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Urban road congestion is not a new phenomenon and remains an outstanding problem that continues to impact people around the world. Road congestion costs the European Union an estimated 1-2% of GDP each year and is responsible for 27% of deadly C02 emissions. In addition, it can cause life-threatening delays in the emergency services response time. Road congestion has a multifaceted nature and lacks a clear and explicit definition. This makes the problem of tackling it very subjective, time and context dependent. There have been several approaches to both modelling and predicting road congestion. From a physical perspective, road congestion has been modelled using speed, capacity, velocity, and journey time; relatively road congestion has been classified using terms such as non-recurrent and recurrent congestion which tend to be relative to each stakeholder; conceptual models such as the bathtub, traffic flow, and origin to the destination have been used to ascertain the impact of road congestion on a city scale. This research presented tackles the problem of defining what is meant by congestion within an urban road network through defining a conceptual model that captures the semantics of road traffic congestion and its causes. The model is validated through the construction of a real-world dataset and the development of a visual tool which can be used to identify and alleviate congestion. The final stage of the project uses both the model and the dataset to investigate and implement a series of fuzzy systems to classify three types of congestion (non-recurrent, recurrent, and semi-recurrent). The fuzzy system results are then validated against human methods of classifying congestion. The main contributions of this thesis to world knowledge can be summarised as follows: The design and development of a novel universal Urban Road Congestion Conceptual (URCC) model. The URCC model is broken down into two main components: Analogical conceptualisation which builds upon the famous 'bathtub' model and will integrate with other analogies to create 'a raindrop hitting a leaf inside the bathtub with ever changing water temperatures'. The second component is an ontological approach to modelling congestion thus providing a better understanding for decision-makers through providing a formal and explicit explanation for concepts within the domain of urban road congestion. Another contribution is the development of a real-world spatiotemporal quasi-real-time big data dataset known as the Manchester Urban Congestion Data (MUCD) dataset which was used to validate the URCC. A visualisation graphical user interface called TIM (Transport Incident Manager) was developed with stakeholders TfGM (Transport for Greater Manchester). TIM has the ability to fill the void left by the clear lack of visualisation tools that are capable of visualising real-world big data datasets, such as the MUCD and models of urban road congestion. The final contribution to knowledge is the design and development of two fuzzy decision-making systems which are not only capable of predicting urban road congestion on a link but the type of congestion occurring on a network of links. Using a fuzzy decision-making system allows for explainable and interpretable decisions, and also provided useful and meaningful qualitative context back to the relevant TfGM stakeholders. The non-optimised multi-classification fuzzy system had slightly worst accuracy than the J48 decision tree algorithm, however, the fuzzy system is easier to interpret and provides meaningful context compared to the J48 algorithm due to only requiring 12 rules compared to the 1184 learned rules in the J48 decision tree. Furthermore, once the fuzzy system has been optimised (future work) it is likely to have similar if not better performance than the J48 decision tree.

The ritual and incantation series Šurpu 'Burning' is one of the most important sources for understanding religious and magical practice in the ancient Near East. The purpose of the ritual was to rid a sufferer of a divine curse which had been inflicted due to personal misconduct. The series is composed chiefly of the text of the incantations recited during the ceremony. These are supplemented by brief ritual instructions as well as a ritual tablet which details the ceremony in full. This thesis offers a comprehensive and radical reconstruction of the entire text, demonstrating the existence of a large, and previously unsuspected, lacuna in the published version. In addition, a single tablet, tablet IX, from the ten which comprise the series is fully edited, with partitur transliteration, eclectic and normalised text, translation, and a detailed line by line commentary.

In June 2001 the title ‘chiropractor’ came to be protected under British law and those who called themselves chiropractors attained a position of increased legitimacy within British society. Yet the details of chiropractic’s journey to statutory recognition have not been thoroughly explored in contemporary literature. The origins and development of chiropractic in Britain have received meagre attention from historical scholars. This thesis uses a neo-Weberian approach to explore the history of chiropractic in Britain through the lens of ‘professionalisation’. It investigates the emergence of chiropractic in Britain, and details how and why chiropractic developed in the way that it did, assessing the significance of processes and events in respect to chiropractic’s professionalisation, and examining intra- and inter-occupational tensions. The thesis is primarily a product of documentary research, but is also informed by interviews undertaken to provide oral testimonies. Although the origins of chiropractic are usually traced back to the 1890s, to Davenport, Iowa, and to the practice of Daniel David Palmer, it is argued in this thesis that it is misleading to claim that chiropractic was ‘discovered’ by Daniel Palmer, or that chiropractic in Britain was entirely an ‘import’ from the United States. Instead, chiropractic’s origins were complex and multifarious and form part of a broader history of manipulative practices. With regard to the development of chiropractic in Britain, chiropractic’s history is intertwined with that of osteopathy, and has involved medicalisation. This study demonstrates that through the course of its evolution chiropractic was subject to processes that can usefully be described in terms of professionalisation, sharing features in common with the professionalisation of other occupational groups described in historical and sociological literature. Even so, chiropractors did not attain the social presence or cultural authority of archetypal professionals such as medical doctors or lawyers. Although protection of title was achieved, many problems have remained, including divisions within the occupation.

Small scale turbulence in a magnetically confined fusion plasma drives energy and particle transport which determine the confinement. The plasma in a tokamak experiment has a toroidal rotation which may be driven externally, but can also arise spontaneously from turbulent momentum transport. This thesis investigates the interaction between turbulence and rotation via nonlinear numerical simulations, which use the gyrokinetic description in the frame that corotates with the plasma. A local gyrokinetic code is extended to include both the centrifugal force, and the stabilising effect of sheared equilibrium flow. Sheared flow perpendicular to the magnetic field suppresses the turbulence, and also breaks a symmetry of the local model. The resulting asymmetry creates a turbulent residual stress which can counteract diffusive momentum transport and contribute to spontaneous rotation. The competition between symmetry breaking and turbulence suppression results in a maximum in the nondiffusive momentum flux at intermediate shearing rates. Whilst this component of the momentum transport is driven by the sheared flow, it is also found to be suppressed by the shearing more strongly than the thermal transport. The direction of the residual stress reverses for negative magnetic shear, but also persists at zero magnetic shear. The parallel component of the centrifugal force traps particles on the outboard side of the plasma, which destabilises trapped particle driven modes. The perpendicular component of the centrifugal force appears as a centrifugal drift which modifies the phase relation between density and electric field perturbations, and is stabilising for both electron and ion driven instabilities. For ion temperature gradient dominated turbulence, an increased fraction of slow trapped electrons enhances the convective particle pinch, suggesting increased density peaking for strongly rotating plasmas. Heavy impurities feel the centrifugal force more strongly, therefore the effects of rotation are significant for impurities even when the bulk ion Mach number is low. For ion driven modes, rotation results in a strong impurity convection inward, whilst a more moderate convection outward is found for electron driven modes.

Wingless is a secreted signalling molecule with multiple roles in patterning developing Drosophila. Previous work has shown that in the Drosophila embryonic epidermis, regulated degradation controls the distribution of Wingless protein, leading to an asymmetric range. The actual mechanism of Wingless degradation is not currently understood. I have used gain and loss of function experiments to examine the role of the signalling receptors, Dffizzled-2 and Arrow, in the control of Wingless degradation. Receptor mediated degradation can be subdivided into three steps: capture, endocytosis and targeting to lysosomes. Dfrizzled-2 is understood to play a key role in capture and indeed when Dfrizzled-2 is overexpressed, Wingless is stabilised at the cell surface. I have shown that Wingless and Dfrizzled-2 also colocalise in endocytic structures and by using mutants of Dfrizzled-2,1 have shown that Dfrizzled-2 is actively involved in the endocytosis of Wingless. Dfrizzled-2 therefore appears to function in the first two steps towards degradation, capture and endocytosis, however it is clearly not sufficient for degradation as when overexpressed, Dfrizzled-2 stabilises Wingless. This suggests that a limiting factor is absent that prevents Wingless captured by DFrizzled-2 from being degraded. I investigated the possibility that this limiting factor could be Arrow. I have shown that indeed, Arrow brings about the degradation of the Dfrizzled-2-Wingless complex. This activity is specific to Dfrizzled-2, since Arrow does not cause degradation of Wingless stabilised by Dally-like, another Wingless receptor. My results have led to a model where there is a division of labour between the two signalling receptors Dfrizzled-2 has functions in capture and endocytosis and Arrow, while also contributing somewhat to endocytosis, brings the signal that directs Wingless to lysosomes. Further investigations have been carried out to identify the specific motifs in Arrow that target Wingless to degradation.