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The organisational-level translation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and accounting: case studies of selected Saudi higher education institutions (HEIs)
Get PDFThis study examines the translation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the organisational level. Even though, the SDGs were designed to be implemented at the national level, it is recognised that government action alone is insufficient. Rather, concerted action from governments, organisations from the public and private sectors, civil society organisations, and citizens is needed. Among these actors, higher education institutions (HEIs) have noted their commitment to adopting the SDGs. Despite the significant role that HEIs play in achieving the SDGs, research related to this sector and SDGs remains scarce. Therefore, using the lens of translation theory, this study aims to investigate the process through which the SDGs are translated within HEIs, as well as the motivations behind such translation. Additionally, it examines the role of accounting, if any, in the translation process of the SDGs at the organisational level.
In investigating these questions, 37 semi-structured interviews were conducted with various stakeholders involved in the translation of the SDGs and related frameworks, including Saudi Vision 2030, with participants drawn from two Saudi HEIs as well as government entities. Additionally, a qualitative analysis was performed on reports and social media data related to this translation within both institutions. To further supplement and verify the data obtained from the interviews, direct observations were conducted over approximately four months at these two universities.
The study finds that as the translation of the SDGs advances, there is an increasing focus on adapting these goals within national contexts. However, this study argues that the adaptation of SDGs extends beyond the national level, underscoring its pivotal role at the organisational level. The process of SDG adaptation is broad in scope, encompassing diverse dimensions of policy implementation and necessitating consideration of cultural, social, political, economic, and environmental contexts. This study emphasises the criticality of aligning the SDGs with organisational contexts
Place, pollution and public health: municipal responses for sanitation in Birmingham 1840s-1920s
Get PDFThis thesis explores the municipal responses to poor sanitation and river pollution in Birmingham between the 1840s and the 1920s. It assesses the impact and effectiveness of those responses on the health of England’s second largest city and re-examines the contemporary view of the city’s governance and the alleged association of sanitation reform and ‘municipal socialism’ linked to one of the city’s political figures, Joseph Chamberlain. This history of sanitation, set within its political, social and economic contexts, examines the development of utilities for water supply and sewage treatment in Birmingham and offers the first thorough academic analysis of the broader municipal policy towards public health in the city during that period. It also explores the development of municipal systems and public health administration, as well as medical theory and practice, and is therefore a history of the urban environment that overlaps with the social history of medicine.
To examine the interrelationship and importance of place, people and policy this study adopts a microhistorical approach to appraise a single local authority, particular committees, specialised roles and individuals. Attention is given not only to those who governed, but also to people who worked within those systems. Close analysis of place-specific primary sources, some never used before and produced by those involved, has facilitated a fuller contextualisation of municipal responses and reveals the nature and effectiveness of local government systems dealing with public health.
The research findings reveal not a sanitary revolution but rather a lengthy foundational period of local government development and investment in sanitary infrastructure before Birmingham had the capability to address poor sanitation for all citizens. While this foundational period did not have an immediate positive impact on the health of the city’s poorest between 1870 and 1904, it nevertheless throws new light on the living conditions in the courts of back-to-back housing and adds significantly to an understanding of the impact of waste management systems. This challenges the image of Birmingham closely linked to Chamberlain and his impact on sanitation and municipal socialism in the 1870s and 1880s; an image this thesis argues is far from justified. The findings can feed into debates surrounding urban sanitation, infrastructure investment and its effects on mortality, and underscores the importance of place-specific contextualisation.
The impact of Birmingham’s first two Medical Officers of Health is also considered within place-specific, medical and contemporary understandings of disease contexts, with a reassessment of their impact on infant mortality in the city. This thesis adds significantly to an understanding of Birmingham’s municipal history and extends the historiography for the beginnings of the water industry in England and Wales and the history of public health in Britain
British political theatre and the Gothic mode, 2000-2022
No full textThis thesis proposes that Gothic dramaturgy has emerged as a potent and timely mode of political address in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Developing and exploring a Gothic model of political dramaturgy, this study builds upon recent waves of scholarly interest in Gothic/Horror performance cultures, and presents the first full-length critical examination of where the Gothic has met with the political on British stages since the turn of the millennium. Through analysis of selected dramatic works from a range of contemporary British playwrights, including Caryl Churchill, Winsome Pinnock, Stef Smith, Travis Alabanza, Bryony Lavery, Dennis Kelly and more, the chapters of the thesis demonstrate how Gothic dramaturgy at once illuminates forms of agency available to contemporary social subjects, and identifies the myriad ways that agency is threatened in a post-millennial era of perpetual “crisis” (Angelaki, 2017). Taking a thematic approach, the thesis illustrates that Gothic political drama is capable of offering powerful interventions in a variety of sociocultural discourses. Chapters focus on the ecocritical applications of ‘Ecogothic Drama’; the anti-patriarchal operations of ‘Queer Gothic’ and ‘Post/Feminist Gothic’ dramaturgies; and the fraught, but also politically potent relationship of Gothic dramaturgy and the NeoColonial. In doing so, this thesis offers a series of vital new perspectives on the urgent political and cultural roles of a theatrical form which, until recent years, has received startlingly slight critical attention
Discovery of selective saccharide receptors via Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry
Get PDFThe diagnosis of various diseases and pathological conditions can be accomplished by screening and detecting glycans in cells. Certain glycans serve as excellent biomarkers, being related to cell malfunctioning, while other structurally similar glycans perform completely different functions and are naturally present in healthy cells. Despite the theoretical feasibility of using glycans as biomarkers for early disease detection, our current inability to discriminate between them limits their use.
One promising approach to distinguishing between glycans is targeting their dissimilarities in saccharide chains. However, designing selective receptors for saccharides is challenging due to the complexity of these molecules. Their vast diversity, the fact that they exist in many interconvertible forms, their lack of recognisable functional groups, or the fact that they are normally heavily solvated in aqueous environments have made the design of receptors for saccharides a challenge that has kept the scientific community busy for the last 35 years. Although there have been ground-breaking discoveries in the field, improvements are needed to enhance our disease detection and risk stratification tools.
To address this challenge, we employed a technique known as Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry (DCC). DCC enables the self-formation and self-selection of the best possible receptor for a given target from a pool or library of potentially good ligands. DCC has been effective for creating receptors for biomolecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins, but its use for discovering sugar receptors is less explored. In this work, we filled this gap by implementing DCC for screening common saccharides (glucose, galactose, mannose, and fructose) using small, simple, and inexpensive building blocks. Our results indicated that molecule 2DD, which consists of a benzene ring with 2 units of amino acid aspartic acid derivatives connected in positions 1 and 3, is the best receptor in a library of very similar structures for the saccharides glucose, galactose, and mannose. For fructose, molecule 1P, a benzene ring linked to just one unit of the amino acid phenylaldehyde, was appointed as the best receptor. The differential behaviour of fructose can provide insight into the relatively unknown processes behind molecular recognition of sugars.
Molecules 2DD and 1P, as well as some other library members as negative controls, were then synthesised for further testing and DCC results were then validated by Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) and NMR techniques, proving the effectiveness of DCC as a molecular recognition tool for the creation of receptors for saccharides. Moreover, molecule 1P was found to have a high binding constant (K = 1762 M) and selectivity (50-100 times over other sugars) for fructose, which is surprisingly good considering the simplicity of the receptor.
A much more challenging approach was attempted by employing short peptides as scaffolds in DCC experiments. The benefits of using peptides are numerous but can be summarised in three bullet points: customisability, flexibility, and easiness in their synthesis. Unfortunately, we encountered many difficulties for the complete functionalisation of the peptides within the Dynamic Combinatorial Library (DCL) and this approach did not yield the desired results before the research project came to an end. However, we believe in its potential and the knowledge that we gained on the topic helped to stablish the foundations on which new research will be carried out in the near future within the research group.
In summary, this thesis reports the development of a rapid methodology for the discovery of selective receptors for monosaccharides, employing a library of simple and inexpensive starting building blocks. While this was a proof-of-concept study, it can be scalable to larger library sizes and to target more complex biomolecules, becoming a useful tool that could accelerate the discovery of new molecules with biomedical applications
Development and application of 3D X-ray diffraction for the study of phase transformations in metallic materials
Get PDFMany steel alloy types, both currently in use and under development, exploit a deformation-induced phase transformation to achieve a combined high strength and ductility. As deformation is applied to these alloys, a metastable retained austenite phase transforms to martensite. This process acts as a significant carrier of plasticity, increasing the work-hardening rate and therefore the ductility. The "stability", or resistance against martensitic transformation, of the austenite phase is the main parameter that governs the martensitic transformation rate and therefore the work-hardening behaviour of the steel. In the last few decades, the stability of an individual austenite grain has been shown to depend on a number of microstructural properties, such as the size of the grain, its orientation relative to the loading axis, the alloy chemistry, and the configuration of the grain's immediate crystallographic neighbourhood. A good understanding of how exactly these properties modify austenite grain stability is crucial to the development of accurate models of deformation-induced phenomena, which themselves directly contribute to the design of new and improved alloys that better exploit said phenomena.
In the past, austenite grain stability has usually been evaluated for a steel sample either through phase-averaged behaviour, where the stability of the phase overall is characterised, or on an individual grain level, where typically only a few grains are considered. This is primarily due to the difficulties involved with measuring the martensitic transformation in situ at a per-grain level for a large number of grains simultaneously. The recent development of far-field Three-Dimensional X-Ray Diffraction (3DXRD) has enabled such measurements on a range of polycrystalline materials, capturing the grain-level position, orientation and strain tensor for many thousands of grains in situ. However, the 3DXRD technique poses a number of significant challenges related to data analysis and post-processing, both crucial steps that must be carefully implemented to enable detailed measurements of complicated polycrystal samples.
In this study, 3DXRD was implemented at the I12 Joint Engineering, Environmental, and Processing (JEEP) Beamline at the Diamond Light Source X-ray synchrotron. Then, the capabilities of the technique were explored by examining how a microstructurally "simple" single phase ferritic steel responds to in-situ tensile deformation on a per-grain level. A number of micromechanical phenomena were investigated, including a small (but statistically significant) grain neighbourhood effect, where the stress state of a central grain was found to depend on the orientation of its immediate neighbourhood grains, a finding never before seen for large numbers of grains in a cubic polycrystal. During this 3DXRD implementation, a sophisticated automated data analysis and post-processing pipeline was developed, that enabled rapid exploration of such micromechanical effects.
With 3DXRD implemented and a data analysis pipeline developed, a novel metastable stainless steel alloy system was devised that enabled the exploration of the martensitic transformation at very low applied strains, as 3DXRD is typically limited to ~2% maximum strain. This alloy system was extensively characterised non-destructively in three dimensions with laboratory electron-based and X-ray based techniques, and was used to evaluate both the performance of multi-phase laboratory-based Diffraction Contrast Tomography (DCT), as well as a novel registration algorithm that accurately located two-dimensional planes measured with Electron Back-Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) within the three-dimensional DCT dataset.
Finally, the deformation response of the alloy was measured in-situ with 3DXRD at the ID11 beamline of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, coupled with in-situ EBSD scans using an in-chamber tensile stage. Substantial martensite transformations were found even within the ~2% maximum strain window, proving the alloy design was successful and enabling extensive in-situ analyses of austenite grain stability in the bulk material with 3DXRD. Austenite grain stability was found to be influenced by grain size, orientation, and local neighbourhood. Larger grains, grains oriented with {100} close to the loading axis, and grains with more ferrite/martensite-dense neighbourhoods were found to have reduced stability against deformation. The minimum strain work criterion model was also evaluated against the experimental data — it was found to correctly predict the orientation of martensite that formed in the majority of grains, given the parent orientation and macroscopic applied load. Grains where the model failed tended to have reduced levels of stress just before forming martensite, which was attributed to the use of the global stress state by the model as opposed to more granular measurements of the immediate stress field around a grain
Feminism, theology and everyday domestic skill within a phenomenological framework: An autoethnographic reflection
Get PDFAcademic theological writing on the incarnation avoids or contains very little phenomenologically unless informed by a feminist approach, such as that of Karen O'Donnell. This demeans or diminishes, implicitly or explicitly, the value of everyday lived experience in the life of faith, especially that of women, with whom the shaping of people's everyday remains, excluding them from a sense of being incarnated. To this end, my project reflects theologically on an autoethnographic account of my everyday domestic lived experience. Recognising the complexity of representing such an elusive concept/activity, I interweave five different thematic approaches because I work from a conviction that human lived experience is always embedded, entails integrative elements of 'both/and', and doesn't fit into reductionistic binaries, however convenient those categories are in writing about human living in a dissociated fashion. Wanting to be explicitly inductive in my approach, and framing the study within the phenomenological viewpoint of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on lived experience, especially in relation to his notion of 'flesh', I use an emergent analysis of Constructive Grounded Theory (Kathy Charmaz). My inability to 'untangle' the 'tangled web' of my everyday life into a dominating thread of theory leads me to the theorisation of the everyday in the work of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Ben Highmore and Luce Giard. I turn to the theopoetics of Catherine Keller, Richard Kearney, Mayra Rivera and Heather Walton to provide a richer, edgier, more mysterious sense of the flux, fluidity, dynamism and messy chaos of fleshy being in the home than are to be found in may feminist theories of embodiment. Finally, I resolve that all of these lenses are need to enable the 'appearing' or 'making visible' the 'flesh' that creates my daily living, especially when it comes to the facilitation of relationships with those who are non-verbal, pre-verbal, or 'othered' in some way, as Iris Marion Young and Mary McClintock Fulkerson, amongst others, have identified
Traditional authority, enlightenment, and education bureaucracy in Ghana: The case of the Otumfuo Education Fund
Get PDFSince the colonial period, monarchs in Asante have undertaken important projects in education to improve their communities' social well-being and material welfare. Following this tradition, in 1999, the current Asantehene Osei Tutu II initiated the Otumfuo Education Fund (OEF) to make education accessible to ‘brilliant but needy’ children in Asante and Ghana as a whole. This thesis examines the rise and fall of the Otumfuo Education Fund (OEF), to shed light on the complex relationship between education and the legitimacy of traditional rulers (‘chiefs’) in Ghana. It explores the interplay between traditional authority, formal education, and localised notions of social progress and success, as summed up in the Twi term anibue (lit. ‘eyes opened’, also translated as ‘enlightenment’).
Existing analyses of access to formal education in Ghana begin with mission-initiated and state-regulated efforts in the colonial period and have focused on the state and donors in the postcolonial period. This has hindered a deeper understanding of local initiatives and chiefs' utilization of education beyond formal state policy and practice. Situating the OEF within the historical context of traditional rulers' involvement in formal education, and in the specific global and national circumstances of the late 1990s, including democratization, World Bank initiatives, and the recognition of basic education as a child's right, it offers an interdisciplinary analysis of why development interventions in education fail.
Relying on archival records, interviews and observations, as well as data generated via local documentary practices, our findings suggest that the Asantehene Osei Tutu II strategically used education to further his hegemonic and political ambitions, ultimately impacting local support and dissatisfaction for the OEF. Contrary to conventional analysis of chiefs' role in development, this thesis challenges actor-oriented approaches and assumptions of brokerage. It highlights the importance of emotional and interpersonal dynamics in development practice. It also establishes a crucial link between the historical literature on education and political insights into the continuing power of traditional rulers, by showing how chiefs have incorporated bureaucratic governance into their registers of power through their engagement with education. Findings from the research hold important lessons for ongoing state initiatives (such as free Senior High School education, SHS) in expanding access to education for poorer communities in Ghana and Africa more broadly
The effect of corpus activities on EFL learners’ acquisition of phrasal verbs: contrasting explicit and implicit instruction
Get PDFPhrasal verbs (PVs) are considered an important aspect of EFL mastery; however, they are among the most puzzling forms for EFL learners (Celce-Murcia et al. 1999; Thrush, 2001). Arab EFL learners often find PVs exceptionally challenging, as Arabic, a Semitic language, does not have a specific category of PVs. It is hypothesized in this study that data-driven learning (DDL) is a possible foreign language learning approach to promote Arab EFL learners’ acquisition of PVs (Johns 1986). The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of corpus-based activities on EFL learners’ acquisition of PVs and examines how explicit and implicit instructions through corpus-based activities influence PV acquisition.
Before conducting the classroom intervention study, an exploratory corpus-based study of EFL learners', particularly intermediate Arab EFL learners’, usage of PVs was carried out to gain a clearer image of EFL learners’ actual usage. A selection of the 10 most and 10 least frequently used English PVs as identified in Liu (2011), were chosen for analysis. The EF-Cambridge Open Language Database (EFCAMDAT) served as a source of data produced by intermediate Arab EFL learners. The descriptive statistics for this study revealed that several semantic and syntactic PV errors are produced by Arab EFL learners. The main semantic error observed was the learners’ use of unsuitable PVs in various contexts. This included either choosing an incorrect verb or a wrong particle. Regarding syntactic errors, the primary grammatical errors were the lack of tense consistency with the PVs and the absence of subject-verb agreement.
As part of an experimental classroom intervention study, 76 female intermediate Saudi students studied 27 transitive and intransitive PVs by one of three different methods. I) The Control Group (N=25) followed the traditional learning approach through dictionaries. Learners had access to English definitions of each PV and carried out PV translation activities into Arabic. II) The Explicit DDL Group (N=26) followed the explicit ‘inductive’ learning protocol through which students were exposed to concordances with PVs and carried out some activities such as determining the meanings of the PVs from context or completing concordances with a suitable PV. III) The Implicit DDL Group (N=25) adopted the implicit instruction approach that exposed learners to a set of concordance lines and drew their attention to aspects other than PVs. All learners’ knowledge was tested before the start of the intervention, as well as after the intervention, at two different points in time, 7 days for the post-test and 28 days for the delayed post-test. A mixed effects linear regression analysis revealed a statistically significant improvement between the post and delayed post-test results for the Explicit DDL group compared to the Control group. While there was no significant difference between the Control group and the Implicit DDL group in the post-test, there was a statistically significant difference in the delayed post-test results, with an improvement for the Implicit DDL group. Finally, the Explicit DDL group scored better in the post-test in comparison with the Implicit DDL group, but there was no significant difference at the time of the delayed post-test.
This project contributes to advancing our understanding of Arab EFL learners' usage of PVs. It also involves an exploration of the effects of corpus-based activities on PV acquisition and the influence of explicit and implicit types of instructions on short and long-term learning gains, which can help relevant stakeholders make informed decisions about PV learning and teaching
Triphenoxazoles: utilising UV-excitable molecular fluorophores with tuneable emission for flow cytometry
No full textFluorescently labelled antibodies are a fundamental tool used in countless biological applications from monitoring surgical operations to identifying and diagnosing diseases. It was in the 1940s that Coons et al.1, 2 reported the method of labelling antibodies with a fluorescent molecule (fluorescein isocyanate) to identify antigens in mammalian tissue, a procedure commonly used today.
This thesis focuses on the development and use of fluorescently labelled antibodies in flow cytometry. Antibodies are labelled with a novel class of fluorescent dyes known as triphenoxazoles, which are excited from ~260 nm to ~425nm and can be chemically tuned to emit from 395 nm to over 600 nm. Conjugating triphenoxazoles to antibodies with a wide range of conditions and additives have been tested to improve performance and achieve specificity, without compromising on functionality. Antibody conjugation, characterisation and evaluation using both conventional and spectral flow cytometry are presented.
The majority of fluorescent dyes used in flow cytometry excite with the violet or higher wavelength lasers, relatively few UV excitable fluorophores are available, and some suffer from intrinsic limitations due to their tandem dye nature. Furthermore, as flow cytometry advances with the development of lasers that operate at even lower wavelengths, there is a rapidly increasing demand for reagents that can be excited by both deep UV (320 nm) and UV (355 nm) laser excitations
Analysis of unplugging as a common disassembly operation
Get PDFClimate change poses a serious existential threat to human societies and the natural environment worldwide. To lessen environmental damage, the circular economy seeks to convert from linear to closed-loop processes in which products, components, and materials circulate for as long as possible at their best value. It is well accepted that remanufacturing, a circular economy strategy that involves returning a product at the end of its service life to its original condition, is economically and environmentally beneficial. Robotising disassembly can make remanufacturing even more cost-effective by removing a substantial proportion of the labour costs associated with dismantling end-of-life products for subsequent processing. As unplugging of press-fitted components is a common operation in disassembly, it is appropriate to investigate how it can be robotised.
For cylindrical plugs and sockets, an unplugging technique, twist-and-pull or twisting-pulling, is proposed to reduce axial friction during the unplugging process. Through theoretical modelling, simulations, and experimental analysis, the interactions among twisting, pulling and axial friction reduction during unplugging are explored. An analysis of the experimental, simulation, and theoretical results confirmed that for small radial interference, twisting and pulling reduces the axial friction and the maximum required unplugging force.
For cuboid plugs and sockets, there are two conditions for the plug: unconstrained and constrained. Correspondingly, two novel disassembly methods, unconstrained wiggling and constrained wiggling, have been proposed. The theoretical models of these unplugging strategies are validated by Finite-Element Modelling. The experimental results prove that for soft plugs and hard sockets, wiggling reduces the axial friction and the maximum required unplugging force.
In conclusion, this thesis discusses three unplugging techniques for two different plug socket shapes to reduce the axial frictional resistance during the unplugging process and enable a robot to perform unplugging easily
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