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In the absence of a theory of everything, modern physicists need to rely on other predictive tools and turned to Effective Field Theories (EFTs) in a number of fields, including but not limited to statistical mechanics, condensed matter, particle physics, cosmology and gravity. The coefficients of an EFT can be constrained with high precision by experiments, which can involve high-energy particle colliders for instance but are generally left free from the theoretical point of view. The focus of this thesis is to use various consistency criteria to get theoretical constraints on the low-energy coefficients of EFTs. In particular, we construct a new model of massive spin-1 field by requiring that the theory is free of any ghostly degree of freedom. We then study its cosmological perturbations and ask that all propagating modes are stable and subluminal, reducing the space of viable cosmological solutions. Finally, we implement a method to get 'causality bounds', which are obtained by requiring infrared causality. This is imposed by forbidding any resolvable time advance in the EFT. We derive such 'causality bounds' for shift-symmetric and Galileon scalar EFTs, before turning to gauge-symmetric vector fields. We prove that our causality bounds can be competitive with positivity bounds and can even be used in scenarios that are out of reach of the positivity approach. The result of this thesis, by exploring several consistency criteria, is to provide compact causality bounds for low-energy EFT coefficients, in addition to constraints coming from the absence of ghosts, stability and cosmological viability.

The ability to create and optimise new interfaces is essential to develop and optimise materials for use in sustainable energy storage and conversion technologies. In this thesis, the solution-deposition of coatings from molecular precursors is explored as a promising approach towards this end. First, a facile method for the deposition of electrocatalytically active zirconium-based films for photoelectrochemical water oxidation is developed. The films were derived from three novel alkoxy cage compounds containing Zr and a first-row transition metal (Co, Fe or Cu). The deposition of a Co-doped ZrO₂ coating onto the BiVO₄ photoanode lowers its onset potential by 0.12 V to 0.21 V vs. the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) and increases the maximum photocurrent density by ∼50% to 2.41 mA cm⁻² compared to the uncoated BiVO₄. In the next chapter, a new solution deposition method to coat the Li-ion battery cathode LiNi₀.₈Mn₀.₁Co₀.₁O₂ (NMC811) with Al₂O₃ using aluminium isopropoxide (AIP) is developed. High-field solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (SSNMR) probes the formation of γ-LiAlO₂ at 600 °C and doping of aluminium into NMC811 starting at 500-600 °C. NMC811 coated with amorphous Al₂O₃ (200-400 °C) had a capacity retention comparable to pristine NMC811, while higher annealing temperatures led to more crystalline coatings and surface Al-doping which were found to increase the rate of degradation of NMC811 upon cycling. Finally, LiAlO₂ coatings are deposited onto NMC811 using heterobimetallic alkoxides: LiAl[(OCH₂Ph)₄], LiAl[(OⁱPr)₄] and LiAl[(O^tBu)₄]. The later showing the most promise as a coating precursor due to its high solubility in tetrahydrofuran (THF), low temperature decomposition (283 °C) and reaction with hydroxyl groups present on the surface of NMC811. This coating was tested on polycrystalline NMC811 (PC-NMC811) and Al₂O₃ coated single-crystal NMC811 (Al₂O₃/SC-NMC811). Significant improvements in capacity retention (17.2% more C/2 capacity retained after 107 cycles vs. Al₂O₃/SC-NMC811) were seen in the LiAlO₂/Al₂O₃/SC-NMC811 system. Furthermore, coating PC-NMC811 that was previously degraded by soaking in water improved the capacity retention (50.1% more capacity retention at C/2 after 215 cycles vs. uncoated PC-NMC811 soaked in water and annealed at 400 °C) suggesting that the combination of a LiAlO₂ coating and subsequent annealing step can recover NMC811 surfaces that have been previously degraded by soaking in water.

The current material used as Dyson space heater is BaTiO3 (BT) (operating temperature ~ 200 °C). BT has a temperature dependent electric resistance behaviour, which presents challenges for temperature control in a heater. The engineering challenge in this work was therefore to design a material with temperature independent electrical conduction: near zero temperature coefficient of resistivity (TCR). Different formulations of multiwall carbon nanotube-alumina (MWCNT-Al₂O₃) and graphene oxide-alumina (GPO-Al₂O₃) composites were prepared. Electrical conduction at room temperature was achieved in some of the composites due to percolation of the conducting phase. An investigation of the degradation of electrical conductivity was used to identify potential stable operating regimes in which these materials could be used as heaters. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) using the Ozawa-Flynn-Wall method and thermal ageing studies, were used to determine the kinetic parameters of a pressureless sintered 2wt% MWCNT-1550 °C composite, and a 3wt% GPO-1400 °C composite. TGA on the 2wt% MWCNT-1550 °C composite resulted in an activation energy for the decomposition of the MWCNT as 182 ± 19 kJ/mol, with an estimated lifetime of ~3.0 ± 0.1 years when cycling at 340 °C with the failure of the heater defined as a 0.5 % loss in MWCNT mass in the composite. The 3wt% GPO-1400 °C composite had an activation energy for GPO degradation of 195 ± 68 kJ/mol and, an estimated thermal lifetime of 8.7 ± 0.8 years for similar parameters. The testing of samples as heaters (power output), and comparison of thermal conductivities of the samples showed that the 2wt% MWCNT-1550 °C and the 2wt% GPO-1400°C-ox composites performed better than the BT samples. The near zero TCR, thermal stability and power output results achieved, are key towards use of these composite materials as space heaters.

Paraphrase plagiarism occurs when text is deliberately obfuscated to evade detection, deliberate alteration increases the complexity of plagiarism and the difficulty in detecting paraphrase plagiarism. In paraphrase plagiarism, copied texts often contain little or no matching words, and conventional plagiarism detectors, most of which are designed to detect matching stings are ineffective under such condition. The problem of plagiarism detection has been widely researched in recent years with significant progress made particularly in the platform of Pan@Clef competition on plagiarism detection. However further research is required specifically in the area of paraphrase and translation (obfuscation) plagiarism detection as studies show that the state-of-the-art is unsatisfactory. A rational solution to the problem is to apply models that detect plagiarism using semantic features in texts, rather than matching strings. Deep contextualised learning models (DCLMs) have the ability to learn deep textual features that can be used to compare text for semantic similarity. They have been remarkably effective in many natural language processing (NLP) tasks, but have not yet been tested in paraphrase plagiarism detection. The second problem facing conventional plagiarism detection is translation plagiarism, which occurs when copied text is translated to a different language and sometimes paraphrased and used without acknowledging the original sources. The most common method used for detecting cross-lingual plagiarism (CLP) require internet translation services, which is limiting to the detection process in many ways. A rational solution to the problem is to use detection models that do not utilise internet translation services. In this thesis we addressed these ongoing challenges facing conventional plagiarism detection by applying some of the most advanced methods in NLP, which includes contextualised and non-contextualised deep learning models. To address the problem of paraphrased plagiarism, we proposed a novel paraphrase plagiarism detector that integrates deep contextualised learning (DCL) into a generic plagiarism detection framework. Evaluation results revealed that our proposed paraphrase detector outperformed a state-of-art model, and a number of standard baselines in the task of paraphrase plagiarism detection. With respect to CLP detection, we propose a novel multilingual translation model (MTM) based on the Word2Vec (word embedding) model that can effectively translate text across a number of languages, it is independent of the internet and performs comparably, and in many cases better than a common cross-lingual plagiarism detection model that rely on online machine translator. The MTM does not require parallel or comparable corpora, it is therefore designed to resolve the problem of CLPD in low resource languages. The solutions provided in this research advance the state-of-the-art and contribute to the existing body of knowledge in plagiarism detection, and would also have a positive impact on academic integrity that has been under threat for a while by plagiarism.

The Dominican Republic has a historical crisis in its energy sector due to an unreliable electrical grid system that causes high levels of technical and non-technical losses in transmission and distribution. This is exacerbated by the fact that the country depends on fossil fuels for over 80% of its electricity supply to the population. However, there is enormous potential for solar energy projects due to the country's abundant solar radiation levels. Law 57-07 was enacted to support renewable energy development in the country, and while there has been progress in solar energy implementation since its passage, there have been challenges in their execution. The government must do more to support solar energy development if the country is to reach its 2030 energy goals. To understand why the country has struggled to implement solar energy, an exploratory qualitative research was conducted with a pragmatic philosophy at its core due to the scarcity of sources available regarding the topic in the DR. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify the areas of knowledge involved in the implementation of solar energy worldwide that were lacking in the DR. To understand the specific solar environment of the DR, 14 semi-structured interviews were performed with experts from the Dominican energy sector, selected through purposive and snowball sampling methods. Interviews were the subject of thematic analysis to identify the factors influencing the implementation of solar energy in DR. The study discovered that commitment to international agreements and high levels of radiation are major drivers for the implementation of solar energy in the country; furthermore, the possibility of using off-grid, fast development of projects and steady income along with other 3 more factors were highlighted as driving forces. In contrast, 11 challenges hindering the implementation were also identified with the majority belonging to regulatory deficiencies and a particular case of conflict of interest, which partially prevented the implementation of new projects for several years. Other barriers present in the country are technical deficiencies in the system and how costly some of the technologies are. Nevertheless identifying five main strategies supporting solar energy implementation, the study also highlights deficiencies in their execution; additionally, nine new strategies, based on the experts' opinions, to improve the implementation were proposed including the definition of a renewable energy standard to improve the project planning, project procurement and ease of financing, which will consequently produce social, economic, and environmental benefits to the DR, such as the increase in public health, creation of new jobs and the stabilisation and affordability of energy prices. Further analysis was performed with an ISM method to determine the interrelationship between the different parameters. All these findings were brought together to develop a strategic framework to support the energy sector's stakeholders in their efforts to implement solar energy initiatives in the country, which was the aim of the study.

Leishmaniasis is a complex group of vector-borne zoonosis caused by parasites of the Leishmania genus. The prediction of annual cases of visceral leishmaniasis and cutaneous leishmaniasis combined is of more than 1 000 000 cases, with up to 20 000 deaths per year. The treatment of leishmaniasis relies on a few drugs presenting multiple shortcomings, which makes the discovery of new treatments urgent. In recent years, clemastine 27 and tamoxifen 28 have been identified in repurposing strategies and shown to display potent anti-leishmanial activity against both in vitro and in vivo models of the disease. Both molecules were proposed to target the same enzyme, inositol phosphorylceramide synthase (IPCS), which is found in the parasite but not in the host. These molecules also share similar chemical features, such as an aminoalkoxy side chain and a diaryl system. In this project, it was hypothesised that these chemical features are responsible for their antileishmanial activity. Therefore, the goal was to design and synthesise hybrid molecules between clemastine and tamoxifen and improve their antileishmanial activity. Firstly, a library of 40 compounds was synthesised varying the nature of the diaryl carbinol core and the aminoalkoxy side chain. Using a classic resazurin-based assay, all compounds were screened for antiparasitic activity against L. major and L. amazonensis promastigotes, and HepG2 cells for the evaluation of their cytotoxicity against human cells. Seven compounds with an EC50 < 2 µM against both species, and a selectivity index > 10 were the selected for testing against other two species of Leishmania promastigotes epidemiologically relevant in South America (L. braziliensis and L. infantum) as well as against two species of intracellular amastigotes (L. amazonensis and L. infantum). All compounds were highly active against L. braziliensis promastigotes, displaying EC50 values below 1 µM, and 6/7 compounds had EC50 approximate to 2 µM against L. infantum. In addition, they displayed promising activity against L. infantum amastigotes (EC50 ≤ 2 µM), but were slightly less active against L. amazonensis. Analogues 110 and 111 had the highest activity across the four species of promastigotes tested, and the most active compound against the intracellular amastigotes was 130. Collectively, these results contributed towards raising insights regarding the structure-activity relationship of this library, which led to the selection of clemastine/tamoxifen hybrids with high antileishmanial potency. Ongoing and future efforts are to explore the mechanism of action of this library. For this, two techniques were chosen to be explored; chemical proteomics, which makes use of chemical probes for the identification of binding proteins, and resistance selection followed by genomic sequencing, which allows for the identification of genes associated with the compound activity.

I present an ethnographic account of the Gazi fishing community in coastal Kenya through an exploration of what it means to be an artisanal fisher, what it means to live in a fishing village, and how a sense of meaning-making is nurtured to navigate around an uncertain world. Since fishing is the mainstay activity in this village, an increase in fishing effort during the past 20 years and overall catches remaining relatively unchanged has led to a decline in catch per fisher. I conducted a quantitative study in the village in 2008, focussing on marine resource use, relations, conflicts and governance. In this study, I investigate how the people manoeuvre in an environment of uncertainty using participant observation, informal interviews and 32 in-depth interviews, each lasting about an hour with active and retired fishers, fish traders and the former village chair. I shall show in chapter 3 how fishing communities learn how to fish. In chapter 4, I show the conditions under which residents evoke witchcraft or predetermined destiny in everyday conversations to explain misfortunes and eliminate coincidence. I explore, in chapter 5, how the uncertainties in fish catches lead to rumours to enrich our understanding of fishing skills and the sensory perception of fishers. In chapter 6, I explore how uncertainties in landings have led to what I call the 'forced' gift economy where residents increasingly force fishers to give them fish gifts to make a living and get food for their families. My study contributes to four main areas: 1) instalment and sensory engagement, 2) rumours constructed to resolve confusions or contradictions that experience in daily life contains, 3) anthropology of ethics and morality and 4) anthropology of destiny. Finally, I suggest the need to integrate knowledge derived from such ethnographic studies into fisheries policy and management programmes.

My aim in this dissertation is to examine P.F. Strawson's claim, in his Skepticism and Naturalism, that both Hume and Wittgenstein see our belief in body, that is, our belief in mind-independent objects, as groundless and, at the same time, not open to serious doubt. Theirs is what he calls a "naturalistic" answer to scepticism: the proper attitude towards the sceptic's request for a justification of our belief in body is not to produce such a justification-the belief is groundless-but to point out that this request idle, a pretence. I examine Strawson's claim from an exegetical and philosophical perspective and reach four conclusions, two exegetical and two philosophical. First, Strawson's comparison is not the right one, as there are substantial differences between his position, that of Hume, and that of Wittgenstein. Secondly, there is room for another comparison since their writings contain claims which suggest a similar anti-sceptical argument, one purporting to show that our inability to rule out that we are in Cartesian sceptical scenario does not preclude us from having knowledge of many everyday empirical truths, because the question whether one is in such a scenario has no bearing on the truth of everyday empirical propositions. Thirdly, the naturalistic argument that Strawson attributes to Hume and Wittgenstein, and that he himself endorses, fails. Fourthly, the anti-sceptical line of argument that I uncover in the writings that I examine fails as well.

While traditionally the understanding of cardiovascular morbidity relied on the acquisition and interpretation of health data, the advances in health technologies has enabled us to collect far larger amount of health data. This thesis explores the application of advanced analytics that utilise powerful mechanisms for integrating health data across different modalities and dimensions into a single and holistic environment to better understand different diseases, with a focus on cardiovascular conditions. Different statistical methodologies are applied across a number of case studies supported by a novel methodology to integrate and simplify data collection. The work culminates in the different dataset modalities explaining different effects on morbidity: blood biomarkers, electrocardiogram recordings, RNA-Seq measurements, and different population effects piece together the understanding of a person morbidity. More specifically, explainable artificial intelligence methods were employed on structured datasets from patients with atrial fibrillation to improve the screening for the disease. Omics datasets, including RNA-sequencing and genotype datasets, were examined and new biomarkers were discovered allowing a better understanding of atrial fibrillation. Electrocardiogram signal data were used to assess the early risk prediction of heart failure, enabling clinicians to use this novel approach to estimate future incidences. Population-level data were applied to the identification of associations and temporal trajectory of diseases to better understand disease dependencies in different clinical cohorts.

At low flow rates, the flowfield of axial compressors becomes unstable. Two examples of this are rotating stall (a compression system level instability) and so-called "Rotating Instabilities" (a localized fluctuation in the tip flow region). This thesis presents full-annulus URANS computations demonstrating newly discovered properties of spike-type stall inception, Rotating Instabilities, and "multi-spikes" (a phenomenon related to Rotating Instabilities that has not been discussed in previous literature). It is shown, via the series of computations on a low speed rotor designed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) with nominal tip clearance (1.2%ctip), that spike-type stall inception is preceded by exponentially growing and circumferentially propagating long wavelength harmonic perturbations upstream of the rotor tip leading edge. These harmonic perturbations directly influence the circumferential variation of incidence and hence the blade which first exhibits leading edge separation that characterizes spike-type stall inception. The harmonic perturbations are supported by the rotor tip's rolled over local instantaneous axisymmetric total-to-static pressure rise characteristic, which reaches peak pressure rise at a stable operating point prior to spike-type stall inception. The rolling over of the tip axisymmetric characteristic is caused by blockage due to increased tip leakage jet strength as the rotor mass flow rate is reduced, a phenomenon common to other rotors. These findings provide connections between spike-type and modal stall inception, in that both mechanisms involve pre-stall exponentially growing long wavelength perturbations and total-to-static pressure rise characteristics, at least over part of the span, rolling over prior to stall inception. In the series of computations of the MHI rotor with large tip clearance (4.5%ctip), Rotating Instabilities are captured with their characteristic frequency spectral "hump" (a property of Rotating Instabilities widely reported in the literature) reproduced. Rotating Instabilities are shown to begin to develop when the circumferentially averaged axial velocity above the blade tip becomes negative. The computations allow the structure of the Rotating Instabilities to be identified. During the development process, the tip leakage flow starts to oscillate, and rolls up into circumferentially propagating disturbances of a vortex tube nature with a circumferential spacing of between 1.16 to 1.65 blade pitches. This range in circumferential spacing of the Rotating Instabilities vortex tubes gives rise to the characteristic "hump" in the frequency spectra. These disturbances are confined within the top 15%span, exist downstream of the leading edge, and do not trigger rotating stall inception. Previously unreported "multi-spikes", which are found to be adjacent spike-like disturbances measured in casing static pressure traces, occur when the mass flow rate is reduced from the Rotating Instabilities operating point. The computations show that "multi-spikes" consist of Rotating Instabilities disturbances (the vortex tubes) superposed with non-growing, circumferentially-propagating, long wavelength perturbations. The long wavelength perturbations create a pressure trough with a width of several blade passages (one-eighth of circumference in the case presented), which causes adjacent Rotating Instabilities disturbances to move upstream of the leading edge. Thus, the now-upstream vortex tubes are registered as adjacent spike-like disturbances by the upstream static pressure traces. The rest of the annulus, meanwhile, operates with Rotating Instabilities disturbances still contained within the blade passage downstream of the leading edge.

This research focuses on the main causes of food waste and strategic approaches that can be applied in reducing food service sector waste in the context of the Garki district of Abuja, Nigeria. Food waste (FW) is a global concern which is intricately linked to food safety, food security, and food sustainability. This research applies key theoretical tenets from the perspective of stakeholder theory and practice approach to identify and understand key elements (meaning, competencies, and materiality) of multi-stakeholder practices in engaging with and mitigating food waste in the food service sector. This research study aims to critically evaluate the strategies adopted by multi-stakeholders who are engaged in the provision of food services to manage and address the growing challenges of food waste (FW) in an emerging economy such as Nigeria. The empirical data were collected using qualitative methods including participant observation in multi-stakeholder focus groups and semi-structured interviews with 32 stakeholders in the food service sector, as well as secondary sources. The intention is to investigate the fundamental causes of waste created in food services, the consequences of food waste in food services, potential techniques for the reduction of food waste, and recommendations for food service sustainability through waste reduction. The study's findings demonstrate the significance of collaboration between core and supportive stakeholders of food services, viz. firms (owners, managers, and staff), suppliers, government agencies at both national and local level, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), research organisations, academics, customers, and local residents in the identification of the root causes of waste and its mitigation. In this thesis, the stakeholders and practises are studied. The theoretical contribution of this thesis lies in the distinct insights it provides from a single actor's perspective to a multi-stakeholder view on FW mitigation, as the majority of the academic work previously carried out focuses on the role of an individual within an organisation to tackle the issue. The study's practice contribution stems from the understanding that the work provides information both on best practices pertaining to FW management from the perspective of multiple stakeholders in the Garki province and the challenges embedded in internal management practices which arise as a result of external actors' practices and influence. Overall, this study fills a significant gap by providing a framework which addresses multi-stakeholder interactions within the food service sector in Nigeria.

In natural porous media, the wall of each induvial pore is commonly formed by chemically different materials to give various surface energies and wettability to fluids. In a two-phase capillary system with contrasting wet-surface sections along the capillary, when the interface between the invading and receding fluid moves cross each wet-surface interface, the dynamics of fluid-fluid-solid contact line is subject to a transition stage, in an accelerating (slip) or decelerating (stick) manner, due mainly to the transformation of surface, kinetic energy and viscous dissipation. Time and length durations of the slip-stick process are influenced by fluid properties, capillary geometry, and wettability as well as forces driving flow through imposed boundary conditions. The slip-stick process can have a strong impact on the dynamics of capillary filling process in individual capillaries and therefore subsequent selection of plausible pathways for a fluid to migrate through a pore system which is filled by another fluid. This impact is likely to be more severe in less-well connected pore systems with strong contrasts in surface wettability such as organic-rich shales and coals. However, the transitional dynamics of the contact line, the slip-stick process, is poorly understood in a parameter space of practical interest. This research fills this knowledge gap through a combined study of numerical modelling and analytical analysis. A two-phase multi-relaxation-time colour-gradient lattice-Boltzmann (LB) model is implemented for simulating contact line movement around wettability transitions in 2D. A 1D analytical model for homogenous-wet capillary filling, which considers the inertial effects of contrasting fluids, is employed to derive a dimensionless model for parameter groups and to perform dimensional analysis on energy and forces involved. The LB code is validated using this analytical model and is used to simulate capillary filling in 2D channels which contain two sections of different wetting surfaces along each channel, for a set of parameters, including respective velocity and pressure flow driven boundary conditions. The variation of the viscous dissipation generated by the slip-stick processes is analysed and it is found that the transient dynamics of the contact line coincides with the temporal variation of the viscous dissipation and that duration reflects the time the contact line requires to balance the change of surface energy arisen from the wettability change. The time and distance in which the transitional dynamics take place are evaluated under low capillary numbers over a wide range of fluid and capillary geometric parameters. Using the data obtained from this study, an empirical effective capillary filling model is developed. It is shown this model can be used to establish a simple rule-based criterion for determining whether an individual pore throat in a pore network is to be invaded or not under given boundary conditions during drainage and imbibition processes. Finally, using this criterion, the significant impact of multi-wet pore-throats on phase saturation in a simple pore system is demonstrated under quasi-static displacements.

This dissertation explores the intrinsic connection between knowledge and ethics. It is an ethnography about a community of Christians who have taken it upon themselves to change their way of knowing the Bible in view of becoming better moral subjects. Founded in 1929 as a house church in Nashville, Tennessee, today Heart Ridge Church (HRC) is a predominantly White, suburban middle-class congregation with 1,800 members. They identify as a "Restoration Movement church" (Second Great Awakening, c. 1790-1840) and are affiliated with the Churches of Christ, a conservative branch characterized by its stalwart commitment to biblical literalism. Restorationists lamented the schismatic denominationalism characteristic of American Protestantism, considering such discord a hindrance both to Christians' own salvation and to global evangelization. They sought to unite all Christians around an "objective method" for acquiring biblical knowledge; there ought to be "no creed but the Bible." Relying upon the empiricist precepts of Common Sense Realism and Baconian inductive science, they pursued an idealized form of purely perceptual biblical knowledge considered to be free from "interpretive" bias. Biblical truth was to be found, not made, and believers ought to humble themselves before the "facts" of God's revealed word. HRC maintain an affinity for the Restorationist mission, but they have lost confidence in the efficacy of literalism both to shape good Christians and to make new ones. This puts them at odds with their own epistemic habits and intuitions. In their view, over the generations, literalism lost its righteous humility. This failure, in their view, is evident in their forebearers' uncompromising dogmatism, suppression of the experiential dimensions of faith, and defense of what HRC now consider parochial social mores. For HRC, literalism ceased to be a moral way of knowing. I examine their efforts to fix this problem. Why does epistemic change matter so much to them? What exactly does renouncing literalism imply in mind, spirit, and practice? What cultural, social, and political conditions are they responding to? This dissertation proposes an anthropology of epistemic virtue. I highlight the ways in which knowing is shaped by ideal types of knowledge to which knowers aspire and the pursuit of which requires a particular shaping of one's moral subjectivity. I explain how these Christians' epistemic change is co-constituting with a shift in ethical style. In place of literalism, HRC promotes what members call "narrative theology." It is a conception of biblical truth substantiated not through the ascertainment of objective facts but through believers' capacity to foster and to sustain certain intellectual and relational virtues in alignment with the perceived teleology of the canonical biblical narrative. While rationalistic assent to propositional beliefs and the elaboration of logically sound doctrine remain essential, their alternative moral-epistemic strategy exhibits a heightened concern for the ethics of relationships. As aspiring ex-literalists (Chapter 1), HRC members must convince each other to undertake a shift in moral-epistemic stance. They nudge-and at times urge-one another to adopt alternative hermeneutic frameworks for acquiring biblical knowledge (Chapter 2), to critically reimagine the ethics and politics of evangelism (Chapter 3), to cautiously experiment with charismatic spirituality (Chapter 4), and to embrace the explanatory claims of science (Chapter 5). In these ways, these Christians challenge their former knowing selves and cultivate new ones.

The standard technique of implementing veterinary syndromic surveillance (VSyS) is the detection of temporal or spatial anomalies in the occurrence of health incidents above a set threshold in an observed population using the Frequentist modelling approach. Most implementation of this technique also requires the removal of historical outbreaks from the datasets to construct baselines. Unfortunately, some challenges exist, such as data scarcity, delayed reporting of health incidents, and variable data availability from sources, which make the VSyS implementation and alarm interpretation difficult, particularly when quantifying surveillance risk with associated uncertainties. This problem indicates that alternate or improved techniques are required to interpret alarms when incorporating uncertainties and previous knowledge of health incidents into the model to inform decision-making. Such methods must be capable of retaining historical outbreaks to assess surveillance risk. In this research work, the Stochastic Quantitative Risk Assessment (SQRA) model was proposed and developed for detecting and quantifying the risk of disease outbreaks with associated uncertainties using the Bayesian probabilistic approach in PyMC3. A systematic and comparative evaluation of the available techniques was used to select the most appropriate method and software packages based on flexibility, efficiency, usability, ability to retain historical outbreaks, and the ease of developing a model in Python. The social media datasets (Twitter) were first applied to infer a possible disease outbreak incident with associated uncertainties. Then, the inferences were subsequently updated using datasets from the clinical and other healthcare sources to reduce uncertainties in the model and validate the outbreak. Therefore, the proposed SQRA model demonstrates an approach that uses the successive refinement of analysis of different data streams to define a changepoint signalling a disease outbreak. The SQRA model was tested and validated to show the method's effectiveness and reliability for differentiating and identifying risk regions with corresponding changepoints to interpret an ongoing disease outbreak incident. This demonstrates that a technique such as the SQRA method obtained through this research may aid in overcoming some of the difficulties identified in VSyS, such as data scarcity, delayed reporting, and variable availability of data from sources, ultimately contributing to science and practice.

Solanum lycopersicum is an important vegetable high in vitamin A and C and minerals such as phosphorus, iron and high in lycopene and beta-carotene. It is considered the favourite in the food processing and cosmetics industries. S. lycopersicum current global production is concentrated in the United States of America, China, and India. The production of S. lycopersicum depends on the application of chemical fertiliser; however, ecological damages caused by chemical fertiliser far outweigh its benefits. Thus, there is a need to initiate and adopt eco-friendly cultivation of S. lycopersicum using vertically transmitted endophytes. In this study, different strains of vertically transmitted endophytic bacteria were isolated from eight different cultivars of S. lycopersicum. The findings show that vertically transmitted endophytes are host specific and display various phenotypes that produce diverse metabolites with different concentrations. It also demonstrated that treated S. lycopersicum under fertilised microbial communities performed significantly better than those under the manure microbial community, untreated microbial community, and the control tank. The finding also shows that vertically transmitted endophytes in the S. lycopersicum failed to stimulate interaction between S. lycopersicum and its surrounding soil microbial communities, which promotes plant growth, increase chlorophyll content, increase fresh and dried biomass of the plant. Our result further demonstrated no significant difference when the isolated vertically transmitted endophytes Bb-B-1 was inoculated on S. lycopersicum under the optimum nutrient condition and deprived nutrient condition. Finally, the study demonstrates that microbial communities from fertilised treated soil, manure treated soil, and untreated microbial communities are not involved in inducing or suppressing Auxin, LelRT1, FER, FROS2 and LeNRT2;3 genes in S. lycopersicum. It further shows that the S. lycopersicum vertically transmitted endophytes are not involved in regulating these genes. Whilst no significant result to demonstrate the possible role of vertically transmitted endophytes the study demonstrated that S. lycopersicum vertically transmitted endophytes are host specific and display various phenotypes that produce diverse metabolites with different concentrations. Further investigation is required to focus on the isolated vertically transmitted endophytes precisely to understand their possible roles in the plant host. Additional studies investigating the role of different microbial communities on the host plant required more time to monitor the suitable duration needed by the microbial communities to be established in the new environment.

Introduction: Social justice is considered the root of nursing responsibilities due to historical and enduring practices of promoting health and redressing social barriers that impact on health. This statement is supported in the literature and philosophies of national and international nursing organisations. However, in the United Kingdom, scholarly interest and nursing organisational position is ambiguous on social justice. Aim and Objectives: My research aim was to explore ideas for empowering student nurses to engage in actions that promotes social justice practices. The objectives included understanding the meaning of social justice, recognising the impact of social injustice on health, ascertaining the visibility of social justice learning in nurse education, and developing ideas for incorporating social justice practices in nurse education. Methods: Research methods were situated in critical interpretivism and constructivism grounded theory qualitative research design. Data was collected from semi-structured interviews with eleven student nurses and focus groups with eleven nurse educators, in a City of London nurse education institution. Data was analysed using Charmaz's grounded theory initial, focused, and theoretical coding levels. FINDINGS Firstly, social justice was understood as conditions that fosters health experience. Secondly, social injustice was recognised as conditions that hinders health experience. Thirdly, social justice learning was found to be equivocal in nurse education. Lastly, it was discovered that frameworks can be used to incorporate social justice learning into nurse education. Discussion: I have created a framework on Awareness for Social Justice Action for the purpose of developing the critical student nurse for social justice awareness and action. This is my unique contribution to knowledge that reconcile educational theories with aspirations of research participants in the context of nurse education. Conclusion: Doing the Professional Doctor of Education programme provided opportunities for shaping my research ideas. Systematic processing of these ideas was demonstrated throughout my research and contributed to my framework on promoting social justice nurse education to address persisting health inequities.

The sustainability of microalgae biodiesel production primarily relies on the choice of algae species, carbon sources utilised and mode of cultivation. Careful choices of these features can stimulate the production of commercial and suitable biodiesel of international standards. Optimisation of the key units such as cultivation, harvesting and cell disruption is necessary to cut down excess inputs that will not only circumvent hike in the cost of production but help identify the overall conditions for optimal biodiesel yields. In this study, firstly, two selected oleaginous microalgae species Chlorella vulgaris (C. vulgaris) and Nannochloropsis oculata (N. oculata) were cultivated in photobioreactor (PBR) and multi-cultivator (MCR) mixotrophically and photoheterotrophically utilising glycans such as β-glucan, β-mannan and xylan, and folic acidas carbon sources using artificially made wastewater and formulated growth media (BG 11). The aim is to investigate their effects on biomass productivity and growth rate, lipids content, fatty acid composition, biodiesel yields and properties. Biodiesel properties were estimated empirically using equations available in literature. Secondly, microalgae samples were harvested via flocculation. Cell wall disruption and lipid extraction were carried out using a mild and low energy device 'Tissue-lyser II' after cell wall weakening via osmotic shock. Thirdly, key parameters of three microalgae biodiesel production units comprising of photoheterotrophic cultivation, harvesting by flocculation and cell disruption were optimised using the response surface methodology (RSM). Results obtained from the preliminary growth experiment conducted using wastewater (mixture of distilled water and miracle gro. fertilizer) showed a limited degree of growth (maximum OD of 0.44). Supplementing the medium with folic acid solution inhibited microalgae growth and eventually terminated the growth phase, signifying that the dissociation of folic acid in culture did not make available the much-needed carbon required for algae growth, and therefore is unsuitable for use as a carbon source. Utilising a properly formulated Blue Green (BG 11) growth medium supplemented with organic carbon sources enhanced growth. Results obtained after a period of 8 cultivation days in BG 11 showed that C. vulgaris outweighs N. oculata in all growth parameters such as biomass concentration, productivity, and growth rate, signifying better nutrient absorption and photosynthetic activities by the former species. Biomass concentration of 0.186, 0.287, 0.267, 0.214 and 0.232 gl-1 were obtained from C. vulgaris and 0.133, 0.223, 0.238, 0.167 and 0.195 gl-1 from N. oculata when cultivated mixotrophically in culture supplemented with control (culture not supplemented with carbon source), glucose, mannose, β-glucan and β-mannan respectively. Comparatively, these results are higher than 0.184 and 0.218 gl-1 obtained from C. vulgaris, and 0.165 and 0.184 gl-1 from N. oculata obtained when cultivated photoheterotrophically, indicating that the act of passing air bubbles into culture (aeration) practiced under mixotrophic mode of cultivation further supplements culture with carbon dioxide (CO2) which resulted in the upsurge in growth parameters observed. The outcome of optimising the photoheterotrophic mode of cultivation clearly showed that growth is dependent on the combination and interaction of both nutrients: organic carbon (glycans) and organic nitrogen sources(urea). More so, utilising β-glucan and β-mannan from different sources (yeast and barley) and structures as carbon sources did not significantly influence growth parameters when compared. Additionally, the growth performance of both microalgae species cultivated in MCR was also influenced by glycans (β-glucan, β-mannan and xylan) when utilised as carbon sources in such a decreasing order of xylan > β-mannan > β-glucan. The algae species and glycans studied are good candidates for biodiesel production, with maximum biomass and lipid yields from the species cultivated in the culture supplemented with xylan. Thereafter, the two selected algae species which were cultivated under the same conditions were harvested and flocculated at different times in acidic, alkaline, and neutral media, aimed at investigating and comparing how flocculation parameters can influence algae flocculation efficiencies. Results revealed a high flocculation efficiency (over 80 %) of both species, but at different flocculation conditions. It was observed that N. oculata flocculated better than C. vulgaris in alkaline culture (pH of 11) whereas C. vulgaris is better flocculated in acidic culture (pH of 3). At maximum flocculation, it was observed that N. oculata was very resistive to cell loss when compared with C. vulgaris. Cell loss of C. vulgaris is over 3fold higher than that N. oculata. In another unit process, wet and dry harvested algae species were subjected into cell disruption regime. Results obtained from cell disruption experiments conducted on wet algae samples using the Tissue-lyser showed that owing to the stronger cell wall composition and matrix which amplifies the resistance to shear damage of N. oculata, lower disruption efficiency was observed in N. oculata (55.9±5.7%) than C. vulgaris (84.15±0.95%) under the same disruption conditions. Observably, the effects of treatment time were coherent in the first 20 minutes, thereafter, the rate of disruption declines. Also revealed was that more cells were disrupted at lower specific energy on agitating culture of higher biomass concentration due to the exposure of more biomass to the grinding beads resulting in the disruption of more cells. Cell disruption efficiency increases with increasing specific energy and decreasing biomass concentration. Energy input as a function of time in the disruption regime was relatively low. However, energy utilisation estimated in form of specific energy (energy input per unit mass) is high due low mass of algae biomass treated. The specific energy that resulted in maximum disruption efficiency and lipids yield is 18 MJ/g and can be further reduced by increasing the mass of biomass in the treated culture. Also, lipid was extracted from dry algae samples subjected to bead shaking using the Tissue-lyser II. Maximum lipid yields of 26, 18, 23.5, 17.5 and 11.5 % by weight of dry C. vulgaris, and 23.5, 15, 22.5, 17 and 8.5% by weight of dry N. oculata were obtained from culture grown under mixotrophic cultivation using β-glucan, glucose, β-mannan, mannose and control respectively, indicating that glycans are potential carbon sources for sustainable microalgae lipid yields for biodiesel production. For obvious reason, the specific energy consumption is relatively very low (0.9 MJ/g) which is one-twentieth of the 18 MJ/g obtained on treating wet algae utilising the same device. More so, the influence of various carbon sources on fatty acid composition and biodiesel fuel properties were observed to be significant in this study. The values of key biodiesel properties that can enhance engine performance (cetane number, oxidative stability and viscosity) are within the range of set international standards, signifying that glycans utilised in this study can enhance the volume and quality of biodiesel from microalgae extracts.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is an assisted reproductive technology (ART) that aims to assist intended parents overcome fertility issues, including an infertility diagnosis and other barriers to conception. It involves harvesting gametes from a male and female provider to generate embryos, with the subsequent transfer of these embryos into a uterus with the goal of establishing a viable pregnancy and a healthy take home baby. Technological advances in the field have led to drastic improvements in outcomes over the years, including selection methods of the most competent embryo for transfer within a cohort. Embryo selection tools include evaluating an embryo's chromosomal composition (preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy, or PGT-A) and other biomarkers/conditions that may have an impact on implantation and the ensuing pregnancy. Notably, many such methodological innovations (even some routinely used in the industry) still lack appropriate validation and are in dire need of unbiased vetting. The primary goal of this thesis is to evaluate current embryo selection techniques. This work encompasses the following items: (1) Evaluating if current DNA sampling techniques (biopsy) of an embryo is an adequate predictor of the remaining embryo, which is a central premise of preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A); I conclude that a clinical trophectoderm (TE) biopsy correctly predicts aneuploidy in the inner cell mass (ICM) in the vast majority of cases 18 Empirical Studies on the Evaluation of Current Embryo Selection Techniques when one or several chromosomes are abnormal, but aneuploidy of segmental (sub- chromosomal) nature is not well correlated in paired TE-ICM samples. (2) Assessing of clinical outcomes of embryos classified as mosaic by routine clinical biopsy; I conclude that embryos classified as mosaic by PGT-A are associated with different clinical outcomes when compared to embryos diagnosed as euploid by PGT-A, namely reduced rates of implantation, ongoing pregnancy, and live birth. (3) Defining features of mosaicism to rank embryos by their potential for a positive outcome; I conclude that mosaic level (putative percent aneuploid cells in the biopsied sample) and mosaic type (aneuploidy involved in the mosaicism) correlate with specific clinical outcomes and can be used to prospectively rank mosaic embryos in the clinical setting. (4) Evaluating mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) levels determined from a clinical trophectoderm biopsy as a potential predictor of implantation; I conclude that accurate calculation of mtDNA levels shows there is no association with embryo ploidy or implantation potential. (5) Studying the health of babies from embryos reported to have high mtDNA levels; I conclude that unusually high mtDNA levels did not preclude blastocyst implantation and healthy births. 19 Empirical Studies on the Evaluation of Current Embryo Selection Techniques (6) Performing a theoretical evaluation on the potential application of genome editing to human embryos such that abnormal embryos may be repaired and reclassified as transferable; I conclude that demand for germline genome editing (GGE) to cure heritable genetic diseases is grossly over estimated, mainly due to the role of preimplantation genetic testing, but nevertheless future applications may exist to correct chromosomal abnormalities and rescue aneuploid embryos. (7) Exploring SARS-CoV-2 infection and its implications on embryo viability and its potential effect on strategies for embryo selection; I conclude that preimplantation embryos are vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection, which can compromise their health and viability. The data presented in this thesis empirically evaluates the utility of several embryo selection techniques on the IVF cycle. The array of methods available is certain to grow in time; to ensure that new instruments of selection or refinements to current tools continue to have a positive effect on outcomes and success rates, they must be evaluated thoroughly before being applied in the clinic in full force.

Flooding is the most prevalent disaster worldwide accounting for 43% of all recorded global disaster events in the past 20 years leading up to 2018 Choy (2018). While migration from rural settlements to urban areas often mirrors economic advancement, it also presents socioeconomic and environmental challenges. Rapid urban growth strains existing infrastructure and also discourages the preservation of natural habitat in favour of building more developments causing urban flooding. Climate change and urbanisation have been reported as the major contributors to the increasing damaging effects of flooding to lives and livelihoods worldwide (Aerts et al., 2014). There is lack of adequate research focused on the dual impacts of climate change and urbanisation on urban flooding and water quality in rapidly developing urban areas of the world - a gap that will result in an increase in fluvial and pluvial flood risk, and further reduction in water quality (Miller and Hutchins, 2017). This study highlights the importance of the use of free global datasets in the development of a city-scale 2D hydraulic model that assesses the impact of land use change and climate change on urban pluvial flooding in rapidly developing cities. This thesis presents three key results chapters assessing the ability of a simplified city-scale hydrological and hydraulic models to estimate urban pluvial flood inundation in a large catchment, before going on to establish the impacts of climate change and land use change on flood hazard. Topography has been identified as a key dataset of estimating flood extent (Horritt and Bates, 2001) and models of flood extent rely on DEMs in order to simulate paths of water flow, flood extent and depth. Errors in Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) can substantially affect the results of flood models (Stephens et al., 2012, Hawker et al., 2018). Therefore, in order to increase the accuracy of the outputs from the hydrological and hydraulic models used in this study, a methodology for the correction of building error in DEMs was developed in Chapter 4 for removing building elevation artefacts from six global DEMs namely: (i) NASADEM, (ii) SRTM, (iii) MERIT, (iv) ALOS, (v) TanDEM-X 12 m, and (vi) TanDEM-X 90 m. The findings show that the removal of building elevation artefacts/error from global DEMs resulted in the improvement of the vertical height accuracy of global DEMs. The findings show that building density has an influence on vertical accuracy of global digital elevation models (DEMs). This finding was a key step prior to research undertaken in subsequent chapters. In chapter 5, a city-scale hydrological and hydraulic model of the Nairobi catchment is built. The purpose of creating the models is to use the raw DEM and corrected global DEM derived in Chapter 4 to estimate the impact of land use change and climate change on urban pluvial flood hazard at city-scale level using global datasets. The HEC-RAS software is used to create five categories of models for the extreme rainfall event of 1st to 13th of March 2018; a baseline model (S1-Baseline), S2-2000LU model, S3-CP4uplift model, S4-P25uplift model, and the S5-RawDEM model. The five sets of models are created in 2D and make use of the diffusive wave equation for simplification. The results showing a lot of promises by providing evidence for the hypothesis that urban flood models built at city-scale level using free global datasets have a good level of skill and are proficient enough to accurately estimate urban flood inundation depth and extent in rapidly developing cities characterised by sparsity of data. Chapter 6 discusses the results of the flood inundations and flood hazard vulnerability maps from the HEC-RAS 2D hydraulic model under 5 different scenarios. It is found that topography plays an important role in flood inundation maps and that the accuracy of flood inundation maps can be improved simply by using urban corrected DEMs over raw DEMs as key input data when conducting both hydrological and hydraulic modelling. The findings also show that urban pluvial flooding is affected by both change in climate change and land use change, however, climate change is found to contribute significantly to surface water runoff and exacerbate the problems of urban flooding. The results also show that the baseline model using the urban corrected DEM as input data produced flood inundation and flood hazard vulnerability maps with better accuracy in comparison to a similar baseline model using the raw DEM as key input data. Chapter 7 further explored the influence of climate change and land use change that is due to rapid urbanization on urban pluvial flood hazard. Chapter 7 focuses on the synthesis of the results obtained from the results of the 5 set of 2D hydraulic models discussed in chapter 6. Results demonstrated that climate change had more influence on urban pluvial flood hazard than land use change. It is found that climate change, rather than land use change is a bigger threat to urban area in terms of flood risk. Specifically, the effects induced by climate change under the CP4 and P25 climate rainfall models are much higher than the effects induced by land use change due to urbanisation in Nairobi from 2000 to 2020. The findings show that the changes caused by current and future changes in rainfall intensities and frequencies are most likely to render most large urban areas vulnerable to extreme rainfall and pluvial flooding due to lack of resilience in existing drainage infrastructure and flood mitigation systems. Assessment of land use changes alone cannot fully account for hydrological and hydraulic alterations in the urban context and it is important for policy makers and people with responsibilities for managing urban flood risks to consider adaptation and mitigation strategies that considers increasing threat of urban flooding emanating from increased runoff from climate change rainfall. This thesis has subsequently enhanced our understanding of the value of free global hydrological and hydraulic models developed at city-scale to model the impacts of climate change and land use change on urban pluvial flood hazard in data-sparse context of rapidly developing cities where availability of high-quality data for urban flood studies are a rarity. Finally, one of the key findings of this study is that in the context of conducting urban flood modelling in data sparse regions in rapidly developing cities across the world, it is possible to leverage the opportunities provided by the growing availability of free, global datasets to develop urban flood models. Traditional urban flood models rely on the use of high-quality datasets as key input data and require computers with high computational efficiency to run detailed flood inundation models. Most importantly, the study has demonstrated that it is possible to achieve a trade-off between complexity and resolution by the use of simplified 2D hydraulic flood models that use global dataset as key input data.

Due to recent challenges in oil exploration, there has been an increase in oil exploration from shallow waters to deep waters. This requires more length of the risers and thus an increase in the weight of the risers on the offshore structure. Secondly, there is the need for the application of more flexible structures like marine hose systems. Marine hoses are unique marine riser systems which are utilised as conduits to transport fluid from the oil well to the offshore platform of the transport vessel. Marine hoses are also a type of bonded flexible risers that are connected to buoys and other offshore structures but have short service periods. Three types of marine hoses are researched-submarine hoses, floating hoses and reeling hoses. The design for some load cases on the marine hoses is presented. The advantages and brief on state-of-the-art of marine hose structures for deep water applications are presented. Increasing energy needs has also led to advances in ocean monitoring, offloading and loading operations based on the use of Catenary Anchor Leg Moorings (CALM) buoys. However, variations in the soil stiffness and environmental conditions necessitates the investigation on the behaviour of marine hoses, based on the mechanics, structural and hydrodynamic behaviour. In this study, the local design and global design analysis of marine hoses layers were designed. In the numerical modelling, comparisons were made using two (2) configurations- the Lazy-S and Chinese-lantern configurations. However, a new hybrid hose riser configuration was also proposed for the application of marine hoses. Also, some parametric studies on the effect of the buoy shape, and buoy skirt were conducted. A novel coupling model was also proposed whereby hydrodynamic simulation using ANSYS AQWA was first conducted and later coupled into the dynamic models in Orcaflex. Based on the case study with marine hoses, the dynamic analysis was carried out based on the design of the submarine hoses attached to a CALM buoy using six (6) mooring lines. Experimental work conducted in Lancaster University Wave Tank was also presented using a CALM buoy model. In the wave tank, the motion response of a scaled hull model was investigated using two (2) novel underwater Bluetooth MIT motion sensors, two (2) underwater Akaso 4K cameras, and the Imetrum Digital Image Correlation (DIC) system. A series of hydrodynamic models were created in ANSYS AQWA using environmental conditions specified by API, ABS and DNV to further examine its application for additional ocean depths and support systems. The Imetrum system results from the wave tank experimental test were used to validate the AQWA model. Results on the effect of wave height, flow angles, soil stiffness and hydrodynamic loads on the structural behaviour of the submarine hoses and composite risers were presented with recommendations. The global analysis carried out on a CALM buoy using these configurations, could be considered in (WA) Weight-added risers, Top Tension Risers (TTR) and a lazywave riser (LWR) formations. The research result shows novel numerical modelling approaches for the design, hydrodynamics and mechanics of marine hoses for oil and gas applications.

This empirical study of African law and culture in the LLB Programme is based on data collected from documents, qualitative interviews, and observations at 15 university law schools in common law and Roman-Dutch jurisdictions in Africa. At least 100 students, lecturers and legal practitioners participated in this study, which was premised on the assumption that undergraduate legal education in African common law systems could involve skills associated with African customary law and culture. The findings show that most of the university law schools are using skills-based approaches of one kind or the other. Data from interviews with LLB students showed that integrating clinical courses provides the best opportunity to learn law in context because students would learn from their own experiences. In the view of some legal academics and practitioners, integrating skills in the curriculum is central to understanding law. On this issue, the findings suggest that widening the scope of skills to include those associated with customary law would strengthen the LLB degree programme. The findings also show that there are many other practical skills that could be incorporated into the undergraduate law degree. To strengthen the law degree programme, the informants suggested a range of skills such as negotiation, mediation, proficiency in indigenous languages, knowledge of customary traditions, values, and mores and an understanding of Ubuntu and other cultural beliefs. Also, clinical methods such as internships and externships were considered to be some of the best ways of learning skills. The findings further showed that adopting African cultural skills of decision making such as Indaba premised on collaboration, communitarianism, and compromise, rather than the adversarial techniques used in Western jurisdictions, may be more relevant to the African context. This is because lawyers routinely deal with cases involving African customary law and culture that require a sound knowledge of customary law and culture. Given these findings, it is recommended that the existing legal training system in Anglophone Africa, which is based on the British model, should be reformed in order to prepare graduates who are more grounded in African legal practice.

Integrated Chassis Control (ICC) is one of the most appealing subjects for vehicle dynamics specialists and researchers. ICC ensures that the potential of the increasing number of vehicle chassis actuators is completely exploited while conflicts and redundancies are prevented, resulting in enhanced vehicle performance, ride comfort and safety. The doctorate study portrayed in this thesis is organised in three major activities. The first part investigates the last three decades of ICC literature and provides guidelines to classify the architectures and coordination strategies, depicting their pros and cons. Hence, the investigation recommends the most suitable testing procedures and driving requirements to objectively assess the ICC performance. The second part of the study deals with the first layer of a generalised ICC structure, where the environmental data from sensing systems and state estimators are gathered. The thesis focuses on the implementation of a vehicle state estimator (VSE) for unmeasurable data, which combines the information of the vertical and longitudinal tyre contact forces determined by a smart tyre system with the signals obtained from conventional vehicle sensors. The sensing systems aid the mathematical model inside the VSE to improve the estimation accuracy. The study assesses the UKF design via experimental data post-processed from a high-performance passenger car, with a comprehensive set of driving scenarios. In the third and final part, the activity implements a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) in the control layer of the proposed ICC architecture. The target is to optimally allocate the control actions of electronic limited slip differential (ELSD), independent friction brakes and throttle valve actuation, aiming to enhance vehicle cornering response while minimizing longitudinal dynamics degradation due to brake actuation. The ICC is assessed through simulations via the comparison to the standalone NMPC formulations and a benchmarking control strategy.

This thesis seeks to address the limited stakeholders' recognition and protection under the Anglo-Saxon corporate governance model currently practised in Nigeria. The Anglo-Saxon corporate governance model originated from the UK and the US and focuses on profit maximisation for shareholders' benefit at the expense of other stakeholders, such as customers and employees. The thesis argued that the relative success of the Anglo-Saxon model in developed economies, such as the UK, is because of the availability of functional institutions, such as an efficient legal system which includes the state apparatus for making, interpreting and enforcing the law. The UK Anglo Saxon model is dependent on an active external market for corporate control and organised civil societies for its success. Nigeria inherited the UK corporate governance model because of its historical past. Despite the differences in their institutional environments, Nigeria has continued to model its corporate governance framework on that of the UK, despite its inefficient legal system resulting from the systemic corruption across the entire branches and tiers of government. Thus, implementing the UK's corporate governance model in Nigeria has deviated from what theories have envisaged. This is due to Nigeria's institutional environment, evidenced by its weak institutions, such as inadequate legal, regulatory and supervisory systems, insiders' ownership concentration, an underdeveloped capital market and systemic corruption across the entire branches and tiers of government. This has resulted in Nigeria's persistent banking failures because of the weak corporate governance framework, evidenced by inaccurate reporting and non-compliance with regulatory requirements, gross insider abuses resulting in substantial non-performing insider related loans, persistent illiquidity, and poor assets quality. Because of Nigeria's institutional voids, when banks fail, stakeholders, mostly customers and employees, suffer because the current framework does not offer them any protection. Therefore, given Nigeria's challenging institutional context, this thesis proposes an alternative corporate governance framework in the Nigerian banking sector that will promote the recognition of stakeholders and protect stakeholders' interests. The thesis makes original contributions to the existing scholarship in comparative corporate governance and regulation, particularly as it relates to banking regulation and stakeholders.

Teachers' territorialities encompass the claim that teachers' practices do not necessarily have to be perceived as bounded to classroom teaching but can be understood as a way to reconnect with the importance of space in education. In the relationship with school contexts, teachers can be situated within a network of social and spatial relations that provides meaning to teaching but it can also be shaped by teachers. Territoriality becomes a powerful conceptualisation to consider how transformative teachers' practices can be, particularly in its form as a spatial practice. Territoriality and the territory that it generates involves a spatial relationship that, in its South American understanding, focuses on the creation, appropriation and ownership of spaces. I have explored these issues from a qualitative and interpretative perspective using a multi-site case study as research strategy to generate in-depth descriptions of in-service rural teachers' practices in Chile's Cachapoal province. Findings in this context have identified different processes that contribute to defining the spaces of professional practice in which rural teachers can deploy their expertise, particularly in contexts of accountability, where administrative and examination requirements seem to have disabled action rather than enabled it. Previous studies have highlighted how teachers react in these contexts with practices of resistance and compliance; however, the examination of teachers' territoriality in the cases studied has indicated how teachers might act in professional spaces that they have made their own or have purposefully created as part of their practice in schools. The significance of these findings has been to demonstrate how teachers can achieve an agentic role as they can transform school contexts into school-based territories that can be spatially diverse and encompass divergent types of knowledge. Territoriality, therefore, can be applied to other settings rather than the rural and to different professions and occupations.

In this thesis, new synthetic methods to give access to molecules having fluorinated scaffolds and other polar functional groups have been developed. The methods give access to highly valuable organic compounds that may serve as building blocks in the synthesis of functionalized drug candidates. In particular, the present thesis describes four new protocols for the synthesis of such compounds starting from allylic substrates and enol derivatives, using metal- or organocatalysts. In the introductory chapter (Chapter 1), the importance and the different approaches to catalysis are discussed. The structural features and reactivity of allylic substrates are presented, followed by an extensive description of the use of CO2 as a building block in organic synthesis. In the final part of this chapter, the structure and common reactive pathways of hypervalent iodine(III) reagents are described. In the second part (Chapter 2), a palladium-catalyzed allylic substitution method is designed to obtain 3-fluoropiperidines from 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds and allylic carbamates. The final products are further functionalized in a chemo- and diastereoselective manner. Additionally, the enantioselective version of this reaction is studied using chiral phosphoramidite ligands. In the third chapter, an umpolung methodology for CO2 fixation is explored in the coupling of silyl enol ethers with amines and CO2 mediated by hypervalent iodine(III) reagents. The mechanism of this transformation is examined using DFT calculations and experimental results. Moreover, this protocol is extended to 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds, yielding -carbamate-- ketocarbonyl compounds. The final part of this thesis (Chapter IV and V) describes the base-catalyzed stereospecific isomerization of allylic halides and amines. Catalytic amounts of a simple guanidine type base (TBD), are able to transfer the chirality during the isomerization reaction of chiral allylic substrates. In the case of allylic amines, the synthetic utility of the chiral enamine/imine intermediates derived from the isomerization reaction is extensively explored, designing a one-pot protocol for the stereospecific and diastereoselective synthesis of chiral - trifluoromethylated aliphatic amines with two non-consecutive stereogenic centers.

Since the late 1960s UV irradiation of Herpesviruses has been used to study various aspects of cell biology, including the cellular immune response to virus infection. Previous studies have demonstrated that UV irradiation of herpesvirus virions strongly stimulates the type I and II IFN response to viral infection. However, the spatial and temporal kinetics of recruitment of immune signalling actuated in response to UV irradiated virus infection have remained poorly understood, due to limitations of viral DNA (vDNA) detection. Utilizing 5-Ethynyl-2' deoxycytidine (EdC) labelling of HSV-1 DNA in combination with click chemistry, we were able to directly visualize vDNA and characterize the recruitment of host immune factors to infecting wild type (WT) or UV irradiated viral genomes. UV irradiation ofHSV-1 virions induced the premature cytoplasmic release of vDNA in a microtubule-dependent manner. An increase in vDNA thymine dimer formation was observed that restricted genome decompacting once released from the capsid. HSV-1 genomes in the cytoplasm exhibited an enhanced recruitment of cGAS and STING following UV irradiation compared to non-UV irradiated cytoplasmic genomes. Depletion of cGAS led to the loss of STING recruitment, demonstrating a sequential recruitment of cellular PRRs. ChIP analysis further supported this finding as cGAS interaction with HSV-1 genomes was enhanced following UV irradiation, whilst STING demonstrated no interaction at all. Conversely, UV irradiation reduced frequency of recruitment of key PML-NB proteins to vDNA in the nucleus. ChIP analysis demonstrated the interaction between UV irradiated vDNA and PML to be significantly reduced compared to WT HSV-1 genomes. The click labelling was further extended to human Cytomegalovirus (hCMV) to investigate if these immune defences are conserved among Herpesviruses or HSV-1 specific. Collectively, our analysis shows multiple host factors to alter their respective recruitment and/or vDNA binding properties in response to infection following UV irradiation.

This study evaluates the factors influencing the inclusion of females into the Nigerian offshore industry. After extensive literature reviews, it is concluded that there is a shortage of females employed in this industry due to the patriarchal nature of Nigerian society. Evidently, the patriarchal nature of this country influences the rate of inclusion of females into the Nigerian offshore industry. Patriarchy in the Nigerian society also influences gender roles, male domination and gender discrimination, resulting in the limited inclusion of females into the Nigerian offshore industry. In Nigeria, the social conception of females as naturally incommensurate to males has given rise to an unreasonable social development of gender roles and male domination among males and females. As a result, males are prioritised with daily agendas in society, thereby dominating the commercial and bureaucratic environment. Meanwhile, females are relegated to the domestic scene, entailing primarily of non-essential activities that do not yield financial and political enablement. This study aimed to investigate and understand whether patriarchy has an influence on the shortage of females in the Nigerian offshore industry. Gender inequality has become an acute and persistent issue for global concern. Obviously, due to the expanding role that females perform in the community and the workplace, there is a crucial need to better perceive the inclusion of females in employment, especially in developing countries. This research argues that the shortage of females in the Nigerian offshore industry is due to the effect of patriarchy on gender roles, male domination and gender discrimination. Patriarchy is a traditional practice in Nigeria, resulting in a substantial negative impact on the inclusion of females' in the Nigerian workforce and the Nigerian economy. For this study, gender inequality is modelled as the limited inclusion of females into the Nigerian offshore industry. This research involved the researcher developing a theoretical framework underpinned by the liberal feminist theory, using the quantitative analysis methodology, the survey method, and primary data collected via a survey questionnaire. This study used a convenience sample size totalling 173 individuals, comprising 131 male and 43 female respondents employed in the Nigerian offshore industry. Finally, descriptive and parametric inferential statistics were adopted to analyse the survey data from this investigation. As the researcher is male, this research was steered with views from the liberal feminist perspective, and to avoid bias, the target population for this research were males and females employed in the Nigerian offshore industry. The individuals that participated in this research were sourced from labour groups and male and female organisations in the Nigerian offshore industry. The results of this research confirmed that gender is a prerequisite for employment in the Nigerian offshore industry, patriarchy does exist in the Nigerian offshore industry, and it is the primary factor for the shortage of females in this industry. The roles in the Nigerian offshore industry are not gender-neutral, resulting in gender discrimination. Gender discrimination and patriarchy do co-exist in the Nigerian offshore industry, and the liberal feminist theory is appropriate to address gender inequality in this industry.

Commitment, motivation and teaching profession status are significant subjects in studies about the teaching profession; however, little is known about how these concepts influence one another. This study explores the influences of teacher commitment and motivation on the teaching profession status in Nigeria through the perceptions of twenty-nine educational administrators. The perceptions of these specific educational administrators were collected because they are individuals in positions of power and they play important roles in keeping teachers motivated and committed to the teaching profession as well as influencing the teaching profession status in Nigeria. Hence, the perceptions of eight officials from the Ministry of Education, fifteen school principals and six members of the Nigerian Union of Teachers from three states in Nigeria were collected for this study. As this study adopted a qualitative methodological approach and an interpretivist paradigm, data was collected through in-depth semi structured interviews and was analysed by a combination of thematic and three-component qualitative data analysis. Six themes emerged from the perceptions of educational administrators in this study. They believed that the teaching profession status has mainly declined; that there is a difference between the status of lecturers and secondary school teachers; and that teacher motivation and commitment is influenced by a passion or calling, the students, a need to transfer knowledge, leadership, untrained teachers, relationship with colleagues, salaries and promotion, the working environment, the attitude of other teachers, and government. This study suggests that these three concepts explored influence one another in a complex way, such as the teaching profession status influences teacher motivation, but also, teacher motivation and commitment influence the profession status in Nigeria. However, the teaching profession status did not appear to influence the commitment of the educational administrators themselves in this study. Several recommendations are discussed for school leaders, school unions, local and National Government, including suggestions for future studies.

This thesis analyses the impact of the ground-breaking 1870 Education Act on entrepreneurial education in Northumberland. Some regulation and funding of mass education was already in place by then but the 1870 Act introduced direct state provision in the form of elected School Boards and school buildings. The Act promised to support the voluntary sector and use state provision to fill the gaps between existing schools and the total number of school-age children. In 1876 however, an Amendment Act changed and enhanced the delivery of state education. The remit of school boards was considerably extended from their responsibility to educate disadvantaged children to become the primary vehicle for delivering universal education. The 1870 Act required local governments to assess educational need in their areas. Where provision was inadequate, they were required to form a democratically elected school board. Any ratepayer could serve on their committee or vote, including women and elections were to be held every three years to ensure accountability. Boards were intended to work alongside the voluntary sector, encouraging the growth of all school accommodation thus relieving pressure on state provision. By 1876, however, it was clear that in some areas, such as Newcastle, the democratic process of the boards had broken down. Furthermore, the 1876 Reform Act which introduced additional powers to enforce compulsory attendance was used to force closures of 'undesirable' schools. This included Private Adventure Schools charging 9d or less per week. The history of education in nineteenth-century Britain has attracted considerable scholarly scrutiny but relatively little attention has been paid to the function and contribution of Private Adventure Schools. Particularly those charging 9d or less per week which could be considered affordable to the working class. A surge of research in 1970, inspired by the centenary of the Education Act, did little to evaluate the diversity and quality of entrepreneurial education. All too often, flawed reports, observations and skewed statistics of government inspectors were accepted without due diligence. Aside from the early work of authors such as E.G. West (Education and the State, 1965) and Philp Gardner (The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England, 1984), and the G.R. Grigg's 2005 case study of Welsh Private Adventure Schools, this lacuna in the literature has still not been addressed. This study offers an entirely new approach to identifying and analysing the impact of entrepreneurial education. By using the whole of Northumberland as a defined geographical area and concentrating on the two decades between 1869 and 1889 this study compares urban and rural educational development in the wake of the 1870 Education Act. A mixed-methods approach combines big data, GIS and a quantitative survey to map out school structures with demographic context. In addition, a broad selection of qualitative historical material has been used to excavate individual school histories and changes in attitudes to education from a variety of perspectives. The key findings conclude that entrepreneurial education was much more resilient in Northumberland than previously thought. It was also far more diverse, quality-driven and impactful than current literature suggests. This thesis argues that the decline of entrepreneurial education in the late nineteenth-century was not inevitable. These schools warrant more attention both as a neglected aspect of educational history and for its significance to contemporary global debates on the role of low-cost private schools in developed and developing economies.

Microfluidics will lead to a revolution in the field of sample analysis and to the development of Labon-a-Chip platforms capable to perform complete analytical processes cheaper and faster than the current methods inside single tiny chips. Many biomedical and diagnostic analytical processes require micro/nanoparticle separation which means there is an increasing need for reliable particle separation techniques, suitable for integration within Lab-on-a-Chip systems. This thesis introduces a novel microfluidic sorting technique that combines a well-established sizebased microfluidic separation technique known as Deterministic Lateral Displacement (DLD) with electrokinetic particle manipulation. This new approach to particle sorting expands the spectrum of potential applications and delivers precise, high-resolution and label-free separation and fractionation of particles in the range of micro and nanometres. Coplanar parallel electrodes were integrated into a DLD microfluidic device in order to generate electric fields orthogonal to the fluid flow. These electrical forces enable fine tuning of particle trajectories within the DLD microchannels depending on particle structural and electrical properties. This turns a simple size-based separation DLD into a tunable technique capable of targeting a range of particle properties other than size, including particle polarisability and electrical charge. Proof-of-principle experiments demonstrate the potential of this new separation technique and investigate its working principles. Characterisation experiments were performed to identify the scaling laws that govern behaviour under the action of alternating electric fields. The results were compared with a theoretical model together with numerical simulations to achieve a full understanding of the physical mechanisms that lead to particle sorting. The results showed two distinct working regimes that depend on the frequency of the applied AC electric field. At high frequencies (above 500 Hz), Dielectrophoresis (DEP) was identified as the force driving the separation. When a low frequency field is applied (below 500 Hz), the physical mechanism differs significantly, and experiments indicated the existence of new electrokinetic phenomena that drive the separation process. Finally, the thesis also describes a refined design of a device that is capable of separation of nanoparticles. The experimental results demonstrate the potential of this technique for the extraction and purification of a wide range of micro and nanoparticles.

This piece of research investigated how Chilean teachers of English exert agency to construct identities in relation to prescribed textbooks in vulnerable municipal schools. The study addressed four questions: (1) How does teachers' experience as learners influence their identity construction as textbook users? (2) How does professional development influence teachers' identity construction as textbook users? (3) How do prescribed textbooks influence teachers' identity constructions as textbook users? (4) How do teachers exert agency to construct their identities as textbook users in vulnerable municipal schools? The research was situated within an interpretive paradigm and used a narrative inquiry methodology. The participants were three male teachers of English with an average of four years of experience in vulnerable municipal schools. As a research method, the study relied on semi-structured online interviews. Data analysis was carried out at two levels. At the first level, a narrative analysis was done to understand how teachers construct identities from experience over time. At the second level, thematic analysis was done to identify emerging themes. By examining the main aspects involved in the construction of teachers' identity as textbook users, this study put under detailed scrutiny central concerns in the area of TESOL, language teacher identity, and materials development. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of how teachers of English move from adopted identities to the ones they construct on their own as they get more teaching experience. Previous studies scarcely explore explicitly the relationship between teachers' identity, agency, and textbook use. By exploring the concepts of identity construction and teacher agency, this study shows that both concepts are interdependent and influence each other. It is suggested that in vulnerable contexts, teachers exert agency in different ways to construct identities as textbook users. Three types of identities have been identified that include transformative, developer, and authoritarian teachers. Transformative teachers are highly oriented to students and exert agency through textbooks to promote social justice. These teachers use textbooks with maximum flexibility and make adaptations to improve them in such a way that they can be suitable for the students at the emotional and cognitive level. Developer teachers are the ones who use textbooks to develop the formal curriculum. From their perspective, the curriculum is well designed and promotes social justice. These teachers may use textbooks with flexibility and make adaptations to appeal to the students' cognition. If the textbooks fail to meet the demands of the curriculum, they may discard them and design their own material. Regarding the authoritarian teachers, they teach the textbook but may skip all the contents which they think are irrelevant. These teachers hardly ever adapt textbooks and if they do, it is to omit contents. They tend to think that teaching English through traditional methods can improve the students' possibilities of pursuing higher education. The thesis offers recommendations for language teachers, language teacher education, school heads, publishers and the ministry of education. The thesis closes with a call for further research on teachers' identity construction as textbook users in contexts where teachers of English are measured by the students' results in national standardised tests. It also recommends doing longitudinal research involving teachers of different genders and years of experience.

This thesis is focused on the simulation of photoemission for the design of new photocathode materials for Free electron laser (FEL) applications. In order to understand and develop new photocathode materials, a photoemission model that simulates the quantum efficiency (QE) and the mean transverse energy (MTE) of the photoemitted electrons from first principles simulations of the electronic structure of a material is developed in this work. The model presented in this work extends the previous models of photoemission to include an explicit model of surfaces, finite temperature and the effects of an external electric field. The photoemission model presented in this work is applied to simulations on different metallic surfaces and the results are compared to experimental measurements of MTE done by the ASTeC group at STFC with reasonable agreement. The computed QE is within the range of previously reported experimental values. Discrepancies between the computed and experimental workfunction observed in this work are studied from the perspective that a change in surface chemistry and composition can produce the observed change in workfunction.

The scope of this research is to develop the next generation of dissipating grouted anchoring systems for the seismic strengthening of historical masonry structures. Historic masonry buildings often experience out-of-plane failure due to the lack of effective connection between perpendicular walls. The insertion of steel elements at corner connections is commonly applied in rehabilitation practice to control this collapse mode and locally increase the strength and stiffness of the structure. Nonetheless, they are unable to dissipate the seismic forces rather than through cracking and yielding of the steel elements, as they present limited dissipative and ductility capacity. To this purpose, the proposed system integrates a friction-based dissipative device with stainless-steel anchors grouted within the thickness of walls. The system provides 1) effective connections between panels and reduced intrusiveness, 2) energy dissipation capacity, and additional ductility. The proposed framework addresses the assessment and refinement of the dissipative system by means of experimental and numerical activities and provides a displacement-based design tool for its implementation to heritage buildings. The first goal of this research is the refinement of a patented prototype of a friction-based device to improve its short-term performance as well as deliver a reliable and robust long-term behaviour. This task is performed according to a test-analyse-redesign procedure that can be used to improve the durability and stability of a typical friction-based device. The performance of the innovative system is then investigated by experimental tests performed on specimens reproducing a strengthened masonry connection. To address the technical gap in design codes, the second aim of this research is to propose a design method for the implementation of the dissipative system within the framework of the displacement-based design. The design procedure is applied to a case-study structure and the performance of the building strengthened by the innovative anchoring system is determined by non-linear dynamic analysis. Performance's comparisons between different strengthening solutions are drawn, emphasizing that the additional ductility capacity reduces the seismic demand, thus resulting in a less invasive intervention in compliance with the requirements of current codes.

Distributed real-valued vector representations of text (a.k.a. embeddings), learned by neural networks, encode various (linguistic) knowledge. To encode this knowledge into the embeddings the common approach is to train a large neural network on large corpora. There is, however, a growing concern regarding the sustainability and rationality of pursuing this approach further. We depart from the mainstream trend and instead, to incorporate the desired properties into embeddings, use inductive biases. First, we use Knowledge Graphs (KGs) as a data-based inductive bias to derive the semantic representation of words and sentences. The explicit semantics that is encoded in a structure of a KG allows us to acquire the semantic representations without the need of employing a large amount of text. We use graph embedding techniques to learn the semantic representation of words and the sequence-to-sequence model to learn the semantic representation of sentences. We demonstrate the efficacy of the inductive bias for learning embeddings for rare words and the ability of sentence embeddings to encode topological dependencies that exist between entities of a KG. Then, we explore the amount of information and sparsity as two key (data-agnostic) inductive biases to regulate the utilisation of the representation space. We impose these properties with Variational Autoencoders (VAEs). First, we regulate the amount of information encoded in a sentence embedding via constraint optimisation of a VAE objective function. We show that increasing amount of information allows to better discriminate sentences. Afterwards, to impose distributed sparsity we design a state-of-the-art Hierarchical Sparse VAE with a flexible posterior which captures the statistical characteristics of text effectively. While sparsity, in general, has desired computational and statistical representational properties, it is known to compensate task performance. We illustrate that with distributed sparsity, task performance could be maintained or even improved. The findings of the thesis advocate further development of inductive biases that could mitigate the dependence of representation learning quality on large data and model sizes.

A growing body of theoretical and empirical work has shown that culture matters for institutions and socio-economic outcomes. This thesis contributes to the growing economic literature that investigates the relationship between cultural norms & values, institutions and socio-economic outcomes. Each of its three chapters presents a separate essay. Chapter 2 reconsiders the relationship between trust and democratisation. Despite extensive literature that investigates the determinants of democratisation, the ques- tion of why some countries develop democratic institutions remain open. Modernisa- tion theory argues that economic growth and development is the driving force behind democratisation (Lipset, 1959). Other segments of the literature have analysed the role of education, natural resources, historical roots and demographic factors. Do cultural values and norms impact democratisation? There is no compelling evidence either for or against. Using a panel of countries from 1989 to 2014, I find a robust negative correlation between trust and democracy. This relationship is robust to controlling for socioeconomic, demographic and historical factors. Chapter 3 investigates the impact of slavery on contemporary trust in Brazil. I combine contemporary trust data from Latino Barometro with historical slavery data from the 1872 Brazilian census. Overall, the results suggest that past slavery does not have a robust effect on current day generalized trust and trust in government. Furthermore, I do not find a negative effect of slavery on trust levels of Brazilians of mixed-race ancestry. Robustness check confirms the results are not driven by immigration, measurement of slave location and municipality age. Chapter 4 investigates the short-term impact of the Portuguese Language Orthographic Reform on students in Brazil and Portugal. The Portuguese Language reform was an international agreement that unified orthography for the Portuguese Language. To measure the impact of the reform, we adopt a difference in differ- ence framework using several waves of PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) data. The results suggest that the reform had a detrimental impact on Portuguese students' scores, which were more affected by the reform.

Heart failure (HF) affects an estimated 900,000 people within the United Kingdom (UK), resulting in approximately 60,000 hospital admissions each year. Mortality at one year is estimated at as high as 40%, with the risk of death rising with age. A common consequence of HF is mitral regurgitation (MR). MR is one of the most common valvular lesions worldwide. The prevalence within Europe is estimated at 4 million making MR the second most common valve lesion requiring surgery. By nature of the disease, severity also worsens with advancing age, and as such by 2030, prevalence is expected to more than double. MR in HF can occur as a consequence of organic leaflet disruption (primary MR) or secondary to annular dilation (secondary MR), with both mechanisms ultimately resulting in geometric changes to the left atrium (LA) and left ventricle (LV), and concomitant symptoms. HF is commonly seen in patients with chronic long standing MR and also those who present in the acute setting. Patients with symptomatic primary MR typically undergo surgery which offers a survival benefit. Recommended treatment options for patients with secondary MR and symptoms focus on the optimisation of medical therapy, cardiac resynchronisation therapy and conventional open heart surgery. However more recently, transcatheter mitral valve repair (TMVR) has been recognised as a novel technique for MR patients with a high surgical risk and multiple comorbidities, LV systolic dysfunction, and persistent symptoms despite optimal medical therapy (OMT). Currently, there remains a dearth of information regarding the number of HF patients with MR, and the proportion of these patients who despite OMT remain symptomatic with MR and an LV ejection fraction (EF) < 50%. Additionally whether or not these individuals meet suitability criteria for TMVR, and the effectiveness of TMVR in reducing the degree of MR, improving symptoms and quality of life is largely unknown. This thesis therefore aimed to identify the prevalence of MR within the HF population as well as assess the degree of change as a result of OMT. It also investigated thepopulation considered eligible for TMVR based on risk and echocardiography criteria. The thesis then focussed on using current literature and a systematic review to identify predictors of outcomes for patients who have undergone TMVR. Employing these findings, the project then prospectively assessed the usefulness of predictors in relation to quality of life and symptoms. The thesis concludes that one fifth of all patients presenting with HF have moderate or more MR and that patients with moderate or more MR have a greater risk of mortality. Patients who received OMT do see an element of relief from symptoms and a proportion also experience a reduction in the severity of MR. However, one half of patients with LV systolic dysfunction and MR still remain symptomatic despite OMT. When further evaluating the risk status for these patients, the thesis determines that a significant number of these patients are eligible for TMVR based on echocardiographic and risk criteria. From a functional assessment perspective, the results of a systematic review demonstrated that six minute walk test (6MWT) may be predictive of outcome for patients who undergo TMVR. Exercise stress echocardiography may also play a role in determining patients with early stage exercise induced severe MR. The prospective study, although limited, demonstrated variation in quality of life and echocardiography outcomes across the recruited population of eight patients. Further recruitment is needed prior to the provision of more solid conclusions. More broadly, these findings suggest the burden of MR within the HF population is significant and although medical optimisation can assist in reducing the degree of MR and symptoms, a portion of high risk patients with LV systolic dysfunction remain symptomatic and should be considered for TMVR eligibility assessment. The thesis findings suggest that when identifying patients who have the potential for improvement with MV intervention, the value of 6MWT distance, exercise stress echo, LV volume, the LV/MR ratio, and the degree of LA dilation should be assessed and examined. Further studies should also focus on clarifying recommendations for TMVR in a variety of clinical settings.

Adakitic magmas usually form in subduction environments due to the melting of hot, young, eclogitized oceanic crust. However, a number of different mechanisms such as fractionation of amphibole and/or garnet, suppression of plagioclase, and melting of clinopyroxene- and amphibole-rich lower crustal lithologies have been shown to produce similar signatures. Adakite-like rocks can be found in the Neogene and Quaternary rocks of the South Apuseni Mountains, a NW-SE trending magmatic corridor formed in extensional settings generated by the rotation of the underlying Tisza-Dacia crustal block. By reconstructing the igneous evolution of the province, this thesis tests a number of different hypotheses regarding arc-like and adakite-like magmatism in a post-subduction setting and constrains the source of arc-like and adakite-like magmas in the South Apuseni Mountains. Regional geochronology shows that the area was active between 13.63 and 7.24 Ma with a small trachyandesite intrusion at Uroi at 1.45 Ma. However, antecrystic zircon present in a number of samples indicate that magmatism predates 14 Ma. The majority of volcanic centres were active for ~700 kyrs with two samples exhibiting continuous populations for ~2 Myrs. Adakitic signatures are time-dependent, representing the younger products in centres exhibiting both populations. Whole-rock geochemistry indicates that almost all samples fractionated a gabbro-type assemblage. Plagioclase suppression did not occur and amphibole fractionation cannot explain the adakitic signatures in high MgO samples. My geochemical modelling has shown that magmas with arc-like and adakite-like signatures can be obtained by melting gabbroic cumulates forming a clinopyroxene-rich restite. Melting of a lower crust fluxed by asthenospheric melt would cause an increase in the adakitic signatures. Isotopically, all samples plot between the isotopic signatures of coterminous Jurassic and Cretaceous arc rocks. Mixing with asthenospheric melts can also be observed, and the more positive εHf(t) values of the Deva zircons can be explained by mixing a Jurassic component with ~10% asthenospheric melts. Thus, I propose that asthenospheric upwelling led to lithospheric mantle melting and underplating causing melting in the lower crust. In specific areas, asthenospheric melts interacted with the lower crust, modifying its chemistry and isotopic signatures and generating magmas with strong adakitic signatures and positive Nd and Hf signatures.

Soil is the major sink for a broad range of potentially toxic hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOCs), including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are widely distributed affecting the physicochemical and biological properties of soil. These HOCs have significant human and environmental health concerns. The application of mineral-based conventional fertilisation and other chemical treatment methods to stimulate microbial catabolic activities is however costly as well deleterious to soil quality and health. Soil amendment with organic waste materials with a particular interest in the lignocellulosic ones for the remediation of contaminated soil has become a good substrate option for microbial growth and improvement of soil quality due to their lower cost, eco-friendly, sustainable, feasible and practical nature in the environment. Therefore, this thesis aimed to investigate the impact of various organic materials as sources of nutrients and microbial inocula for enhanced PAHs biodegradation in contaminated soils. The study comprised of three sets: the effects of application ratios of different organic materials (spent brewery grains, spent mushroom compost and biochars); fungal treatment and immobilisation study of organic material (in particular brewery spent grains) and nitrogen amendments on the biodegradation of 14C-phenanthrene. Results revealed that the biodegradation of phenanthrene was improved in soils after the addition of organic waste materials. In addition, the results showed that microbial catabolism and biodegradation of phenanthrene can be facilitated by the addition of smaller amounts of organic waste materials into the soil. Furthermore, improving the efficiency of organic waste material by pre-treatment and immobilisation methods using white-rot fungi were observed to promote higher catabolic response as well as influence the physicochemical properties and biological activity of amended soils. This thesis provides insights and evidence supporting the values of organic materials as nutrient supplements; appropriate ratios for soil amendment, and fungal immobilisation and fungal pre-treatment of waste materials as key mechanisms to stimulate and promote the bioactivities and biodegradation of PAHs in contaminated soil.

When winds blow over the ocean, surface waves grow as energy and momentum are transferred from the air to the sea surface. The waves steepen as energy is added and may eventually break, generating turbulence and plumes of bubbles in the near-surface ocean. This thesis focuses on measurements made during a six-week research trip in the North Atlantic Ocean, in a wide range of wind speeds (8-30 m/s). The complex effects of wind speed, wave age, wind sea wave height and subsurface turbulence on the structure, penetration depth, duration and production rate of bubble plumes are investigated in this thesis. The major data set used here was collected using an upward-pointing sonar during three separate four-day deployments. Individual bubble plumes were detected using an algorithm based on simultaneous sonar and resonator acoustic signals from subsurface bubbles. The acoustical backscattering caused by bubble plumes decays approximately exponentially with depth. The decay constant is related to the bubble entrainment in the water column. The entrainment of a larger void fraction may lead to a lower backscattering decay constant due to the possibility of multiple scattering. Higher wind speed induces younger, rougher waves and higher turbulence, which generate deeper bubble entrainment that promotes longer-lasting plumes (> 100 seconds). The plume production rate is amplified by low-medium wind speeds (< 20 m/s) in a non-linear way, reaching up to 32 plumes per hour. However, at very high winds (> 20 m/s), the plume production rate is significantly reduced to only 8 plumes per hour in the presence of younger less developed seas. The duration variation of these plumes is associated with large scatter. The wave height was found to influence the bubble-plume activity only in a sea state where swell does not contaminate the wind-driven waves. Given the complex and often chaotic sea state in the open ocean, wind speed remains the main factor that controls the bubble plume structure. During the persistent storms, it is difficult to directly assess the effect of individual breaking waves on subsurface bubble plumes because the upper ocean may become supersaturated with gas, and plumes are often advected from a side into the sonar sample volume. In supersaturated seas (at wind speeds > 20 m/s), the plumes become continuous fields of bubbles persisting for very long times (minutes or tens of minutes), without a clear separation between individual events. The total backscatter distribution along the water column (0-8 metres, which was the distance from the sonar to the sea surface) varies with plume penetration depth. Most of the backscatter signal (over 90%) is contained in the upper one metre when the plume is shallow and dense, spreading down the water column more evenly as the plume deepens and becomes more acoustically transparent.

Industrial biotechnology is currently synonymous with heterotrophic processes that rely on bacterial, yeast, insect or mammalian cells to biosynthesise products of interest. Microalgae are of substantial biotechnological interest due their polyphyletic nature which grants them access to a wide array of high-value metabolites and their ability to grow under a variety of trophic strategies, including phototrophy. Despite significant process development and optimisation efforts, the full potential of these photosynthetic organisms has yet to be realised. One of the most impactful process parameters when cultivating microalgae is light. It is essential for phototrophic growth and remains highly influential on mixotrophic growth. Indoor cultivations relying on artificial light allow full control of illumination conditions. The advent of LED lights has lowered the costs and improved the flexibility of such installations. Specifically, the spectral composition of LED lights can be accurately and dynamically tailored to the needs of the culture. Spectral composition is known to exert regulatory control over the cell cycle and can affect the cell's biochemical make up. The effects of illumination strategy on the model microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii were characterised at three different levels (a) growth kinetics, (b) biochemical composition and, (c) transcriptional activity at key carbon nodes. To obtain the transcriptional data, RNA extraction protocols were compared and optimised. Additionally, a suite of candidate reference genes was validated to ensure accurate gene expression normalisation was possible in reverse transcriptase quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) studies. The growth kinetics and biochemical composition data obtained served as inputs for a previously published genome scale metabolic model. An algorithm was developed to approximate the default biomass composition in the model to experimental data in an effort to increase the fidelity of the simulations. The flux distributions obtained thereafter helped to describe the distinct metabolic fingerprints created under different trophic and illumination strategies.

This thesis investigates the design process of contemporary, Latin-script, secondary italic text typefaces. It examines designers' approaches, the technical and cultural factors that influence their design decisions, and the techniques they employ. It reviews the historical italic design process, and explores how it informs current designers' approach to the design of italics. This research sheds new light on a poorly-documented area of typeface design. It also demonstrates a method of design research that compares historical and contemporary practice and produces a framework for description and discussion. Examination of the design process begins with an analysis of the varied roles and identities of italic in Latin-script text typography-as a language feature, typographic element, historical marker, design object, and business product-and how these identities have influenced design. Historical practice is documented and analysed based on a wide range of sources including designer accounts, reviews, journal articles, publications, and type specimens. Contemporary practice is explored though interviews with a broad sample of currently-active designers regarding their approaches, processes, and techniques. Responses are analysed according to stages in the type design process-initiating,experimenting, forming, harmonizing, and adapting-with additional sections on evaluating and learning. These present a comprehensive view of the process and how it relates to historical practice. This thesis then proposes a decision-based framework for description and discussion of the contemporary italic design process, including a fresh look at historical inspiration. It presents a method of approaching and analysing the design process and introduces two new concepts for describing designer decision-making: balanced differentiation and italic tension. It gives examples of how the framework might be applied in various contexts and explores how it might be extended to be useful in the analysis of other secondary styles and to scripts other than Latin.

The present doctoral thesis examines the properties of carbon-based, porphyrin-based and hybrid carbon-porphyrin nanostructures as promising candidate materials for catalysis (including photocatalysis) applications. I use density functional theory simulations, together with experimental insights from collaborators, to both explain known behaviour and suggest ways in which these materials can be modified for improved catalytic efficiency. Since the catalytic activity of graphitic materials is concentrated on the edges, I investigate their properties in several ways. First, I attempt to understand the properties of folded edges of graphitic nanostructures and quantify their thermodynamic stability, and explain how the application of an electric field leads to their opening. Edge folding can reduce catalytic activity by allowing bond saturation at the edge, but at the same time they provide a way to achieve highly porous carbon-based materials, which could be very useful for catalytic applications. My calculations rationalise the experimental observations about these folded edges. Additionally, I investigate catalysts based on carbon- and iron-based nanostructures, in collaboration with experimentalists. I present models for N-doped graphitic/ferrihydrite nanocatalysts for CO2 reduction, and for Fe-N active sites in graphite-based catalysts. In contrast with carbon nanostructures, porphyrin nanostructures exhibit a welldefined band gap which makes them more useful in photocatalytic applications. In this thesis I explore possible routes to engineer the electronic properties of two types of porphyrin-based materials. The first type consists of fully-organic porphyrin nanostructures with various dimensionalities, and we show how the length of the linkers between porphyrin can be used to engineer their electronic band structures. The second type consists of two-dimensional (2D) porphyrin-based metal-organic frameworks, where we explored different strategies to optimise the photocatalytic behaviour, by changing metal centres, partially reducing the porphyrins or changing the bridges between the porphyrin units. Finally, I consider mixed graphitic/porphyrinic structures, based on the idea that such composites could combine the advantages of both types of structures, leading to superior photocatalytic behaviour. I discuss the adsorption of porphyrins on the surfaces or edges of graphene nanoribbon, and how the interaction affects the electronic properties of the combined structures. Overall, the thesis shows how computer simulation approaches can be used to understand, and also to design and optimise the electronic properties of carbon and porphyrin-based nanostructures to be applied in catalysis and photocatalysis.

Close apposition of membranes is a frequent occurrence in biological systems,and one of considerable physiological and pathological significance. The geo-metric and compositional complexity of such associations, and in some casestheir transient and/or rare occurrence, makes them challenging to study ex-perimentally, and necessitates a multidisciplinary approach to their investiga-tion. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have considerable potential toform part of the toolkit for studying membrane interactions, being able to pro-vide molecular-level insight into the time-dependent behaviour of biologicalsystems. However, there at present is no standard approach to prepare and sim-ulate membrane-membrane interactions for MD simulations. In this work, Ipresent progress towards the development of methods that could prove valuablein preparing simulation systems for this purpose.