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This thesis examines three of Shakespeare’s plays in light of his engagement with the late Elizabethan Inns of Court. It considers the cultural, pedagogical, and intellectual world of the Inns and their impact on the emerging dramatic industry in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Each of the three main chapters explores one of Shakespeare’s plays that was either performed at one of the Inns of Court (The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night), or otherwise considered to have been performed there (Troilus and Cressida). By looking at Shakespeare’s Inns of Court plays collectively, the thesis will seek to elucidate how their design complements the unique performance context of the Inns of Court revels, and the ways in which these works reflect or contemplate the Innsman’s social, political, and professional realities. The latter two chapters draw comparisons between Shakespeare’s relationship with the Inns and that of his contemporary, Ben Jonson, whose early satires were heavily indebted to literary fashions cultivated at these institutions. Ultimately, the thesis attempts to demonstrate the diverse strategies Shakespeare implemented in these plays in order to entertain, and to provoke, one of the most important and influential sectors of his audience.

A suite of new collision avoidance systems (CAS) is presented for use in heavy vehicles whose structure and size necessarily impede driver visibility is introduced. The main goal of the project is to determine the appropriate use of each of the commercially available technologies and, where possible, produce a low cost variant suitable for use in proximity detection on large mining industry haul trucks. CAS variants produced were subjected to a field demonstration and, linked to the output from the earlier CAS 1 project, (a production high-definition in-cabin video monitor and r/f tagging system). The CAS 2 system used low cost Doppler continuous wave radar antennae coupled to the CAS 1 monitor to indicate the presence of an object moving at any speed above 3 Km/h relative to the antennae. The novelty of the CAS 3 system lies in the design of 3 interconnected, modules. The modules are 8 radar antennae (as used in CAS 2) modules located on the truck, software to interface with the end user (i.e. the drivers of the trucks) and a display unit. Modularisation enables the components to be independently tested, evaluated and replaced when in use. The radar antennae modules and the system as a whole are described together with the empirical tests conducted and results obtained. The tests, drawing on Monte-Carlo simulation techniques, demonstrate both the 'correctness' of the implementations and the effectiveness of the system. The results of the testing of the final prototype unit were highly successful both as a computer simulation level and in practical tests on light vehicles. A number of points, (as a consequence of the field test), are reviewed and their application to future projects discussed.

The ionization potential (IP) as well as the coupling and interactions occurring between the states converging to each of the spin-orbit split states of the ground state of the ion core are analyzed using resonance enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) spectroscopy. Although this is not the first time that the IP for carbon has been measured, the measurement was made to an as yet unseen level of accuracy. Additionally, this is the first time that the interseries interactions have been analyzed for the 2pnp states of carbon. This was accomplished by first exciting from the 2s22p2 3Pj (1 = 0, 1,2) ground state up to the 2p3s 3Pj (1 = 0, 1,2) intermediate state with a vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) photon. This enabled a second transition up to the Rydberg states for the respective transitions. The Rydberg states were scanned from a principal quantum number of about 30 to well beyond the ionization limit. From the analysis of these states, the ionization limit for the series converging to the2P1/2 state of the excited core is determined to an accuracy of ±0.05 cm-1. Additionally, the series interactions occurring within the Rydberg series excited from the 2p3s 3Pj and 2p3s 3P0 states were analyzed to yield quantum defects, interaction matrix elements, and relative dipole matrix elements for comparison to theoretical calculations.