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This thesis takes the first edition of Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589) as its focus. A significant, sixteenth-century printed text and Richard Hakluyt’s major work, it is familiar to scholars of the period. Its rich archival source has aided understanding of early modern geography, English discovery and cultural encounters. It has also been evaluated in relation to Hakluyt’s substantial contribution to the burgeoning literature of vernacular prose and to imperial expansionism. My thesis conceives a social history of the production, transmission and reception of Principall Navigations from bibliographical analysis, an investigative method that has remained largely untapped. In each chapter, I incorporate information drawn from the material text into an appreciation of historical practice and relocate Principall Navigations more precisely in its socio-historical moment. This engages with and, in some cases, destabilizes current critical positions. In the first chapter, I explore the importance of Hakluyt’s patrons. Francis Walsingham’s essential role is recorded through his connection with the various interdependent networks of people involved in the book’s production and Hakluyt’s description of his ‘prescribed limites’. This chapter re-evaluates authorial subjectivity. In chapter two, Walsingham’s authority over the Queen’s printing house generally and the production of Principall Navigations particularly is traced through the examination of the Stationers’ Company archive and the evolution of the office of the royal printer. This chapter contends that Walsingham commanded the production of Principall Navigations. Chapter three represents a bibliographical study which integrates the production of Principall Navigations into the Queen’s printers’ general work patterns and investigates textual variants and paper-stocks. The date of the interpolation of the Drake leaves is posited with reference to the debate concerning their suppression. The final chapter explores the relationship between early modern readers and empirical records, through historical reading practice, and concludes by evaluating the location of discursive authority.

The thesis deals with the party journalism of the years 1710-1712 as it concerned Marlborough, relating it to its political context and discussing the techniques of controversy employed. The introduction outlines Marlborough's popular status during the earlier years of Anne's reign, the uneasiness aroused by his family's monopoly of royal favour, the growing discontent with the war, despite his repeated victories, and Marlborough's personal reactions to such criticism. The first three chapters concern the issues arising from the ministerial changes and General Election of 1710, measures which many pamphleteers justified by censuring Marlborough's abuse of royal favour and conduct as general and plenipotentiary. The important contribution of Marlborough's principal apologist, Francis Hare, to this latter controversy is discussed in detail. Chapter III demonstrates that journalistic. pressure was also a determining factor in Marlborough's retention of his command under the new ministry. Chapters IV to'VI trace the efforts of Marlborough's Journalistic supporters during his last campaign to make his continuing military success the spearhead of their opposition to the ministry's secret peace negotiations, a procedure more favoured by the Duchess of Marlborough than by the Duke, and culminating at the end of 1711 in major ministerial press attacks on the latter and finally in his 3. dismissal on charges of financial malpractice. The last two chapters describe the controversies of the year following Marlborough's dismissal, including the journalists' unscrupulous exploitation of the peculation charges, and the numerous publications purporting to expose plots of Marlborough's devising against the Queen and ministry. The difficulties facing his defenders and the effect of this massive and damaging press campaign on the Duke himself are also examined. An epilogue deals briefly with journalistic reactions to Marlborough's period of self-exile on the Continent from December 1712 until August 1714.

Motivated by the macroeconomic literature on competition and innovation, Chapter I studies how the anti-competitive behaviour of firms affects the performance of the economy. I develop a general equilibrium model with endogenous entry and exit where a finite number of firms, leaders and followers, strategically compete in the product market and in the innovation activities to improve their productivity . Moreover, leaders can also implement anti-competitive practices that may prevent from catching up or leapfrogging the sector frontier. The model allows to identify and study the different effects through which anti-competitive affects the aggregate outcomes. Moreover, it provides a plausible interpretation for the for the recent boost of firms' anti-competitive practices through the Winner takes all hypothesis. Motivated by the macroeconomic literature on business cycle fluctuations, in Chapter II I present the results of the paper, written with my Supervisor Professor Tatsuro Senga, that analyzes how idiosyncratic shocks to large firms drive the cycle. The work shows that the mean of idiosyncratic shocks faced by the largest firms is significantly countercyclical. To examine the quantitative importance of such features of idiosyncratic shocks faced by large firms, we then develop an equilibrium business cycle model wherein idiosyncratic shocks can alone alter the shape of the distribution of firms and thus can drive aggregate fluctuations. The results show that idiosyncratic shocks can be quantitatively important micro-origin of aggregate fluctuations. In an frictionless model, Granular shocks, can, in principle, explain the volatility of output and investment and 30 and 70 percent of consumption and hours worked. Secondly, large firm movements can account for 25 percent of the output, 20 percent of consumption and 30 percent of the investment and 70 percent of the hours volatility. Thirdly, we qualitatively show the existence of a second channel, dynamic inefficiency, that was not present in static granular models. Motivated by the literature on macroeconomic uncertainty, in Chapter III I present the results of the paper, written with my colleague Guido Bonatti, that empirically analyzes how the change in uncertainty modifies the dynamic response of the economic system to the structural shocks. The aim of this work is to implement an uncertainty varying VAR model that is able to capture how the uncertainty affects the effects of the innovations on the economy. This work proposes a VAR model where the coefficients of the impact effect of the shocks vary because functions of the aggregate uncertainty level represented by a common factor that moves the volatility of the structural shocks. The estimation provides some considerable results. First changes of the idiosyncratic part of the impact effect coefficients are very small and the fluctuation of the covariances are mainly due to the movement of the factor: this could mean that the monetary authority and the household did not change the preference during the period considered. Second, Interest Rate reacts differently to GDP and Inflation changes depending on the uncertainty level, as well as Inflation following GDP fluctuations.

Elected President on 2 November 1976, Jimmy Carter, was little known outside Georgia and was the first politician from the deep South to be elected since the Civil War and with the briefest record of public service since Woodrow Wilson. He presented himself as an outsider, not part of the Washington establishment, who would bring back an ethical, competent government. However, his devastating electoral defeat to Ronald Reagan in 1980, the worst for an incumbent since 1932, set the seal on what was widely regarded as a failed presidency. Carter's much praised humanitarian record since he left office in 1981 has not prompted any serious re-evaluation by historians. This study dissects Carter's domestic policies, re-evaluating the unresolved questions relating to Carter's character and ideology and to put his presidency in the proper historic context. I will begin by reviewing the relevant historiography, the important issues of the decade and his early political life, including his triumph in 1976. I will then seek to address Carter's leadership by analysing how his administration was organised, and exploring the key domestic policy issues, principally the economy, energy, health, welfare, labour and his approach to the social changes that dominated America in the 1970's. I will conclude with his failed attempt to be re-elected in 1980. In conclusion I will comment on Carter's overall effectiveness as a leader and how he should be ranked against other modern Presidents. This thesis is based on a wide range of sources including extensive use of collections from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Papers of the Presidents of the United States, oral history transcripts, published papers and numerous other primary and secondary sources covering political, economic and social issues.

The rst chapter uses a unique dataset on Brazilian party members and variation from mayoral elections to examine the determinants of party membership in Brazil. It starts by examining the effect of winning office on the membership of political parties at the local level. The effect of interest is identi ed using a differences-indifferences approach that compares changes in membership of parties that assume office with changes in membership of all other political parties registered in a municipality. The results indicate that winning office increases the membership of the party of the mayor by 0:5%. In addition, political alignment with higher levels of government has a signifi cant effect on the membership of the mayoral candidate party. Finally, the paper documents that party switching is one of the drivers of the estimated increase in membership. The paper offers evidence in favor of the hypothesis that party membership is driven by opportunistic motives in addition to ideology. The second chapter combines data on the universe of recipients of the Bolsa Famlia program from 2005 to 2015 with data on party membership to investigate the returns to political loyalty. Speci cally, it uses variation from mayoral elections to investigate whether members of political parties that assume office at the local level are more likely to receive social transfers. Regression results from an IV estimation show that indeed members of the party that gained access to municipal government are signifi cantly more likely to receive the benefi t. Additionally, it finds no evidence that members of parties that did not win office are more likely to lose the benefi t as a result of the electoral defeat. This chapter offers direct evidence of material rewards to party membership. The last chapter focuses on the impact of pay transparency on earnings inequality in the Brazilian public sector. Differences-in-differences estimates show that the disclosure of wages reduced the 90/50 decile wage gap across municipalities located in states that adopted wage transparency in comparison to those located in states that did not adopt the policy. There is also no evidence that earnings decile gaps below the median were affected by the salary transparency policy, which indicates that the effect of disclosure in the public sector was mainly concentrated at the upper tail of the log earnings distribution. Finally, evidence presented suggests that the effect on inequality compression is the result of lower returns to top paid occupations rather than changes in employment. The paper suggests that at the margin, top paid public sector employees are insensitive to changes in their earnings, indicating that there are rents that accrue to holding these positions.

This thesis presents an investigation of fabrication technologies and electromagnetic characterisation of textile metamaterials in the microwave frequency range. Interdisciplinary in nature, the work bridges textile design practice and electromagnetic engineering. The particular ambition was to explore a number of surface techniques prevalent in the textile design field, and map their suitability for the construction of metatextiles for microwave operation. Two different classes of metatextiles, all-dielectric and dielectric with electrically conductive patterns, were examined. First, five structures of all-dielectric textiles and papers are reported; three textiles with graded embroidered and screen printed patterns, and two papers embellished with regular and irregular laser cut patterns. Permittivities for these materials were measured in a purpose-built test chamber and shown to be similar to permittivity ranges exhibited by solid discrete metamaterial cells previously reported in the scientific literature. Importantly these metatextiles were realised within one textile surface and one fabrication process, bypassing the need to assemble large numbers of isotropic material cells. This reveals the potential for rapid and low-cost manufacture of graded textile materials to produce anisotropic ground plane cloaks. Secondly, three studies are presented that examine the use of electrically conductive patterned textile materials in the design of metatextiles which exhibit negative refractive index over a narrow frequency band. A range of e-textile (electronic textile) fabrication technologies were explored to assess their suitability for prototyping splitring and wire arrays, resonating in a narrow region between 3 - 10 GHz. Designs utilised a repeated unit cell pattern on a two-dimensional textile surface and were subsequently pleated into the required three-dimensional structure. A small negative refractive index was achieved for an embroidered prototype at 4.9 GHz, and two 'printed and plated' prototypes at, 7.5 GHz and 9.5 GHz respectively. In summary the thesis demonstrates a set of guidelines for the fabrication of textile metamaterials for microwave frequencies, derived through a practice-led and interdisciplinary method based on material experimentation.

Graphene is the first 2D material consisting of carbon atoms densely packed into planar structures. Graphene oxide (GO) is the intermediate derivative of chemically-produced graphene, which retains 2D basal plane structures but is also decorated with functional groups along the basal plane and edges. This functionality allows self-assembly of planar sheets into a paper-like material. However, formations of both intrinsic defects within the sheet structures as well as larger scale extrinsic defects in the paper are expected to significantly degrade mechanical performance. Strength provides the most direct evidence of defect related mechanical behaviour and is therefore targeted for understanding defect effects in GO paper. Such evaluations are crucial both from a technological perspective of realizing designed functions and from a fundamental interest in understanding structure-mechanics in 2D nanomaterials. A complete strategy of performing mechanical testing at different length scales is thus reported to provide a comprehensive description of GO strength. Both conventional larger scale mechanical testing as well as novel smaller length scale evaluations, using in situ atomic force microscopy (AFM) combined with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optical microscopy as well as structural probing using synchrotron FT-IR microspectroscopy, were applied to GO materials. Results showed that large structural defects determined mechanical properties of GO papers due to stress concentration effects whereas smaller scale intrinsic effects were defined by interfacial defects and stress concentrations within sheets. Synchrotron FT-IR microspectroscopy provided molecular deformation mechanisms in GO paper, which highlighted the interaction between in-plane C=C and cross-linking C=O bonds. A comprehensive description of macroscopic GO paper using evaluations of strength at the range of length scales studied was attempted, with a good correlation between predictions and experimental observations. This thesis therefore provides a hierarchical understanding of the defects impact on the strength of graphene-based materials from the macroscale to the nanoscale.

The three theories may seem to be at odds with each other, but each brings to the discussions very relevant and useful notions of alliance motivation rooted in the notions of power, threat, and interest/opportunity. It is not the aim of this chapter to arrive at a new theory that explains the entirety of Saudi-U.S. relations to the exclusion of other perspectives. The goal is to broaden the path, which enriches understanding of Saudi-U.S. relations and alignment by applying not just one but all three major elements found in realist alliance theory: power, threat, and interest. This thesis examines and applies realist theories of alliance to Saudi-U.S. relations and alignment from 1941-1957, which are best understood within a structure of power, threat, and interest/opportunity for gain. Realist alliance theories applied to economic, military, and political circumstances and events in the Saudi-U.S. case result in a more complete understanding of the formation, dynamics, and endurance of the Saudi-U.S. alliance. In addition to the grand scenario of Cold War power-seeking and self-interests, the Palestine-Israel problem, the Buraimi dispute, and the Suez Canal Crisis made Saudi-U.S. relations, and the formation of alignment, a complicated process marked by extraordinary challenges to the interests of both states. Gregory Gause (2007) emphasised that except for Walt’s study, literature on the formation and endurance of the Saudi-U.S. alliance is virtually non-existent. The literature review pointed to a shortage in deploying major realist alliance theories into the Saudi-U.S. alliance, especially theories advanced by Stephen Walt (1985, 1987) and Randall Schweller (1994, 1997). The literature shows that the application of realist alliance theory tends to emphasise a single dimension more than an attempt to integrate arguments from the three major theories. The paper argues that the integration of multiple realist alliance theories in the study of the Saudi-U.S. case is more useful than studies that focus on single concepts only, such as balance of power. The application of core elements of neorealist and neoclassical realist alliance theories creates an explanatory structure that brings a sharper focus and a more sober understanding of the basic drivers of the Saudi-U.S. alignment. By viewing the Saudi-U.S. alliance through the lens of the three major realist alliance theories, the research paper adds to the body of knowledge about the dynamics of a long-standing and critical alliance in the international economic, political, and military arena.

This is a study of the genesis of the Corneal (Grafting) Act 1952, the Human Tissue Act 1961, the Human Tissue Act 2004, and the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006. The aim has been to understand why so much had apparently changed between 1952-61 and 2004-06, both in society and in medical practice, as an explanation of why the earlier Acts were essentially ‘enabling/permissive’, whereas the later Acts were ‘regulatory/restraining’. A comparison between the Human Tissue Act 2004 and the separate Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006 (both Acts concerned with ‘human tissue’ and with origins in ‘retention of organs without consent’, but with significant differences in their respective provisions), has allowed a finer dissection and comparative analysis of the possible factors involved. The Thesis focuses on the ‘inspiration’, ‘deliberation/ formulation’ and ‘legitimation’ phases of the legislative process (using the terminology of Drewry)-that is, the genesis of the various Acts- and has not sought to study the later (Drewry) phases of ‘implementation’ of the law nor subsequent ‘feedback’. The methodology has been to ‘interrogate the sources’ through in depth study of archived records, using publicly available documents, certain confidential papers made available by the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal College of Physicians (London), papers released under Freedom of Information Acts, and analysis of the scholarly literature. The findings suggest that a complexity of factors contributed to shaping the 2004 and 2006 legislation, in addition to the proximate ‘organ scandals’. The study may contribute specifically to any wish of Government and the medical/scientific professions to review their processes of consultation and negotiation prior to developing new legislation with an impact on research; and more generally to the case for more regular use of pre-legislative scrutiny of Bills.

On 19 December 1967, France formally imposed a veto on British entry to the European Community. The Labour government of Harold Wilson had applied for membership of the Community in May of that year, but the French, in accordance with the views of their President, Charles de Gaulle, implacably opposed enlargement negotiations. Yet just three and a half years later, in June 1971, accession negotiations between Britain and the Community recorded agreement on the critical issues, thereby removing the major diplomatic obstacles to British membership. Why this turnaround in fortunes occurred, and what contribution the governments of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath made to it, are the questions at the heart of this thesis. In its analysis of these historic events, this thesis provides numerous new findings. It re-interprets British actions in relation to the controversial ‘Soames affair’ of February 1969. It demonstrates the impact of The Hague summit upon the cost of British membership, and shows how this influenced internal debate about the case for joining the Community. Fresh light is shed upon the critical phase of the accession negotiations between January and June 1971, both in regard to Pompidou’s actions and motivations, and the role of the May 1971 Heath-Pompidou summit in the successful outcome. The thesis is based primarily upon British governmental sources held at the National Archives. The private papers of key participants have also been consulted, as well as parliamentary debates, political diaries, memoirs, and newspapers. In addition, the papers for the presidency of Georges Pompidou, deposited at the Archives Nationales, are employed to illuminate French actions at the two pivotal moments of the accession negotiations: the impasse of March 1971; and the Heath-Pompidou summit two months later.

The Yukos case is known for its unprecedented character and complexity as a Russian corporate, tax and money laundering case. It continues to raise political and legal problems, both domestically and internationally, and has already become a symbol of the contemporary Russian political regime. This dissertation analyses in detail the criminal and corporate aspects of the case, and focuses mainly on the reasons for, and the development and implications of the embezzlement and money laundering case, which is known as the backbone of the Yukos Affair. The thesis is primarily based on a comparative analysis of the international academic findings, case law and the Russian data on the case. The dissertation also discusses in detail the political nature of the Yukos Affair, whilst attempting to show the substantive aspects of case. The findings of the dissertation highlight new types of risk that result from the politically motivated application of Russian anti money laundering legislation to the activities of the international corporate groups, which has been enacted on the basis of the internationally recognised principles. The paper also describes the nexus between the corporate tax evasion schemes, which have been widely used in Russia, and money laundering risks for corporations. Such a situation creates potentially unavoidable criminal risks for all corporate groups that have functioned in Russia over the recent decade. The thesis shows that the corporations, which invest directly and indirectly in the Russian economy, must be aware of the politically driven corporate criminal risks, which quite commonly are not reflected in the corporate disclosure data, and remain unnoticed by the investors. The paper is unique as reflects the personal experiences of the author as the longterm leading lawyer to the Yukos group and as the consultant on the Yukos-related cases.

Anomalous properties of materials are always hot topics in physics and chemistry research. There are a number of anomalous properties in different areas, including the famous example negative refractive index. This thesis introduces the anomalous thermal property called negative thermal expansion (NTE). It describes the counter intuitive expansion of volume when the material undergoes a temperature decrease rather than increase. After a landmark paper on NTE in ZrW2O8 in 1996, NTE has became a hot topic in modern materials physics and materials chemistry, with a rapidly expanding number of publications. Since 1998 many new materials have been discovered to have NTE over different ranges of temperature, some of which show NTE over a surprisingly wide temperature range. The most significant application of NTE materials will be in the development of materials with zero thermal expansion, which can maintain a constant volume even under large temperature changes. In this thesis, another anomalous property is introduced, which is called pressure induced softening. Materials normally become harder under compression, as atoms are squeezed closer together. However, recently some materials have been found that become softer under higher pressure. This property of pressure-induced softening is proposed to arise from the same atomic fluctuations that give NTE in framework structures, and it is possible that pressure-induced softening may be an inevitable consequence of NTE. This thesis is concerned with both anomalous properties negative thermal expansion and pressure-induced softening. In addition, a case of near-zero thermal expansion is also studied as an extension of the work on NTE. The first studies concern the simplest but very important NTE material, ScF3. By using molecular dynamics simulation on a simplified model of the interatomic interactions the simulations identified how the balance of angular forces determines whether the material shows NTE or not. This work shows that the key to the mechanism of NTE is from low frequency rigid unit modes, whose influence is enhanced by the fact that the ScF6 octahedra have flexibility with respect to bond-bending motions. To further characterise which vibrations are most important, the phonons were calculated using Density Functional Theory (DFT) methods. These calculations have resolved a number of significant uncertainties in the literature. The same molecular dynamics model for ScF3 was further explored by varying pressure, and it predicted that SCF3 might show astonishing pressure-induced softening. In view of this, a neutron powder diffraction experiment was carried out varying both temperature and pressure, which amazingly confirmed the simulation prediction. The effect from experiment is much larger than in any of the few materials that have been identified as showing pressure-induced softening. The issue of the role of RUMs in NTE has been explored in the case of zeolites. All 13 different cubic zeolites were studied using both molecular dynamics and lattice dynamics using two different potential models, and in one case these were augmented by DFT lattice dynamics calculations. We have explored the extent to which RUMs can mix with other low-frequency modes within the mechanism of NTE. Finally DFT calculations of the lattice dynamics have been used to explore the origins of near-zero thermal expansion in the new material Zn4B6O12X (X = O, S, Se). The crystal structure of these materials is very close to that of one of the zeolites. The work has shown that at low frequencies there is a competition between sets of modes that contribute to positive and negative thermal expansion, giving a low coefficient of thermal expansion at temperatures below 300 K, in excellent agreement with experimental data.

Each aspect of this thesis is motivated by the recent paper of Beresnevich, Dickinson and Velani (BDV03]. Let 'ljJ be a real, positive, decreasing function i.e. an approximation function. Their paper considers a general lim sup set A( 'ljJ), within a compact metric measure space (0, d, m), consisting of points that sit in infinitely many balls each centred at an element ROt of a countable set and of radius 'I/J(130) where 130 is a 'weight' assigned to each ROt. The classical set of 'I/J-well approximable numbers is the basic example. For the set A('ljJ) , [BDV03] achieves m-measure and Hausdorff measure laws analogous to the classical theorems of Khintchine and Jarnik. Our first results obtain an application of these metric laws to the set of 'ljJ-well approximable numbers with restricted rationals, previously considered by Harman (Har88c]. Next, we consider a generalisation of the set of badly approximable numbers, Bad. For an approximation function p, a point x of a compact metric space is in a general set Bad(p) if, loosely speaking, x 'avoids' any ball centred at an element ROt of a countable set and of radius c p(I3Ot) for c = c(x) a constant. In view of Jarnik's 1928 result that dim Bad = 1, we aim to show the general set Bad(p) has maximal Hausdorff dimension. Finally, we extend the theory of (BDV03] by constructing a general lim sup set dependent on two approximation functions, A('ljJll'ljJ2)' We state a measure theorem for this set analogous to Khintchine's (1926a) theorem for the Lebesgue measure of the set of ('l/Jl, 1/12)-well approximable pairs in R2. We also remark on the set's Hausdorff dimension.

This thesis consists of a detailed chronological examination of the events leading up to the publication of the white paper, In Place of Strife in January 1969, and its subsequent replacement with a 'solemn and binding' agreement with the Trades Union Congress in June 1969. The work seeks to address four propositions that have emerged from the historiography: that Barbara Castle was unduly influenced by anti-trade union officials; that the contents of the white paper were a knee jerk reaction to the Conservative proposals; that neither Castle nor Harold Wilson understood the trade union movement; and that the final agreement, was a failure that demonstrated the inability of a Labour government to escape from its trade union roots. In Place of Strife has received considerable coverage in the diaries, autobiographies and biographies of politicians and trade union leaders. However, there remain a number of important gaps, notably; the respective roles of civil servants, politicians and outside advisors; the detailed debates of the parliamentary Labour party and the internal discussions of the trade unions, especially the TUC general council. Drawing from a range of primary sources including; newly released government papers this study addresses the gaps in our knowledge and evaluates the existing historiography. What emerges from this study is that, rather than being unduly influenced by her officials, Barbara Castle was the main instigator of the white paper. Similarly, whilst the white paper was influenced by the publication of the Conservative proposals, it was grounded in a well thought out philosophy of trade union rights and responsibilities. Similarly, whilst confirming that Castle and Wilson demonstrated considerable naivety in failing to anticipate the extent of the antagonism shown by trade unions towards the proposals, the study also reveals a depth of trade union intransigence that came close to challenging the government's right to govern. Consequently, Wilson in particular emerges as a skilled negotiator who extracted as much as was possible given the constraints placed on him.

There is plenty of evidence that humans disagree on the interpretation of many tasks in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision (CV), from objective tasks rooted in linguistics such as part-of-speech tagging to more subjective (observer-dependent) tasks such as classifying an image or deciding whether a proposition follows from a certain premise. While most learning in Artificial Intelligence (AI) still relies on the assumption that a single interpretation, captured by the gold label, exists for each item, a growing research body in recent years has focused on learning methods that do not rely on this assumption. Rather, they aim to learn ranges of truth amidst disagreement. This PhD research makes a contribution to this field of study. Firstly, we analytically review the evidence for disagreement on nlp and cv tasks, focusing on tasks where substantial datasets with such information have been created. As part of this review, we also discuss the most popular approaches to training models from datasets containing multiple judgments and group these methods together according to their handling of disagreement. Secondly, we make three proposals for learning with disagreement; soft-loss, multi-task learning from gold and crowds, and automatic temperature-scaled soft-loss. Thirdly, we address one gap in this field of study - the prevalence of hard metrics for model evaluation even when the gold assumption is shown to be an idealization - by proposing several previously existing metrics and novel soft metrics that do not make this assumption and analyzing the merits and assumptions of all the metrics, hard and soft. Finally, we carry out a systematic investigation of the key proposals in learning with disagreement by training them across several tasks, considering several ways to evaluate the resulting models and assessing the conditions under which each approach is effective. This is a key contribution of this research as research in learning with disagreement do not often test proposals across tasks, compare proposals with a variety of approaches, or evaluate using both soft metrics and hard metrics. The results obtained suggest, first of all, that it is essential to reach a consensus on how to evaluate models. This is because the relative performance of the various training methods is critically affected by the chosen form of evaluation. Secondly, we observed a strong dataset effect. With substantial datasets, providing many judgments by high-quality coders for each item, training directly with soft labels achieved better results than training from aggregated or even gold labels. This result holds for both hard and soft evaluation. But when the above conditions do not hold, leveraging both gold and soft labels generally achieved the best results in the hard evaluation. All datasets and models employed in this paper are freely available as supplementary materials.

Psychopathic and sadistic patients share several common characteristics, such as emotional detachment from the suffering of the others and proneness to instrumental modes of aggression and crime. Despite voluminous literature the aetiology of psychopathy and sadism remain largely unknown, whereas psychological treatments for psychopaths and sadists are marked by therapeutic pessimism, as these patients appear intransigent to any therapeutic intervention. The aim of this thesis is to explore the early environmental antecedents that contribute to the development of psychopathy and sexual sadism and investigate how they are related to violent, sexually violent and sadistic behaviour. Further, the study examines the association between psychopathy and sexual sadism. This research followed a mixed-method design involving paper-based questionnaires, behavioural scales and semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that psychopathy is significantly associated with sexual sadism. The two constructs, however, follow distinct developmental pathways. Both psychopathy and sexual sadism were significantly correlated with early aversive experiences. The findings of the study showed that psychopathic and sadistic patients experienced more traumatic experiences, such as neglect, abuse and parental humiliation than the non-psychopathic and non-sadistic ones. Overall, the study findings indicate that these early traumatic experiences contribute to the development of psychopathy and sexual sadism and are specifically associated with severe forms of aggression.

The local authority credit market is an important source of funding, matching long-term financing to infrastructure investment programmes. This study considers the financial innovation of developed-market subnational governments, when raising private funds via bond mutualisation, to understand if it improves municipal bond market efficiency. The thesis compares three important alternative means for raising long-term debt, namely direct government-backed lending; individual bond issues; and municipal credit-pooling agency backed bond issues. It addresses clear gaps in the existing European municipal bond agencies (MBAs) literature - only one other paper is relevant to Chapter 1 and none on MBAs are relevant to Chapter 3. The database of Chapter 2 is substantially more detailed than any in the literature and so provides an insightful empirical output. Chapter 1 addresses whether European MBAs offer subnational governments (SNGs) a viable alternative to central government debt. I show that a credit-pooling agency can issue domestic bonds at a competitive yield that enables it to offer loans to SNGs more cheaply than if they were to borrow directly from a central government agency. The thesis is motivated by the launch of the UK Municipal Bond Agency. Following a counter-factual that a synthetic UK MBA, credit-ranked pari passu with the European MBAs, issues bonds in public markets and distributes loans to its members, I show that local authorities could save interest costs relative to their existing borrowing. Chapter 2 finds that credit rating and the required size of credit determine whether a US municipality issues its own bonds or participates in a credit-pooling agency's issuing activity. I estimate interest cost savings relative to issuing its own bonds for a participant in a municipal bond bank's bond issuance. Chapter 3 investigates whether the MBAs take advantage of the failure of Covered Interest Parity (CIP), so that their bond issuance in foreign currencies reduces their interest costs. I estimate that MBAs achieved average interest cost savings of between 20.4 and 23.8 bps when issuing foreign currency bonds, relative to issuing in their respective domestic currencies over 2009-16. However, I find limited evidence that the MBAs are sensitive to deviations from CIP in timing bond issues. Issuing bonds based on a joint and several guarantee, MBAs operate through a coinsurance design, whereby financially stronger SNGs subsidise weaker ones. They indirectly leverage on their country's borrowing capacity, so they require supportive institutions including a highly credit-rated national government, a legal system that allows interventions if an SNG falls into financial distress, and prudent borrowing by subnational governments. Most importantly, they require the collective buy-in of a peer group that wishes to use this agency to reduce the cost of borrowing for the common good. UK local authorities seem to be reluctant to provide a joint and several guarantee for their liabilities and, therefore, the original MBA model fails. Differences in the UK from the collectivist culture of the Dutch and Nordic MBAs hamper local authority buy-in to a business model that has proved successful elsewhere.

Understanding the contact line dynamics during droplet impact is critically important for industrial processes such as coating, the spraying of pesticides and for the design of anti-icing surfaces or impermeable clothing. It is known that, upon impacting on a solid, a droplet can spread, bounce off the substrate or splash depending on the liquid characteristics, the solid properties, the impact speed and the ambient pressure. In this thesis, we explore droplet impact in terms of some of these variables. Consequently, this work is focused on the experimental study of the contact line dynamics of impacting droplets on substrates ranging from wettable to non-wettable and from porous to non-porous. In particular, we focus on the parameters affecting: i) the splashing threshold of impacting droplets on solid substrates and ii) the penetration of impacting droplets through textiles. Furthermore, we apply our findings to the development of a liquid latex droplet-on-demand printing system. Most of the experiments in this thesis consist of the visualisation, by high speed imaging, of the impact of ethanol, water and aqueous glycerol droplets on solid and textile substrates. In addition, we present a custom-made Matlab algorithm that uses a polynomial fitting approach to extract the dynamic contact angle as a function of the contact line velocity. Moreover, we analyse the effect of droplet shape, the order of the fitting polynomial and the fitting domain, on the measurement of the contact angle on various stages following droplet impact. We use our experimental setup to demonstrate the importance of wettability and substrate roughness on the contact line dynamics and the impacting outcome. For smooth surfaces, we show that the maximum advancing contact angle ( max) is greater than 87 degrees for all the liquid/substrates. Moreover, we show that splashing depends on the substrate wettability and its threshold can be parameterised by max and the splashing ratio. Correspondingly, for rough surfaces, we determine that max increases with increasing substrate roughness. Furthermore, we establish that the ratio of the peak to peak roughness to the surface feature mean width, in conjunction with max and the splashing ratio, adequately predict the splashing threshold. Similarly, for the droplet impact dynamics on textiles, we find that the textile characteristics, such as the pore size and solid fraction, are critical for the impact outcome. Correspondingly, we find three different impact regimes, namely, 'no penetration', 'capture' and 'complete penetration'. Additionally, by balancing the kinematic pressure with the capillary pressure, we find a critical pore size for the transition from capture to complete droplet penetration in terms of the Weber number. Finally, we present a setup that permits the printing, by droplet impact, of liquid latex on paper with a high solid content (60 wt %). The process is controllable and reliable, making the printing of patterns possible. With this setup, multilayer objects were created from pure liquid latex, as well as from micronized rubber powder and latex suspensions. These results demonstrate the potential of droplet-based additive manufacturing processes to produce prints of liquid latex and tire rubber reuse.

Despite plenty of fine research on the inter-war period there has, of yet, been no detailed study of the reaction in Whitehall and Westminster to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia during the Lloyd George Coalition and Conservative Governments in this period. This thesis fills that gap by tackling the bitter clashes between moderates and hardliners in the Coalition and Conservative Cabinets over how, where and when Britain should handle the threat posed by Communism. It looks at the extraordinary circumstances of the age, a time of radical and profoundly uncertain political and social change, seen by many at the time as a point of potential rupture from the existing representative institutions and traditions. Starting with the Russian revolution and debate over military intervention in the Russian Civil War, it explores key flashpoints over the next ten years, including mass soldiers' strikes, rebellion on the Clyde and the General Strike of 1926. Using source material obtained fr om the Baldwin Archives, the Cabinet Archives, Hansard, the Chamberlain Papers and Churchill Archive, among others, the thesis maps and analyses the fluid changes in the factions within the Cabinet and the factors that influenced key political figures. Loo king at the leadership of Lloyd George and Baldwin, it asks how governance was maintained over such an emotive issue and how the divides in Cabinet and the Conservative Party impacted the policy of government. This thesis argues that both premiers were able to forge a path which suited their own moderate approach but which was tempered by the views of the hardliners a middle way that, by stretching cabinet collective responsibility to its limits helps account for the durability of both coalition and single party government in the decade following the First World War.

Background: Self-management improves asthma outcomes and has been widely recommended in guidelines, though interventions are less effective in UK South Asian communities. Asthma, self-management and South Asian sociocultural contexts are all dynamic, therefore making sense of these factors is necessary. This thesis aimed to understand the role of two UK South Asian subcultures (Bangladeshi and Pakistani) on asthma self-management, which can help set the foundations for developing holistic bottom-up interventions. Method: Using the MRC guidance on developing complex interventions, this thesis: i) narratively synthesises 16 RCTs (17 papers) in South Asian and Black populations to explore the extent to which variance in self-management is due to ethnicity and/or various sociocultural contexts, ii) semi-structured interviews with 27 Bangladeshis and Pakistanis with asthma to understand the role of culture in self-management, and iii) semi-structured interviews with nine healthcare professionals to understand their perspective on providing supported self-management to these communities. Result: i) Sociocultural contexts (including whether individuals were from a minority or indigenous population) was important for developing interventions targeted at different cultures, but bottom-up interventions were rare. Ethnic minority interventions (South Asian and African-American) were less effective than interventions delivered in indigenous Indian populations, ii) The perspectives of individuals with asthma showed understanding the Bangladeshi and Pakistani self (the person) in self-management was helpful to understand various forms of self-management around the body, context, and distribution of knowledge/discourses, iii) The perspective of healthcare professionals showed that they mostly made universal assumptions about culture and adapted supported self-management accordingly (in the absence of adequate cultural training). Conclusion: A holistic approach to developing bottom-up interventions, considering the perspective of Bangladeshi and Pakistani individuals and healthcare professionals are needed. Some intervention ideas that can be explored further are: medicine adherence during Ramadhan, psychological interventions (e.g. religious coping and dealing with emotions), raising physical/symbolic self-consciousness (e.g. beliefs), better service/language provisions and cultural training/information for healthcare professionals.

This PhD thesis explores how core national cultural values of ethnically diverse employees in Nigeria influence their understanding/views of organisational values and their commitment to these values. The study is motivated by the need to understand the impact of ethnic culture on employee value allegiance and how this translates into ethnic loyalty or organisational commitment within private sector organisations in culturally diverse and developing economies like Nigeria. Twenty employees from two wholly-owned Nigerian commercial banks formed the subjects of this research. Using a multiple case study design, based on interviews and vignettes, constructs which represent employees' ethnocultural values and organisational values were explored in relation to employees' accounts of workplace practices. This thesis extends the knowledge in cross-cultural management, specifically in a multi-ethnic sample, first by revealing how commitment might be experienced in different cultures and why, and second, by putting forward propositions for applicable culture-specific considerations which can enhance the cross-cultural applicability/adaptability of egalitarian organisational values in a culturally diverse and developing country such as Nigeria. The findings show that ethnocultural values and practices thrive in Nigerian organisations which espouse egalitarianism due to the inability of employees to translate implicit/explicit organisational values into required job/workplace practices. Also, the employees' consciousness of differences is sustained through organisational relationships based on status, and the social distance between managers and subordinates. Consequently, this research reveals a missing link between organisational structure on paper and the relationships which that structure presumably supports, in practice, in Nigerian Banks. This research also shows that the structural elements of an organisation can be disconnected from its attitudinal counterparts, which can have far-reaching implications, including negative consequences, for managing employees within organisations in a multi-ethnic context.

The understanding of the liquid movements in textiles is important to the development of novel liquid repellent strategies based on the manipulation of liquid motion. In this thesis we focus on the two areas that have received little attention: (1) the liquid permeation across the thickness of a single-layer textile following the deposition of a static droplet and (2) the liquid movements following the impact of droplets on a single-layer textile. In the study of area (1) we report a time-resolved high resolution X-ray imaging of the motion of the liquid-vapour interface in the textile thickness direction. The imaging of the time-dependent position of the interface is made possible by the use of ultra-high viscosity liquids (dynamic viscosity 2.5·106 times higher than that of water). Imaging results suggested a three-stage permeation mechanism with each stage being associated with one type of capillary channels in the textile geometry. We also showed that the permeation dynamics cannot be described by the popular Washburn theory. In the study of area (2) we record the impact of droplets on textiles with high-speed imaging. We showed that the impact on textiles at short timescales involved no droplet shape deformation if the textile's porosity was sufficiently high. We also showed that droplets could be captured by the textiles under some impact conditions. By balancing the dynamic and capillary pressures we showed that the droplet penetration was governed by a threshold pore size and the droplet diameter. Moreover, we identified 5 stages for the liquid spreading on the textile surfaces following the impact. Within the investigated range of impact velocity the surface chemistry of the textiles was unimportant in the determination of liquid repellency. We also investigated the transplanar liquid permeation across non-wettable textiles following the deposition of droplets. We showed that the permeation was governed by a critical pore size and the weight of the deposited liquid. We discussed the limitation of the Gillespie scaling, developed for the prediction of in-plane spreading area in papers, in the description of the in-plane capillary spreading dynamics in textiles.

In this thesis I investigate the effects of positive and negative connections on social and organization networks, and the presence and role of homophily in networks of scientific collaborations and citations through the combination of methodologies borrowed from complexity science, statistics, and organizational sciences. In the first part of the thesis, I study the differences between patterns of positive and negative connections among individuals in two online signed social networks. Findings suggest that the sign of links in a social network shapes differently the network's topology: there is a positive correlation between the degrees of two nodes, when they share a positive connection, and a negative correlation when they share a negative connection. I then move my focus to the study of a dataset on start-ups from which I construct and analyse the competition and mobility networks among companies. Results show that the presence of competition has negative effects on the mobility of people among companies and on the success of the start-up ecosystem of a nation. Competitive behaviours may also emerge in science. Therefore, in the second part of this thesis, I focus on a database of all papers and authors who have published in the American Physical Society (APS) journals. Through the analysis of the citation network of the APS, I propose a method that aims to statistically validate the presence (or absence) of a citation between any two articles. Results show that homophily is an important mechanism behind the citation between articles: the more two articles share similar bibliographies, i.e., deal with similar arguments, the more likely there is a citation between them. In the last chapter, I investigate the presence of homophily in the APS data set, this time at the level of the collaboration network among sci- entists. Results show that homophily can be responsible in fostering collaboration, but above a given point the effect of similarity decreases the probability of a collaboration. Additionally, I propose a model that successfully reproduces the empirical findings.

Introduction The use of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to measure the effects of care is being advocated increasingly in clinical settings. Current patient data capture involves completion of paper questionnaires which is costly and environmentally perplexing. New innovations are required to balance the challenges of introducing data capture directly from patients while considering budgets, access to Information Technology, and the capability to use technological devices. Methods Two qualitative studies were undertaken to identify the views of patients and clinicians concerning electronic PROM data capture in osteopathic practice. One qualitative study involved patient interviews to identify their views on a selection of specific PROMs. Clinician focus groups and interviews (osteopaths, chiropractors, and physiotherapists) were undertaken concerning their views and experiences of using PROMs. Scoping of PROMs in musculoskeletal practice was undertaken followed by a systematic review of one identified PROM. The review and qualitative work informed the development of content for a mobile and web app for capturing PROM data. The app was piloted to evaluate feasibility, and the clinimetric performance of the included PROMs. Feedback from the pilot informed revisions to the app prior to implementation into osteopathic practice. Results Clinicians (n=46) identified a range of barriers and facilitators to PROM use. Patients (n=22) while generally more enthusiastic than clinicians welcomed the opportunity to provide feedback and although undaunted by the use of technology highlighted the need for assurances concerning confidentiality of data, and limits on data sharing. The systematic review identified good measurement properties for the Bournemouth (BQ). Piloting of the app involved 257 participants contributing 404 data returns: it performed well requiring minimal revision prior to implementation. Conclusions The app performed well demonstrating great potential for further development to collect outcome data in a musculoskeletal clinical setting.

Senescence is classically defined as an irreversible cell cycle arrest. There is now convincing evidence that senescent cells accumulate during human ageing, potentially driving age-related dysfunction through depletion of mitotically active cells and stimulation of chronic inflammation. Recently, a landmark paper demonstrated that removal of p16INK4A (p16)-positive senescent cells in mice prolonged healthy lifespan, suggesting a direct link between senescence and age-related dysfunction. As such, restraining the senescent pool or slowing their rate of accumulation presents an attractive therapeutic strategy for extending healthspan. Previously, our laboratory has demonstrated that siRNA transfection can reverse deep senescence in p16-positive primary adult human mammary epithelial cells using a panel of senescence markers. Subsequent siRNA screening revealed 28 hits which strongly induced reversal in the deeply senescent HMECs. In this project, siRNA knockdown of p16 combined with p21WAF1/CIP1 (p21) was found to reverse deep replicative senescence in primary adult human mammary fibroblasts, as defined by a panel of senescence markers. This discovery provided the opportunity to screen for novel siRNAs which induce reversal in both cell types. Screening in the deeply senescent HMFs of the 28 shortlisted candidates and 33 protein interactors identified using bioinformatics revealed 45 siRNAs which significantly increased cell number compared to the negative siRNA control. Subsequent immunofluorescence staining and high content analysis of the top 14 candidates identified 10 hit siRNAs which induced senescence reversal as defined by a panel of markers. Interestingly, these 10 hits were enriched for cytoskeletal and cell adhesion processes, suggesting an interplay between external forces and senescence induction. The top siRNA hit, early growth response 2 or EGR2, a transcription factor, was validated and selected for further exploration as a novel driver of senescence. Bioinformatics analysis revealed an enrichment for EGR2 binding sites within genes dynamically expressed in HMEC senescence, including p16, p21, and nine hits identified to reverse senescence in HMFs and HMECs. Furthermore, deeply senescent HMFs and HMECs were found to have a significantly increased nuclear EGR2 foci number compared to proliferating cells, and this was significantly decreased in reversed HMFs. In conclusion, it is proposed that EGR2 may represent a novel driver of both HMF and HMEC senescence.

Taking higher education (HE) in England as its case study, this PhD adapts and reposes Roger Lee's thesis on the Ordinary Economy to help understand how neoliberal market values become negotiated, embedded and transformed in and through complex emerging economic geographies. In 2011, pursuing a somewhat neoliberal theme, the HE White Paper sought to further organize the sector through the application of certain market values and metrics, whereby a demand-led system would increase efficiency and competitiveness by making universities more directly accountable to their studentconsumers than ever before. Since the late 1970s, ascendant forms of neoliberalism have come under scrutiny with some political economy and governmentality scholars underscoring neoliberalization's processual and variegated nature wherein geographies and extant political economic relations matter to its concrete manifestation. However, some studies have encountered difficulties in accounting for how top-down political programmes become "anchored into" the complexity of everyday life, and/or in presupposing that their desired "subject-effects" will be either automatically realized or successfully resisted (Barnett, 2005). Thus, by residualising "the social", theories of hegemony and governmentality often fail to illuminate the complex interplay between abstract policy programmes and the complexity of the Ordinary Economy. To overcome such weaknesses, this PhD follows Lee's assertion that economic geographies are always emerging and inherently relational entities in and through which value emerges from the practice and performance of socio-economic life. Thus, studying the economy means grappling with the multiple values, social relations and notions of value that constitute economic geographies. Adapting a framework to examine four universities in England, the PhD illuminates the transformative power of both political programmes and socio-economic relations as, in this case, market hegemony was (re)-produced in multiple and complex forms. Neoliberalization is thus shown to be a bottom-up as well as top-down process that is constructed in practice. For it is the practice of socio-spatial economic relations that determines what is and is not value.

The conventional picture of Bishop Bonner as the 'butcherly beast" of the Marian persecutions has never been seriously investigated. Discussion of the problems of his family and his education, together with a study of his service in Wolsey's household and his relationship with Thomas Cromwell form the first part of this thesis. Bonner's diplomatic career as Henry VIII's ambassador in Rome, Germany, France and Spain between 1532 and 1543 as well as his government service in England between 1535 and 1541 are next considered. The diocesan financial structure and Bonner's policy in clerical appointments have been analyzed for both halves of his episcopate, the nature of the sources rendering it necessary to consider his episcopal administration as a whole. Finally the development of Bonner's theological views up to 1549 and the story of his trial in that year complete this study. Bonner's was a complex personality, quarrelsome and rude, yet probably obsequious and time-serving. He was certainly ambitious and clever, but he seems to have lacked both statesmanship and judgment. This is the picture of him as he was before he participated in the storms of the Marian Counter-Reformation. Much of the material for this thesis has been taken from the State Papers. There are, however, three other main manuscript sources which have been used. The Lechmere papers in the Worcestershire Record Office throw some light on Bonner's early youth and the volume of hiB despatches in the Yelverton collection in the British Museum revealS his activity in the winter of 1535-1536. The account books of the Bishop of London's Receiver-General for 1526-1521 and 1561-1568 in the Guildhall Library and the account rolls for 1549-1550 and 1555-1556 in the Public Record Office provide the basis for the analysis of the Bishop's diocesan administration.

Condensation on banks of tubes is of considerable interest in the power, refrigeration and process industries, where large scale condensers form a significant proportion of plant capital costs. Since the pioneering paper by Nusselt in 1916, numerous investigations, both experimental and theoretical, have made great inroads into the understanding of the important physical factors effecting performance, including effects of vapour shear and condensate inundation on heat-transfer performance. Despite this there are still significant gaps in the knowledge and no single recognised design approach exists for condensers under all conditions. Purely theoretical models have shown some success in modelling condensation on single tubes under high shear regimes, but these have not been successfully extended to full tube banks. The present work begins by drawing together a comprehensive data base of experimental results from those available in the literature. This includes assessing the experimental accuracy of the data and organising it into a consistent format to allow detailed comparison with existing and future models. The resulting data base comprises 13 tube bank geometries, 7 test fluids and over 4000 individual data points. The data base was used to evaluate existing theoretical and empirical models, and highlighted the weaknesses therein. In particular, it was found that empirical approaches were limited to application (ie refrigeration or steam condensers), with development and validation being based on experimental data for single fluids or groups of fluids. When these models were compared to the more comprehensive data base described above their performance was poor. Consequently there is limited confidence in their extension to applications outside those they were developed for. A new empirical based model was then developed. The approach involved identifying relevant dimensionless groups to account for the various physical factors which may affect heat transfer during condensation on a bank of tubes and formulating these into an equation involving a number of initially unknown but empirically obtainable constants. An iterative scheme was then employed to eliminate those groups having little effect on the result while retaining those which proved to be more important. The resulting model predicted the majority of the experimental data base to around 12%. A subsequent parametric study 3 showed the correct dependence of heat transfer coefficient on factors such as vapour velocity and tube row. The thesis concludes with some suggestions for future work.

In this thesis I contribute to the applied study of households' consumption and saving behaviour. In the first chapter I introduce and explain why it is relevant to understand how households react to income shocks in terms of their consumption and saving decisions. The second chapter is inspired by a recent paper by Krueger and Perri (2011), who argue that the observed response of household wealth to income shocks, which is smaller over long periods, provides evidence in favour of the classic permanent-income model with perfect financial markets. Whether a model with financial market imperfections, however, such as the standard incomplete-markets model with liquidity constraints, can also generate such a wealth response crucially depends on the importance of precautionary wealth accumulation. I structurally estimate a model with a precautionary- savings motive and show that it can generate the observed wealth responses in the data. I further show that the wealth responses to income shocks do not allow us to rule out financial market imperfections. In the third chapter I extend the analysis, studying empirically what can be learned from international evidence on the way in which households react to income. I use detailed panel data from newly available surveys of Chile, Spain and the United States. Although it compares three different countries with dissimilar levels of development in their financial markets, the evidence suggests that the amount of precautionary savings in these economies is low and that household behaviour is not strongly influenced by the presence of borrowing constraints. The structural estimation for all countries suggests a low target level of wealth resulting from high levels of impatience or low levels of risk aversion. In the fourth chapter I extend the analysis to the real estate properties owned by the households. I revisit the Italian data, building on Kaplan and Violante (2014) who have argued that a substantial fraction of wealthy households with illiquid wealth, such as real estate, behave as hand-to-mouth consumers. In exploring the data, I find that, in the Italian sample, households which adjust their illiquid wealth show responses to income shocks like permanent-income consumers. Instead households which do not adjust their illiquid wealth, and whose behaviour in general can thus not be characterised by the first order conditions, show responses to income shocks which suggest a stronger precautionary-saving motive, such as wealthy hand-to-mouth consumers might be expected to show. The fifth chapter provides the conclusions of the thesis.

This thesis begins by examining an unexplored contextual background for sixteenth century local maps. It argues that the architectural drawing techniques developed by master masons in the late twelfth century continued to be taught to the King’s masons well into the sixteenth, and that these drawing techniques lie behind the innovations in sixteenth century topographical mapping. Having provided a history of the craft skills that were adapted to make sixteenth century local maps this thesis moves on to consider why masons adapted craft skills traditionally used in full scale drawings on stone and plaster surfaces to make small, paper maps in the sixteenth century. It examines the way in which sixteenth century local maps were used and argues that the changing demands of patrons put pressure on master masons to alter the way in which local maps portrayed their subjects. The surviving archival evidence suggests that Henry VIII was the principle patron of local maps and my research examines the influence of the king over the shifting form of the map. It uses the letters and drawings sent between Henry VIII and his craftsmen to examine the decisive changes that Henry VIII made to the nature of the relationship between patron and builder, and the consequent effects of these changes over the forms of the image used to communicate between them. My argument suggests that Henry employs and promotes the craftsmen whose drawings allow him the greatest level of design control over the works he finances and that through this system maps and plans rapidly advance to include the technical drawing techniques which had, during the Middle Ages, been used exclusively among masons as on-site, working drawings. This thesis focuses attention on the technical aspects of map making, examining the material skills used to construct Henrician local maps and arguing that sixteenth centry local maps need to be related back to the craft skills of an older tradition of masonic drawing. It also suggests that map historians needs to look more closely at the correspondence sent between the king and his craftsmen and it argues this archival evidence provides a new contextual background with which to understand the changing forms of the Henrican local map.

Social connections represent an important determinant of economic agents’ behaviour. The three chapters of this thesis empirically analyse the effect of different types of networks on several economic outcomes. The first chapter analyses the role played by co-worker networks on immigrants’ employment outcomes. It investigates how immigrants’ job search outcomes are affected by the labour market outcomes of co-workers from the same country of origin. Using matched employer-employee micro data from Italy and an instrumental variables approach, I show that an increase in the employment prospects of socially connected workers improves immigrants’ job search outcomes. The paper also sheds light on the different mechanisms generating the social effect and it highlights the role of migrant networks in explaining immigrant segregation. Chapter 2 employs a unique dataset on articles, authors and editors of the top four economics journals over the period 2000-2006 to investigate the role of social ties in the publication process. Connections between editors and authors are identified based on their academic histories. Regression results show that the existence of a social tie with an editor positively affects publication outcomes of connected scholars. The analysis of citations shows that connected articles receive on average a higher number of citations than non-connected ones. The final chapter focuses on the impact of female managers on female workers’ employment outcomes. Exploiting changes in the share of female managers induced by firms’ takeovers, I find no statistically significant effect of an increase in the presence of female managers on employment outcomes of female workers. However there is an interesting negative effect on wage inequality within the acquiring firm, which may matter for both equity and efficiency reasons.

This thesis explores the affective and professional relationships that sustained the intelligence network of Anthony Bacon (1558-1601), a gentleman-traveller and spymaster for the earl of Essex. Through a series of interventions in the extensive Bacon papers in Lambeth Palace Library, I present four manuscript-based case studies that cast light on a host of relationship-paradigms particular to early modern English culture that are today poorly understood. Chapter 1 focuses on Anthony Bacon’s relationship with the Puritan Nicholas Faunt, and argues for a new understanding of the language of ardent affection between men that acknowledges the influence on such language of Reformed theology. Chapter 2 explores the correspondence of Bacon with Anthony Standen, an imprisoned Catholic spy, and suggests that the early modern prison may have been a facilitating institution in the creation of instrumental friendship between men. Chapter 3 examines the Inns of Court. I argue that the Inns’ concern for the values of friendship was reflected in the widespread political patronage system that operated out of the four societies, a system that was recognised and manipulated by powerful men. In Chapter 4 I explore a context in which the influence of friendship networks was deleterious: the unstable and unhappy political secretariat of the earl of Essex. I argue that the earl’s outmoded concept of ardent service was as damaging to his own household as it was to his relationship with the queen. Taken as a whole, this thesis argues for a new awareness of the place of feeling and the role of friendship in our understanding of relationships between men in the sixteenth century.

In 1965 J. Ginibre introduced an ensemble of random matrices with no symmetry conditions imposed as the mathematical counterpart to hermitian random matrix theory. In his original paper he treats the case of matrices with i.i.d. normally distributed real, complex or quaternion entries. Since then, mainly due to interest from applications, the development of non-hermitian random matrix theory has further evolved, though the eigenvalue statistics of non-hermitian random matrices are far from being as thoroughly understood as their hermitian counterpart. A characteristic of non-hermitian random matrices are eigenvalue distributions in the complex plane. Real asymmetric random matrices have the additional caveat of having real and complex eigenvalues and thus are technically more challenging. In the following work a new three-fold family of non-hermitian random matrices is introduced via a quadratization procedure. As a consequence the entries of these matrices are highly dependent. For all three ensembles the joint eigenvalue probability density functions and eigenvalue correlations are derived for β = 1, 2. In the limit of large matrix dimensions a classification of eigenvalue correlation functions for different asymptotic regimes is undertaken. In tune with the title of this work for all three ensembles there exists an asymptotic regime, in which the eigenvalues are supported on an annulus around the origin. Thus the induced family of non-hermitian random matrix ensembles serves as an example, for ensembles of the Feinberg-Zee type with logarithmic potential.

Noncommutative Riemannian geometry is an area that has seen intense activity over the past 25 years. Despite this, noncommutative complex geometry is only now beginning to receive serious attention. The theory of quantum groups provides a large family of very interesting potential examples, namely the quantum flag manifolds. Thus far, only the irreducible quantum flag manifolds have been investigated as noncommutative complex spaces. In a series of papers, Heckenberger and Kolb showed that for each of these spaces, there exists a q-deformed Dolbeault double complex. In this thesis a comprehensive framework for noncommutative complex geometry on quantum homogeneous spaces is introduced. The main ingredients used are covariant differential calculi and Takeuchi's categorical equivalence for faithfully at quantum homogeneous spaces. A number of basic results are established, producing a simple set of necessary and sufficient conditions for noncommutative complex structures to exist. It is shown that when applied to the quantum projective spaces, this theory reproduces the q-Dolbeault double complexes of Heckenberger and Kolb. Furthermore, the framework is used to q-deform results from Borel{Bott{ Weil theory, and to produce the beginnings of a theory of noncommutative Kahler geometry.

This thesis explores the idea that an equality state has evolved in Britain since the 1960s. The policies and institutions that make up the equality state are those that seek to ensure some forms of equality between its citizens. Its latest development has been through the 2010 Equality Act that promotes equality in relation to nine protected characteristics, but just two of these are considered here, race and sex. The study will investigate the origins of the equality state under the 1964-1970 Labour governments through the formulation of policies that explicitly or implicitly promoted sex and racial equality. The main areas examined in relation to racial equality are the anti-discrimination provisions of the 1965 and 1968 Race Relations Acts; measures to promote the integration of immigrants, particularly in employment, education, housing and policing; the institutions which aided integration particularly the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants and Community Relations Commission; and the Urban Programme and other measures taken in response to Enoch Powell's 1968 'Rivers of Blood' speech. With sex equality the areas considered are the 1970 Equal Pay Act; the development of policy to promote equal opportunity in employment; and the reform of law relating to abortion, divorce and the availability of contraceptive services through state agencies. iv The primary focus of the thesis is on the policy making process and the research is based on government papers in The National Archives. Other influences on these policy areas have been researched through primary sources, particularly policies' origins in the Labour Party, the influence of the trade union movement, campaigning groups and, in the case of sex equality, the remaining first wave feminist organisations. Through this the thesis develops an understanding of the nature and limitations of the equality that the equality state promotes.

This thesis seeks to develop our understanding of ideas about political liberty in the English Revolution by way of focusing on the issue of property, a topic unduly neglected in the secondary literature. Most writers of the period conceived of liberty as absence of dependence, but what has been little examined is the extent to which it was believed that the attainment of this condition required not only a particular kind of constitution but a particular distribution of property as well. Here the central ideal became that of self-ownership, and the thesis is largely devoted to tracing the rise, eclipse and re-emergence of this way of thinking about the connections between property and liberty. Chapter 1 considers the emergence, in the ‘paper war’ of the early 1640s, of the radical Parliamentarian view that all property ultimately resided in Parliament. It was to oppose this stance, Chapter 2 argues, that the Levellers began to speak of ‘selfe propriety’, transforming the Parliamentarian notion of popular sovereignty into an individualist doctrine designed to protect subjects and their property from not only the king but also Parliament. Elements of both the Parliamentarian and Leveller discussions of property were taken up by John Milton and Marchamont Nedham (Chapter 3), while James Harrington offered an alternative theory that eschewed the notion of self-ownership (Chapter 4). After a chapter considering the relationship between property and freedom in Henry Neville and Algernon Sidney, the final chapter focuses on John Locke’s revival of self-ownership in his attempt to ground property rights in the individual’s ownership of his ‘person’. Although Locke is shown to offer a theory of private property, the Locke that emerges is not a proto-liberal defender of individual rights but a theorist of neo-Roman freedom whose aim was to explain the connection between property and non-dependence.

Cooperation is seen as a means to improve the signal in OFDMA wireless networks by overcoming the inter-cell interference. Such co-operation can be deployed in both the physical layer and the MAC layer. In this thesis, a cross-layer cooperation strategy is considered. Firstly, in the physical layer, a cooperative coding scheme with private information sharing is proposed based on dirty paper coding; this is analyzed in a scenario with two transmitters and two receivers. To implement the cooperation, a rate limited link is deployed at the transmitters’ side in order to share the information. A new achievable rate region is established in both strong interference regime and weak interference regime. Secondly, in the MAC layer, a graph-based dynamic coordinated clustering scheme is proposed. An interference weighted graph is constructed to assist dynamic coordinated clustering for inter-cell interference mitigation and to improve the cell-edge user performance. Only 2 bits are allowed for the signalling exchange between transmitters and this reduces the overhead of the approach. The system throughput and cell-edge throughput with different user distributions are used to evaluate the performance. Thirdly, a transmit antenna selection algorithm is presented to optimize system performance with the constraint of fairness. A graph is generated by using the channel condition between the transmit antennas and Mobile Stations. Based on the graph, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to choose the transmit antenna for each user in order to improve the system performance and guarantee the user fairness. Finally, combining the cooperative coding scheme and cooperative clustering scheme, a cross-layer cooperation scheme is presented. In the physical layer, the cooperation coding scheme mitigates the interference and increases the transmission rate; in the MAC layer, the cooperative clustering scheme provides efficient cooperative transmission. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively increase both the system throughput and cell-edge throughput.

Developing of targeted drug delivery systems is currently a very important topic, which can be easily judged by a great number of papers published every year. Materials science proposes, among others, microcapsules as one of the possible solutions to the problem. Known for more than a decade by know, microcapsules, their properties, methods of encapsulation, release, control where under thorough investigation by several scientific groups in the world. Despite the fact that many factors were already studied, application of this system to drug delivery provides an enormous amount of work yet to be done, lying across several areas of science – biology, chemistry, physics, medicine. To be used as a technique of targeted delivery, not only the microcapsules should meet many constraints on their physical and chemical properties, but also the means of their control and release triggering irradiation should be applicable and harmless to living body. This means, that there's a lot more to do than to encapsulate the substances of interest and make sure they stay inside the capsules. This is why this research was devoted to investigation of stability of cargo encapsulated to layer-by-layer microcapsules constructed on silica and CaCO3 microparticles using various shell constructions with synthetic and biodegradable polyelectrolytes, nanoparticles, DNA, enzyme and other materials, methods of microcapsules control by magnetic field, which can be used for navigation of the carriers in-vivo to the place of interest and methods of release of encapsulated substances from the microcapsules, that are friendly to living body. The thesis starts with introduction and a literature review to help reader to get a better understanding on the structures discussed in this work and what have already been done in the area. These are followed by a short description of main materials and methods used to conduct this research. Three following chapters of experimental section describe the research itself. Chapter 4 shows feasibility of triggered IR-laser and high-frequency ultrasound release, including intracellular release. Reporting application of cargo using pH-sensitve dye is shown. Ultrasoundtriggered release at parameters, close to that currently used in medical applications, is shown to achieve up to 60% efficiency of previously reported highpower 20 kHz ultrasonic irradiation. Feasibility of laser-induced triggered release using microcapsules functionalized photo-sensitive dyes was also shown. In Chapter 5 retention of activity of DNA and enzyme molecules upon encapsulation was demonstrated. Activity of encapsulated substances was shown to be lower, than of free ones, but the accessibility and kinetics of reactions can be controlled by adjusting the construction of microcapsules. In Chapter 6 feasibility of control of cells impregnated with microcapsules functionalized with magnetite nanoparticles was shown at distances of up to 10 mm using usual constant magnets.

There have been several studies on the tearing of rubber materials since the seminal paper on rupture of rubber was published by Rivlin and Thomas (1953).The behaviour is typically characterised using a fracture mechanics approach whereby the rubber has a geometrically independent relationship between crack growth rate during tearing versus strain energy release rate. This approach works well under conditions of steady tearing as the crack growth rate is easy to measure. However, this approach is much harder to interpret under the condition where the rubber exhibits discontinuous crack growth behaviour such as knotty tearing or stick slip tearing. Unfortunately, these are common tearing conditions observed in practice for filled rubbers as well as for some unfilled rubbers, especially those such as natural rubber that are capable of strain-induced crystallisation. Under these conditions it is not clear what the actual crack growth rate is as the value typically given results from the average of a very rapid tearing rate and a zero velocity tearing rate. The aim of this work is to develop a new approach to characterise the unsteady tearing behaviour of rubber in terms of the relationship between the rate of increase in the strain energy at the crack tip just immediately prior to the onset of the tearing which is quantified directly as the time derivative of the strain energy release rate · T , and the critical strain energy release rate T* required to propagate the crack. The approach adopted in this study is then evaluated using a range of different crystallising and non-crystallising rubbers as well as crystallising rubbers that have been modified to alter their crystallisation over a range of different test temperatures. Additionally, a new elastic-viscous transition diagram in association with the rate of change in the strain energy release rate at the tip of the crack is presented.

The thesis concentrates on the work of fourteen antiquaries active in the period from the French Revolution to the Great Exhibition in England, Scotland and France. I have used a combination of the antiquaries’ published works, which cover, among other subjects, architecture, topography, costume history, Shakespeare and the history of furniture, alongside their private papers to develop an account of that lived engagement with the past which characterised the romantic period. It ends with the growing professionalisation and specialisation of historical studies in the mid-nineteenth century which left little room for the self-generating, essentially romantic antiquarian enterprise. In so far as this subject has been considered at all it has been in the context of what has come to be called ‘the invention of tradition’. It is true that the romantic engagement with history as narrative led to some elaboration of the facts, while the newness of the enterprise laid it open to mistakes. I have not ignored this. The restoration of the Bayeux Tapestry, the forged tartans of the Sobieski Stuarts and the creation of Shakespeare’s Birthplace are all considered. Overall, however, I have been concerned not to debunk but as it were to ‘rebunk’, to see the antiquaries in their historical context and, as far as possible, in their own terms.

My concern in this thesis is to show that a reconstruction of the publishing history of the work of William Burroughs offers a new, critical perspective on his experiments with psychoactive substances and their connection to his developing practice. I begin with an exploration of the publication of The Yage Letters (1963) and Naked Lunch (1959), and reveal how the complexities of their publishing histories shaped their critical reception. I examine the legal defence of Naked Lunch as it developed from the Big Table Post Office hearing through to the 1965 Boston trial and demonstrate the degree to which censorship came to define the published text. The legal defence of Naked Lunch, as it was incorporated into the Grove publication, emphasised the issue of opiate addiction. The way in which Burroughs’ 1953 letters to Allen Ginsberg were reworked as The Yage Letters did much to conceal the significance of yagé for Burroughs’ later work. Together, these publishing histories have obscured the relationship between his use of psychoactive substances and his evolving aesthetic. At the same time many of Burroughs’ most experimental - and important - works appeared only in small, ephemeral magazines. His adoption of avant-garde strategies such as collaboration and collage and his dedication to multimedia experimentation with the non-chemical alteration of consciousness made conventional book publication problematic or unsuitable. These experiments in aesthetic production, I argue, are central to our understanding of Burroughs. His main published writings must be re-evaluated as one element in this collage of multimedia activities. 4 I argue that Burroughs’ experiences with yagé, mescaline and dimethyltryptamine exerted an influence on his shift to experimentalism in the early 1960s, which sought to replicate the experience of these altered states of consciousness. That this is so is evident from a study of two collections of correspondence - Burroughs’ letters to Ginsberg held at Columbia University Library and his letters to Brion Gysin in the William S. Burroughs Papers held at the New York Public Library. My reading of these letters forms an important component of my argument, working to reveal what the conventional ‘published’ Burroughs serves to conceal.

My supervisors Ian Chiswell and Thomas M¨uller have found a new class of groups of functions defined on intervals of the real line, with multiplication defined by analogy with multiplication in free groups. I have extended this idea to functions defined on a densely ordered abelian group. This doesn’t give rise to a class of groups straight away, but using the idea of exponentiation from a paper by Myasnikov, Remeslennikov and Serbin, I have formed another class of groups, in which each group contains a subgroup isomorphic to one of Chiswell and M¨uller’s groups. After the introduction, the second chapter defines the set that contains the group and describes the multiplication for elements within the set. In chapter three I define exponentiation, which leads on to chapter four, in which I describe how it is used to find my groups. Then in chapter five I describe the structure of the centralisers of certain elements within the groups.

This thesis consists of two main parts. The rst part deals with an analysis of realized volatility and its relationship with market mi- crostructure problem. The second part of the thesis presents a time trend analysis in a panel data framework, with a semiparametric ap- proach. Chapter 1 introduces the topics that I embark upon the thesis. In particular, I motivate the interest in realized volatility and market mi- crostructure problem in the rst part of the thesis, with a factor model approach. Then, in the second part, the motivation is on the estimation of time varying coe¢ cient trend functions in a panel data case, using nonparametric estimation methods. Chapter 2 proposes a literature review on realized volatility and factor models, while focusing on the seminal papers and models that the theoretical literature suggests and also provides the empirical evidence observed in nancial markets. Chapter 3 develops a theoretical model to forecast the realized volatility consistently and e¢ ciently for large dimensional datasets and also addresses the solution for noise problem coming out of volatility estimation in the presence of market microstructure e¤ects. Chapter 4 provides the empirical analysis and results on a sample of S&P 500 stocks following the methodology and models suggested in Chapter 3. Chapter 5 focuses on developing a semiparametric panel model to explain the time trend function. Pro le likelihood estimators (PLE) are proposed and their statistical properties are studied. We apply our methods to the UK regional temperatures. Finally, forecasting based on the proposed model is studied. Chapter 6 concludes, summarizing the main results and contribu- tions of the thesis.

The process of musical composition is sometimes conceived of as an individual, internal, cognitive process in which notation plays a passive role of transmitting or recording musical ideas. This thesis questions the role played by representations in musical composition practices. We begin by tracing how, historically, compositional practices have co-evolved with musical representations and technologies for music production. We present case studies to show that the use of graphical sketches is a characteristic feature of the early stages of musical composition and that this practice recurs across musical genres ranging from classical music to contemporary electroacoustic composition. We describe the processes involved in sketching activities within the framework of distributed cognition and distinguish an intermediate representational role for sketches that is different from what is ‘in the head’ of the composer and from the functions of more formal musical notations. Using evidences from the case studies, we argue in particular that as in other creative design processes, sketches provide strategically ambiguous, heterogeneous forms of representation that exploit vagueness, indeterminacy and inconsistency in the development of musical ideas. Building on this analysis of the functions of sketching we describe the design and implementation of a new tool, the Music Sketcher, which attempts to provide more under-specified and flexible forms of ‘sketch’ representation than are possible with contemporary composition tools. This tool is evaluated through a series of case studies which explore how the representations constructed with the tool are interpreted and what role they play in the compositional process. We show that the program provides a similar level of vagueness to pen and paper, while also facilitating re-representation and re-interpretation, thus helping bridge the gap between early representations and later stages of commitment.

This thesis examines the novels of Beryl Bainbridge from her earliest published work, A Weekend with Claud (1967), to her most recent, According to Queeney (2001). It argues that issues of historical representation are central to all of Bainbridge's fiction; that throughout her work there is a concurrent attraction to the past and scepticism about the possibility of portraying it. The development of these ideas is traced using a broadly chronological structure, which considers Bainbridge's work in new theoretical and literary contexts. This study is also the first to make use of the British Library's collection of Bainbridge papers. Chapters 1 to 4 discuss Bainbridge's early novels in terms of the 'sexual revolution,' the Second World War and its abiding impact, and Bainbridge's avowed anti-feminism. It is argued that these novels show certain continuities with her later, more overtly historical work, not least in their revisionist approach to representing the recent past. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss novels that intervene between her earlier work, set within her own lifetime, and her later historical fiction. Young Adolf (1978) and Watson's Apology (1984), the subject of Chapter 5, are discussed in light of Linda Hutcheon's category of 'historiographic metafiction' and are demonstrated as developing Bainbridge's earlier ideas about the past, memory and representation. Chapter 6 continues to trace these links through its discussion of the intertextual references in An Awfully Big Adventure (1989). The final three chapters analyse Bainbridge's recent tetralogy of historical fictions. Finally, and drawing on the arguments of earlier chapters, it is argued that these novels represent a broadening of Bainbridge's ambition as a novelist as well as a more concerted deployment of developing ideas about the past, historical change and memory.

The Prospect Theory proposes to assess outcomes relative to a reference point (or benchmark). Although the literature recognises the relevance of dynamic benchmarks, most of the applications of Prospect Theory employ static reference points (or a status quo). This paper aims to develop a Prospect Theory framework for investment under uncertainty subject to a dynamic reference point, within the context of environmental policy making, where the distinction between a dynamic and a static frameworks is crucial. I evince that, in contrast to the static framework, in a dynamic framework the investor measures not only the absolute but also the relative risk premium (Sharpe ratio) of the investment opportunity, incorporating the risks and returns of a reference portfolio. I propose that there exists a relation between static and dynamic frameworks. Using the dynamic framework, I argue that in the environmental context international co-operation is the key to a successful environmental policy