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Phenotyping asthma attacks: clinical, physiological and inflammatory characteristics of acute asthma
No full textAsthma is increasingly recognised as a heterogeneous disease, encompassing a range of phenotypes and endotypes. This evolving understanding of the pathophysiology of stable asthma has enabled the development of targeted anti-inflammatory treatments that have significantly improved clinical outcomes. Unfortunately, this is not the case with asthma attacks (AA), as they remain poorly understood and largely treated the same way since the 1950s. This is mainly owed to the lack of longitudinal investigations of asthma at the time of acute symptoms worsening and during periods of recovery, and the subsequent poor understanding of the pathophysiology of AAs. This is further confounded by the absence of a clear definition of these episodes, and the lack of easily performed lung function assessments and reliable attack-specific inflammatory biomarkers, which, collectively, has fostered a one-size-fits-all approach to managing these episodes irrespective of the underlying pathophysiological mechanism
The histopathological effects of potentially toxic elements on European badgers (Meles meles) from the English Midlands
No full textThe European badger (Meles meles), as an omnivorous mammal that tends to remain geographically close to its place of birth, could be a useful sentinel bioindicator of environmental contamination of potentially toxic elements.
An observational pilot study was performed on 14 wild-caught rodents, using a semi-quantitative scoring system to determine whether greater hepatic concentrations of lead and cadmium were associated with greater histological evidence of cellular damage in the liver and kidney. Juvenile rodents had significantly higher hepatic lead concentrations than adults (p<0.01), however adult rodents had significantly higher renal damage scores (p<0.05). No significant associations were identified when comparing hepatic cadmium concentrations and hepatic damage scores.
The main observational study examined the liver, kidney, and gonad, where available, in 50 found-dead badgers to assess for histological evidence of cellular damage including degeneration, necrosis, fibrosis, and inflammation, associated with greater hepatic concentrations of lead and cadmium. Greater hepatic lead concentrations were significantly associated with higher overall scores for renal damage (p<0.05) in the examined badgers. Additionally, renal damage scores were significantly higher for badgers with high (p<0.05) and toxic (p<0.05) values as extrapolated from other species, when compared to those with normal extrapolated values. There were no significant correlations or differences identified in any damage scores with increasing hepatic cadmium concentrations. Finally, no significant differences were identified between the populations with and without concurrent disease identified macroscopically for either cadmium or lead hepatic concentrations.
This study suggests that badger kidney and ovarian tissue reacts to higher hepatic lead concentrations similarly to other mammalian species, and that value limits for high lead concentrations are likely similar between badgers and other described mammalian species. However, more extensive examination with a larger cohort would be needed to fully define these limits
An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) study exploring the experiences of lone mothers throughout the Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) process.
Get PDFAccording to the Office for National Statistics (ONS, 2023), 16% of families in the UK were classified as lone-parent households. This means that approximately 1 in 6 families fell into this category. Of these, 85% were headed by lone mothers raising at least one dependent child. Research suggests that lone mothers are at risk of heightened blame and social judgement which can permeate into professional settings. From a sociological perspective, this marginalisation can leave lone mothers feeling disempowered and less able to voice their concerns due to systemic bias that undermines their credibility and agency. This raises important questions about how lone mothers navigate statutory processes.
The Education Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) process emphasises the importance of centring the voices of children, young people (CYP) and their parents/carers within the statutory assessment process. While existing research explores parental experiences of the EHCNA, it largely overlooks the specific experiences of marginalised groups. A systematic literature review (SLR) found that there were limited studies which gained the experiences of lone mothers navigating processes regarding their children’s education, none of which discuss the EHCNA. This study addresses this gap through discussing the experiences of lone mothers navigating the EHCNA process. Grounded in an emancipatory and social justice context, the findings highlight systemic barriers, limited access to information and a strong desire amongst participants to improve the process to ensure equitable parental involvement.
To gain an in depth understanding of experiences, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology was used to capture the voices of four lone mothers from diverse demographic backgrounds through semi-structured interviews. Five master themes were interpreted using IPA including: ‘A power imbalance’, ‘I’m not in control here’, ‘Parental support’,‘Empowerment’ and ‘shaping a child-centred process for the future’. Despite the challenges, lone mothers demonstrated resilience through positioning themselves as persistent advocates for their children. While the themes align with broader findings on parental experiences in education, this study offers a distinctive lens on the intersection between lone motherhood and statutory assessment processes, highlighting issues such as: marginalisation, isolation, emotional burden, and self-blame. The findings contribute to the ongoing discourse on systemic iniquities in education, offering practical implications for educational professionals to ensure that all parents can fully and meaningfully engage in the EHCNA
How can mainstream schools support successful transitions into Year 1 for children with special educational needs and disabilities? A reflexive thematic analysis exploring the views and experiences of school staff and parents/carers
Get PDFWhen transitioning from one school year to another, children enter an unfamiliar environment, with new people and expectations. These changes can be unsettling if not appropriately managed. The transition from Reception to Year 1 (Y1) is recognised as a particularly challenging transition due to a lack of continuity, and evidence suggests it can be especially difficult for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Despite this, little research has explored children’s experiences of this transition, with no English studies completed since COVID-19. Furthermore, the ‘school readiness agenda’ continues to dominate conversation surrounding the transition to Y1. This rhetoric places the responsibility of being ‘ready’ for Y1 upon children, disadvantaging those who do not achieve the expected standards at the end of Reception.
The current research provides insight into the experiences of children with SEND during the transition to Y1. The study adopts a bioecological viewpoint, exploring how mainstream schools can support successful transitions from an environmental perspective. Five semi-structured focus groups were facilitated, two with parents/carers of children with SEND in Y1 or Y2, and three with relevant members of school staff. Transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006/2022).
Participants considered the transition more challenging for children with SEND, mainly due to the formal teaching approaches of Y1. However, increased transition support was seen to enable more successful transitions. The transition was recognised as a difficult time for parents/carers, and the long-term impact of COVID- 19 was acknowledged. Environmental factors seen to influence transition success included: consistent relationships, the physical environment, collaboration between stakeholders, flexibility of curriculum delivery, and Y1 staffs’ knowledge of early development. The findings are discussed in relation to existing literature and theory. The research has implications for schools, Educational Psychologists and the government with regards to developing inclusive transition practices and ‘ready’ Y1 classrooms
Real-analytic modular forms for Gamma_0(N) and their L-series
Get PDFA class of real-analytic modular forms for SL2(Z) was recently introduced by Francis Brown. The purpose of this thesis is to generalise these objects to higher level congruence subgroups, and construct L-series for them which satisfy a functional equation and a converse theorem. In particular, we investigate higher level modular iterated integrals and real-analytic Eisenstein series.
We recall the basic theory of Dirichlet characters and of holomorphic modular forms in Chapter 2, and the classical theory of L-series due to Hecke and Weil. We give important applications of this theory due to e.g. Shimura, Kohnen. We define Brown’s real-analytic modular forms, our key differential operators and modular iterated integrals. The inspiration for our L-series construction is presented in the context of harmonic Maass forms.
In Chapter 3, we define the objects of Brown in higher level, and construct higher level Eisenstein series. Then, in Chapter 4, we define an L-series for a certain class of real-analytic modular form. We show that it has a functional equation and converse theorem. We also use a construction with an auxiliary variable to define L-series in the more general setting, and prove a functional equation and converse theorem in this case, too. Finally, in Chapter 5, we use this functional equation to prove a summation formula for cusp forms
The impact of social media use on organisational commitment in higher education in Saudi Arabia
No full textThe use of social media has expanded in our daily lives, including at work, due to its global popularity in recent years. Social media includes a wide range of internet-based applications. A few studies have been conducted to understand how employees use the underlying social media platforms at the workplace and how their use impacts employee commitment. The research indicates that employees often use social media for both work-related and non-work-related purposes in the workplace. Nevertheless, the literature continues to debate whether using social media in the workplace is a waste of time or a source of motivation. Also, the literature reveals contrasting results for both the positive and negative impacts of social media use on organisational commitment. This thesis therefore aims to examine this phenomenon guided organisational commitment theory to understand the impact of the use of social media in the workplace on organisational commitment and its three components: affective, continuance, and normative.
This doctoral research employed a mixed-methods approach, using three studies to better understand the phenomenon of workplace social media usage and its impact on organisational commitment. The first quantitative study, involving 750 Saudi faculty members in higher education, aimed to understand how faculty members use social media for work-related and non-work-related purposes. The second quantitative study, which included 314 faculty members, used an analytical framework to examine the impact of using social media for work-related and non-work-related purposes on organisational commitment and its three components. Finally, the third qualitative study interviewed twenty-one academic staff members to verify the findings and explain the quantitative results in depth.
Understanding the dual nature of social media use in the workplace is crucial for employees, employers, and organisations. Therefore, individuals perceive that using social media in the workplace can have both advantages and disadvantages. The research findings indicated that using social media for work-related purposes enhanced employees’ commitment to the organisation, engagement levels, and loyalty. This enhancement is achieved by improving communication via various platforms, such as WhatsApp and Twitter, facilitating collaboration and motivation, and fostering a sense of belonging within the workplace community with the support of managers and colleagues. This results in improved task completion and overall work quality. On the other hand, using social media at work for personal, social, or recreational reasons has a negative effect on employees' organisational commitment due to several factors, including distractions, time wastage, and mind wandering resulting from engagement with social media content, ultimately leading to diminished work quality or deferring task completion to the next day.
The thesis offers some implications for practice. First, it contributes to the higher education sector in Saudi Arabia, where universities have increasingly adopted social media use for professional purposes, reducing bureaucracy by simplifying task completion and speeding up procedures rather than waiting for managerial responses or approvals via an administrative communications system. Furthermore, it fosters professional networks and tracks recent employee work progress. Second, it contributes to and enhances operational efficiency by diminishing reliance on paper-based administrative correspondence, thereby facilitating the expedited and simplified completion of tasks. Third, it contributes to increasing employee loyalty and attachment to work. The findings' practical implications suggest that using social media for work-related purposes improves employee loyalty, motivation, and affiliation with the workplace by recognising their contributions via WhatsApp groups or the college's Twitter account, thereby increasing their commitment to performance and productivity
Forecasting depressive symptom deterioration using wearable sensor data and LSTM models: a longitudinal analysis from the RADAR-MDD Study
Get PDFMajor Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a highly prevalent and disabling mental
health condition, with early detection of symptom deterioration offering
opportunities for timely intervention and improved outcomes. Advances in
wearable technology and machine learning have prompted growing interest in
passive monitoring as a scalable means of identifying individuals at risk of
worsening depression. This thesis investigates the feasibility of forecasting
depressive symptom deterioration using wearable sensor data and Long Short-
Term Memory (LSTM) models, leveraging data from the RADAR-MDD study—a
large, multi-site, longitudinal cohort of individuals with a history of MDD (N =
623).
The primary aim was to develop a predictive model capable of identifying
clinically significant deterioration, defined as a ≥5-point increase on the Patient
Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8), using passive data streams (e.g., sleep, step
count, heart rate) collected via Fitbit devices. Despite rigorous data
preprocessing, normalization, and class-balancing procedures, the LSTM model
failed to correctly identify any cases of symptom deterioration, achieving an
AUC-ROC of 0.50, F1 score of 0.00, and high specificity driven by substantial
class imbalance. A secondary logistic regression analysis using a reduced
feature set similarly failed to demonstrate predictive utility, suggesting that the
limitations lay not in the modelling technique but in the quality and
completeness of the data.
Contributing factors to poor model performance included significant data
sparsity—particularly in sleep data—declining participant adherence over time,
and the bidirectional nature of certain behavioural indicators (e.g., sleep
duration). Furthermore, exploratory analyses revealed significant cultural
variation in PHQ-8 response patterns across the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands, raising concerns about the universal applicability of standardised
depression measures and global prediction models.
The findings highlight the current limitations of population-level machine
learning approaches in forecasting depression and support a shift toward
idiographic, context-sensitive modelling strategies. The thesis also examines
the psychological, ethical, and practical implications of continuous monitoring
technologies in mental health, emphasising the need for user-centred, culturally
informed, and ethically robust design. Recommendations for future research
include improved data collection strategies, adaptive feedback systems, and the development of person-specific early warning systems that align more closely with clinical realities
Investigating high-frequency electrical transport properties in yttrium iron garnet (YIG)/platinum (Pt) using picosecond acoustic pulses
No full textThis thesis investigates high-frequency electrical transport properties in yttrium iron garnet (YIG)/platinum (Pt) heterostructures using picosecond acoustic pulses. Femtosecond laser excitation of aluminium (Al) transducers generates coherent strain pulses that propagate through gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG) substrates. These acoustic phonons couple magnetoelastically with the ferrimagnetic YIG layer, modulating local magnetic anisotropy and exciting spin waves. The resulting spin currents transfer to the adjacent Pt layer, where strong spin-orbit coupling converts them to measurable charge currents via the inverse spin Hall effect (ISHE), enabling electrical detection of acoustic-magnetic interactions.
Samples comprised YIG films of 200 nm and 830 nm thickness deposited on both thick (500 μm) and thin (120-200 μm) GGG substrates, with 5 nm Pt detector strips and 25-60 nm Al transducers. Three temporally distinct signals emerge, which are optical excitation at t ≈ 3 ns from direct thermal spin Seebeck effect, primary acoustic response at t = 35.8-86.5 ns from magnetoelastic coupling, and acoustic echo signals confirming coherent phonon propagation. The antisymmetric voltage response upon magnetic field reversal (±1.66 mT to ±4.15 mT) demonstrates ISHE detection, representing the first electrical measurement of strain-induced spin currents in magnetic insulator/heavy metal bilayers.
Key findings include temperature-dependent signal variations from 1.8 mV at 10 K to 1.25 mV at 250 K, field-tunable ferromagnetic resonance frequencies spanning 0.1-9.7 GHz, and acoustic standing wave resonances at 4 GHz and 8 GHz. Remarkably, 200 nm films at 50 K exhibit signal amplification over 4 μm timescales, suggesting possible sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (SASER) action through magnetoelastic feedback mechanisms.
These results establish picosecond acoustics as a powerful platform for investigating magnetoelastic coupling with sub-nanosecond temporal resolution, opening pathways for acoustic control of spin transport in next-generation spintronic devices
Back to broadcast: streaming drama series and the emergence of co-distribution in the contemporary Chinese television industry
No full textIn the contemporary television industry, streaming media has become a significant platform alongside traditional broadcast channels. In a multi-platform media environment, the distribution landscape of the television industry has undergone transformative changes. This thesis explores an emerging strategy of co-distribution that has developed in this context. Co-distribution refers to the cooperation between content owners and multiple television services in the process of delivering and promoting the same programmes across multiple platforms. In order to explore co-distribution in systematic and situated terms, this thesis focuses on a specific context and phenomenon - television drama series flowing back from streaming to traditional broadcast channels in China since 2015. By focusing on a distribution counter-trend - countering the mainstream trend of the migration of broadcast content to streaming - this thesis traces where and how co-distribution emerged and developed in contemporary Chinese media.
Utilising a case study method, the thesis examines the distribution processes of three television series: Legend of S (2015), Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace (2018) and Thunder (2019). These examples facilitate exploration of the emergence of co-distribution in relation to policy pressures, competitive scheduling tactics, political propaganda, and as strategies for maximising economic profits. Exploring co-distribution in the Chinese context, this thesis demonstrates how the growing cultural and economic importance of streaming media has challenged and cooperated with state-owned broadcast stations that once dominated the television market. Importantly, it represents a non-Western example of television’s transformation
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