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Developing a transcultural arts-based participatory approach to exploring the drivers of diabetes and hypertension among African communities in Scotland and Malawi
Get PDFBackground: African communities in Scotland and Malawi are disproportionately affected by noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes and hypertension. There is a need to understand the specific socio-cultural drivers of these diseases among different communities to develop health promotion interventions that are effective and sustainable. Arts-based participatory approaches are a collaborative strategy to explore underlying experiences of NCDs using creative activities (e.g. music, drawing). A transcultural model which values multiple perspectives and diverse cultural identities, could support the development of a methodology that can be adapted and applied with diverse communities to generate culturally-situated insights into NCD risk factors and inform culturally compelling health promotion interventions. This research aims to develop a framework for a transcultural arts-based participatory approach (TABPA) to explore the drivers of diabetes and hypertension among African communities in Scotland and Malawi.
Methods: This research involved close collaboration with community members, local arts-practitioners, and stakeholders in each setting, and was carried out in three phases to develop a TABPA framework for wider implementation. Phase 1 involved a familiarisation process with communities in Malawi and Scotland. Walkalong interviews (N= 8 Malawi: N=10 Scotland) were used to explore local perspectives on community, NCDs, and local art forms. Three single-gender community workshops (Malawi: N=10 gender and N=12 gender, Scotland: N=11 women) were used to determine what art forms would be compatible with community interests and adaptable to explorations of NCDs, and how participants would respond to arts based participatory workshops in practice. Finally, two stakeholder workshops (Malawi: N=10 in-person, Scotland: N=4 online) were conducted to learn more about community capacity for arts-based health research from the perspectives of key local stakeholders.
Phases 2 and 3 involved the pilot and refinement of the TABPA in Scotland (Phase 2) and Malawi (Phase 3). Single-gender TABPA workshops were piloted with women in Scotland (N=12) and men Malawi (N=10) before being refined and conducted with women in Malawi (N=10) and men in Scotland (N=3). The TABPA workshops followed a simple, flexible, scaffolding structure, using arts-based activities to explore community perspectives on the risk factors of diabetes and hypertension. Data from all three Phases were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Findings: Phase 1 walkalong interviews in both Malawi and Scotland generated a deeper understanding of the local contexts that would shape community involvement in the TABPA workshops. In Malawi, participants defined community as belonging to “one family” within their local area. In Scotland, definitions of community were more complex, with many participants seeing themselves as belonging to several communities at one time. In both settings, communities were concerned about diabetes and hypertension, were knowledgeable about risk factors, including diet and stress, and several had personal or familial experiences of the diseases. Many participants indicated that they had experience of arts-based activities through community events (Malawi), community organisations (Scotland) and places of worship (both). However, community members in each setting revealed barriers to participation in arts, such as a lack of time or opportunities. These insights informed the design and implementation of the Phase 1 community and stakeholder workshops, which highlighted that a range of art forms including music and dance, drama, drawing, and poetry, could be effectively used to explore hypertension and diabetes, especially if they are culturally engaging (e.g. music) and accessible (e.g. drawing). Offering flexibility and choice over the art-form and the content fostered participant engagement, relationship building and co-learning. Stakeholders in each context also highlighted the importance of supporting workshop accessibility (e.g. by providing reimbursement for travel and childcare).
The Phase 2 and 3 TABPA workshops were initially informed by the Phase 1 findings and refined using learnings from initial pilot implementations in both countries. The workshops used a scaffolding structure consisting of five activities including games, individual visualisations, creative group activities, performance and reflection. Community members used drama, song, drawing and storytelling, and shared culturally-situated understanding of the risk factors of diabetes and hypertension (e.g. social prestige as a driver of unhealthy eating in Malawi and the impact of the UK immigration on health behaviours in Scotland). Participants also shared personal and emotive narratives about how they and their families had been impacted by diabetes and hypertension and reflected positively on the TABPA workshops as a space where they felt “free” to express their views. However, the workshops also highlighted power dynamics during the co-production of knowledge, such as differing expectations regarding whether the workshops should include health information dissemination and diverging expectations around the quality of the artistic outputs. Overall, the TABPA workshops supported the model and highlighted that community involvement in the development could support a culturally-compelling research design.
Conclusions: Although this research was developed and conducted in diverse contexts, the TABPA workshops appeared promising as a means to gain culturally-situated insights into the drivers of diabetes and hypertension in each community. Thus, while the need for Phase 1 will depend on the practitioner’s familiarity with the community, this research presents a TABPA framework consisting of: i) a familiarisation phase to gain in-depth understanding of the target community and local context; and ii) a scaffolding TABPA workshop protocol to explore community perspectives and experiences of NCD risk factors. Recommendations for future implementation of the framework by researchers and practitioners are provided including the importance of flexibility, supportive facilitators and responsiveness to community and practitioner expectations
Conceptualising employment relationships: why the law struggles to regulate platform work
Get PDFTo date, regulating platform work in a manner that genuinely extends labour rights to workers has been an uphill battle. Across jurisdictions, the notion of the standard employment relationship has shaped both the scope of labour law and the course of its conceptual development, limiting the law’s capacity to regulate atypical forms of work, such as platform work. Against this backdrop, this dissertation explores the extent to which labour law has been able to conceptualise and respond to platform work. After deconstructing the notion of the standard employment relationship and its legal counterpart - the contract of employment, this dissertation explores how platforms have organised work, through an analysis of four patents filed by Uber and DoorDash. This analysis is followed by a comparative overview of caselaw on the determination of platform worker status. Overall, this dissertation finds that a major obstacle to extending genuine labour rights to platform workers is to be found in platforms’ ability to organise and reorganise work through algorithmic means around the legal form of employment, resulting in these firms being able to repeatedly place workers into the legal category of self-employment - even following court decisions to the contrary
Exploring the impact of managerial perception of social anomie on the innovation orientation and innovation performance of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in China
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Functionalisation of metamaterials and their applications in novel chiral biosensing technologies
Get PDFNanotechnologies have the potential to transform our society, offering unprecedented control over matter and enabling a multitude of applications across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Scaling materials down to the nanoscale presents a significant challenge, necessitating evermore complex manufacturing techniques. Despite extensive research on the enhanced properties of nanoscale materials, most of the real-world applications have yet to see widespread adoption. In this thesis, the extraordinary optical properties of metamaterials will be explored and applied to the development of next-generation ultrasensitive chiral sensors. Metamaterials, in this context, are engineered periodic arrays of subwavelength-scale plasmonic structures that produce optical responses unmatched with naturally occurring materials.
The chemical functionalisation of these metamaterials is a critical step in numerous applications such as sensing, photovoltaic and optical technologies. In this PhD research, a novel selective functionalisation technique has been developed, enabling control over the chemical selectivity of plasmonic nanostructures. This is possible using a thermoresponsive polymer with a functional end group that can be switched on and off using the heat directly generated by the nanostructures through thermosplasmonic effects.
The application of chiral metamaterials in chiral sensing is a focal point in this thesis, where several techniques are studied for the detection and characterisation of chiral molecules. In the first project, plasmonic circularly polarised luminescence is used to probe the near field of a chiral metamaterial and detect a monolayer of a de novo peptide, which cannot be achieved with a light scattering technique in the far field. A second study focuses on surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy applied to the discrimination of chiral helicoid nanoparticles using a chiral metamaterial. This is possible through the enantio-dependent intensity of the electromagnetic hotspots, which is “hotter” for matching combinations and “colder” for mismatching ones. The final research project in this PhD exploits chiral metamaterials in the infrared, where the vibrational modes of a single molecular layer of amino acid can be detected. Enantiomeric discrimination of multilayers of this molecule was also achieved by enhancing vibrational circular dichroism effects using the same chiral plasmonic metamaterial
Characterising constitutive activity and inverse agonism across the free fatty acid G protein-coupled receptors using BRET biosensors
Get PDFRecent studies have identified five G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), known as free fatty acid receptors (FFARs), as promising targets for treating metabolic and inflammatory conditions. However, the constitutive activity of these receptors has not yet been thoroughly characterised. In this study, bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) biosensors were employed to define the constitutive signalling properties of all five FFARs. The bystander-BRET technique was first used to assess β-arrestin2 recruitment to each FFAR, enabling the determination of which receptors naturally interact with β-arrestin2 in the
absence of a ligand. Among the five FFARs tested, FFA4 exhibited the highest levels of constitutive and basal β-arrestin2 recruitment. Furthermore, the extent of constitutive β-arrestin2 recruitment was directly proportional to the amount of FFA4 expressed, indicating a strong relationship between receptor abundance and constitutive signalling activity.
Although several receptors did not display measurable constitutive signalling, the bystander BRET assay proved effective for detecting agonist-stimulated β-arrestin2 recruitment across all FFARs. The magnitude of agonist-induced arrestin recruitment varied by receptor, following the order: FFA4 > GPR84 > FFA1 > FFA2/FFA3. This suggests that FFA4 is not only the most active in the absence of a ligand but also the most responsive to agonist stimulation in terms of arrestin pathway engagement. Additionally, the effects of AH-7614, a well-characterised negative allosteric modulator (NAM) of FFARs, were evaluated. The results revealed that AH 7614 acts as an inverse agonist of β-arrestin2 recruitment, thereby reducing its constitutive activity. Moreover, AH-7614 partially inhibited agonist-mediated β-arrestin2 recruitment, primarily by decreasing the recruitment rate rather than completely blocking the response. These findings highlight the value of BRET-based assays for dissecting constitutive signalling at FFARs and the complexity of their regulation by both receptor expression and
pharmacological modulators. This study provides important insights into FFAR signalling mechanisms, which may inform the development of new therapeutic strategies targeting metabolic and inflammatory diseases.
Additionally, a bystander BRET-based internalisation assay was employed to measure both ligand-dependent and constitutive internalisation of free fatty acid receptors. These studies demonstrated that FFA4 receptors displayed constitutive internalisation, whereas FFA1, FFA4, and GPR84 displayed ligand-induced internalisation. FFA4 NAM AH-7614 functions as an inverse agonist of FFA4 internalisation. The kinetics of the AH-7614 internalisation inverse agonism response were significantly slower than those of FFA4 agonists stimulating
internalisation. Furthermore, AH-7614 inhibited agonist-stimulated internalisation. However, this effect varied depending on the ligands used.
Constitutive G protein signalling of free fatty acid receptors was systematically assessed using TRUPATH BRET biosensors, enabling real-time and quantitative measurements of both ligand dependent and constitutive G protein activation.These experiments revealed that FFA2, FFA4, and GPR84 all displayed significant constitutive activity, coupled to both Gαq and Gαi2 in the absence of agonist stimulation. Importantly, the extent of constitutive G protein signalling correlated with receptor expression levels, indicating that higher receptor abundance enhances basal G protein activation. Pharmacological characterisation further demonstrated that antagonists of FFA2 and FFA4-specifically CATPB and AH-7614, respectively, function as inverse agonists by reducing basal Gαi2 activation, thereby confirming their ability to inhibit constitutive receptor signalling. The FFA4 allosteric modulator AH-7614 exhibited robust inverse agonistic properties and rapidly suppressed basal G protein activity. These findings establish that constitutive signalling is a prominent feature of FFA2, FFA4, and GPR84 andthat
inverse agonists targeting these receptors can effectively dampen their constitutive activity. This study provides new insights into the pharmacological regulation of free fatty acid receptors and underscores the importance of constitutive activity and inverse agonism in GPCR biology.
In summary, this thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the constitutive and ligand regulated signalling properties of free fatty acid receptors, with a particular focus on their G protein coupling profiles and trafficking dynamics. By employing advanced BRET- based biosensors, including the TRUPATH platform, we systematically characterised both ligand dependent and constitutive G protein activation across the FFA receptor family. These studies revealed that FFA2, FFA4, and GPR84 display significant constitutive G protein signalling, and that the extent of this basal activity is closely linked to receptor expression levels. Furthermore, pharmacological profiling demonstrated that antagonists of FFA2 and FFA4 function as inverse agonists, effectively suppressing constitutive G protein activity, with the FFA4 allosteric modulator AH-7614 exhibiting rapid and robust inverse agonism. Overall, bystander BRET and Trupath have provided new insights into the complex trafficking, internalisation, and G protein behaviour of these receptors, highlighting the importance of characterising these receptors for validation in interpreting receptor dynamics. Collectively, these findings advance our understanding of the fundamental pharmacology and cell biology of fatty acid receptors and establish a set of sensitive quantitative tools and conceptual frameworks that will be invaluable for future drug discovery efforts targeting these receptors in metabolic and inflammatory diseases
Thiol-reactive small molecules to accentuate oxidative stress in mitochondria
No full textAbstract not currently available
The effect of emotional intelligence and emotional regulation in elite military units
Get PDFDespite widespread application of emotional intelligence (EI) assessments in high-stakes occupations, fundamental theoretical and methodological challenges persist regarding how well current measurements represent the nomological network of EI and their predictive validity. The extent to which existing EI instruments capture a unified construct versus distinct psychological phenomena, remains unclear. Simultaneously, while emotional regulation (ER) theory demonstrates clear links to performance under stress, there remains a critical absence of empirically validated intra-personal regulation interventions that can be effectively deployed in real-world, high-pressure contexts. This thesis addresses these substantial theoretical and practical limitations through two complementary studies investigating EI measurement precision and ER intervention efficacy within British Royal Marine Commandos training.
Study 1 examined how well current EI measurements represent the construct by investigating convergent validity between two leading ability-based assessments, the MSCEIT and GECo, and their predictive utility for military training success. Analysis revealed weak to moderate correlations between total EI scores, with similarly labelled sub-scales showing negligible correlations, indicating low convergent validity and suggesting these instruments capture different aspects of EI’s nomological network. Comparative analysis demonstrated that Officer recruits possessed significantly higher EI across most domains compared to civilian reference samples, while non-Officer recruits showed mixed profiles. Logistic regression identified only the GECo emotional management sub-scale as predictive of Officer training success, while the MSCEIT showed no predictive utility in either cohort, and no EI measures predicted non-Officer outcomes.
Study 2 evaluated a novel three-component ER intervention (The King Strategy®1) combining resonance breathing, cognitive reframing, and vagus nerve reset techniques through a longitudinal experimental design (n=233). Mixed-effects modelling revealed significant improvements in Commando training performance markers for intervention participants. Under acute stress serials, critical findings included enhanced memory recall when ER strategies were actively employed, with optimal heart rate recovery occurring within 99 seconds; beyond this threshold, memory performance declined significantly. Longitudinally, the intervention increased heart rate variability (RMSSD), reduced perceived stress, enhanced interoceptive awareness, and improved EI sub-scales (management, understanding, regulation) while leaving emotional recognition unchanged.
These findings contribute to EI theory by demonstrating measurement challenges within the construct’s nomological network while establishing utility for role-specific applications. The study advances ER theory by providing empirical validation of a multi-modal intra-personal regulation strategy and identifying critical physiological thresholds for cognitive performance under stress. Practically, this research informs evidence-based selection processes and provides a deployable intervention for enhancing human performance in high-stakes environments
Three essays on financial analysts
Get PDFThis thesis comprises three chapters in related to the financial analysts. The first chapter focuses on the textual information in analyst reports. The second chapter examines the impact of analyst coverage. The third chapter investigates analysts’ forecasting behavior in relation to the cultural characteristics of covered companies.
The first study in Chapter one examines the determinants and the impacts of analysts’ tendency to provide similar textual information in their reports. To implement the tests, I collect a large sample of analyst report transcripts for the S&P 500 companies from 2015 to 2020. I introduce four factors to investigate the possible determinants of analyst report similarity, which include analysts’ herding behavior, analysts’ lack of ability, analysts’ learning behavior, and the significant firm-related news. The regression results indicate that these four factors are positively associated with the analyst report similarity, which suggests that the four factors are likely to be the determinants of analyst report similarity. Next, I examine whether this textual similarity among analyst reports has implications for the market. The results indicate a negative association between the analyst report similarity and the short-term investor reactions, suggesting that market investors consider an analyst report as less informative if the report contains the textual information that is more similar to that in other prior analysts’ reports. In the additional analysis, I find that this similarity likely hinders investors’ understanding of analysts’ quantitative outputs, including the earnings forecasts, stock recommendations, and price target forecasts. In addition, I find that the observed negative investor reaction to the analyst report similarity is stronger when firm managers have more incentives to withhold relevant information, but it is alleviated if the analysts are from larger brokers.
The second study in Chapter two investigates the influence of analysts on corporate governance in the context of corporate culture. I first examine the association between the analyst coverage of a firm and the score of the firm’s culture. The baseline results show that the firm with higher level of analyst coverage is associated with a lower score of corporate culture. This is consistent with the argument that analysts can impose short-term pressure on firms, resulting in a weak corporate culture. In further tests, I find that this negative association is stronger for the long-term oriented cultural values than other cultural values. Furthermore, to deal with the potential endogeneity problems, I first employ the two-stage least squares model based on a commonly used instrumental variable in this field, the expected coverage. The results suggest that the analyst coverage has a negative impact on the corporate culture. Moreover, I implement a quasi-natural experiment based on two exogenous shocks to analyst coverage, the brokerage closures and mergers. Consistent with the above findings, the results of the Difference-in-Difference model indicate that the analyst coverage could negatively influence the covered firm’s culture. Taken together, these results are mostly consistent with the pressure effect that analysts impose short-term pressure on firms, increasing management myopia and resulting in a weak corporate culture. In additional tests, I find that analysts’ negative effect on the corporate culture is alleviated when firms are covered by more experienced analysts, when firms are more likely to reach analysts’ earnings forecasts, and when firms tend to have better corporate governance as captured by a higher competitive market.
The third study in Chapter three examines whether analysts’ forecasting behavior is affected by the covered firm’s information environment that is characterized by a strong integrity culture. I first investigate the association between analyst forecast boldness and the covered firms’ scores of integrity culture. The baseline results indicate a positive relationship between the two variables, suggesting that analysts tend to issue bolder earnings forecasts when covering the firm with a stronger integrity culture. In further analysis, the results show that analysts’ bolder forecasts for firms with a strong integrity culture are associated with decreased market reactions, indicating that analysts’ bold opinions for these firms are regarded as less informative by market investors. Moreover, I find that the firm with a higher score of integrity culture is negatively associated with the number of analysts following the firm, suggesting that the analyst’s service is less demanded for the firm with a stronger integrity culture. Additionally, other results show that analysts tend to issue less accurate earnings forecasts for firms with higher scores of integrity culture. Furthermore, I mitigate the potential endogeneity issue by conducting the two-stage least squares regression based on two instrumental variables: the average score of corporate integrity culture in an industry and the CEO age of the firm. Consistently, the regression results support the positive association between the firm’s integrity culture and analyst forecast boldness. Finally, I introduce an alternative measure of the score of corporate integrity culture based on the analyst report transcripts. Consistent with the main findings, the regression results show that the corporate integrity culture is positively associated with analysts’ forecast boldness. However, the association is not statistically significant, possibly due to the limited sample of analyst report transcripts
Applying Action-Research to the analysis of motivation in FL learners: A case study on the translation of motivated behaviour into Italian teaching practice
Get PDFThe importance of motivation in learning a Foreign Language (FL) is well established, but less widely explored is whether understanding learners’ motivation can meaningfully inform curriculum design. This study is informed by Action-Research, a model built on immediate and ongoing reflections on educational practice (Leitch & Day, 2000); it relies on the fundamental notion in language education that motivation and successful learning outcomes are closely interrelated, as extensive research has shown. However, what the present study aims to explore further is whether tracking motivation – through questionnaires including an initial needs analysis, learning diaries, interviews and Focus Groups – could inform curriculum development of an Italian FL course. Participants (n=9) were complete beginners in Italian, who provided feedback on their learning experiences, and their motivations, expectations and needs within the microcosm of this Italian class. Such data informed the development of the curriculum design for the whole duration of the Italian course and represented at the same time a precious resource for the teacher-researcher to understand the motivation of the learner-participants.
It is intended that the findings will contribute to the ongoing field of investigation on those learning LOTEs’ (Languages Other Than English) and their motivation, with a specific focus on improved materials design. Furthermore, the present study aims to explore a learnercentred approach within an Italian learning process, aligning therefore with other current educational frameworks in the field, such as and Identity informed Curriculum Design and Negotiated Syllabus
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