns in individualistic countries are not higher than in collectivistic countries under all market dynamics, while relationships between individualism and momentum returns vary across market states. Extending the importance of overconfidence, we undertake an unprecedented investigation into its impact on global value profits over short and long-run periods by employing individualism and market states as proxies for overconfidence. Results demonstrate lower value profits following UP states than DOWN states and in individualistic countries than collectivistic countries over the short run. While long-run results do not support our hypotheses, possibly owing to the difficulty of defining long run, short-run results provide clear support for the view that investor overconfidence significantly impacts on reversals and value profits.

As we transition towards a more sustainable society, high-performance bio-based materials are increasingly required. In this context, cellulosic materials hold exceptional promise as they are derived from abundant and bio-sourced feedstock, and they are able to self-assemble into nanoscale architectures. More specifically, several cellulose derivatives exhibit a cholesteric liquid crystalline phase in solution, displaying vibrant structural colours. Amongst them, water-soluble hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) is ideal for developing sustainable photonic materials to replace toxic dyes and pigments. The development of photonic HPC materials has been, so far, hindered by the difficulty to retain colouration in solid-state films. In this study, three methods to preserve the colour of HPC-water mesophase in the solid-state were developed, and each of these methods yielded different optical or mechanical behaviour, resulting in materials with a variety of functionalities. Firstly, by combining chemical crosslinking and heat treatment, photonic films across the entire visible spectrum were obtained and instead of the typical metallic iridescence associated with HPC mesophases, these films appeared matte and angular independent. Secondly, a functionalised HPC polymer was exploited as an ink to achieve direct 3D printing of photonic structures, which colour could be tuned by exploiting the lyotropic and thermotropic properties of HPC. Lastly, a strategy to develop HPC gels using supramolecular chemistry was explored, leading to photonic gels crosslinked via host-guest and π-π interactions. Through these studies, a toolbox has been developed to tailor the optical properties of HPC and other cellulosic liquid crystals, paving a path towards sustainable cellulose-based photonic systems.

This thesis will provide a distinctive way of doing theistic metaphysics in light of the recent postmodal revolution in metaphysics. In Chapter I, I will undertake the preliminary task of figuring out what metaphysical tools we may need in the inquiries of theistic metaphysics. I will propose three postmodal concepts for theistic metaphysicians: (i) the concept of grounding, (ii) the concept of divine causation, and (iii) the concept of structure. In Chapter 2, I will go through various issues with regard these postmodal concepts including their formal properties and their relations to each other, before applying them to first-order questions in theistic metaphysics. After the second-order reflections on the postmodal concepts in question, I will turn to their applications in Chapters 3-5. The focus of Chapter 3 is theistic accounts of properties. I will demonstrate how various theistic accounts of properties may be formulated in terms of these postmodal concepts. I will also propose my own theistic account of properties which draws on some metaontological considerations raised in this chapter. In Chapter 4, I will turn to issues regarding theistic accounts of modality. I will show how the postmodal concepts may shed new light on several traditional questions about God and modality. A number of theistic accounts of modality will then be evaluated from a postmodal perspective. In Chapter 5, the postmodal concepts will be applied to issues with regard to God and time. I will defend the coherence of various positions about the relationship between God and time. In short, Chapters 3-5 will demonstrate how these postmodal concepts may help formulate, clarify, and answer various first-order questions of theistic metaphysics. Finally, in Chapter 6, I will summarize the previous chapters and say something about the limits of the postmodal approach proposed in this thesis.

This study aims to understand the discursive constitution of Hong Kong nationalism. Despite China's efforts to instil Chinese nationalism among Hong Kong people, recent years witnessed an escalating conflict between Hong Kong and China and the eventual rise of nationalism in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from social media, publications, and archival documents, this study maps the competing discourses of Hong Kong's past, present, and future. It illustrates how history, culture, social issues, and political crises were appropriated by nationalists to foster the building of the Hong Kong nation. The findings suggest that the idea of China Threat is a key component central to the nationalism discourse. The idea of China Threat includes the threats to freedom, democracy, and Hong Kong's culture. Hong Kong nationalism, on the one hand, mobilises Hongkongers to resist the threats from China, and on the other hand, projects itself in the international arena as an aspiring member of the free world to muster support. This study introduces a novel approach that complements sociological research with computational methods to study nationalism. The study employs a mixed methods design; for each chapter, the most appropriate research strategy was devised with consid eration of its research aims and the nature of the data. In order to deal with the vast quantity of social media data, computational text analysis was used to reveal patterns within the text corpora and to select relevant texts for qualitative analysis at a subsequent stage. Sociologically, this study not only contributes new knowledge on Hong Kong society, but also takes advantage of Hong Kong's unique geopolitical, historical, and cultural context as well as the nascent nature of Hong Kong nationalism to reflect on existing theories of nations and nationalism. Methodologically, this work demonstrates the value of using computational methods to augment social inquiries and proposes a novel research framework that is applicable to a wide range of studies that utilise text as data.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infects liver cells resulting in hepatitis B infection. In approximately 90% of childhood infections and 10% of adult cases the virus establishes a chronic, lifelong infection. In 2015, it was estimated that approximately 3.5% of the global population were living with chronic HBV infection. Long-term complications of chronic HBV infection such as cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma cause a significant disease burden. The World Health Organisation has set a goal to eliminate the infection by 2030. However, current treatment for HBV does not cure the infection, and most people require the treatment for life. Therefore, a better understanding of the virus lifecycle and viral intra-host evolution is crucial in the development of antiviral drugs. The error-prone nature of the HBV polymerase and combined with high replication rate result in genetic diversity manifesting as a quasispecies in a chronically HBV- infected host. However, the impact of genetic diversity in HBV infections is still poorly understood; while antigenic differences and drug resistant forms of HBV have been assigned to specific viral polymorphisms, the consequence of the majority of genetic variants have not been interrogated. In this study, genetic diversity of HBV infections was investigated using a nanopore sequencing platform to determine longitudinal HBV evolution within hosts. The data extends previous knowledge that greater viral diversity is observed in HBV e-antigen (HBeAg)-negative infection and the rate of evolution in the nonoverlapping region is much higher than that of the overlapping region. The HBV surface proteins (HBsAg) comprise the Large (L), Middle (M) and Small (S). The HBsAg gene is completely overlapped by the polymerase gene in a -1 frameshift. Mutations occurring in one open reading frame (ORF) can also impact on the other; therefore, it is challenging to investigate the phenotype of HBsAg mutations without altering phenotypic behaviour of the polymerase. Moreover, HBV research requires Biosafety Level (BSL)-3 containment, which hinders research progress. To address these limitations, retroviral pseudotyped viruses (PVs) were utilised in this study to investigate HBV entry and the effect of viral polymorphisms. Retroviruses pseudotyped with the HBV glycoproteins, possess the structural proteins of retrovirus and HBV surface glycoproteins and only require BSL-2 laboratory facilities, which offers an alternative to overcome the drawbacks of handling HBV in vitro. This study developed novel pseudotyping techniques to investigate the HBV entry pathway. A sodium taurocholate co-transporting polypeptide (NTCP) overexpressing hepatocellular carcinoma cell line was developed to determine the impact of receptor expression on HBV entry. A new cell line (293T.gtD4.S) constitutively expressing the S protein of a genotype D isolate has also been developed. Using an in-house engineered lentiviral vector pNL4.3.Nluc.R-E- and a plasmid expressing L co- transfecting 293T.gtD4.S cells, the infectivity of HBV PVs was quantified and monitored. The results revealed the importance of L/S ratio in HBV infectivity.

In this PhD thesis, I defend virtue reliabilism and use it to develop three innovative theories in the philosophy of emotion, epistemology, and action theory. In the first chapter "A New Epistemic Argument for the Perceptual Theory," I argue that emotional experiences share similar epistemic status and functions with their perceptual counterparts based on the notion of recognition abilities. In the second chapter "A Virtue Reliabilist Account of Justified Emotion," I argue that emotional experiences enjoy epistemic justification if, and only if, they are exclusively products of the agent's intellectual virtues, which are reliable emotion-making processes that have a sufficiently high probability of generating correct emotions. In the third chapter "Sentimental Willpower: An Emotional Theory of Synchronic Self-Control," I argue that, with the assistance of justified emotions that are correct and proportionate, which are exclusively products of the agent's intellectual virtues, it is psychologically possible for the agent to initiate the exercise of self-control while under the influence of a competing temptation, so she can act in alignment with the value she genuinely endorses.

Colorectal cancer is one of the most prevalent types of cancer. Many factors are associated to the poor prognosis of colorectal cancer including genetic mutations, epigenetic changes, myofibroblast recruitment, and metastasis. Metastasis is the major cause of death in colorectal cancer patients. The most common sites are liver and lymph node metastasis with approximately 20-30% of patients with liver metastasis. Most literature discuss epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) as the molecular mechanism tumor cells undergo to increase motility and invasiveness, ultimately leading to cancer metastasis. This thesis is consisted of two major sections: computational and experimental work. The first aim of the thesis is to demonstrate our Python-implemented pipeline GMMchi developed to identify bimodal patterns in a mixture of normal and non-normal components (Chapter 3). GMMchi is further applied onto multiple large datasets to demonstrate its capability in pattern-based analysis (Chapter 4). In addition, we built a GMMchi-based scRNA-seq postprocessing pipeline efficient in separating clusters in a population of similar cell types (Chapter 7). In the second aim of this thesis, we studied colorectal cancer metastasis in the context of EMT-like colorectal cancer cell lines and myofibroblast recruitment via co-cultured system consisting of colorectal cancer and myofibroblast cell lines. We showed a novel epigenetic regulation of ZEB1, the gene encoding an EMT transcription factor highly associated with our CRC cell lines exhibiting EMT markers, via CpG island methylation (Chapter 5). The second part of this section focused on understanding PDGF-C as an important ligand responsible for myofibroblast and CRC cell line interaction (Chapter 6). In this thesis, we identified a novel mechanism for ZEB1 promoter methylation, revalidated myofibroblast recruitment phenotype previously observed in co-culture assays as well as developed and demonstrated our suite of tools for researchers to carry out pattern-based analysis.

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR associated (Cas) proteins build adaptive immunity against mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in prokaryotes. The memory of previously encountered MGEs is established by DNA capture and integration into CRISPR loci catalysed by Cas1-Cas2 adaptation complexes. Cas1 is thought to have evolved from enzymes called casposases, which belong to a novel class of transposases. A previous study showed casposases integrate into target molecules single and double stranded DNA containing terminal inverted repeats (TIRs). In this project, in vitro biochemical assays showed that the substrate flexibility of Acidoprofundum boonei casposase extends to random integration of DNA without TIRs, including integration of a functional gene. The DNA substrate tolerance of casposases may make them useful as a tool for biotechnology applications that require targeted DNA integration activity. Casposase-Cas9 fusions were engineered to investigate the targeting of DNA integration to specific DNA sites. The fusion proteins were able to form an R-loop with target DNA and demonstrated RNA-guided DNA integration in vitro. Full-site RNA-guided DNA integration products were not detected and DNA integration into some non-specific DNA sites was observed. Expression of fusion proteins in Escherichia coli cells could target both chromosomal and plasmid lacZ gene but casposase catalysed DNA integration was not detected. Casposase-Cas9 fusions might be a useful prototype of a genome editing tool for targeted DNA insertion that is independent of homology-directed DNA repair. In addition, the project investigated alternatives to casposase-Cas9 fusions. A casposase-dCasX fusion construct yielded protein that could not be successfully purified. A tyrosine recombinase, IntpTN3 integrase, was fused to dCas9 and successfully purified. However, RNA-guided recombination between homologous sequences was not detected. Future work will require a deeper understanding of the low sequence specificity recombination activity of IntpTN3.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is one of the most common autosomal-recessive genetic disorders affecting millions worldwide. The three most significant abnormal features of RBCs from SCA patients are haemoglobin (HbS) polymerisation, phosphatidylserine (PS) exposure and significantly increased cation permeability via the KCl cotransporter (KCC), and are critical to the pathogenesis of SCD. The outcome of these abnormal features usually results in altered red blood cell (RBC) fragility and rheology, increased viscosity with blockage of small capillary vessels, and changed RBC membrane permeability. This study aimed to explore novel aspects of these three features with respect to their modulation by physiological stimuli experienced in vivo and a major pharmacological modulator, protein phosphorylation. Various physiological stimuli such as oxygen tension (PO2), rate of deoxygenation, pH, urea, anisotonicity and medium composition, play an important role in regulation of HbS polymerisation, PS exposure and KCC activity in HbSS RBCs. In addition, low potassium (LK) sheep RBCs were utilised as an animal model to examine these physiological stimuli on KCC activity in comparison with their effects on human HbSS RBCs’. Various pharmacological manoeuvres were also tested for their effects on HbS polymerisation, PS exposure and KCC activity. A key finding was the marked stimulatory effect of the pan “with no lysine” kinase inhibitor WNK463 on KCC activity in HbSS RBCs, indicative of a critical role for WNK kinases in control of KCC in RBCs. However, there was no pharmacological evidence for the downstream involvement of SPAK/OSR1, although definitive evidence awaits phosphoproteomic studies. Overall, results provide a better and more comprehensive understanding of the pathogenesis of SCD with the potential to inform novel therapeutic approaches.

Worry is a chain of negative thoughts about future events that everyone experiences from time to time. However, worry can be excessive and uncontrollable, thereby leading to emotional distress and impairments in daily life. This PhD thesis aimed to explore the cognitive processes associated with worry based on Hirsch and Mathews’ (2012) cognitive model of worry (introduced in Chapter 1) using both behavioural and neurophysiological measures across four empirical studies (Chapters 3 to 6). In order to have appropriate measures for assessing online interpretation bias, i.e., the immediate interpretation generated when encountering ambiguous situations, materials were developed systematically (see Chapter 2). Study 1 (Chapter 3; Feng et al., 2019) aimed to explore whether individuals with high or low levels of worry interpret ambiguity differently at different interpretative stages, i.e., from the moments when they first encounter information (online interpretation) to when they have time to reflect (offline interpretation). Both behavioural and event-related potentials (ERPs) indices supported the hypothesis that high worriers lack the benign interpretation bias evident in low worriers at all interpretive stages. Study 2 (Chapter 4; Feng et al., 2020) further examined whether high worriers generate more benign online (as well as replicating the finding of changes in offline interpretations) following a brief single-session interpretation training, and if so, whether this facilitation of a benign bias reduces worry. The findings indicate the causal role of interpretation bias in maintaining worry, and the utility of reducing worry via this computer-based interpretation training. A cross-sectional Study 3 (Chapter 5) used an integrated approach to explore how different cognitive processes work together in relation to worry. Cognitive processes assessed in this study included interpretation bias and for the first time in worry research examining the integration of the interpretation into the veridical memory of the original information (interpretation-memory bias). Study 3 also assessed individuals’ tendency to attend to negative or benign (positive or neutral) information (attention bias), and whether they have enough cognitive resources to ignore the irrelevant distractors (e.g., emotional information) while focusing on the current task (attention control). In addition to exploring the relationship between worry and individual cognitive processes, how cognitive processes work in combination was also investigated. For example, the tendency to attend to threatening information (i.e., negative attention bias) may be associated with worry severity, but only when individuals also have poor attention control (in keeping with established findings for anxiety). This study established that different cognitive processes combine and provide unique variance in explaining worry above the individual cognitive processes. A prospective study (Study 4; Chapter 6) investigated whether cognitive processes and their combinations predict future worry when individuals are under stress (i.e., examinations). The study used the cognitive processes assessed in Study 3 to predict worry and anxiety at follow-up during a stressful event (examinations). Findings showed that individuals with negative offline interpretation bias and poor attention control were more likely to have high levels of worry or anxiety during a stressful time. The results indicate that assessing key cognitive processes might help identify those at risk of developing severe worry and anxiety, thus opening up the possibility of selecting individuals who may benefit from preventive interventions to decrease the likelihood of escalating anxiety and worry. In summary (discussed in Chapter 7), this thesis extends the understanding of the cognitive mechanisms of worry and raises important implications for the development of future effective interventions and prevention programs, and means to identify individuals at risk of severe worry at times of high stress.

This product- and process-oriented study looks into the translingual and transcultural phenomena surrounding the introduction of English-language Christian-themed literature into Taiwan after the year 2000. The texts chosen for this study are C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and William P. Young’s The Shack. The empirical data for this research contains the translated texts and their source texts, various paratextual materials, my own observations, and the information obtained from my interviews and correspondence with translation agents in Taiwan. Polysystem theory is used to analyse my findings regarding the interaction of relevant cultural systems, such as the Christian and secular cultural systems in Taiwan and the U.S. My case studies show that the introduction of Christian-themed fiction from the Anglophone contexts into the Taiwanese context can be understood as systemic functioning. In the theoretical aspect, my discussion illustrates the continued usefulness of the polysystem approach for investigating translation phenomena if it is integrated with other theories to take into account of the weaknesses that criticism has pointed out: mainly its downplay of agents (or, institution) and its subjectiveness. I tackle these limitations by borrowing theoretical elements from two of the most known social theories in translation studies: Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture featuring ‘field’, ‘habitus’, and ‘capital’, and Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. This study suggests that polysystem theory can be applied to examine literary and cultural phenomena in which the institution plays a major role, especially when the institutional efforts tend to adhere to a certain belief system. However, to weaken the mechanical tendency hinted by system-based theories, it would be helpful to incorporate Bourdieu’s idea of habitus into the system-oriented theoretical framework. Luhmann’s theorisation of social systems helps to strengthen my point on the structuralisation and self-containedness of the Christian literary polysystem and also enables me to critically reflect on the vantage points from which the systems are examined and described.

Predicting cardiovascular events is an important subject in the developed world as it is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Identifying those at risk of developing cardiovascular disease is key as there are treatments available to reduce the risk of future events. The most well-known prediction tool is the Framingham Risk Score (FRS), a multivariate cardiovascular risk prediction model. The Framingham cohort identified some of the most fundamental risk factors that shape modern cardiovascular prevention, however, it is not a perfect model. The imperfect nature of cardiovascular risk prediction based on FRS forms the starting point of this research journey. In the search for a better prediction tool, a logical approach would be to improve on an existing model, rather than ‘reinventing the wheel’. This philosophy underpins this piece of work, which focuses on finding a tool that improves identification of subclinical disease. From my clinical practice in radiology, the value of cardiovascular CT biomarkers became an obvious area to investigate. Over the course of my research, I realised both cardiovascular (CVD) risk prediction models and CVD CT biomarkers have evolved over a similar period. The scope of my research demanded my attention to focus on FRS as a base model, though there are many other CVD risk prediction models. Similarly, there are multiple cardiovascular CT biomarkers that have been proposed. The best studied CT biomarker in terms of predicting CVD events is undoubtedly coronary calcium score (CACS). Considering the evolving nature of CT technology and the deeper understanding of CVD pathophysiology, there are two other up-and-coming biomarkers, namely thoracic calcium score (TACS) and coronary artery stenosis, which broaden the scope of investigating potentially useful biomarkers. Embedding CT biomarkers within Framingham Risk Score formed the framework investigation. Derived from this was a journey of discovery that led me to learn the rapidly expanding knowledge of prognosis research. My initial investigation was conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of the incremental value of discussed CT biomarkers. This was followed by investigating the reporting standard of the Framingham Model within the realm of incremental value added by CT biomarkers. Finally, performing a feasibility study to look at whether the coronary arteries can be assessed during routine oncological whole-body CT imaging. I would like to illustrate and share my learning in the subsequent chapters.

The key role of p53 as a tumour suppressor is widely acknowledged and based on many observations that p53 suppresses oncogene-mediated transformation of rodent fibroblasts and is the most frequently mutated gene in human cancers. However, the p53 family of transcription factors is evolutionarily very ancient and already found in primordial metazoans where it acts as a pivotal coordinator of reparative responses to cellular stress, cell and DNA damage (“the Guardian of the Genome”). The best guess is that the tumour suppressor functions of p53, principally induction of cell death and senescence, are later additions that serve to rein in rogue somatic cells. The extent to which the immediate stress response and tumour suppression functions of p53 augment or antagonise each other is hotly debated, not the least because of occasional studies that indicate a paradoxical positive selective retention of p53 in some early stage cancers, suggesting that p53 function is indeed in some way beneficial for nascent tumours. Such inherent antagonistically pleiotropic properties make classical genetic analysis of p53 function complicated – as does the confounding presence in the mammalian genome of at least two additional paralogues of p53, p63 and p73 whose functions partially overlap. Therefore, to address the potentially distinct functions of p53 in development, maintenance and repair of normal adult tissues and in tumour suppression, I have built a unique, temporally switchable mouse model in which p53 function may be reversibly toggled between wild type and null states at will in vivo. I show that acute systemic repression of p53 in adult mice elicits no overt symptoms or somatic pathologies. However, spontaneous tumours emerged in the same cellular compartments and with a similar latency to those observed in germline p53-null mice. Detailed analyses of tissues and tumours have yet to be conducted. Temporal dissection of p53’s functions at different stages of chemically-induced skin cancer revealed a window during the initiation stage where p53 retention promoted early carcinogenesis (skin papillomas) while loss of p53 promoted the development of later squamous carcinomas. The ability to rapidly and reversibly switch p53 functional status and to identify windows of p53 pro-tumourigenic and tumour suppressive function will provide new insights into the diverse and perhaps antagonistic roles of p53 in development, tissue homeostasis, cancer and ageing.

Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has become one of the most commonly performed procedures in hospital used to treat coronary heart disease. As PCI has evolved into a safe procedure with low mortality rates, however, there is now a growing population of patients who undergo PCI and are at risk of complications and readmissions. With the constant aim to improve patient care, reducing unplanned readmissions are of interest because they can be considered an adverse outcome for patients and potentially requiring unnecessary cost. There is limited literature from national cohorts that were designed to evaluate unplanned readmissions from all payers in the United States. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate 30-day unplanned readmissions after PCI in a nationally representative, all-payer cohort in the United States. In particular, this thesis will determine 1) The overall rate of 30-day unplanned readmissions and trends in readmission rates will be explored to determine how rates have changed over time 2) Who are the patients at risk of 30-day unplanned readmissions? 3) How do age group, sex, comorbidity and discharge against medical advice impact unplanned readmissions? 4) Why do patients return for 30-day unplanned readmission? 5) How do the rates of unplanned readmissions after PCI change over time after the procedure? 6) What are the costs of 30-day unplanned readmissions after PCI? This thesis addresses the aforementioned aims in multiple chapters. Chapter 5 evaluates the 30-day unplanned readmission rate in the entire cohort, trends in readmission rates, predictors of readmissions and cause of readmission in the entire PCI cohort. Chapter 6, 7, 8 and 9 evaluated how 30-day unplanned readmissions differ depending on age group, sex, comorbidity burden and discharge against medical advice. Chapter 10 highlights the impact of 30-day unplanned readmissions on cost while Chapter 11 discusses how readmission rates, predictors and causes of readmission differ depending on the timing of evaluation of readmissions up to 180 days. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that 30-day unplanned readmissions are common affecting nearly 1 in 10 patients who undergo PCI. Older patients, female patients, comorbid patients and patients who discharge against medical advice have a greater propensity for unplanned readmissions and measures should be taken to reduce readmissions in these patients. The financial burden of readmissions is significant and the cost of coronary syndromes treated with PCI and 30-day unplanned readmissions in the United States is estimated to be $10.8 billion. Important causes of unplanned readmissions include non-specific chest pain, infection, gastrointestinal disease, coronary artery disease including angina, acute myocardial infarction and heart failure and these causes should be targeted by interventions to reduce readmissions. Hospitals where patients undergo PCI should evaluate if rates of readmission are a problem and clinicians should implement interventions to reduce the burden of unplanned readmissions after PCI. In particular, patient care should be tailored to the individual with risk reduction and optimization of the management of both cardiac and co-morbid conditions and the appropriate arrangement of community care once discharged.

In this thesis, a wide range of surface sensitive techniques have been used to characterise surfaces relevant to offshore steel structures, to provide fundamental understanding of steel-paint binding that prolongs coating lifespans and corrosion inhibition. Particular steel surfaces are characterised before and after almandine garnet abrasive blasting. Significant build-up and coverage of abrasive residue (almandine and calcium carbonate) is identified on the post-treatment steel, covering up to a third of the steel surface; Given the importance of the blasting materials on the surface, almandine garnet is also characterised for its surface chemistry and behaviour. By characterising both bare steel and almandine garnet, adsorption on `real' garnet-blasted steel substrates can be modelled. A dry ice-garnet mixed stream is also investigated to see whether abrasive residue could be reduced. It is found that a quarter of the steel surface is covered with blasting residue. However, cooling and moisture-condensation leads to corrosion spots formation. The adsorption of potential paint additives and components on S355 steel and garnet are determined using solution depletion isotherms. Quantitative data such as equilibrium adsorption constants, and estimation of monolayer molecular geometries are collected. The latter is further investigated through novel surface spectroscopy. In brief, most organics are found to have higher The steel surface is shown to be likely to corrode in offshore conditions with corrosion marine aerosols in a matter of a few hours. It is these corrosion products which will be substrates for coating/paint molecules. A `salt drop' corrosion study simulates relatively short timescale aerosol exposure (mins to hours). Surface chemical-environments are characterised. The corrosion products are found to be porous, inhomogeneous in chemical environment, and evolve through time, with adsorbed/occluded marine ions. Finally, as steel corrosion products are likely to adsorb marine salts, ion adsorption on almandine garnet is investigated. Cations of sodium, magnesium, and calcium are found to specifically adsorb. Numerical model co-fitting of data from different techniques successfully obtains the adsorption equilibria and constant, and the surface site density of almandine garnet. The study highlights a general need for more complete studies, using multiple adsorption experiments, for aqueous phase adsorption investigations on minerals in the future.

Increasing awareness of personal health conditions has emerged as a key driver in point-of-care breath analysis for early diagnosis. This also demands real-time monitoring of air pollution based on internet of things (IoT) networks. Both systems rely on the development of scalable mobile-embeddable devices. Conventional devices face challenges like high power consumption, severe baseline drifts, and cross-analyte interferences, compromising the detection accuracies. Recently, 2D nanomaterials and their functionalization with metal oxides (MOx) have become attractive for high performing sensors. Solution processing of these materials coupled with inkjet printing can be promising for fabricating low-cost devices. I have addressed the abovementioned challenges from the perspectives of materials, device fabrication, and algorithmic approaches. I develop an inkjet-printed array of graphene-ZnO and graphene-WO₃ system integrated onto miniaturized CMOS platforms to detect NH₃ and acetone for potential diagnosis of diseases. I also develop a machine-intelligent classification system based on inkjet-integrated α-Fe₂O₃-rGO CMOS devices to selectively measure NO₂ air pollutants. The ink formulation and the theoretical model I develop facilitate uniform printed morphology, achieving excellent device reproducibility. Coupled with temperature modulation (TM) algorithms I develop, the devices achieve high responsivity, eliminated baseline drift, reduced response/recovery time, high SNR, and extraordinary repeatability. Moreover, a sensor array is established for compensation of cross-analyte interference. The influences of interferents are addressed by machine learning (ML) approaches. The predictive system quantifies NO₂ concentrations under different humidity conditions, with excellent separation between classes. Furthermore, the fully inkjet-printed room temperature NO₂ sensors assembled within the developed multi-sensory hub have performed reliable measurements in a real-world environment. My strategy to combine the sensing material, inkjet printing onto the CMOS platform, and TM/ML algorithms promises a robust system that outperforms conventional devices. The versatile technologies enable reliable multi-material array for potential multi-disease diagnostics. The systems developed also pave the way for ubiquitous implementation of adaptive wireless-connected monitoring systems.

The regulation of gene expression underlies all cellular processes and fundamentally enables complexity of eukaryotic organisms. Aberrant expression of noncoding RNAs can compromise normal gene expression. Gene promoters are inherently bidirectional and generate divergent noncoding RNAs along with protein-coding messenger RNAs. Chromatin and RNA turnover pathways limit expression of noncoding RNAs, but how sequence-specific transcription factors regulate divergent noncoding transcription and promoter directionality is not well understood. Here, I investigate how divergent transcription is repressed at highly expressed genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. I find that the sequence-specific transcription factor Rap1 limits divergent noncoding transcription at a large fraction of its target genes. Rap1 safeguards normal gene expression by limiting aberrant transcription that overlaps with neighbouring loci. Divergent RNAs initiate at or extremely close to Rap1 binding sites, indicating that Rap1 limits initiation of transcription from divergent core promoters. Stable binding of Rap1 near cryptic promoters is required and sufficient to suppress divergent transcription. Silencing cofactors or transcriptional coactivators associated with Rap1 are not required for repression of noncoding RNAs at promoters. In contrast, a small region within the Rap1 carboxy-terminal domain is required for repression of divergent transcription and affects interaction between Rap1 and the RSC chromatin remodeller. RSC and Rap1 regulate divergent transcription at Rap1-regulated gene promoters in distinct ways. Promoter output shifts from unidirectional to bidirectional transcription in the absence of Rap1, which is partially suppressed after co-depletion of Rap1 and RSC. RSC activity is not strictly required for divergent transcription suggesting that additional regulators also play important roles. I propose that certain sequence-specific transcription factors limit the access of transcription machinery and coactivators to divergent core promoters by steric hindrance, thereby providing directionality towards productive transcription of coding genes.

Perovskite solar cell (PSC) is one of the most promising next-generation photovoltaic technologies that can provide low-cost, alternative renewable energy. The main hindrances to the deployment of PSC panels are instability issues. Deterioration in the power conversion efficiency of PSCs over time greatly originates from perovskite light absorbers. Hence, in this thesis, the stability of lead and tin perovskites is investigated. Some key factors to improve the stability of perovskite materials are discussed, including processing, materials, and understanding degradation mechanisms in particular. I introduce a state-of-the-art characterisation technique, near-ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (NAP-XPS), to investigate the surface stability and degradation process of perovskites. We propose the moisture-induced degradation behaviour of a prototypical halide perovskite, methylammonium lead iodide (MAPI): MAPI decomposes into lead iodide and hydrocarbon chains by releasing hydrogen iodide and ammonia gases. For processing, we find that MAPI films made by aerosol-assisted chemical vapour deposition (AACVD) generally have better stability in humid air than their spin-coated counterparts, which can be attributed to larger grain sizes. Moreover, surface passivation plays a crucial role in the improved stability against moisture. This can be achieved using excess CH3NH3I (to react with a Pb(SCN)2 precursor) or bulky ammonium iodides for MAPI films. Formamidinium (FA)-based mixed-cation mixed-halide perovskites and Cs2SnI6 double perovskite not only have better water resistance but also undergo different degradation routes compared to MAPI. Upon H2O vapour exposure, the FA cation transforms into CH3NH3+ first, whilst the degraded species of Cs2SnI6, CsI, remains at the surface. It will be shown that these insights can pave the way towards stable PSCs.

This thesis explores advertising and commercial art in Korea under Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). It questions how visual artefacts, mainly press advertisements and posters, reflect the social, cultural, political, and economic conditions of colonial Korea. It focuses on the period from 1920 to 1940, when Korean-owned and -language newspapers were published for Korean readers. The colonial period has largely been marginalised in histories of Korean design, partly because of the scarcity of the remaining material, but also due to the reluctance of many Korean design historians to acknowledge design artefacts produced under Japanese rule as authentically 'Korean' or genuinely 'modern'. The thesis problematises existing nationalist and Eurocentric- modernist definitions of 'Korean design' and sheds light on a little-studied period with a scope beyond the single nation. Advertising in colonial Korea was a complicated field in which the economic interests, political agendas, and cultural identities of both Korean and Japanese agents were entangled. To disentangle this complexity, the thesis adopts a design-historical methodology; it closely analyses visual artefacts and traces their production and dissemination within broader contexts of commerce, industry, technology, and education. It also takes a transnational perspective to trace movements of objects, people, knowledge, and institutions in a more global contextual background, incorporating exchanges across Korea and Japan. To this end, an extensive range of magazines, newspapers, and books produced in the two countries by both Koreans and Japanese are examined. The four chapters of the thesis discuss Korean nationalists' promotion of advertising design as a project of 'self-strengthening'; the expansion of Japanese companies and products in the Korean market through localised advertisements; the rise of urban consumerism and modernist design styles in advertisements; commercial art education and the professionalisation of the commercial artist. By examining advertising from the vantage points of nationalism, colonialism, consumer culture, and education, the chapters collectively articulate how design changes in print advertisements relate to the circumstances of colonisation and modernisation in Korea more broadly. The thesis argues that modernity was displayed in colonial Korea in the sense that advertisements presented images of modern lifestyles with modern stylistic vocabularies, but also in the sense that there existed a significant dissonance between the visual gloss and the fragile social and economic conditions of the colony. Such dissonance was particularly salient given the lack of social, industrial, and educational systems to sustain the production of the displayed images themselves. Through this critical examination of design and modernity, the thesis contributes to the discourse of colonial modernity in Korea and East Asia more generally. It not only offers a history of design in colonial Korea, but also provides a more nuanced understanding of colonial Korea through design, in terms of the modernities aspired to, pursued, and experienced, as well as unachieved, during the period. It also suggests design history as an analytical framework for understanding cultural transmission within asymmetrical power relationships, or more generally for writing empirical and more nuanced histories, which may be relevant for historians of other regions and periods.

This thesis examines three interrelated questions by way of an ethnography of the Taipei Dance Circle (TDC): What is ‘a dance troupe’? What is ‘artistic work’ for society? What is ‘becoming a dancer’? As a modern dance troupe, the TDC (1984- 2019) was known for dance pieces using baby oil, a practice led and then lost by its founder and choreographer Shaw-Lu Liu. I argue that when Shaw-Lu Liu died in 2014 the dance troupe passed into a liminal state to keep itself going. This situation challenges the ontological meaning of being a dance troupe. To address this question, I draw on Victor Turner’s theoretical concepts of social drama and the ritual process to suggest why a dance troupe should be treated as a process in time. Thirteen months of involved participant observation, complemented with detailed interviews, allow me to show how the members of this dance troupe practise their distinct performing arts, and how a dancer continues ‘becoming a dancer’ in this transition period. By engaging with anthropological theories of creativity and play, this thesis argues that the TDC’s rehearsal and dance practice transcends the traditional dichotomy of work and play. Finally, by comparing the kinaesthetic attention and choreography of the late choreographer Shaw-Lu Liu with that of the new collaborator/choreographer Cheng-Chieh Yu, I illustrate the different relationships between an individual and an organization: this ‘becoming a dancer’ is understood as an ongoing process of professional socialization.

In-Between Pleats is a research project constituted by a series of case studies, historical research, a short intensive pleating apprenticeship, and live performances. The research objective emerged through the exploratory making of pleats. It is to create new thinking about pleats by examining the dynamics of handmade and digital technology, and the potential of those pleats on the body and movement, interrogating three research questions: ‘What is a pleat?’, ‘What is in a pleat?’, ‘What do pleats do?’. Pleating is a type of fabric manipulation and so this research refers to ‘textile thinking’ for analytical thinking. The research starts with an understanding of pleating history and techniques. A selection of materials, including cotton, silk, and synthetic fibres, are tested, recognising that the quality of pleats and pleating is directly affected by the specific fibre and forming structure. It is these differences that offer a range of perspectives to this study. These explorations, led by textile thinking, help to anchor my practice among other practitioners, and position this study in the research context. The experiments to reproduce Mariano Fortuny and Issey Miyake pleats establish a fundamental understanding of pleating techniques, which form the first layer of analysis for this study, and lead to a methodology for the next layer of research. I propose a new methodology: ‘pliable logic’, derived from my making and thinking, evolving from Pennina Barnett’s ‘soft logic’, Sarat Maharaj’s ‘think-speak-write’, and Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘plica ex plica’, to interrogate and revisit the research questions. A new pleating method – fabric mould – is originated from my research into materials and techniques; new types of pleats emerge from the application of 3D printing technology. Using these newly produced pleats in live performances, a space to rethink the relationship between garments, textiles, body and movement, offered new perspectives of what pleats and pleating are. Pliable logic provides innovation for both the creation and interpretation of pleats and pleating, through an oscillation between making and theory. The research proposes a new taxonomy of pleats based on my making experiences. A speculative proposition of what future pleats will look like and be made of, builds a perspective that reinvigorates the way in which pleats and pleating are perceived.

The human lifestyle can be foreseen to have a tremendous change once the automation of transportation has been fully realised. The majority of current researches merely focus on improving the efficiency performance of autonomous vehicles(e.g. the energy management system, the handling, etc.)instead of putting the human acceptance and preference into consideration, leaving the knowledge gap of achieving the personalised automation. The primary objective of this research is to develop a novel human-like trajectory planning algorithm that is able to mimic the performance of human drivers and generate a feasible trajectory for an autonomous vehicle to complete a motorway lane change, which is the most representative and commonest manoeuvre on the motorway. This thesis can be divided into four main sections. Starting with the part of literature review, which summarises the existing techniques and the associated knowledges that can be taken the advantage of; including the trajectory planning, the driving styles, the lane change manoeuvre and the Model Predictive Control (MPC). An appropriate-designed experiment is then introduced and implemented, with the purpose of constructing a precise and reliable human driving database. This database contains 551 lane changes on the motorway from 12 different male drivers. Through applying data statistics methods, the human characteristics can be mined from the experimental data, showing that the vehicle velocity v, the hand steering wheel angle δhandreal, the longitudinal acceleration aₓ, the rate of hand steering γhandsteer and the rate of longitudinal accelerating γlongAcc are the essential features for the motorway lane change manoeuvre. An off-line constraint table for the three nominated driving styles can be therefore constructed based on these features. Finally, the obtained human information is then fused with the traditional MPC planning technique so as to achieve the proposed human-like trajectory planning algorithm. The main contribution of this study is proposing a novel approach of combining the real human driving data and the traditional planning technique(i.e. MPC) to achieve human-like lane change trajectory planning for autonomous vehicles. An integrated human driving database which contains both the video footages and the vehicle-dynamic-based signals from 12 different participants is built. Moreover, the draft marginal values of the essential parameters for the driving styles while performing a right lane change on the motorway are also presented. Both the collected driving database and the driving styles' constraint table can be seen as distinctive achievements, providing resourceful materials for future researches.

This thesis presents four studies that sought to examine the presence and role of cortical hyperexcitability underlying aberrant / anomalous perceptions in neurotypical and self-reported migraine groups. The current thesis developed new screening tools for assessing and conceptualising cortical hyperexcitability leading to essential advancements in our understanding of its presence and its role in different forms of anomalous experience. In chapter II, the latent structure of a proxy measure was uncovered and constructed to reflect cortical hyperexcitability, namely Cortical Hyperexcitability Index - II (CHi-II), by conducting an exploratory factor analysis on the behavioural data that indicates the frequency and intensity of the 300 non-clinical participants' everyday life anomalous visual experiences. In chapter III, a revised pattern glare test was employed to investigate a direct linkage between everyday life visual stress symptoms and pattern glare. The quantitative analyses were implemented by exploring the statistical relationships between the scores of the extracted factors on CHi-II and pattern glare scores and on a set of migraine patients and healthy controls. In chapter IV, where the gratings typically used in a pattern glare test were revised as visual stimuli with a VEP paradigm. The association between cortical hyperexcitability and pattern glare was examined by electrophysiological measurement. Here the early (0 - 200 ms) and late VEP (300 -700 ms) components are compared between the groups of self-reported migraineurs and neurotypical participants. Finally, aiming to isolate the effect of cortical hyperexcitability from migraine, the above VEP study on a clinically normal sample was replicated in chapter V. In order to observe how cortical hyperexcitability may influence the VEPs, non-clinical subjects were split into hyperexcitable and non-hyperexcitable based on their pattern glare scores. The early and late VEP components are, again, compared between these two groups.

The phenomenal advances in cloud computing technology have raised concerns about data privacy. Aided by the modern cryptographic techniques such as homomorphic encryption, it has become possible to carry out computations in the encrypted domain and process data without compromising information privacy. In this thesis, we study various classes of privacy-preserving information hiding schemes and their real-world applications for cyber security, cloud computing, Internet of things, etc. Data breach is recognised as one of the most dreadful cyber security threats in which private data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by unauthorised parties. Although encryption can obfuscate private information against unauthorised viewing, it may not stop data from illegitimate exportation. Privacy-preserving Information hiding can serve as a potential solution to this issue in such a manner that a permission code is embedded into the encrypted data and can be detected when transmissions occur. Digital watermarking is a technique that has been used for a wide range of intriguing applications such as data authentication and ownership identification. However, some of the algorithms are proprietary intellectual properties and thus the availability to the general public is rather limited. A possible solution is to outsource the task of watermarking to an authorised cloud service provider, that has legitimate right to execute the algorithms as well as high computational capacity. Privacypreserving Information hiding is well suited to this scenario since it is operated in the encrypted domain and hence prevents private data from being collected by the cloud. Internet of things is a promising technology to healthcare industry. A common framework consists of wearable equipments for monitoring the health status of an individual, a local gateway device for aggregating the data, and a cloud server for storing and analysing the data. However, there are risks that an adversary may attempt to eavesdrop the wireless communication, attack the gateway device or even access to the cloud server. Hence, it is desirable to produce and encrypt the data simultaneously and incorporate secret sharing schemes to realise access control. Privacy-preserving secret sharing is a novel research for fulfilling this function. In summary, this thesis presents novel schemes and algorithms, including: • two privacy-preserving reversible information hiding schemes based upon symmetric cryptography using arithmetic of quadratic residues and lexicographic permutations, respectively. • two privacy-preserving reversible information hiding schemes based upon asymmetric cryptography using multiplicative and additive privacy homomorphisms, respectively. • four predictive models for assisting the removal of distortions inflicted by information hiding based respectively upon projection theorem, image gradient, total variation denoising, and Bayesian inference. • three privacy-preserving secret sharing algorithms with different levels of generality.

This thesis investigates the use of Origami folding techniques in antenna structures. This application would be suitable for space satellites and military secure communications. The main research is divided into three segments. The first one presents a Vivaldi antenna using flexible substrates, Kapton and Mylar. They are simulated in Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Studio and tested with a Vector Network Analyser (VNA) in the anechoic chamber. The reason for using various flexible substrates is to determine which substrate would perform better when folded. Each substrate has unique electrical and mechanical properties. Secondly, a more specfic Origami folding pattern called Miura Ori is introduced. It is integrated into two antenna designs: Slot antenna and Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) antenna. The Miura Ori folding technique is a repeated pattern with some interesting mechanical properties. It would be able to switch between different states: at, partially folded or fully folded. This would be beneficial for applications where the cost, size and weight are limited. Both antenna designs are simulated and optimised to achieve a good performance, before incorporating the Miura Ori folding technique. There are special parameters that require the model to be functional, Inner angle and Folding angle. Each antenna is simulated by varying those two parameters, because of that the resonant frequency, reflection coefficient (S11), gain and the direction of the radiating angle is changed. Lastly, a microwave switch with nanowires is investigated to provide a fast switching network at each individual antenna. The microwave switch is simulated on a flexible substrate.

This Dissertation describes the development of chemical looping for selective oxidations. Chemical looping is a reactor technology that achieves simultaneous reaction and separation. For a large subset of reactions (viz. abstraction or insertion of oxygen), this technology is based upon the use of oxygen carriers. These materials, typically metal oxides, reversibly store and release oxygen, and there is growing interest in using these materials for selective oxidations. This Dissertation describes work on the development of oxygen carriers for selective oxidations, including foundational work on a method for analysing periodic non-catalytic gas-solid reactions, of which chemical looping selective oxidations are a subset. The oxygen chemical potential of Ca2Fe2O5 was exploited to improve the efficiency of the steam-iron process to produce hydrogen. The ability of reduced Ca2Fe2O5 to convert a higher fraction of steam to hydrogen than chemically unmodified Fe was demonstrated in a packed bed. This demonstrates how the oxygen chemical potential might be manipulated and exploited for chemical looping reactions. The oxygen chemical potential determines the selectivity in thermodynamically-controlled selective oxidations, and, depending on the reaction mechanism, kinetically-controlled selective oxidations. A generic method for enhancing the oxygen-carrying capacity of oxygen carriers for use in selective oxidations is presented, where one material that is selective in the reaction is deposited on the surface of a second material acting as a reservoir of oxygen and as a support. The presence of ceria in the support was found to supply lattice oxygen additional to that provided by the bismuth oxide, without affecting the selectivity of bismuth oxide. The surface chemistry was decoupled from the bulk properties of the support, thus simplifying the design and formulation of composite oxygen carriers. Building upon the concepts of oxygen chemical potential and composite oxygen carriers, chemical looping epoxidation was demonstrated for the first time. The oxygen carrier was composed of Ag, for its unique catalytic properties, and SrFeO3 as the support, for its high oxygen chemical potential at low temperatures. A reaction mechanism was proposed based on the observations. Nonlinear frequency response theory was used to analysis a periodic non-catalytic gas-solid reaction. Generalised frequency response functions (which are higher order analogues to traditional, linear transfer functions) were derived to obtain the nonlinear frequency response of the archetypal reactor. Such a method lies between the traditional frequency response theorem and numerical methods in terms of accuracy and speed. A niche application was proposed for the analysis of experimental kinetics, avoiding convolution of measurements with the response time of measuring equipment. In summary, this Dissertation describes how materials might be formulated for selective oxidations in chemical looping mode. This was demonstrated for an industrially-significant reaction for the production of ethylene. A novel application of nonlinear frequency response theory was also demonstrated for chemical looping reactions.

This thesis will examine how heroes attempt to create their own heroic identity in Statius' epic poem, the Thebaid. The Thebaid is a poem with no single central character, but a central group of heroes of relatively equal standing. Among this large crowd, each individual attempts to prove their heroic worth by manipulating narratives about themselves. In this way, they hope to improve their standing in society, and their chances of being remembered well by posterity. But heroic identity relies on the recognition of society, meaning reputation is difficult to control among the public. Therefore, these individuals must perform a heroic identity, so that society would actually recognise them in such a way. However, the Thebaid is a poem about failure. Few of the heroes remain alive by the end of the poem. Fewer still remain with their good reputations intact. In their attempts to push pass the limits of humanity to gain eternal fame, most commit terrible sins. The heroic greatness that they claim to have in their self-presentations is therefore called into question by the Thebaid's narrative and its narrator, who condemns the actions of the heroes throughout the poem. Throughout my project, I will be interested in the gap that forms behind the heroic image, which the heroes create about themselves in their narratives, and those of the main narrator. The narrator will consistently undermine the efforts of the heroes, encouraging counter-interpretations to the heroic image that the characters hope to cement. In my first chapter, I will examine how the heroes create narratives about themselves by trying to control the discourse about their family. This can involve suppressing or even changing details from their family history, so that their ancestors will have a positive effect on their reputation. In my second chapter, I will examine how the heroes manipulate the rhetoric about monster-slaying. The heroes attempt to portray themselves as forces of good, removing evil monsters from the world; in reality, they themselves become monstrous through their actions, and become a source of evil to the world. My final chapter will examine the relationship between the text and contemporary Flavian society. I suggest that Flavian society was one that was self-conscious about self-portrayal, and that a discourse had arisen about the appropriate ways in which this should be done. I hope to show that the attempts of the heroes to make themselves look like heroes are a reflection of these contemporary anxieties.