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Focusing on a selection of musical works from within three genres -- symphony, string quartet, and the piano repertoire -- I argue that the experience of music from the late 20th and early 21st centuries must be understood in terms of its mediation by the continued presence of the past, not simply through reference to past musical formal materials, but also to the history of experience as musically mediated. Following this logic, I explore a discursive strategy based around philosophical tensions central to the aesthetics of post-Enlightenment musical experience -- in particular, the dialectics of nature and culture, and of mind and body. This allows me to interweave closely strands of musicological and philosophical thought, exploring and developing the latter as they have been taken into, exhibited, and played with in a range of late modernist works. I focus on works that draw attention to their historical situatedness, music by Wolfgang Rihm, Helmut Lachenmann, Giya Kancheli, Valentin Silvestrov, Alfred Schnittke, Thomas Adès, Morton Feldman, and Jukka Tiensuu. I draw on, though outline the need to take forward, Theodor Adorno's understanding of the historical qualities of musical material, yet also foster an understanding of musical experience situated between past and present without recourse to explicitly postmodern quotation or "intertextuality", something I implicitly critique. Through illustrating points of affinity and convergence between musical works and experiential issues, I pull together seemingly disparate methodological approaches. These include musical semiotics, Critical Theory, embodied phenomenology, and psychoanalytic theory.

The biogenic trace gases dimethylsulphide (DMS) and methane play a major role in the Earth's climate and atmospheric chemistry. DMS makes a significant negative contribution to radiative forcing and methane is an important greenhouse gas. The marine environment is an important source of both DMS and methane and this thesis investigated the interactions between methylated sulphur compounds and methanogenesis within micro-environments in the upper-water column. The production of DMS is closely associated with dimethylsulphoniopropionate (DMSP) and dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) although comparatively little is known about the dynamics of DMSO in the marine environment. This study analysed the production of DMSO by a range of marine phytoplankton species in comparison with DMSP. Algal concentrations of DMSO were taxon-dependent and an average DMSPp:DMSOp ratio of 4.85 was calculated for the phytoplankton species analysed. The consistent presence of DMSO at ~20 % of total intracellular methylated sulphur (DMSP + DMSO) suggests it is an important algal constituent. The fate of DMSP and DMSO produced by algal cells was analysed in a series of grazing experiments with the copepods Temora longicornis and Acartis clausi, and the dinoflagellate Scrippsiella trochoidea. The relative importance of assimilation, sloppy feeding, DMS production and excretion of faecal pellets as sinks for algal-DMSP was assessed. In comparison to the ambient marine environment, both algal cells and copepod faecal pellets were identified as micro-habitats of elevated DMSP and DMSO concentrations. Millimolar concentrations of DMSP were measured in algal cells and micromolar concentrations of DMSP were recorded in copepod faecal pellets. These hotspots of DMSP and DMSO may be associated with chemical processes that differ from bulk seawater characteristics, such as the transformation of DMSO as revealed in coastal pelagic particulate material. Furthermore, oxygen depletion at the micro-scale could facilitate the presence of anaerobic bacteria, or anaerobic microbial activity, in the predominantly aerobic pelagic environment. The occurrence of methanogenic Archaea specifically associated with copepod faecal pellets from mono-species cultures of copepods, environmental samples and total pelagic particulates was investigated using 16S rRNA gene libraries. Clusters of sequences closely related to Methanogenium, Methanobacterium and Methanolobus were recovered. This work revealed that CO2-reducing methanogens can exist in the pelagic environment where it was previously assumed methylotrophic methanogenesis dominated. This work demonstrated that the methylated sulphur compounds represent a metabolic substrate for methanogens in the upper water column. The addition of DMSP, DMSG and DMS to samples collected from the upper water column stimulated methanogenesis when incubated under anaerobic conditions. The addition of inhibitors suggest that other anaerobic microbes e.g. sulphate-reducing bacteria, may play a key role in this process. The potential for DMSP and DMSO to serve as precursors for methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as well as DMS, has important implications when considering the emissions of these compounds from the marine environment and their role in the Earth's climate.

In humans, Kaposi's Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) is capable of establishing latent infection in B-cells. During latency no infectious virions are produced, the viral episome is maintained and few viral genes are expressed. Latently infected cells, however, retain the capacity to enter the lytic cycle. KSHV ORF50 encodes the transcription factor RTA whose expression is sufficient to initiate the full lytic cycle. RNA interference (RNAi) involves the sequence specific silencing of gene expression. Although extensively validated and widely available at present, lentiviral vector-mediated RNAi was unavailable in 2002. This thesis describes the generation and characterisation of shRNA expression cassettes that can be delivered using self- inactivating lentiviral vectors. Using shRNAs designed to interfere with KSHV ORF50 expression, the number of cells expressing RTA following chemical induction of the lytic cycle was greatly reduced. Analysis of viral lytic antigens and virus production suggests that reducing RTA expression prevents latent KSHV from initiating the lytic cycle. Although KSHV infects B-cells in vivo, most B-cell lines are recalcitrant to KSHV infection in vitro. This thesis describes the in vitro susceptibility of a panel of B-cell lines, representing different stages of B-cell differentiation, and other common cell-lines to recombinant KSHV infection. Interestingly, all the adherent cell-lines examined were susceptible to recombinant KSHV infection whereas we were unable to identify any B-cell lines which were efficient targets for recombinant KSHV infection KSHV positive primary effusion lymphoma (PEL) cells are phenotypically similar to plasmablasts, which represent a late stage in B-cell differentiation, immediately preceding terminal differentiation into plasma cells. This thesis examines the stage at which B-cell development is arrested in PEL, focussing on the transcription factor X- box binding protein-1 (XBP-1) and the unfolded protein response (UPR). Using exogenously expressed XBP-1, the role of XBP-1 as the possible molecular switch linking terminal differentiation and KSHV lytic reactivation is considered.