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The Novel Use of Raman spectroscopy to Detect Bone Chemistry Changes with Ageing in the Human Skeleton
No full textA novel archaeal antiviral defence system and possible links to the origins of eukaryotic innate immunity
No full textNarratives of Female Saudi Adolescents : Intersectionality and English Language Learning
No full textThe current climate of change in Saudi Arabia has called into question the favoured position English has long held as a second language for Saudis. For today’s Saudi youth, this issue is highly pertinent as there are questions about how they navigate these changes and the role English might play in their lives and imagined futures. This thesis focuses on female adolescents, who will be particularly affected by recent reforms aimed at enhancing the role of women in the Saudi economy. Drawing on Norton’s (2013) concept of identity and employing the lens of intersectionality, this thesis explores the identities eight female adolescents constructed through narratives. Focusing on the socioeconomic dimensions of identity construction, it offers insights into the intersections between language, gender and other intra-categorical differences associated with socioeconomic status that may impact identities and access to education. The participants were studying at two schools (public and private) in a socially and economically diverse regional city of Saudi Arabia and were selected based on demographic information derived from a questionnaire. Data were collected through interviews, classroom observations and learners’ journals. Multi-level positioning analysis (Bamberg, 2010) and intersectional analysis (McCall, 2005) revealed a matrix of socially complex realities in the female adolescents' learning experiences. The analyses showed how small stories served as a performative resource whereby the narrators navigated their sense of self, presenting distance and resistance, exercising agency and recreating realities. Family provided a context in which power relationships shaped and reshaped their identities and English, as symbolic capital, was part of defining these relationships and determining the adolescents' societal status. The intersectional analysis revealed multiple identity dimensions intersecting with the main narrator identity of “being an English learner”, which enhanced the adolescents’ privileged position or contributed to their marginalised position, thus helping or hindering their learning experience
English : Understanding the Effective Use of the Health Information System (HIS) From the Perspectives of Patients and Physicians
No full textOver the past three decades, the healthcare sector has been transformed by digital technologies, with health organisations increasingly integrating information systems (IS) into their operations, focusing on access to care, cost efficiency, and patient outcomes. Investment in health information systems (HIS) has risen rapidly, with widespread adoption and use of systems such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Computerised Physician Order Entry (CPOE), Telehealth Platforms, Patient Portals, and Health Information Exchange (HIE). Consequently, healthcare organisations are currently striving to fully leverage these systems to generate maximum value and optimise their efficacy in patient care delivery by utilising them effectively. However, one of the most significant problems healthcare organisations face today is not how much their systems are used and how faithfully features are appropriated but how effectively their systems are used and whether the desired outcomes are achieved. Yet, we have a limited understanding of what constitutes the effective use of HIS, particularly from the perspectives of different user groups, such as patients and physicians. Addressing this knowledge gap, this study examines the effective use of HIS through the context of telemedicine via mobile application, offering insights from both physicians and patients. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, the study contextualises and develops propositions on the effective use of telemedicine from the patients’ and physicians’ perspectives. The findings provide a deep understanding of how telemedicine applications and consultations are being utilised effectively by patients and physicians to achieve their healthcare objectives, with implications for enhancing the use of and education surrounding telemedicine services
Understanding the Structural and the Mechanical Properties of Bone
No full textOsteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common chronic diseases characterised by a disorder in the subchondral bone (SB), cartilage damage, and osteophyte formation. Due to an inadequate understanding of the mechanism of disease pathology, no treatment is currently available to effectively prevent the initiation or progression of OA, and severe treatment modalities, such as hip joint replacement, are currently available. A better understanding of the chemical and mechanical properties of bone will also help improve OA’s diagnosis. This study aims to investigate the chemical properties of SB from the femoral head (FH) of patients with OA through an invasive and label-free approach. Vibrational spectroscopy has shown the potential to provide diagnostic information. A combination of Raman, Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic, and Photoacoustic Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR-PAS) methods were used for the chemical analysis of samples. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to identify variations within different tissue of OA bone. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) was used to predict pathogenic markers with high sensitivity (Sn) and specificity (Sp). The combination of Infrared and Raman spectroscopy with chemometrics were very helpful in identifying new spectral markers to differentiate OA bone samples. Initially, preliminary studies were conducted on bovine bones, which are almost comparable to human bones. They were applied on Raman and FTIR to study the chemical composition concerning the different cutting directions to prevent mistakes and enhance the primary study. For Raman, the PCA bovine result showed a perfect clustering, with PC-1 and PC-2 accounting for 92% of the variation, resulting in excellent Sn and Sp of 100%. The results for FTIR also exhibited perfect clustering, with PC-1 and PC-4 accounting for 80% of the variance, resulting in 100% Sn and Sp. Raman, FTIR and FTIR-PAS have identified structural and compositional changes in OA compared to tissue-specific (subregion). Significant statistical differences were detected among the bone types, including organic and inorganic composites. The results of the PCA in all vibrational spectroscopy showed that the PCA had good clustering, accounting for 74, 75, and 86% of the variation for Raman, FTIR and FTIR-PAS, respectively, leading to excellent Sn and Sp of 100%, representing the whole spectrum. Furthermore, as the aetiology and pathogenesis of OA are not fully understood, measuring the mechanical properties of bone by applying nanoindentation to FH to extract the mechanical properties is essential in order to understand the disease profile. The mechanical results show that the reduced modulus () and the hardness (H) averaged out to be (16.07±3.05 GPa) and (0.56±0.107 GPa), respectively. The average elastic modulus () of bone was measured to be (14.84±2.85 GPa), whereas the indentation modulus (E_ind) was (16.31±3.14 GPa). Compared to the other bone types, the osteophyte (Osteo) bone has the lowest value, while the cortical bone (Cort) has the highest value. The parameters in RS and FTIR confirm that increasing mineralisation ratios in bone types were correlated with a decreased and vice versa. In conclusion, vibrational spectroscopy is a highly effective method for identifying chemical changes associated with different subtypes of bone tissue disease. This study confirms its significance in evaluating both chemical and mechanical changes in cases of severe OA affecting the human FH helping to understand the reasons for the disease process and enable an improved treatment modality. Furthermore, these findings will assist the research community in identifying regions of the skeleton where the local physical and chemical properties of bone, in addition to the mechanical properties, should be characterised during the preclinical optimisation process of treatments for skeletal diseases
Becoming Chinese Digital Feminists : Examining the Rural-Urban Divide and the Value of Kinship
No full textThis thesis focuses on Chinese digital feminists, a generation of digital natives born under the One-Child reproductive policy (1979-2015). As an emerging generation of feminists in post-socialist and neoliberal China, Chinese digital feminists are characterised by their unique feminist agendas and activities/activism. Centrally, this thesis counters the image of Chinese feminists as exclusively urban middle-class women, which has been the main focus of a disproportionate amount of research on Chinese feminism (such as Fong, 2002; Zheng, 2016; Yang, 2020). Rather, based on 34 in-depth semi-structured interviews, I found the backgrounds and experiences of Chinese digital feminists are diverse and complicated. Almost half of the digital feminists (16 out of 34) in this research originate from rural areas, and some of them even hail from disadvantaged rural peasant backgrounds. Drawing on Bourdieu’s ‘capital theory’ (1979, 1984, 1986, 1987), I propose the concept of ‘kinship capital’ – a robust kinship relationship as a significant form of capital – to explain how feminists from different family backgrounds can mobilise resources related to their family ties. Building upon feminist scholarship on emotions, feelings and affect, the concept of ‘kinship capital’ helps to deconstruct the production and reproduction of intersectional social inequalities in the Chinese context. I investigate digital feminist agendas by analysing the debates on ‘anti-marriage’, and examine their feminist activism through Chinese MeToo as an example. I argue that the feminist agendas and activities/activism of different feminist cohorts are not only shaped by their economic, social and cultural capital, but also by their differing levels of kinship capital. I also assert that ‘kinship capital’ plays an important role in the reproduction of feminisms among Chinese digital feminists. Specifically, rural feminists with insufficient ‘kinship capital’ tend to advocate feminism through collective actions, while urban feminists with sufficient ‘kinship capital’ prefer an individualist discourse for self-development under the feminist framework. In other words, ‘a collective feminism’ is reproduced by reduced ‘kinship capital’, whereas ‘an individualist feminism’ is reproduced by plentiful ‘kinship capital’. This thesis contributes to furthering the understanding of the diversity of Chinese digital feminists and the (im)possibility of collective action and solidarity. Even though, it is important to acknowledge that women do also share similarities and that the rural-urban divide is not entirely absolute
Hybrid Futures : Hybridity, the Anthropocene and Speculative Fiction
No full textThis thesis considers how textual and bodily hybridities can operate in speculative fiction to reject and challenge ecophobic and extractive attitude endemic with what has been titled, the Anthropocene. Highlighting Donna Haraway’s Chthulucene as a key possible future but that any progression towards the multispecies connectivity it espouses are limited by a cognitive disposition towards humans. This thesis demonstrates how speculative fiction provides clues towards overcoming the limitations of Anthropos, the cultural idealisation of human societies, in favour of shared futures for both humans and more-than-humans. Textual hybridities refers to how texts may draw upon multiple modes and traditions rather than just be limited to a single genre. Although there has been much scholarship already on the links between the ecological and various speculative fiction modes such as the gothic or science fiction, few have considered these modes and traditions together. By reading speculative fiction texts as cross-modal, as textual hybrids, I argue we can appreciate a range of affective responses within a single text. Meanwhile, this thesis will also discuss how representations of bodily hybridities offer the chance of Chthulucenic futures by delineating Anthropos as a separate and hierarchised subject. Instead, this thesis places the human body and Anthropos as something that is breached and permeated by the more-than-human in various forms: the environment, technology, the divine, the weird, the inorganic and the monstrous. By accepting and narrating such hybridities, speculative fictions offer potential routes to more self-conscious, connected living. The initial two chapters of this thesis will consider historical attitudes which have worked to promote ecophobic and extractive practices, and how these might be challenged. The latter two chapters consider texts where the relationship between humans and the land have been convoluted and weirded to the extreme, and so hope to offer readings of the selected texts which consider how humans may rework their relationship with the ecological
Group Vulnerability and the Need for a UN Convention on Internally Displaced Persons
No full textInternally displaced persons are a category of people forced to leave their homes in search of safety. People in this category suffer severe human rights abuse, but despite the vulnerabilities that internally displaced people face, there is no explicit, globally enforceable hard law that is tailored to their particular need. Existing normative frameworks do not specifically address the needs of displaced people. The only document that tailors to the needs of displaced people is the 1998 UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. Despite being widely accepted, the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement do not confer rights on internally displaced persons. This research work examines whether there is a need to create a hard law instrument on internal isplacement. There have been calls for a normative framework that is legally binding on internal displacement, but it has not yielded a positive response. This work argues for a UN Convention on internally displaced persons. It draws on the notion of group vulnerability to justify the need for a specialised global instrument on internal displacement. This work discovered that vulnerable groups are people whose vulnerability is relational, particular, and harm based. Vulnerability is relational when people experience vulnerable situations because they associate with a particular group. The group membership creates and sustains their vulnerabilities. The vulnerability that they experience is also particular to the people who identify with the group. Lastly, this vulnerability is predicated on harm and human rights abuse. Populations who embody these characteristics are a vulnerable group in need of special protection. Data on the dire nature of internal displacement show that internally displaced persons are a vulnerable group. The vulnerability that displaced people experience is created and sustained by their identification as people forced to move. The nature of the vulnerabilities they experience is particular to displaced people, and it is also harm based. People in the category of internally displaced people are subjected to harm and human rights abuse as a result of their displacement. These characteristics place people displaced within the State border in the category of vulnerable group identities and create the possibility for a specialised hard law instrument. The notion of vulnerability, therefore, justifies the need for a hard law instrument on internal displacement
Section 17 Child in Need: Contemporary practice in an area of deprivation
No full textThis PhD explores the under-researched area of contemporary section 17 Children Act 1989 practice. Whilst highly researched following implementation of the Children Act, section 17 provision has since been mostly overlooked, except in relation to where thresholds sit for child protection intervention under section 47, or by the recent review of children’s social care. This study provides a detailed exploration of contemporary section 17 child in need provision. Considered through a critical constructivist lens, a detailed review of the literature relating to section 17 and the challenges faced since its inception sets the scene. This is followed by a discussion of methods used, and a detailed contextual positioning of the study area. Findings commences with a documentary analysis of relevant local policy and procedure documentation. With context front and centre, the study explores the influence of national and organisational positionality, discourse and language on contemporary section 17 practice. The rich data obtained through qualitative research methods (focus groups and interviews with 12 social work professionals, four allied professionals and eight families), brings to the surface the multiple, complex, and competing influences on social work professionals’ formulations of need and the way in which formal and informal logics and reasoning interweave. It further considers the way in which social work professionals perceive and relate to the people they work with and how section 17 thresholds are negotiated in practice. Consideration of allied professional and family experiences of section 17 complete the data analysis, spotlighting voices rarely seen in this practice area, with some findings echoing the experiences of social work participants. The study concludes highlighting the ongoing challenges of section 17 practice, and offers suggestions for training, practice, legislative and policy change
The Relation Between EU Competition Policy and Consumers in Online Multi-Sided Platform Market : An Analysis Based on Consumer Welfare Standard
No full textThe Internet has unleashed a boom of entrepreneurship and competition which is unrivalled in history and in the modern era. As a natural consequence of the invention of the Internet and the development of technology and trade, different environments where trade can flourish also began to arise and they pose many differences and necessities which have to be considered by lawmakers. One of these new environments for trade is online multi-sided platforms (MSP). Even though they bring some advantages, they also introduce many new risks for organisations, consumers, governments and the global economy as the existing EU competition rules are planned and regulated to remove the problems within traditional single-sided markets, which consist of a single relationship between actors. One of the basic problems that can be seen is in the positions and conditions of consumers. The relationships between actors in online MSP markets are not as basic and separated as in traditional single-sided markets. For that reason, the behaviour of the online MSPs to consumers and the results of their specific practices can create anticompetitive results such as unfair pricing, lower quality, less variety of products and slower innovation in these markets. Therefore, this thesis aims to analyse how these emerging dynamics in online MSP markets affect consumers’ positions and conditions by reviewing the consumer welfare standard in different existing practices of these platforms. After the consumer welfare oriented competition analysis of geo-blocking, tying and bundling, and most-favoured-nation (MFN) practices of online MSPs, the discussion will conclude that it is necessary to secure greater competition among online MSPs, provide the right conditions for the digital single market in the EU, update existing competition tools in accordance with the need of online MSP markets and the digital economy, and finally provide a comprehensive set of rules for these markets