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This thesis argues that the congregational or collective singing of metrical psalms was one of the principal means through which ordinary men, women and children negotiated the religious changes that shook sixteenth-century England. The thesis argues that these otherwise 'voiceless' individuals (those who, while using their voices to sing, lacked agency within their parish community, and are thus largely silent in the sources) shaped both the practice and corpus of texts and tunes to fit their preferences, and in doing so shaped both the speed and spread of Protestantism's introduction into England, making its arrival and its ideas more palatable for themselves. To study fully the singing of metrical psalms, however, historians must appreciate the musical element which lies at the heart of this phenomenon. Without doing so, they miss some of the central reasons for its popularity and success. This thesis, therefore, establishes a framework through which historians can use music as a historical source, analysing it as it was heard by contemporaries. Drawing on the work of scholars from fields as diverse as music, theology, philosophy, and poetry, the thesis introduces three approaches which form the central pillars for this framework. Adopting this framework allows us to gain a fresh understanding of the surviving sources, revealing that the singing of metrical psalms may represent the most significant means through which the otherwise 'voiceless' came to accept Protestantism. The thesis also argues that the singing of metrical psalms was both more widespread and less controversial than scholars have previously understood, especially during the overlooked Edwardine and Marian periods. During Elizabeth I's reign, in large part due to the experience of music and the agency of the otherwise 'voiceless', metrical psalmody firmly and quickly established itself first in London, then further afield, becoming an immovable element in congregational worship.

In the beginning there was a spark. A spark that could magically create a second remote spark at some distance away without any interconnecting wires or visible medium. It is interesting to think what the early pioneers of radio; Hertz, Tesla, Marconi and Edison would make of the modern mobile phone that now sits comfortably in everyone's pocket. The mobile phone and the cellular network have been truly life changing technologies. From the early analogue systems to the latest 4G LTE multi-band developments. Bandwidth is a limited resource and there are theoretical limits as to how much data can be accommodated within a finite allocated band. With the evolution of cellular radio, new use cases have been created which demand greater data capacity with faster download times and lower latency. LTE 4G for all its engineering improvements in areas such as modulation, error correction and diversity is not capable of meeting the future requirements of some of the emerging technologies such as vehicle to vehicle communications, internet of things, industrial automation and immersive virtual reality. The next generation of mobile, 5G - 'new radio' is expected to address these requirements with a step increase in channel capacity, up to 1000 times greater than 4G, with sub millisecond latency. A singular basestation antenna and a singular mobile antenna is not capable of providing such a quantum leap in performance, hence, 5G is designed to use antennas arrays in a multiple in, multiple out (MIMO) configuration. Antenna arrays are one of the key enablers of 5G new radio. Antenna arrays have been exploited for a number of years but they have a major drawback, cross coupling, which is known as mutual coupling. For MIMO, all the antenna elements need to be de-correlated (isolated) and high levels of mutual coupling can reduce the channel capacity. This thesis investigates mutual coupling in antenna arrays. It explains the load pull effect on power amplifiers and how the output vectors of an antenna array are influenced by neighbouring elements and their excitations. It shows how far field radiation patterns are distorted by the presence of mutual coupling using a bespoke custom designed 5 channel transmitter. There is detailed correlation analysis between elements in an array with different spacing and topologies. This research addresses the issue of mutual coupling at source with passive circuitry introduced into the antenna array to counter the element cross-talk by means of a radically novel analogue Vector Cancellation network that employs a bandpass filter and coupler/splitter. Cancellation of the mutual coupling is achieved by replicating the arrays coupling response in antiphase, thus destructively interfering with the inherent antenna mutual coupling. Several different configurations of network using both lumped components, and microstrips were analysed. In a coupled microstip design (measured), the coupling was reduced by greater than 23 dB over the whole antenna bandwidth with improved radiation efficiency and measured average reduction in load pull due to antenna coupling from over 50 Ω to 4 Ω. This can be scaled up to multidimensional antenna arrays which would reduce the load pull effects on the amplifiers, decrease spectral growth, increasing efficiency and improving beam steering.

Online and technology enhanced delivery are not conventional practices in art and design education and the attitude of design students towards this is largely underexplored. This research therefore explores the phenomenon of online learning and teaching in the context of Scotland's newest university, University of the Highlands, and Islands (UHI). The research evaluates existing provision of online learning and explores the potential of a blended or hybrid approach to learning and teaching as a future proposition within the context of the Creative Industries curriculum of the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI). The research was undertaken with a view to inform UHI's future holistic and strategic approach to Creative Industries curriculum development; initial lecturer training; and to connect communities enabling wider access and collaboration within the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and internationally. The research reviews the blended learning and hybrid approach pre COVID-19, during and post the pandemic and the impact on future delivery of art and design education within UHI. The research reported here explored the development of learners' competences in online and blended design education in a longitudinal, qualitative study. The research discusses emergent themes such as roles of learner autonomy, communities, and networks. This thesis reviews theories and signature pedagogies in relation to art & design education whilst examining the potential of an optimum blended course. Creativity as a key competency forms a compelling rationale for the effective preparation of an 'optimum blend' of delivery related to art and design education. The findings in this thesis make a further persuasive case for hybrid and blended learning and teaching to be considered and designed. The thesis raises awareness of the benefits of art and design education in UHI and beyond. The findings present the hybrid studio as an interchange between internal and external factors in blended design education. Art and design students graduate and enter inspiring, sustainable, and fulfilling careers in the vibrant cultural and creative industries.

Proton Transfer Reaction-Mass Spectrometry (PTR-MS) has been in use since the 1990s for real-time measurement of trace volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from parts per million by volume down to sub-parts per billion by volume in a wide range of applications such as environmental monitoring, health, homeland security and food sciences. The work presented in this thesis deals with new developments and applications of PTR-MS and has different interconnected themes. The first is hardware development; principally the testing and characterisation of new radio frequency (RF) ion-funnels within the PTR reactor designed to improve ion transmission and thus sensitivity of detection for trace compounds. The desire to characterise better the effect of RF fields on analyte ions in the reactor led to a fundamental study in which the proportion of analyte product ions was determined as a function of the reduced electric field strength, first without the application of RF fields. This was to compare their behaviours when subject to RF fields. An unexpected and previously unreported shift in these product ion distributions was discovered, depending upon how the reduced electric field, E/n, was created. A second theme is the creation of a methodology for, and production of, a mass spectral library for individual VOCs analysed by PTR-MS. This was to assist in the development and testing of a new software algorithm for compound identification and quantification of complex VOC mixtures when no pre-separation technique such as gas chromatography (GC) is used. The third theme is the application of both these hardware and software developments in the practical analysis of VOCs, not just in ambient air but also in water, where a portable water sampler has also been developed, so that impurities in water could be determined with high specificity and sensitivity in real-time. This has been used in tandem not only with PTR-MS, but also with two more conventional portable electron impact mass spectrometers (EI-MS). One of these analysers was taken to Mainz, Germany, as part of a secondment, to investigate the possibility of using the instrument instead of the more expensive and complicated PTR-MS for determination of a parameter of interest to atmospheric chemists: 'the total OH reactivity' of the atmosphere. The work in this thesis was conducted as part of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network (ITN): Ion-Molecule Processes for Analytical Chemical Technologies (IMPACT). This European ITN programme was named through the European Commission's HORIZON 2020 Programme. The work was directly influenced by the desire to improve analytical tools available to a commercial analytical instrument manufacturer, Kore Technology Ltd, at whose premises most of the work took place.

This submission for a PhD by publication consists of four sole-authored studies published between 2014 and 2019-a monograph, Publication (a), and three articles all published in peer-reviewed journals of international renown, Publications (b), (c) and (d). The publications are located in the discipline of sociology of sport and also draw on a wide range of disciplines-including journalism studies, gender studies, media and sports history-for theoretical and methodological support. Two related arguments run through the submission. The first is that football and the media in England have been increasingly functionally dependent since their modern inception in the late 19th Century. The resulting rivalries between median functionaries, and the organisations of which they were a part, led to intensifying competition and in turn the evolution of, and innovation within, football journalism. This underpins the second, which is that the result(s) of this socially constructed professional practice are discourses of social identity which both reflect and re encode long-held norms and values within English society. Thus, this submission makes an original contribution in three key areas: It: (1) addresses gaps in disciplinary knowledge, in particular by providing a coherent, longitudinal history of English football media previously absent from research in the area; (2) shows how the practices of sports journalism are socially constructed; (3) unpacks the way in which the outcomes of such practice have led to the discursive strategies that (re)present and reinforce notions of national identity and gender in contemporary English society. Following a personal statement and introduction, the appraisal of research will be divided into three sections in which I will: (i) discuss the publications' methodological and theoretical underpinnings as well as researcher positionality, (ii) provide a summary of the research, and (iii) articulate the original contribution of the submission, outline limitations and contextualise the submission within my ongoing research in the area.

Greater physical fitness is linked to improved cerebrovascular health and brain function. However, acute responses to exercise can differ depending on exercise intensity, as well as by the specific exercise protocol used. While the endothelium plays an essential role in driving responses to stimuli and adaptation in the vasculature, the cellular responses to transient changes in circulating environment are poorly understood. This thesis investigated the effect of different exercise protocols on the responses seen in the cerebrovasculature and circulating environment in vivo, alongside the use of endothelial cell culture models to examine cellular responses to ex vivo application of plasma and serum samples taken from exercising participants. Cerebral haemodynamic responses were largely comparable between moderate intensity continuous exercise and clinical guideline-based high intensity interval exercise protocols. In contrast, sprint-interval exercise induced a unique pattern in middle cerebral artery velocity, whereby velocity was suppressed during the interval effort but then "rebounded" during recovery. A novel, semi-automated analysis methodology was developed to explore this temporal pattern further, showing that while intensity does modulate rebound characteristics the factors influencing temporal patterns in cerebral blood flow are likely multi-faceted. Finally, significant, intensity-dependent changes in VEGF, BDNF, IGF-1 and lactate were seen in response to exercise. However, ex vivo treatment of endothelial cells with samples taken pre- and post-exercise did not reveal any significant impact on cellular function, although further research is needed to fully illuminate the role of the circulating microenvironment in altering acute endothelial function. Collectively, these findings highlight that the choice of exercise protocol can have a profound impact on cerebrovascular haemodynamics and responses in the circulating microenvironment. While the contribution of these two domains to long-term adaptive benefits to cerebrovascular health remains to be determined, it may be that the optimal exercise bout to elicit both haemodynamic- and neurotropic-induced adaptive changes may be a hybrid of the protocols tested here. Finally, future research should embrace the exciting opportunities and challenges that the application of translational research presents, to continue exploring the impact that exercise has on the brain from a cellular and systemic perspective.

The Mw 7.6 Chi-Chi earthquake struck Central Western Taiwan in 1999. The rupture was complex with several dislocations along the 100-km long Chelungpu thrust fault. Revisiting this earthquake is a challenge, as the precision and coverage of the Earth observations available are quite poor, but it allows better understanding of regional fault properties. Furthermore, the topographic and vegetation coverage complexity of the area prevents coherent radar images. In this thesis, radar and optical images, and terrestrial geodetic measurements, were utilised to study the Chelungpu fault and more specifically the impact of the Chi-Chi earthquake. First, five types of Earth observations were processed to investigate the co-seismic deformation. The Particle Swarm Optimization and Okada Inversion (PSOKINV) geodetic inversion package was used with the generalized Akaike's Bayesian Information Criterion (gABIC) to precisely determine the coseismic slip distribution and relative weighting of datasets. Differences in results using the data sets jointly or separately (e.g., under-estimation due to InSAR, inconsistencies in SPOT offsets, smoother slip distribution with gABIC weighting) are observable. Most of the energy was released in the northern part of the fault, where the strike veers toward the east, and mainly at depths of less than 4 km. The PSOKINV-gABIC approach is viable for the study of complicated cases such as the Chi-Chi earthquake (complex fault geometry and multi-source observations) and can substantially benefit the weight determination and physical (no overlap or gap) realism of the fault geometry. Second, the post-seismic deformation of this event was observed using 20 years of time series from InSAR and GPS. Then, a model of the afterslip and viscoelastic relaxation was built. 11 years of ERS, 3 years of EnviSAT, 6 years of Sentinel-1A/B descending and 3 years of Sentinel-1A/B ascending images were processed using GAMMA-Remote Sensing software and atmospherically corrected using GACOS (Generic Atmospheric Correction Online Service for InSAR). Finally, InSAR time series were extracted and validated using GPS data. The modelling of the postseismic deformation following the Chi-Chi earthquake was done using a power-law Burgers rheology to analyse the interplay between afterslip and viscoelastic flow. From the time series, a change in the ground displacement can be observed in 2004 showing a slow-down of afterslip deformation. The forward modelling of the postseismic deformation showed that the maximum afterslip is observed on the southern part of the fault, on the decollement in depth (while the maximum slip was happening at shallow depth on the north section of the fault during the co-seismic deformation). Furthermore, the study of the strain enabled me to conclude that the interseismic phase has started over most of the area, most segments of the Chelungpu fault are now getting locked again. More data coverage and a longer monitoring of the Chelungpu fault will be needed to observe the entire earthquake cycle.

In this thesis, we study challenges arising in cosmological data analysis using data from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), remnant radiation from the Big Bang, and the Lyman-α forest, absorption features in spectra of distant quasars. A six-parameter standard model of cosmology, the ΛCDM model, can explain to great accuracy how the Universe evolved from a hot, dense state to the web of galaxies that we observe today. However, it leaves fundamental questions about the nature of dark matter and dark energy unanswered, despite these making up 95% of the observable Universe. The advent of large cosmological surveys present a unique opportunity to infer some of the fundamental laws governing our Universe. Extracting the full potential of this data set is an ongoing challenge because of its size and highly non-linear nature. In the first part, we present an end-to-end analysis pipeline for large-angular scale CMB data. We present novel foreground removal techniques, improved modeling of the noise and systematics in the data, and develop and extensively test novel likelihood-approximations. The accurate representation of likelihoods including systematics is challenging: exact likelihoods are either unknown or intractable. We present methods that show how to make reliable inference for the optical depth to reionization (τ) or primordial gravitational waves, parametrised by the tensor-to-scalar ratio (r), from large-angular scale CMB data from the Planck satellite. The methods presented range from exact pixel-based likelihoods, maximum-entropy-based semi-analytic likelihood-approximations to simulation-based, so-called likelihood-free, approaches to constrain cosmological parameters. We exhaust current CMB data sets with the developed methods and discuss their potential for next-generation surveys of the CMB. The upcoming Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey will measure spectra for tens of millions of galaxies and quasars, constructing a three-dimensional map spanning the nearby Universe to 11 billion light years. The Lyman-α forest consists of a series of absorption lines that map the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium. This allows us to probe the matter distribution of the Universe at intermediate redshifts 2 ≤ z ≤ 5. In the second part of this thesis, we present and develop new continuum fitting methods to extract the un-absorbed flux of a quasar spectrum. We will discuss methods to constrain cosmology using this rich new data set.

Existing histories of psychoanalysis have by and large paid scant attention to the role the Freud family played in Freud's mental economy, this neglect being most conspicuous with respect to the British branch of the family. Various family members are glimpsed in Freud's published correspondence and some - notably his nephew John - appear as key characters in the Interpretation of Dreams and other works. This latter observation points to the importance of Freud's Britain: Freud's reflections on his own life experiences, with his close-knit family, became indispensable building blocks in his theorising, both for Freud and subsequent psychoanalytic generations. Through a fine-grained study of Emanuel and Philipp Freud (and their families), the variegated influence of these British Freuds on their younger brother is here revealed for the first time. These relationships shaped Freud's thinking, attitudes, and theorising. They strengthened, if not created, his Anglophilia. Freud's Britain thus allows for a better contextualised understanding of the actual sibling and familial ties that went into forming the tapestry of psychoanalysis. Building on the template of this relational base, Freud's Britain considers key sites and events through which psychoanalysis was disseminated into British culture up to, through, and immediately following the Great War. Thus, the London Psycho-Analytic Society, the Brunswick Square Clinic, and Craiglockhart War Hospital are explored in detail, each with varying and often contested psychoanalytic credentials and sequelae. In this context, the publication and transmission of ideas, particularly through the trade in psychoanalytic books, was crucial and this is here explored in terms of censorship and the politics of translation. Further contextualised here, these processes, while aiding a type of institutionalisation, contributed at the same time to a rather conservative, elitist psychoanalysis, which shifted away from the demotic, and failed to do full justice to the radical message of Freud.

Speaking test scores are increasingly being used to make high-stakes decisions (for employment, immigration, university admissions) about learners in many countries. Ensuring that these scores reflect a learner's skill fairly and accurately is critical. This mixed-methods study seeks to strengthen the socio-cognitive framework for test validation (Chalhoub-Deville & O'Sullivan, 2020; Taylor, 2011; Weir, 2005) and deepen our understanding of the complexities involved in deriving scores from L2 speaking tests. Adopting an interactionalist perspective, the research considers interview-format speaking tests as co-constructed events between candidate, examiner and rater. The research examines how certain elements of scoring validity (rater characteristics of 'Agreeableness', 'Extraversion' and 'Test Experience Level') change how raters perceive or rate spoken performances and modulate their severity. Native-speaker, English teachers from universities across Japan (n = 86) rated 12 video-recorded speaking test performances and afterwards completed a personality instrument. A Hierarchical Multiple Regression showed that 'Test Level Experience' and 'Agreeableness' contributed significantly to the regression model, F (6, 79) = 3.126, p = .019 together accounting for 19% of the variation in rater severity. These predictors were negatively correlated with rater severity; higher levels predicted more lenient ratings. Trait 'Extraversion' explained an additional 4% of the variation and this was significant, F (7, 78) = 3.426, p = .039. 'Extraversion' was positively correlated with rater severity; higher levels predicted more severe ratings. Finally, all raters provided written commentary on their rating procedures and three raters took part in Stimulated Recall Interviews. Thematic analyses of the two types of qualitative data suggested that lenient (experienced, agreeable, introvert) raters perceive different aspects of examiner performance to more severe (inexperienced, disagreeable, extravert) raters and these perceptions sometimes impacted how they cognitively approached the task of rating. In some instances, the differing perceptions and cognitive approaches may have impacted raters' final proficiency scores. The research findings offer suggestions for updating our understanding of the co-constructed nature of spoken interaction as well as the scoring validity component of the socio-cognitive framework. The study also makes practical recommendations on future rater training procedures that incorporate the findings from this study.

This research develops a methodology for and shows the benefit of linking records of wind turbine maintenance. It analyses commercially sensitive real-world maintenance records with the aim of improving the productivity of offshore wind farms. The novel achievements of this research are that it applies multi-feature record linkage techniques to maintenance data, that it applies statistical techniques for the interval estimation of a binomial proportion to record linkage techniques and that it estimates the distribution of the coverage error of statistical techniques for the interval estimation of a binomial proportion. The main contribution of this research is a process for the enrichment of offshore wind turbine health history. The economic productivity of a wind farm depends on the price of electricity and on the suitability of the weather, both of which are beyond the control of a maintenance team, but also on the cost of operating the wind farm, on the cost of maintaining the wind turbines and on how much of the wind farm's potential production of electricity is lost to outages. Improvements in maintenance scheduling, in condition-based maintenance, in troubleshooting and in the measurement of maintenance effectiveness all require knowledge of the health history of the plant. To this end, this thesis presents new techniques for linking together existing records of offshore wind turbine health history. Multi-feature record linkage techniques are used to link records of maintenance data together. Both the quality of record linkage and the uncertainty of that quality are assessed. The quality of record linkage was measured by comparing the generated set of linked records to a gold standard set of linked records identified in collaboration with offshore wind turbine maintenance experts. The process for the enrichment of offshore wind turbine health history developed in this research requires a vector of weights and thresholds. The agreement and disagreement weights for each feature indicate the importance of the feature to the quality of record linkage. This research uses differential evolution to globally optimise this vector of weights and thresholds. There is inevitably some uncertainty associated with the measurement of the quality of record linkage, and consequently with the optimum values for the weights and thresholds; this research not only measures the quality of record linkage but also identifies robust techniques for the estimation of its uncertainty.

In the aerospace industry, thermal management concerns numerous components but is bounded to the limitations of traditional manufacturing processes which results in inefficient and inadequately large equipment. Consequently, a change in how heat exchangers are manufactured and designed is needed. Additive manufacturing (AM) techniques such as laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) are capable of alleviating conventional design drawbacks. Among new complex structures, triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) lattice structures are of particular interest with their high surface area to volume ratios that are ideal to increase surface-based interactions such as heat transfer. However, the adoption of LPBF for thermal applications is impeded by the lack of available material for LPBF and insufficient knowledge on how AM material thermal properties are affected by the LPBF process and of the thermal properties of lattice structures. The first part of this thesis focused on the characterisation of the thermal conductivity of materials and lattice structures manufactured by LPBF using an in-house developed testing apparatus based on the guarded comparative longitudinal heat flow technique. AlSi10Mg is the most applied aluminium alloy in LPBF, however, there is an incomplete body of knowledge surrounding its thermal conductivity. In this thesis, AlSi10Mg specimens were manufactured by LPBF and tested to characterise the effect of the unique LPBF microstructure and heat treatments on the thermal conductivity. In addition, the effect of lattice parameters on their apparent thermal conductivity was investigated by manufacturing and testing lattice structures made by LPBF in several alloys of interest for aerospace (Ti6Al4V, AlSi10Mg, and Hastelloy-X). Models were proposed to predict the thermal conductivity of lattices and specimens with tailored conductivity were manufactured. Forced convection heat transfer of AlSi10Mg lattice structures manufactured by LPBF was evaluated by measuring pressure drop and heat transfer of the structures using an in-house developed testing apparatus. A metric based on the maximum variation of the cross-sectional area was proposed as a quick estimate of the lattice structures pressure drop. It was demonstrated that the thermal performance of lattice structures can be up to 6 times higher than that of pin-fin geometry. The last part of this thesis focused on the extension of LPBF material library with the high-strength aluminium alloy EN AW 2618. Despite a wide range of parameter optimisation and high relative density (>99 %), crack-free EN AW 2618 has not been manufactured due to its crack sensitivity and high cooling rates in LPBF. Subsequently, A20X, a newly developed high-strength aluminium alloy specifically designed for LPBF was investigated. Crack-free material with high relative density (>99 %) was achieved. It was demonstrated that its thermal and mechanical properties can compete with those of conventional EN AW 2618. The results from this thesis presented lattice structures made by LPBF as a route through which enhanced heat exchangers could be designed. Through these improvements, heat exchangers can potentially become more efficient and compact with possible multifunctional properties that could be generated as part of the design process.

The aim of this thesis is to use computer simulation techniques to model the bulk structure and low index Miller surfaces of green rust 1 and green rust 2, along with uranyl minerals which could form in the interlayers of green rust, and thus provide a potential mechanism to sequester uranium from polluted groundwater in the environment. The intention is that transferable potential models be developed that can be used in further studies or alternative works. In Chapter 1 the historic use of nuclear material and its subsequent reprocessing and storage is introduced. The aqueous contamination of groundwater by uranium is discussed, changing the oxidation state of the uranyl ion is examined and possible methods of remediation are investigated. Laboratory synthesis of green rust is reviewed along with the techniques used in experimentally determining the structure of green rust. The natural occurrence of green rust is explained and potential uses of the material are described, with a discussion of the difficulties involved in working with green rust; this leads on to a review of the benefits of computer simulation at an atomistic level, and the drawbacks associated with such techniques. Finally the questions which drive the objectives of this work are stated. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the methodologies applied in this work and describe the theory behind them. Chapter 2 introduces computational modelling techniques and the theoretical methods which underpin them; the use of the potential model, which is key to this work, is described in detail. Energy minimisation and molecular dynamics are the theoretical methods used in this thesis and they are described in Chapter 3. Chapter 3 also introduces surfaces, which are critical in the aims of this work, and describes different methods of surface energy calculation. Chapter 4 describes the work on testing and refining the interatomic potential models for Fe(OH)2 and goethite. While Fe(OH)2 has few experimentally reported structures, the ones which are documented were reproduced with excellent results using the potential model; the potential model outperformed density functional theory (DFT) in its ability to match the structural parameters of the cell. Five low index Miller surfaces of Fe(OH)2 were modelled and the (0 0 1) proved to be the most stable. The potentials were then used in similar modelling of goethite; again the potential model was able to better reproduce experimentally determined structures than was the DFT model, with cell dimensions within 1% of reported structures. This demonstrated the viability of the potential sets to be used interchangeably in modelling larger systems and that sophisticated fitting procedures were not necessary. Chapter 5 documents the work on atomistic modelling of uranyl minerals. The need for a reliable set of interatomic potentials for a range of uranyl minerals is introduced. Existing potentials are fitted to known mineral structures from the International Crystal Structural Database (ICSD) and compared to the results of DFT calculations; the methods used to develop these potentials are described in detail. Results show that the set of potentials produced are capable of working successfully and that these potentials can be validated by reference to empirical data or DFT calculations. In Chapter 6 the potentials developed in Chapters 4 and 5 are developed further and used to model one example of each of green rust 1 and green rust 2. It was shown that sulfate green rust 2 could successfully be modelled using interatomic potentials and that the sulfate group, with respect to the oxygen atoms, takes up a tridentate orientation toward the hydroxide layer. Modelling low index Miller surfaces of sulfate green rust 1 showed the (0 0 1) surface to be the most stable of those modelled. The bulk structure of chloride green rust 1 was modelled without water in the interlayers but when water was added there was some dissociation of the H atoms from the hydroxide layers; resolution of this dissociation and progression to surface modelling was prevented by the research period coming to an end. Lastly, Chapter 7 summarises the results presented in this thesis and the conclusions that can be drawn, with a suggestion of further work that could be carried out built upon these results and the potentials developed therein.

The mechanisms and consequences of evolution on viral fitness following interspecies transmission and long-term adaptation are poorly understood. Influenza A viruses (IAVs) circulate among wild birds and have been linked to the emergence of viruses of humans, pigs, dogs, and horses. Since the mid 1950s, equine influenza viruses (EIVs) have emerged in Europe (H7N7, in 1956), America (H3N8, in 1963) and Asia (H3N8, in 1989). All EIVs are thought to have originated in birds, and only the H3N8 EIV lineage that emerged in 1963 circulates today. I used EIVs to study changes in viral fitness following host shifts. To this end, I compared the in vitro and ex vivo infection phenotypes of A/equine/Lexington/1/1966 (EIV/66), a representative of the extinct H7N7 EIV lineage; A/equine/Jilin/1/1989 (EIV/89), also extinct; and two viruses of the currently circulating H3N8 EIV lineage: A/equine/Uruguay/1/1963 (EIV/63) and its descendant A/equine/Ohio/1/2003 (EIV/2003). I also studied A/ruddy shelduck/Mongolia/963v/2009 (AIV/2009), an avian influenza virus phylogenetically related to EIV/89. The results obtained showed that while each virus displayed a unique infection phenotype, EIV/2003 exhibited the highest overall fitness, consistent with the long-term circulation of this lineage among horses. Traits associated with increased fitness included enhanced viral replication, efficient cell-to-cell spread in cells and tissues, and resistance to interferon. Notably, transcriptomics revealed important differences among EIVs in terms of intracellular pathways affecting host immunity, inflammation, and cellular transcription. This study showed that within-host fitness is determined by the interplay between virus-host interactions and evolution. In turn, within-host fitness will likely impact long-term adaptation of IAV to mammals.

When the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin lands on the surface of Mars, the images from the Wide Angle Cameras (WACs) and High Resolution Camera (HRC) of the PanCam instrument will provide human-perspective views of the landing site, in panoramic, multispectral, and stereo detail. The images will be interpreted qualitatively and quantitatively to characterise the potential of the environment as an ancient habitat, towards the mission objective of life detection. In this thesis a new model of PanCam has been formulated that can be evaluated with information available from component datasheets, that has three unique properties: a representation of the directional dependence of the spectral transmission of the multispectral WACs, an analytical model of the nonlinear charge-voltage conversion function of the Star-1000 CMOS detector (used by the WACs and HRC), and a model of the thermal dependence of the analog-digital convertor of the Star-1000. This model has been used to derive a new inverse model for PanCam, capable of correcting for non-linearities and thermal dependencies in order to calibrate an image from raw digital numbers to units of radiance. Two methods for rendering synthetic environments have been implemented, for simulating synthetic calibration scenes and physically realistic natural environments. These methods have been used to investigate the response of PanCam to the expected conditions of the surface of Mars, predicting exposure times in the range of 50 - 300 ms for capturing optimal images of typical rocky surfaces under Mars illumination and thermal conditions, and direct images of the Sun. Quantitatively, through application of the calibration model, surface reflectance and atmospheric transmission retrieval has been predicted to yield a signal-to-noise ratio of ∼150, and qualitative predictions have been presented of the image quality of PanCam, through visualisations of the colour reproduction capabilities of the WACs and HRC.

High-fidelity numerical simulations are carried out alongside analytical methods to investigate the effect of trailing-edge serrations on aerofoil self-noise. Serrated trailing-edges have long been studied as an effective means of noise reduction especially for wind turbine applications. This work aims to present an extensive understanding of the physical mechanisms behind the noise abatement. Two types of noise are investigated: i) the aerofoil tonal noise due to the acoustic feedback loop occurring between the trailing edge and the laminar-to-turbulent transition region and ii) the aerofoil broadband noise caused by the scattering of broadband wall pressure fluctuations at the trailing edge. Furthermore, the present study takes advantage of the accurate numerical data to develop a new approach to straight and serrated trailing-edge noise prediction. It is found that serrated trailing edges show a strong capability to reduce aerofoil tonal noise. The first tonal noise reduction mechanism is inferred to be the decreased intensity of wall pressure fluctuations in the transitional region in the presence of a serrated trailing edge which directly weakens the pressure scattering at the trailing edge. The second tonal noise reduction mechanism is presumably the early breakdown of the span wise coherence in the acoustic source pressure which is likely to create destructive interferences in the acoustic feedback process. Regarding the broadband trailing-edge noise, the dominant noise reduction mechanism is inferred to be the wall source distribution along the edge and particularly the decreased surface pressure fluctuations at the tip of the serration. Besides, Amiet's trailing-edge noise radiation model is found to accurately capture the far-field sound from straight and serrated trailing edges in every direction via the addition of a directivity correction factor as long as a representative wall pressure source is used. This work reports that some optimised locations exist for the extraction of wall pressure fluctuations in the vicinity of the trailing edge used as the representative source in Amiet's trailing-edge noise model. Finally, ideas towards a new wall pressure fluctuations model for serrated trailing edges are proposed. Its combination with Amiet's theory provides a suitable and complete noise prediction method for straight and sawtooth-serrated trailing edges as far as the investigated cases are concerned.

In sepsis, monocytes exhibit the differential immune response states of 'priming' (increased responsiveness to secondary stimuli) and 'deactivation' (reduced responsiveness, depressed expression of HLA-DR and CD86, increased PDL-1), which may reflect the opposing hyperinflammatory and immune-suppressive systemic conditions. In an era where the number and phenotype of circulating leucocytes are used to guide sepsis immune therapy investigation, there is debate as to whether sepsis immunity is differentially regulated within the blood and tissue compartments of the body. Adding to this uncertainty is the fact that core support therapies, such as vasopressor resuscitation, may have an immunomodulatory effect during sepsis. We hypothesised that monocytes undergo trans-endothelial reprogramming during migration between vascular and tissue compartments and that this is a crucial determinant of sepsis immunity and its clinical monitoring. Further, we hypothesised that noradrenaline and vasopressin have a role in the functional and phenotypic modification of monocytes during sepsis. Our aims were to 1) develop an in-vitro model of priming and deactivation using healthy volunteer (HV) monocytes; 2) to test the direct effects of noradrenaline and vasopressin on monocytes in comparison to sera from the VAsopressin versus Noradrenaline as Initial therapy in Septic sHock (VANISH) trial; 3) develop a human lung microvascular endothelial cell (HLMVEC) transwell model of monocyte migration and associated phenotypic changes during sepsis. The major findings of this work were that in combination vasopressin and noradrenaline suppressed LPS-induced TNF release in non-pretreated and primed HV monocytes. In contrast, when HV monocytes were incubated with VANISH patient sera we found no difference in surface marker expression or LPS-induced TNF release. Conditioning of monocytes with vasopressin or noradrenaline was found to enhance their migration in an uncoated transwell assay. Lastly, we successfully developed an HLMVEC-coated transwell migration assay able to detect changes in pre- and post-migration monocyte phenotype.

This thesis aims to show how prominent French commentators have represented Islam and Muslims from 9/11 to the 2015 Paris attacks, how uniform their representation has been, and what this representation reveals about French identity. My analysis will highlight a prevailing narrative by addressing interventions by commentators such as Bernard-Henri Lévy, Caroline Fourest, Gilles Kepel or Michel Onfray, together with rare alternative voices such as Tahar Ben Jelloun or Edwy Plenel. This thesis will reveal that this corpus promotes a French identity that is assimilationist, averse to cultural relativism, infused with colonial nostalgia, and selfportrays as résistante. Whereas previous scholarship, mostly from social sciences, has tended to define Islam as a culture and Muslims as people of varying degrees of religious devotion, 'Islam' and 'Muslims' are defined here as respectively a set of religious beliefs and practices and people actively adhering to them. These definitions cohere with Tzvetan Todorov's definition of 'cultural humanism', that is a universalist approach that upholds free will, as they discard passive cultural heritage in favour of active religious practice. Departing from existing literature focusing on the exclusion of Muslims defined by culture, this thesis argues that most French commentators have welcomed over the last two decades a form of 'cultural Islam', thus exacerbating the exclusion of practising Muslims. The methodology used in this research, inspired by the work of both Richard Jackson and Charles Burdett, differs from the approach of existing studies by combining critical discourse analysis and the techniques of literary scholarship. Whereas Joseph Massad, influenced by history scholarship, argues that the representation of Islam inhered in the emergence of liberal Europe's identity, I will thus analyse the language and imagery employed by French commentators to represent Islam and Muslims and argue that it reveals the version of French identity they seek to promote.

This thesis contributes to the empirical literature on currency unions and the international monetary system, as well as to the economic history of the Italian unification. The first essay relies on the Italian unification as a unique exogenous variation to the membership of a currency union, looking at the closest historical predecessor to the Euro. This allows me to estimate a causal common currency effect on trade. Relying on original bilateral trade data and structural gravity equations, I estimate a causal common currency effect in the order of 35%. This is notably smaller than the average point estimate in the literature. However, my findings corroborate the original policy implications of Rose (2000) in a quasi-experimental setting. The second essay revisits the optimum currency areas (OCA) framework and its endogeneity, looking at a large wave of European monetary integration occurring in the third quarter of the 19th century, ranging from the Italian unification to the gold standard. I find patterns of ex-ante OCA criteria consistent with the predictive power of the OCA framework, and at odds with their endogeneity hypothesis formulated by Frankel and Rose (1998). Focusing on the Italian unification, I find evidence in line with the pessimistic view of OCA endogeneity of Krugman (2001). I explore to what extent these findings speak to patterns of post-unification regional divergence in Italy. The third essay measures the rise and fall of global currencies and the structure of the international monetary system (IMS) over two centuries, relying on a new monthly and weekly dataset of foreign-exchange returns going back to 1820 and the Frankel and Wei (1994) factor model. I show that, from a two centuries perspective, the current dollar hegemony is a historical anomaly. I furthermore find preliminary evidence consistent with a positive relationship between the intensity of competition among global currencies and the prevalence of global financial turbulence, in line with the recent theoretical contribution of Farhi and Maggiori (2018).

Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs) offer the potential of performing dirty, dull, and dangerous missions at sea, in an automated fashion. However, without consideration of the ocean environment and the risk of wave-induced damage, the use of conventional ASVs is restricted to relatively calm sea-states. Assuming a conventional underactuated ASV with only throttle and rudder inputs, this thesis addresses the problem of controlling an ASV in an optimal fashion, while maintaining headway towards a desired destination in any sea and with any sea state. This is a challenging problem owing to the coupled, nonlinear nature of the vessel-wave dynamics, along with multiple competing performance objectives, such as excessive motions, and actuation effort. The thesis shows that the optimal solution, obtained via nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC), involves tacking at two different timescales. This subsequently motivates the design of a two-degree of freedom controller, consisting of a tacking planner that generates a long-term, optimal, heading and velocity reference, and a feedback regulator that produce the optimal throttle and rudder commands to maintain this reference, whilst minimizing wave-induced effects with smaller tacks. This thesis represents the first work to formulate and solve the optimal control problem of navigating in rough seas, based upon a coupled dynamic model of a 6-DOF vessel excited by waves. Closed-loop simulation results from a high fidelity ocean-vessel model demonstrate significant reductions in excessive vessel motions and forces, compared to a conventional path following PID controller for head and beam seas. Further examinations show the superiority of the NMPC in a full sea state. The impact of the prediction horizon parameters on the performance is investigated with a view towards an adaptive prediction horizon. Lastly, the ability of the NMPC to use one set of Response Amplitude Operators (RAOs) in other wave conditions without loss of performance is shown.

This thesis investigates the nature of and factors affecting shareholder activism in 19th century railway companies. It supports the proposition in the literature that the course to management ascendancy was not linear. It finds good contemporary understanding of agency risk and preparedness to incur agency costs to control it. However, there is also evidence in support of stewardship and stakeholder theories. Data has been collected from extensive archival sources - state, parliamentary and company records, press material and personal correspondence - related to nine companies in Britain and New England. Mid 19th century railway shareholders have been seen as a distributed, passive group struggling to hold management to account. However, the case studies evidence shareholder activism and challenge to insiders. Informed by an active railway discourse and assisted by statutory requirements, shareholders, usually prompted by declining financial performance, organised and appointed Committees of investigation (CofI's). The nature of the shareholder body, alignment of shareholder incentives, activist board members, strategic pressures and campaigners all affected the level of shareholder activism. Outcomes of activism included preventing the sale of the company and the removal of senior directors. Strategy and business policy remained with management, but shareholder activism set expectations about how companies should be run; bore down on conflicts of interest; promoted transparency in reporting and constraining managers by the threat of removal. It also educated shareholders through greatly enriching the railway discourse. Indications are that the use of CofI's in railway companies fell away after the period under review. Bringing extensive archival data to bear, the thesis's chief contribution is to reveal and explain a distinct phase in the history of shareholder activism and corporate governance more generally.

The transition region in the solar atmosphere bridges the lower temperature, higher density chromosphere at the base with the tenuous, high temperature plasma in the corona. It undergoes a change in temperature from 25000K to about 600000K. Plasma conditions mean that fundamentally different models for line emission are required for the corona and chromosphere. The modelling framework of the corona is remarkably straightforward by comparison, and the tendency for modellers and observers is to use coronal modelling in the transition region as well. However, discrepancies with observations become apparent when using the modelling for lines emitted by low charge ions. To investigate more suitable modelling for ions which form in the transition region, the coronal approximation is extended by successively including atomic processes which become more important further down. Firstly, the effects of higher density are added to the modelling of carbon and oxygen, to account for its effects on electron impact ionisation and dielectronic recombination. New calculations are made for electron impact ionisation from long-lived metastable levels, which become populated at these densities. Other atomic processes not normally included in the coronal approximation are also added to the modelling of carbon and oxygen. These include processes induced by the radiation field, photo-ionisation and -excitation, and collisions involving neutral and ionised hydrogen and helium, principally charge transfer. The same models are built for other elements routinely observed in the atmosphere: these are nitrogen, neon, magnesium, silicon and sulphur. For these models an approximation is used for ionisation rates from metastable levels. All of the models are run in steady state equilibrium, to allow an assessment of how much atomic processes alter the modelling separately from dynamic events taking place in the plasma. To test how the new models compare with observations, the resulting ion balances from the models are used in conjunction with differential emission measure modelling to predict line intensities in the transition region. Observations of the quiet Sun show that the models resolve a number of the discrepancies found when using the coronal approximation for emission from low charge ions.

A significant amount of literature has been written on the various aspects involved in and influencing buyer and seller relationships. In an international setting, many cultural influences in the buyer and seller interaction process have been identified and researched. In the case of France, the literature identifies a binary divide in the higher education system, with universities on one side and the Grandes Écoles (French private higher education institutes) on the other. While there is general advice for undertaking business in France, research that focuses on the influence of this education system for the international buyer and seller interaction process in a French-German context is rare. Within the spirit of the IMP Interactions Model, this study explores those cultural values whose origins can be attributed to the French higher education system and that can influence communication and the creation of trust in a binational business relationship - the Franco-German dyad. The cultural differences present in this context, their origins, and the divergences between German and French business behaviour are the phenomena on which this study offers knowledge. This study's insight is not only based on how the phenomena present but also seeks to elucidate the roots of those values causing the phenomena, with the goal to enable German sellers to have a more successful approach to their French counterparts. This study is based on a broadly ethnographic design encompassing historical, and educational research. The work follows the holistic perspective, analysing the social interaction of business partners in their daily environment, examining things in the broadest possible context, to understand their interconnections and interdependence. This is undertaken by means of semi-structured interviews among a social group within the goods road transportation industry. Twenty-one interviews were conducted in six selected companies. In each of these companies, three to four participants of different hierarchical III positions and in different job roles related to buying have been interviewed. In addition, five interviews with German managers involved in business interactions with French customers have been undertaken to offer perspective from the German business partner. This research showed that cultural values can be related to the education system, creating behaviour patterns, preferences and expectations. Meeting and respecting these values influence communication and the formation of trust. The specific aspects that were examined could be traced back in their historical development of the respective educational systems: the vocational, generalist, and/or dualistic systems producing elites, specialists, and their effects in cross-cultural relations and interactions. The French participants of this study demonstrate that the different education systems do influence the respective French-German behaviours, cultures, and relations. The research identified and helped to understand the origin of the different business partners values' in the binational dyad. The theoretical model developed represents the interrelation and reciprocal influence on the interaction of trust, communication and cultural values related to the education system. The analysis has shown that different philosophies on the approach to projects and the importance that is attributed to speaking the French language are specific aspects that demand cultural awareness. It could be shown that overcoming the cultural distance formed by the language barrier is even more critical for business interaction with Grandes Écoles graduates. The research offers practical recommendations and requirements for a German seller to position advantageously, control and manage a French-German binational business relationship successfully.

The plasma membrane of cells has evolved to mediate a broad array of functionalities critical to life, such as molecular trafficking, signal transduction, motility, adhesion and communication. These functionalities are often reliant on highly sophisticated membrane-anchored nano-machines, and enabled by the ability of the cell to regulate their spatio-temporal distribution and interactions. Bottom-up synthetic biology aspires to replicate the rich phenomenology associated with biological systems in artificial cells, micron-sized entities created de-novo to display life-like behaviours. Artificial cells have been constructed using a range of elementary molecular components, from lipids to polymers and proteins, yet artificial cellular membranes are usually passive enclosures lacking the diverse functionalities hosted by their biological counterparts. DNA nanotechnology has emerged as a prime route for biomimicry given its yet unparalleled control over the structure and dynamic responses of synthetic nanostructures. Particularly promising in the context of bottom-up synthetic biology is the possibility of constructing bio-inspired DNA devices that mimic the structure and action of membrane-bound biological machines, and integrate them with artificial-cell membranes to unlock some of the rich functionalities sustained by the plasma membrane. In this thesis, I explore the use of functional DNA nanostructures to program the properties and responses of the lipid membranes of synthetic cells. By depending our understanding of how cations, hydrophobic modifications of the nanostructures, and bilayer-phase influence DNA-lipid interactions, I was able to emulate key phenomena exhibited by biological interfaces, such as surface patterning, cargo transport, and lipid domain sculpting. In addition, I show how membrane phase transitions enable reshuffling the content of proto-cells, leading to the assembly of functional nucleic acids in daughter proto-cells. Altogether, my findings showcase the potential that DNA-membrane platforms have for biomimicry, unlocking pathways for engineering ever-more intricate functionalities that will help artificial cells realise their paradigm-shifting potential.

Coexistence is the adaptive but sustainable behaviour of humans and animals living together, which can be beneficial for humans. Conflicts can occur between humans and wildlife or among humans about wildlife which require effective and socially acceptable management solutions to achieve coexistence. Wildlife reintroduction is where species are returned to landscapes where they previously existed but are no longer present. A knowledge of how to anticipate and address conflicts in reintroduction scenarios would aid the development of sustainable solutions in this unique coexistence context, as would an understanding of how social benefits occur and can be maximised post-reintroduction. Further, understanding how reintroduction governance compares to the governance of coexistence with species that are already present would help aid the integration of reintroduced species into anthropogenic landscapes. In this thesis, these questions are addressed with a pragmatic, mixed-methods approach to investigating the human dimensions of Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) reintroduction in England. Informed by a foundational nationwide attitudinal survey, the research consists of a series of studies: two of potential conflicts, two of social benefits, and one exploring the experiences of stakeholders involved in a reintroduction project. The thesis finds: 1) potential conflicts can be anticipated and addressed with early and appropriate engagement, and by seeking to understand social attitudes towards potential management solutions beyond just reintroduction itself; 2) social benefits occur naturally to some extent, but are greatest where there is active investment in the opportunities; 3) lessons from existing literature can be applied to governance of coexistence with reintroduced species, but key differences arise from the 'future-thinking' needed in reintroduction. The thesis concludes reintroduction is both an ecological and social science, and defines 'Renewed Coexistence' as coexistence between a species which was formerly resident and humans in the locality today to whom the species is a 'new' presence.

This thesis questions the ability of the present juvenile justice system (JJS) in England and Wales to deliver justice to the individual child offender. It begins with a critique of the early development of the JJS within the historical context of the industrialisation and urbanisation of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also assesses the present approaches for processing child offenders, and the conflict which persists within the JJS between rehabilitation and punishment. This is followed by an examination of the Scottish JJS in its pre- and postKilbrandon reforms and the present system which continues to evolve whilst remaining focused on the child as an individual in need of help preferably provided outside the formalised courtbased system. The examination of the Irish JJS again explores the divergence in approaches to child offending with the development of a diversionary programmes implemented by the Irish police to direct child offenders away from crime and where possible the formal court system. However, the Irish system also maintains more traditional interventions, including custody, for those who fail to respond. The thesis broadens to assess the extent to which the JJS itself contributes to criminality because of its inherent carceral features which are also present in wider society. It examines the potential negative carceral effects and how they may undermine attempts by child offenders to adopt more positive behaviours. The revolving door of further contact with the JJS is considered and, in some instances, this can continue into adulthood and the adult criminal justice system. The thesis concludes with a proposal for the fundamental reform of the present JJS. It advocates radical approach to child offenders which reflects the insights gained from the examination of the Scottish and Irish JJS, and the field of therapeutic jurisprudence. It proposes the use of behavioural problem solving, rather than punishment, to promote behavioural change in child offenders. It promotes recognition of the child offender as, firstly, a vulnerable child deserving of treatment by a non-criminalised system wherever possible. Such an approach, it is argued, would offer a more sustainable and effective pathway to behavioural change and encourage desistance from offending and though it would benefit primarily the individual child offender, it would also provide benefits to society as a whole.

This thesis reflects theologically on a topic of pressing contemporary preoccupation: self-development. In doing so, it finds instruction and inspiration in the classical Reformed doctrine of sanctification. This undertaking is premised on deep misgivings about the way many people, including many Christians, now tend to conceive of how to grow and develop as persons. This (problematic) approach to self-development has been variously labeled and mapped. In the context of this essay, it is referred to as the self-realisation ethic and is discussed and critiqued with special reference to the legacy of Carl Rogers, one of its leading exponents. In pondering what a theologically-robust alternative to the Rogerian self-realisation ethos might entail, this project begins by plumbing the early Reformed vision of sanctification as it comes from the hand of William Perkins of Cambridge (1558-1602). Perkins is an apt source, given that his construal of sanctification is not only representative of his tradition but is also generously expounded and experientially-oriented. His relative obscurity in our time belies the promise of his thought for retrieval. My study of Perkins provides an expanded understanding of his sanctification theology by looking at its treatment across his corpus. Building on the Perkinsian inheritance, the project concludes with an exercise of constructive appropriation. The proposal which emerges is developed in accord with the ethos of "engaged" systematics. The objective is to reinculturate (or re-contextualise) Perkins's thought, that is, to make the meaning and significance of his doctrine of sanctification more intelligible and salient for our moment. The tangible result of this appropriative endeavour is a series of protocols which are commended as a basis for negotiating one's self-development in an authentically Christian manner. For the sake of persuasiveness and plausibility, these protocols are expounded with reference to pertinent historical and social-scientific insights.

This thesis considers the impact of the British Mandate on the town of Nablus from the end of World War I to the 1936 Arab Revolt. Starting with its role as a regional trading centre under the Ottomans, it goes on to consider the impact of the arrival of the British, combined with the challenges of natural disasters and the growth of Jewish enterprises along Palestine's Mediterranean littoral. The first two chapters establish the general political and economic features of British rule in Nablus, before the thesis looks at three specific case studies (chapters 111 - V). It examines in some depth British projects for the development of the urban water supply, the impact of the 1927 earthquake, and the relationship between the civil and military authorities during the first year of the Arab Revolt. The research is designed to fill a gap in the existing historiography of Mandate Palestine, which has tended to focus either on the Jewish national home controversy, or on Jerusalem and the area of the coastal strip. This is a study of British policy at the local level, in a town located in the relatively neglected and marginalisedarea of the central hill district. At the same time, the thesis proposes this localized approach has wider implications for our view of British imperial history in the aftermath of World War I, arguing that a focus on such 'peripheries' of empire allows us to understand more closely the minimalist state that ruled over large swathes of colonial subject populations in this period. Its primary source material is composed of British Government records held at the National Archives in Kew, supplemented by a range of other sources, including French and Moroccan, used for the purposes of comparison between the British and French colonial systems. The work concludes that Nablus was not a priority for the Mandatory Government, which was focused on the coastal strip, and in particular the port of Haifa, to the detriment of the smaller towns in Palestine's interior. Nablus was neglected, and ill-prepared for the growing competition from new Jewish enterprises. The city's hostile reaction to the Mandate reflects the perspective of locations which have become marginalised in relation to the dominant metropolitan centres of imperial power.

This research addresses the critical and urgent imperative to create value from transformational change programmes which is economically viable, ecologically sustainable and equitable across stakeholders in a world of increasingly finite resources. Three essential prerequisites are needed to realise intentional value from change: effective strategy, efficient execution and coherent linkage between them to ensure that the right things are done the right way. However, widespread failure of programmes to deliver stakeholder value is evidenced. Rather than inadequate methods and techniques, it is argued that patterns of flawed causal thinking and behaviour operating at a Meta level account for the failure. The patterns map to fractured interfaces between change programme disciplines. It is proposed that these flaws can be corrected by applying a simple, precise and rigorous approach centred on value and grounded in causality. A new value theory is proposed comprising principles which map to failure patterns, supported by a learning-centric framework. The research draws together convergent findings from experiential learning, literature research, subject expert interviews and rapid prototyping using dynamic simulation. The approach is developed and validated through case studies under a Critical Realism philosophical foundation. There exists an opportunity to affect a shift towards sustainable, equitable growth which creates a flourishing society, by harnessing technological breakthroughs deployed effectively using advances across neuroscience and learning. It is proposed that Value Productivity, which combines efficiency and effectiveness to integrate economy with prosperous wellbeing, provides a basis to realise this potential and can be implemented through the Value Management approach developed in this research.

Acts of political violence under the broad categorisation of 'Islamic terrorism' are a pervasive socio-political problem in the modern geo-political environment. Furthermore, in the nearly two decades since September 11th 2001, Salafi-Jihadist organisations such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS have emerged to symbolise potent counterpoints to models of legitimacy and sovereignty championed by Western powers, and rely on narratives of justified violence to achieve their ultimate ambitions which defy parameters of conventional Western morality in an increasingly globalised world. This thesis attempts to broaden academic and policy discussions regarding the endurance of the threat posed by violent Salafi-Jihadism by re-examining actors according to their own socio-cultural reference points, and in relation to those classified as 'other'. It intends to provide a holistic examination in a manner which has yet to be undertaken in the fields of terrorism, international relations, or religious studies. This thesis employs a Foucauldian genealogy of ISIS to deconstruct the problematisation of Islamic terrorism in the context of the Global War on Terror by scrutinising fundamental aspects of social group dynamics, the potency of religious ideology, and the symbiotic relationship between violence and ideology. It further reconstructs the emergence of ISIS by drawing on reference points unique to its own self-perception of cosmological and temporal history. Finally, this thesis analyses and reconsiders the utility of current frameworks in use for the study of terrorism. By genealogically scrutinising ISIS, and de-constructing the very understanding of the term 'terrorism' as employed by Western actors as a fluid concept in a power-knowledge nexus, this thesis argues for the necessity of alternate categorisations for the conceptualisation of actors in a contested geo-political social space.

The proliferation of big data analytics in marketing appears to be having significant effects on the field, such as changing how marketers perceive their consumers and how they act on them. As I discuss in my research, marketers are not satisfied to work solely with approximate, imagined conceptualisations of consumers as a basis for advertisements and offers. Instead, they are looking for exact virtual data doubles of existing and potential consumers, which is something they hope to achieve through big data analytics. In my thesis, I explore the question of how and why marketers conceptualise consumers differently when using big data analytics compared with traditional market and consumer research methods. This is embedded in the theory of the co-production of knowledge and empirically relies on interviews with marketers and data analysts, case studies, and participant observations at industry conferences. In my research, I show to what extent the idea of the data double consumer conceptualisation is considered an ideal case for marketers, and that it is believed to be made possible through big data analytics, which is expected to create an exact knowledge about consumers. However, my findings show that in practice, big data analytics should be considered a sociotechnical assemblage that produces knowledge which contains inaccuracies, errors and uncertainties. Knowledge about consumers is not just discovered - neither through traditional market and consumer research methods nor through big data analytics. Instead, it is the outcome of a co-production that involves different steps, individuals, teams, normativities, and technologies. Hence, knowledge about consumers is never an exact representation of reality, irrespective of its methods of production. Consequently, consumer conceptualisations expected to be exact data doubles cannot be attained. Instead, postulations are established that are believed to be accurate, without having actual proof. Yet, my findings show that knowledge resulting from big data analytics has a higher credibility and epistemic authority amongst the participants, explaining the persistence of the data double consumer conceptualisation in digital marketing.

Xiqu (Chinese opera) is a very old art form in China that has had a significant influence on the development of world theatre at large. Cantonese opera is one of the Xiqu genres in Southern China. It shares a strong inseparable historical and cultural background with Hong Kong. In 2009, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization classified Cantonese opera as a form of Intangible Cultural Heritage manifesting Cantonese opera's importance. For the past four decades, Cantonese opera has faced many challenges in adapting to the contemporary environment in Hong Kong. For example, there was the changing of performance venue from outdoor temporary built bamboo canopies to indoor technically well equipped theatres, and the income shifted from commercially box office dependent to government funding oriented. As a result of this struggle, Cantonese opera is declining in terms of audience numbers and performance quality. Modernisation of the art form can support Cantonese opera to adapt to a contemporary environment and enhance its appeal to younger audiences, thus moving the art form forward. Having been born and raised in Hong Kong, with over twenty years of experience as a professional sound designer, I was motivated by my love of Cantonese opera and my contemporary experience of its potential decline to undertake research into whether and how Cantonese opera in terms of production and management aspects could benefit from such technological advances. This research set about investigating other forms of Xiqu, many of which have been registered on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The intention of this particular piece of research was, in line with the HK government's goal of reviving Cantonese opera, to contribute to stabilizing the quality of Cantonese opera sound performance, as well as making it more palatable to the younger generation, with the vision of bringing this national cultural treasure to the world. It explores the contemporary and historical context of Cantonese opera and its relation to other Xiqu. The research was undertaken over a 36 month period using a Mixed Method Research approach with performers and other industry stakeholders. In addition, the research were made comparisons between three theatre case studies which identified the obstacles, outcomes and challenges to modernising Cantonese Opera's sound production management. Key issues revealed included : the sacredness of tradition; the current operation system, the concerns and agenda of stakeholders, and the government's funding policy. The findings identify the need to re evaluate (i) the traditional production system practice, (ii) the industry's general consensus about modernisation, and (iii) the ineffective funding strategy as these are the main factors holding back any modernisation process. The research recommends a funding strategy that will contribute to the development of Cantonese opera and emphasises the need for the consensus and collaboration of all the stakeholders to implement a modernised sound management system for the development Cantonese opera in Hong Kong, not only to enhance the art form itself but also its appeal against competition from other art forms with more sophisticated and effective enhancement strategies - film, theatre, ballet, opera which are generally western. This research is the first of its kind in Hong Kong and as such is a breakthrough for Cantonese opera as well as Xiqu at large. It also opens the doors for more academic research and study on technical aspects of Cantonese Opera and Xiqu.

This thesis challenges the orthodox view that the role of the infantry brigade command of the British Army during the First World War was unduly narrow. Instead, it is argued that the response of the brigadiers and their staff to the challenges of the Western Front secured their role as agents of organisational and tactical change. A series of case studies over the period 1916-1918 serve to demonstrate the significant contribution of brigade staff to the Army's learning process. Much like that of the wider BEF however, this process was complex and uneven. As a consequence, the development and battlefield performance of the brigades varied in accordance with factors of an external and internal nature: of these, the influence of the corps or division under which a brigade served was fundamental.

Contrails, lined-shaped clouds that form behind an aircraft, interact with earth’s radiative balance and are thought to have a net warming effect. Their climate forcing could be comparable to the cumulative impacts of aviation CO2 emissions, but with a low scientific understanding and large uncertainties. This thesis quantifies uncertainties of the contrail climate forcing and proposes mitigation solutions. Several research gaps were identified in an extensive literature review: (i) contrail models currently assume a constant aircraft black carbon (BC) number emissions index (EIn) although it is a critical parameter affecting various contrail properties; (ii) contrail uncertainties were not comprehensively modelled; and (iii) a fleet-wide flight diversion strategy, recommended by existing studies, can be highly disruptive to air traffic management and increase CO2 emissions. To address (i), a new methodology is developed from the theory of fractal aggregates to relate the BC number and mass emissions. The methodology is validated with various BC combustion sources and estimates the fleet-average BC EIn emitted by flights in Japanese airspace to be 1.37 [1.35, 1.39] ×1015 kg-1. Aircraft BC EIn and meteorological uncertainties are then propagated to address (ii), where contrail uncertainties are quantified using the Contrail Cirrus Prediction Model (CoCiP). Only 2.2% of flights contribute to 80% of the contrail energy forcing (EF) in this region. A small-scale strategy of selectively diverting 1.7% of the fleet can reduce the contrail EF by up to 59.3% [52.4%, 65.6%], with only a 0.014% [0.010%, 0.017%] increase in long-lived CO2 emissions. This addresses (iii) and highlights the possibility to instantaneously reduce aviation’s climate forcing. Over the longer term, a fleetwide adoption of cleaner-burning engines, which reduces BC EIn by 76%, achieves a 68.8% [45.2%, 82.1%] reduction in the contrail EF. A combination of both interventions significantly reduces the contrail EF by 91.8% [88.6%, 95.8%].

Reconnection between the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and Mercury's intrinsic magnetospheric field at the dayside magnetopause drives the Dungey Cycle of magnetic flux. The formation of subsequent evolution of large magnetic structures known as flux transfer events (FTEs) therefore represents an important contribution to magnetospheric dynamics. This thesis presents three studies investigating the factors influencing the rate and location of FTEs, as well as the nature of their subsequent motion and evolution. Flux transfer events in the dayside magnetosphere of Mercury have been visually identified using 12 Mercury years of Magnetometer data from the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft, covering the period from March 2011 to February 2014. The dependence of the observation rate on the orientation of the IMF in the magnetosheath is investigated, showing a clear preference for FTE formation during periods of southward IMF, and therefore antiparallel reconnection. The locations of the FTE observations have also been analysed along with their direction of motion, in order to investigate the location and orientation of the average reconnection X-line for different IMF orientations. The motions are also used to produce a map showing the convection of the magnetic field in the dayside magnetosphere. Finally, differences in the magnetic field signatures of the observed FTEs with various parameters, including IMF strength and orientation, are probed through the use of superposed epoch analysis. The results provide evidence of FTE rotation with increased distance from the subsolar point, as well as compression of the leading edge of the structure as it moves through the surrounding magnetic field and plasma.