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MUGERWA, EDWARD. "HRM to E-HRM : Change in Human Resource Management; effect to social sustainability." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-174681.
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Problem:Many businesses today, based on the stakeholder’s theory, suggest thatsustainability can only be achieved through the fulfillment of the stakeholder’s in-terests. These interests are centered around adding value to the stakeholders forexample; shareholders in terms of increased dividends. The value in form of profitmaximization, which suppresses the need for other pillars of sustainability to prevail.In this thesis, an argument is presented that a balance should be achieved in all threepillars of. The economic, social and environmental sustainability. It further arguesthat the shift fromH.R.Mtoe−H.R.Mis crucial for innovations and inventions,focused on the development of such technologies, that bolster social sustainability.However, any change may have to put into consideration the company or organiza-tion’s size, this is because somee−H.R.Mtools might not be efficient and effectivefor small-size companies as defined in the report. Purpose:The purpose of this study is to add insight to the concept ofe−H.R.M, and further explore to which extent ise−H.R.Ma driver towards social sus-tainability, reflecting onthe downside of the change which such sustainability mightcreate. Method:Data collection was through interviews. Three managers, two C.E.Os anda former employee from three companies were involved. The interviews were con-ducted via telephone that lasted between30to40minutes. However, a face-to-facefollow up interview was conducted for one of the participants. All interviews wererecorded with the consent of the participants and later transcribed and analysed. Results:The interviewees agreed thate−H.R.Mtools and strategies helped tocreate harmony at work and simplified communication, training and aided the per-formance and appraisal process of employees, which is used during the incentivesprocess, a form of motivation in the organisation. Conclusion:The conclusion from this study is that,e−H.R.Mis a good changefromH.R.Mand that it plays a big role in organizational social sustainability. Abalance should, however, be gained to also put into consideration other pillars. Thestudy contradicts the stakeholders’ theory that only focuses on the economic part ofsustainability through profit maximization, favorable for functional markets alone.
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Tose, Marília de Gonzaga Lima e. Silva. "A evolução da gestão de recursos humanos no Brasil." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 1997. https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/1090.
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Previous issue date: 1997-11-30<br>The present work is the result of an empirical study. It aims at revealing the situation of the organizations in terms of human resources management (H.R.M.). A questionnaire with closed questions was used, with the possibility of:free answers to the option "Others". That questionnaire was sent to associations of H. R. professionals and to some other companies not belonging to those associations, ali located in southeastern Brazil. The presumption which grounded this dissertation was the evolution of H.R.M. In the industrialization period, it went through tive phases: bookeeping, legal, technical, administr tive and strategical. Ambiguous results required the insertion of intermediate phases among those tive: strategical, strategical-administrative,strategical-technical, technical, technical-strategical, technical-administrative and technical-strategical-administrative. In the sample studied it was found that organizations are passing through a transition, between the technical and the strategical phases. Results show that 'organization are stuck to human resources management techniques of the 60's and 70's, along with the changes hapenning in business world<br>O presente trabalho foi elaborado a partir de uma pesquisa empírica, com o objetivo de retratar a situação das empresas no que se refere à gestão de recursos humanos
}
Foi utilizado um questionário com perguntas fechadas, com a possibilidade de
respostas espontâneas através da opção "Outros". Esse questionário foi enviado, no sudeste do Brasil, a grupos informais de recursos humanos e a algumas outras empresas não pertencentes a esses grupos.
Partiu-se da pressuposição de que a evolução da gestão de recursos humanos" ao longo do processo de industrialização, passou por cinco fases: a contábil, a legal, a tecnicista, a administrativa e a estratégica. Foram encontrados resultados ambíguos, que levaram à criação de uma nova classificação, envolvendo fases puras ou intermediárias: estratégica, estratégica-administrativa, estratégica-tecnicista, tecnicista, tecnicista-estratégica, tecnicista-administrativa, tecnicista-estratégica¬ administrativa.
Foi constatado que as empresas do universo amostral pesquisado estão numa fase de transição entre a fase tecnicista e a fase estratégica. Os resultados; mostram que ainda há um certo apego às técnicas de administração de recursos humanos dos anos 60 e 70 e, em paralelo, a integração às mudanças que vêm ocorrendo no mundo dos negócios
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Beaujean, David Alexander. "Modelling the M-effect in H.R.C. fuses." Thesis, Open University, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.280561.
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Gondim, Diego de Matos [UNESP]. "Ribeiras de vales: ...e experimentações e grafias e espaços e quilombolas e." Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/152579.
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Previous issue date: 2018-01-04<br>Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)<br>Este resumo quer fazer-se uma entrada vertiginosa no acaso de um espaço com experimentações de uma comunidade quilombola. Com fotografias e borrões e traços e…, produz-se uma escrita roubada e que rouba - corrompendo as binariedades epistemológicas fazendo-se uma multiplicidade n-1. Grafias de um acaso e uma eventualidade - um transbordamento de gesto-grafias e geneografias e geo-grafias e topografias - ovos-do-tempo e ovos-do-espaço. Entrar em cantos e encantos… esquinar cantos afirmando uma potência de vidas marginais; com mapas e categorias e gestos e gentes - uma pEsquiza afirmando uma multiplicidade de trajetórias dissidentes, uma coetaneidade de afetos que criam passagens com corpo. Agenciando-se com câmeras e mar e rios e ostra e mangue e marés e escola e quilombo e conversas e fotografias - um aprender com um acaso e com uma eventualidade do espaço; do lugar como aqui e agora. Um pensar com corpo como um pensar com espaço; um saber-com-corpo como um saber-com-espaço. Inventar com acasos vertiginosos uma apalpagrafia - uma expressão de espaço-tempo “di menor”, “por baixo” - expressão vespa e expressão cão e expressão flor e expressão sapo e expressão prática. Um espaço-tempo-lugar coetâneo às práticas que “aqui e agora” funcionam.<br>This abstract wants to make a vertiginous entrance in the chance of a space with experiments of a quilombola comunity. With photographs and smudges and traces and ..., a stolen and stealing script is produced - corrupting the epistemological binarities by becoming an n-1 multiplicity. Spellings of chance and an eventuality - an overflow of gestures-spellings and geneographies and geographies and topographies-eggs of the time and eggs of the space. Entering songs and charms ... cornering songs affirming a power of marginal lives; with maps and categories and gestures and people - a plot stating a multiplicity of dissident trajectories, a coetaneity of affections that create passages with body. Agenciando with cameras and sea and rivers and oyster and mangrove and tides and school and quilombo and conversations and photographs - one to learn with a chance and with an eventuality of the space; of the place as here and now. A thinking with body as a thinking with space; a knowing-with-body as a knowing-with-space. Invent with vertiginous chance an "apalpagrafia" - an expression of space-time "di menor", "beneath" - expression wasp and expression dog and flower expression and expression frog and practical expression. A space-time-place contemporary with the practices that "here and now" work. to chance of a becoming menor", practices that "here and now" work.
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Gondim, Diego de Matos. "Ribeiras de vales : ...e experimentações e grafias e espaços e quilombolas e... /." Rio Claro, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/152579.
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Orientador: Roger Miarka<br>Banca: Sônia Maria Clareto<br>Banca: Wenceslao Machado de Oliveira Junior<br>Resumo: Este resumo quer fazer-se uma entrada vertiginosa no acaso de um espaço com experimentações de uma comunidade quilombola. Com fotografias e borrões e traços e…, produz-se uma escrita roubada e que rouba - corrompendo as binariedades epistemológicas fazendo-se uma multiplicidade n-1. Grafias de um acaso e uma eventualidade - um transbordamento de gesto-grafias e geneografias e geo-grafias e topografias - ovos-do-tempo e ovos-do-espaço. Entrar em cantos e encantos… esquinar cantos afirmando uma potência de vidas marginais; com mapas e categorias e gestos e gentes - uma pEsquiza afirmando uma multiplicidade de trajetórias dissidentes, uma coetaneidade de afetos que criam passagens com corpo. Agenciando-se com câmeras e mar e rios e ostra e mangue e marés e escola e quilombo e conversas e fotografias - um aprender com um acaso e com uma eventualidade do espaço; do lugar como aqui e agora. Um pensar com corpo como um pensar com espaço; um saber-com-corpo como um saber-com-espaço. Inventar com acasos vertiginosos uma apalpagrafia - uma expressão de espaço-tempo "di menor", "por baixo" - expressão vespa e expressão cão e expressão flor e expressão sapo e expressão prática. Um espaço-tempo-lugar coetâneo às práticas que "aqui e agora" funcionam<br>Abstract: This abstract wants to make a vertiginous entrance in the chance of a space with experiments of a quilombola comunity. With photographs and smudges and traces and ..., a stolen and stealing script is produced - corrupting the epistemological binarities by becoming an n-1 multiplicity. Spellings of chance and an eventuality - an overflow of gestures-spellings and geneographies and geographies and topographies-eggs of the time and eggs of the space. Entering songs and charms ... cornering songs affirming a power of marginal lives; with maps and categories and gestures and people - a plot stating a multiplicity of dissident trajectories, a coetaneity of affections that create passages with body. Agenciando with cameras and sea and rivers and oyster and mangrove and tides and school and quilombo and conversations and photographs - one to learn with a chance and with an eventuality of the space; of the place as here and now. A thinking with body as a thinking with space; a knowing-with-body as a knowing-with-space. Invent with vertiginous chance an "apalpagrafia" - an expression of space-time "di menor", "beneath" - expression wasp and expression dog and flower expression and expression frog and practical expression. A space-time-place contemporary with the practices that "here and now" work. to chance of a becoming menor", practices that "here and now" work<br>Mestre
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Kulczyk-Malecka, Justyna. "Diffusion studies in toughenable Low-E coatings." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2012. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/315708/.
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Low emissivity (Low-E) coatings are applied to large area architectural glazing to reduce heat losses from buildings. They combine high visible transparency with high reflectance in the far-infrared region. To achieve this combination of properties, Low-E coatings generally consist of dielectric-silver-dielectric multi-layer systems or stacks, where the thin (~10 nm) silver layer reflects long wavelength IR back into the building and the dielectric layers both protect the silver and act as anti-reflectance layers. The dielectric layers are commonly TiO2, SnO2 or ZnO, and all the layers are usually deposited by magnetron sputtering. The market for Low-E coatings has grown considerably in recent years due to environmental legislation and increased energy costs. To further expand the market, the next generation of Low-E coatings are increasingly being deposited onto toughenable glass, which is post-deposition annealed at temperatures of up to 650oC. However, under these conditions, silver atoms are highly mobile and can rapidly diffuse through the other constituent layers of the coating stack, which can have a detrimental impact on the performance of the coating. Diffusion in polycrystalline films occurs much faster than in bulk samples and by different mechanisms. This is caused by the physical properties of thin films, which may contain a high density of defects such as dislocations, vacancies and grain boundaries that can act as pathways for diffusion processes. The aim of this project therefore is to carry out a detailed study of diffusion processes in dielectric-silver coating systems deposited under industrially relevant conditions (i.e. using commercially available magnetron designs and power deliver modes). TiO2 coatings have been deposited onto float glass substrates by reactive pulsed magnetron sputtering and characterised using Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The coatings have been annealed at temperatures in the range of 100oC to 800oC and re-analysed to determine the effect of annealing on the film structures. An interesting transition from a weakly crystalline rutile-like structure with very small grain sizes to a strongly crystalline anatase structure or mixed-phase structure with much larger grains was observed as annealing temperature was increased. Selected coatings were over coated with silver and annealed for a second time. These coatings were analysed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry to determine the diffusion profiles of silver through the titania layer and the reverse diffusion of sodium from the glass substrates. Little difference in the diffusion rate of silver was observed with annealing temperature, but sodium was observed to diffuse significantly faster through samples annealed at higher temperature range. Similar studies have been performed for Al-doped ZnO, Zn2SnO4 and Si3N4 coatings. These films have been post-deposition annealed at 650oC then over coated with silver and re-annealed at 250oC. Diffusion profiles for both Ag and Na atoms were measured using secondary ion mass spectrometry. Finally dielectric/Ag/dielectric layers were deposited to investigate the behaviour of silver and sodium after annealing at 250oC. The basic models of diffusion mechanisms in thin films have been developed using Fick’s second diffusion law. Analytical modelling was used to fit the experimental data into a concentration dependent curve that represents the solution to Fick’s second law. Moreover selected dielectric/Ag/dielectric stacks were subjected to temperature dependency of silver diffusion studies using Arrhenius diffusion principle. Samples were post-deposition annealed at the temperature range of 200-650oC for 5 minutes to investigate silver diffusion at different heat treatment conditions and diffusivity values were used to find activation energies and frequency factors from Arrhenius plot. Overall findings from the diffusion studies are that from dielectric materials investigated in this work Al-doped ZnO coatings have the best barrier properties for silver atoms diffusion and show relatively low values for sodium diffusion, when not annealed at relatively high temperatures. Zinc stannate, on the other hand, was found to be the material through which atoms investigated here diffuse fairly easily. Both silver and sodium atoms were found to have the highest diffusion rates through zinc stannate films relative to the other coatings investigated in this work.
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Wittgen, Matthias. "Messung der K 0L-]e+e-e+e-- und K0L-]m+m-e+e--Zerfallsraten [K 0 L-]my + my - e + e - -Zerfallsraten]." [S.l. : s.n.], 2001. http://ArchiMeD.uni-mainz.de/pub/2002/0103/diss.pdf.
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Olaiya, Emmanuel Olatunji. "A measurement of the KL → e⁺e⁻e⁺e⁻ and KL → μ⁺μ⁻e⁺e⁻ branching ratios". Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.620225.
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McNutt, James Russell. "A study of e+e- ->e+e at OPAL." Thesis, Brunel University, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.358391.
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Assas, Roaa Ibrahim. "Designing an e-philanthropic website for the Saudi user." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2015. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/617235/.
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Philanthropy is an important part of Saudi Arabia's identity as it is linked to the country's religion and culture. Even though nobody can deny how crucial philanthropy is for Saudis, it is not reflected virtually on the Internet. This PhD aims to enhance philanthropy by putting it in a virtual context. Online philanthropy is known as e-philanthropy and this research documents the design of an e-philanthropic tool that is appealing to users in Saudi Arabia. Its aim is to design an interactive website where users can communicate with each other to meet their specific needs. It explores the nature of philanthropy in the Saudi context and employs human-centred design and user-centred design approaches to create a website in support of this. It is based on qualitative and quantitative data collection from recipients of philanthropy and those who take an interest in the topic. This resulted in the design brief for a new ephilanthropic tool based on time giving, a concept closely related to time banking and something that, to date, has not been launched in Saudi Arabia. As time banking is the closest concept to that of time giving, this project investigated time banking as a philanthropic tool in other contexts. The design of the website for the Fair Shares time bank in the UK was analysed as a source in order to benefit the new project. This was achieved by using Agarwal and Venkatesh's (2002) Microsoft Usability Guideline, which was reformed by Pallud (2002). After investigating Saudi culture, the concept of time banking and the design features of a website in the field, the researcher-designer then created a time giving website named "Joud", a word which means liberality and generosity in Arabic. The process of creating this website was influenced by Schön's (1983) account of the reflective practitioner, where the designer looks for ways to order, resolve and improve their practice. After the design of the website was finished it was launched online at www.joudtime.org. The website was then evaluated using the same technique used to analyse the Fair Shares site; namely the modified Microsoft Usability Guideline. This was to improve the design and get a sense of whether the idea would work in Saudi Arabia or not. This study shows that time giving can be a philanthropic tool in Saudi Arabia. It also shows that using a human-centred design and a user-centred design method in order to investigate specific target users is a practical and useful approach. The outcome shows how the design would take the user into consideration especially in a philanthropic context. Moreover, the resulting design is the first that brings time giving to the Saudi user. As a result, the project met its aim to replicate the philanthropic culture of Saudi Arabia virtually by creating an ephilanthropic tool for their context.
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McCarthy, Jillian W. "The effects of e-learning on nurse identity construction." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2009. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/323626/.
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The development of a nurse identity is known to be a gradual process which takes place by students through social interaction in both academic and clinical settings. It is a crucial element in retaining students within the nursing profession and enabling them to perform the nurse role competently and effectively. Constructing a nurse identity is a complex and individual process, but, it is recognised that it will contain universal traits such as caring and compassion. Failure to absorb a nurse identity by students is not well documented, but, it is thought to contribute towards the number of recruits who leave the profession prior to or on qualifying. This phenomenological study examines the ways in which student nurses construct and adopt a nurse identity whilst studying for the theoretical component of their nursing course. The lived experience of both traditional, classroom based student nurses and those studying by electronic learning (e-learning) is explored through in-depth interviews and participant observations. Elearning is being introduced into nurse education in place of traditional methods of teaching and the research examines the impact of this mode of learning on professional socialisation to the identity of a nurse. The study gathered data from in-depth interviews with six student nurses studying by traditional methods and, also, from six student nurses studying by e-learning; all students were in the third year of a Diploma in Nursing (Adult Branch) course (comparisons were made between the findings from the two groups of students, in order to discover if nurse identities and the ways in which these are formulated differ between traditional students and those studying by e-learning). Findings from the data disclosed similarities and differences between the two groups of students, however, definitive conclusions as to the effects of e-learning on the construction and adoption of nurse identities could not be made. The findings did disclose strengths and weaknesses in both types of education, and the overall conclusion was that e-learning could be a success in student nurse education only if it is introduced with sufficient funding and on a solid foundation of research and development, by nurse educators who are knowledgeable in this style of pedagogy.
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Hoolash, Mahendranath. "E-securité, e-confidentialité et e-integrité." Aix-Marseille 3, 2001. http://www.theses.fr/2001AIX30083.
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La trilogie : e-confidentialité, e-sécurité et e-intégrité, détermine la valeur d'une information sur le web. La sécurité des systèmes d'information (SSI) a pour but de garantir la valeur des informations qu'on utilise. Si cette garantie n'est plus assurée, on dira que le système d'information a été altéré (corrupted). Une altération. Il est donc indispensable d'assurer la protection de l'information de l'entreprise lorsqu'elle est stockée sans précautions sur le disque dur d'un ordinateur relié à internet, Car. Elle peut être lue, copiée, modifiée ou détruite à partir d'un poste de travail situé aux antipodes sans que, trop souvent hélas, le propriétaire s'en aperçoive. Aujourd'hui, les menaces viennent en grande partie d'Internet. Il y a donc un intérêt grandissant pour les systèmes électroniques d'identification et d authentification. Un des buts de ma thèse est d'abord de présenter de façon exhaustive les différentes technologies d'authentification du moment. Deux méthodes, les plus fiables sur le marché, ont été utilisées dans le cadre de mon projet de création de site Extranet mis en place chez GEMS : site Extranet hautement sécurisé, qui fonctionne aujourd'hui en plein régime et dont le démarrage a eu lieu en 1999. L'épine dorsale de ce SSI est constituée de Virtual Private Network et de RSAsecuriD. .<br>The Information Trilogy : eConfidentiatfty, security and elmegrity determines the Information value on the Web. The main objective of any Information Security System (ISS) is to ensure the real and authentic value of Information we make use of. If such is not the case, we refer to our Information System as being corrupted. Hence, it is of primordial importance to protect information of any firm when it is stored on a hard disk on a PC, linked to the Internet. This, since it can be read, copied, altered or deleted from a remote connected person, without the owner's notice. Today, these threats come mainly from the Internet. Because of this, there is an increasing demand for electronic Identification and Authentication systems. One of the main goals of my thesis is to browse exhaustively through all the main Authentification techniques available since 3- 4 years. And, see how, some two of these techniques have been applied in my Extranet Project at GEMS : project which started in 1999. The spinal cord of this high security site is based on : VPN (Virtual Private Network and RSA Securid). .
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Salvador, Maria Adelaide Cotovio. "Adição conjugada de nitrometano a (E,E)-cinamilidenoacetofenonas e (E)-2-estirilcromonas." Master's thesis, Universidade de Aveiro, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10773/4858.
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Mestrado em Química dos Produtos Naturais<br>Neste trabalho pretendeu-se estudar a adição conjugada de nitrometano a
(E,E)-cinamilidenoacetofenonas e (E)-2-estirilcromonas, tendo-se obtido os
respectivos compostos nitrados, as (E)-1,5-diaril-3-nitrometil-4-penteno-1-onas
e as 2-(2-aril-3-nitropropil) cromonas, respectivamente. Após a formação dos
compostos nitrados estudou-se a redução do grupo nitro a amino com o
objectivo de preparar novos compostos aminados. No caso dos compostos
(E)-1,5-diaril-3-nitrometil-4-penteno-1-onas houve redução do grupo nitro e da
ligação dupla e no caso da redução de 2-(2-aril-3-nitropropil) cromonas houve
a redução do grupo nitro e uma reacção intramolecular do derivado aminado,
dando origem a (Z)-4-(4-arilpirrodinil)-2-metilidenil 2-hidroxifenil cetonas.
Esta dissertação está organizada em sete capítulos. No capitulo 1 apresentase
uma visão global dos métodos usados no âmbito da adição conjugada a
sistemas carbonílicos α,β -insaturados (em particular a adição de nitroalcanos
a cetonas α,β-insaturadas e aminas a compostos α,β-insaturados), dos
métodos de síntese de (E,E)-cinamilidenoacetofenonas e de (E)-2-
estirilcromonas, assim como das reacções em que participam. Neste capítulo,
apresentam-se ainda alguns métodos de redução de compostos nitrados.
Nos capítulos 2 e 3 apresenta-se o estudo da adição conjugada de
nitrometano a (E,E)-cinamilidenoacetofenonas e (E)-2-estirilcromonas, em
meio básico (DBU). No capítulo 4 apresenta-se a síntese de 3-aminometil-1,5-
difenilpentano-1-ona e de (Z)-4-(4-arilpirrodinil)-2-metilidenil 2-hidroxifenil
cetonas, por redução dos compostos (E)-1,5-diaril-3-nitrometil-4-penteno-1-
onas e 2-(2-aril-3-nitropropil) cromonas obtidos na adição conjugada de
nitrometano a (E,E)-cinamilidenoacetofenonas e (E)-2-estirilcromonas,
respectivamente.
Nos capítulos 5, 6 e 7 apresenta-se a parte experimental, as conclusões e
sugestões para trabalhos futuros e a bibliografia, respectivamente.
Na caracterização estrutural dos compostos sintetizados recorreu-se a
técnicas actuais, especialmente a estudos vários de espectroscopia de
ressonância magnética (RMN), os quais incluíram sobretudo o estudo de
espectros de RMN de 1H, de 13C e estudos bidimensionais de correlação
espectroscópica homo e heteronuclear.<br>The main goal of this work was the study of the conjugated addition of
nitromethane to (E, E)-cinnamylideneacetophenones and (E)-2-
styrylchromones, in order to prepare (E)-1,5-diaryl-3-nitromethyl-4-pentene-1-
ones and 2-(2-aryl-3-nitropropyl)chromones, respectively. It was also intended
to reduce the nitro group of the obtained compounds, to prepare new amino
compounds. In the case of the (E)-1,5-diaryl-3-nitromethyl-4-pentene-1-ones
the nitro group and the double bond were reduced, and in the case of the 2-(2-
aryl-3-nitropropyl) chromones the reduction of the nitro group and an
intramolecular reaction of the amino compound happened, resulting in the
formation of (Z)-4-(4-arylpyrrolidynil)-2-methylidenil 2-hydroxyphenyl ketones.
This dissertation is organized in seven chapters. In chapter 1 it's presented a
review of the methods used in the studies of conjugate addition to α,β-
unsaturated carbonyl systems (in particular the addition of nitroalkanes and
amines to α,β-unsaturated compounds), in the synthesis of (E,E)-
cinnamylideneacetophenones and of (E)-2-styrylchromones and their reactions.
In this chapter, it’s also presented some methods for the reduction of nitro
groups.
In chapters 2 and 3 are our results on the conjugated addition of nitromethane
to (E, E)-cinnamylideneacetophenones and (E)-2-styrylchromones in basic
conditions (DBU) are presented. In chapter 4 the synthesis of 3-aminomethyl-
1,5-diphenylpentane-1-one and (Z)-4-(4-arylpyrrolidinyl)-2-methylidenyl 2-
hydroxyphenyl ketones by reduction of (E)-1,5-diaryl-3-nitromethyl-4-pentene-
1-ones and 2-(2-aryl-2-nitropropyl)chromones obtained from the conjugated
addition of nitromethane to (E,E)-cinnamylideneacetophenones and (E)-2-
styrylchromones, respectively, is described.
In chapters 5,6 and 7,the experimental procedures, conclusions and future
work suggestions and bibliography, are presented
All synthesized compounds were characterized using modern analytical
techniques, with special emphasis on exhaustive nuclear magnetic resonance
(NMR) spectroscopic studies. The NMR methods used include 1H, 13C, two
dimensional homonuclear correlated spectroscopy (COSY) and heteronuclear
correlated spectroscopy (HETCOR or HSQC and HMBC) experiments.
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Goldring, John E. "There is more to health than HIV : social capital and health in the gay community." Thesis, University of Salford, 2007. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/621099/.
Full textAbstract:
The legal climate for gay men in the UK has undergone enormous change since the decriminalisation of 'homosexuality' in 1967 with changes in the social climate following. Bringing together concepts of 'social capital' and 'reflexive individualisation', the research explores how the changes have helped shape the gay experience, especially in terms of health and well-being. In recent history, gay men's health has been located within the HIV discourse, assuming a homogeneous gay identity and community. Yet gay men have various identities and a full spectrum of health needs, well beyond HIV and AIDS alone. The research pursues ethnography as method to provide 'thick description' of gay men's lives in context. After immersion in the context, access was gained to 24 gay men whose ages ranged from 17 to 73 years old. There were also five non-gay participants and six representatives of gay themed organisations. Participant observation, field notes and Internet data complemented semi-structured and unstructured interviews. The data were analysed using the thematic and grounded theory approach. This identified generational variations within the experience of gay men characterised by how the law defined them. The findings indicated that the social capital framework does not account for the experiences this minority group or the variations within it. Gay men displayed different styles of embeddedness, and ways of developing trust in others. Self-censorship hindered the development of these important skills. It also seemed plausible that these same conditions promoted reflexivity through the need to manage multiple identities in various social settings. With respect to health, it was HIV that structured much of their accounts, although they did vary across generations. Generation also structured the experience and practice in other areas of health. The project demonstrates the importance of both sexual orientation and masculinity in the construction of all men's health.
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Brownbridge, Kathryn. "Development of a conceptual model for anthropometric practices and applications regarding complete garment technologies for the UK women's knitwear industry." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2012. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/459/.
Full textAbstract:
To create garments that fit the body, anthropometric data must be utilised within the product development process. When producing woven garments a relationship between the garment and the body is determined at various different stages. This includes the construction of the basic block, the pattern making process and fit trials. The utilisation of anthropometric data within the manufacture of knitwear constructed and shaped on flat-bed machinery is not well documented. Because knitted fabric is extensible knitted garments have the ability to stretch and mould around the body. Determining the dimensions of these garments therefore must be considered specifically. The methods used to manufacture fully fashioned garments are also completely different and practitioners have to work within a limited set of parameters when creating the garment shape. Traditional fully fashioned garments are knitted as panels and then constructed. Advanced complete garment technology can knit, shape and construct a garment three dimensionally. Those at the forefront of technology development claim it provides the manufacturer with many benefits including improved fit. The utilisation of new technologies has been advocated as a way for UK knitwear manufacturers under threat from cheap imports to remain competitive. However the pace at which the technology has advanced has led to concerns about whether designers and technicians have the skills to fully exploit the machine capability and realise the potential benefits. Certainly to produce knitted garments with improved fit implies that the development process must utilise anthropometric data. Potential improvements in the knitted garment will only be of benefit if they are recognised and appreciated by the consumer An investigation to evaluate the utilisation of anthropometric data within the development of complete garments and the impact of complete garment technology on product development was conducted. Mapping the UK industry provided a sampling frame for case studies with manufacturers utilising complete garment technology. The research employed qualitative strategies of data collection, including interviews and case studies. An analysis of consumer preferences regarding complete garments was also conducted using focus groups with women between the age of 40 and 55. This informed the development of a theoretical framework for female fit preferences relating to knitwear. The results revealed that seven companies were utilising complete garment technology within the UK. Case study analysis provided evidence to show that anthropometric data is not utilised within the development of complete garments but pre-established garment measurement is applied instead. The relationship between the garment and the body is only evaluated and determined during fit trials. Practices were heavily influenced by outdated methods and information which impeded the ability to design and develop complete garments autonomously. In addition designers and technicians do not have the skills to conceptualise and develop the 3D garment in relation to the body. Consequently they are reliant on the machine builders as the only providers of garment templates and skills support. The ability to create garments with fit improvement was also found to be hindered by this evident skills gap. In terms of garment fit, focus group analysis revealed that female consumers had very specific preferences that related to their body size and shape. They demanded garments that provided flattering fit and the theoretical framework reveals how this flattering fit is defined. Finally data from all the stages of the research was triangulated to develop a conceptual model for anthropometric practices and applications regarding complete garment technologies for the UK women's knitwear industry.
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Struller, Carolin Franziska. "Next generation vacuum deposited ALOx clear barrier coatings for flexible food packaging materials." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2013. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/336476/.
Full textAbstract:
In the field of packaging, barrier layers are functional films, which can be applied to polymeric substrates with the objective of enhancing their end-use properties. In the case of food packaging applications, the packaging material is required to preserve packaged foodstuffs and protect them from a variety of environmental influences. Amongst others, the impermeability of the packaging material to substances including water vapour, oxygen and aromas is an important requirement for successful food packaging. Polymer films, vacuum coated with thin transparent barrier layers of aluminium oxide or silicon oxide, are very attractive candidates for food packaging applications due to the oxide film imparting attractive properties, including good barrier performance, transparency, microwaveability and recyclability. In this project, aluminium oxide barrier layers were deposited onto various commodity grade BOPP films via reactive evaporation of aluminium, using a modified industrial ‘boat-type’ roll-to-roll metalliser. Optimisation of the deposited coating, in some cases together with potential surface modifications of the BOPP films, was the main focus of the work. The effects of different film treatments (in-line and off-line); surface properties of the polymer film, such as topography and chemistry; coating stoichiometry and thickness; as well as conversion processes; on barrier properties were investigated using a broad variety of analytical techniques. Furthermore, critical parameters for the convertibility of vacuum coated films, including coating adhesion and coating surface energy, were assessed. This project has demonstrated that the barrier performance of aluminium oxide coated BOPP is heavily dependent on the plain film surface and the growth/nucleation conditions of the deposited film, both of which can vary to a large extent on standard packaging grade BOPP film. Whilst acceptable oxygen barrier levels were achieved on some of the standard BOPP film types, others did not match the requirements, despite investigating a wide range of coating parameters. This was found to be due to the presence of defects (permeation pathways) in the coating, which were reproduced from defects in the underlying polymer film surface. With regards to the barrier performance after aluminium oxide coating, the polymer film surface chemistry was identified as an important parameter. Furthermore, oxygen barrier performance was significantly enhanced when a high surface energy polymer skin layer was co-extruded onto the BOPP film. Nevertheless, water vapour barrier improvement for aluminium oxide coated BOPP films was only achieved through the use of different polymer skin layers or via depositing coatings with reduced oxygen content, thus obtaining grey coatings that can no longer be classified as transparent. Peel tests indicated very high levels of adhesion of the aluminium oxide coating to the BOPP film, with cohesive failure taking place within the polymer, rather than adhesive failure at the coating-substrate interface. Examination of the time related change of surface energy revealed a distinct decay with ageing time, most probably due to transfer of polymeric material and film additives from the reverse side of the film onto the coating and also migration through defects in the coating. Finally, the application of acrylate under- and topcoats, as well as adhesive lamination, was found to have the capability to significantly enhance the barrier performance of the aluminium oxide coated BOPP film. In the case of acrylate undercoats, this was attributed to the change in surface chemistry, whilst for topcoats and lamination processes, the barrier properties of the acrylate/adhesive play an important role, together with a possible ‘pore filling’ effect.
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Tupikovskaja-Omovie, Zofija. "Consumer perceived benefits and value in apparel m-retail." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2016. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/618824/.
Full textAbstract:
Within the UK retail sector, fashion shopping via mobiles is one of the fastest developing forms of online retail, yet recent research has shown that apparel retailers have been slow to implement appropriate mobile platforms into overall marketing strategies, thereby failing to satisfy consumer expectations and missing opportunities emerging through this channel. This research analyses mobile apparel retail from the consumer’s perspective. The aim is to understand fashion shopping experiences via smartphones. Research questions relate to the benefits fashion consumers are seeking through mobile shopping channels, how consumers shop, why they use smartphones and what influences their decision-making process. Consequently, a theory of interactive relationship between m-retail and consumer purchase behaviour has been developed. A mixed methods approach was adopted guided by Grounded Theory methodology complemented by experimental work. It applied 200 questionnaires, 1,313 mobile app reviews, 23 eye tracking experiments involving websites, mobile apps and mobile websites, 6 focus group discussions and 8 case studies. A conceptual model of Essential Features of Mobile Channel (EFMC) was developed by triangulating data gathered from a range of sources: eye tracking experiments, mobile app reviews and focus groups. Case studies of commercial platforms, implementing 43 features of EFMC, were used to evaluate mobile websites and apps developed by apparel retailers. This research contributes to knowledge by developing a Benefits-Value Theory (BVT), which addresses the relationship between levels of benefits and their influence on shopping involvement, by examining the ways consumers perceive mobile platforms and respond with distinctive behaviours and attitudes. This conceptual framework devotes what companies are doing on mobile and what consumers think about it. BVT provides a base for fashion consumer segmentation. Consumer profiles have been developed to account for shifts in consumer behaviour led by mobile technologies. This research proposes a model for diagnosing the strengths and weaknesses of mobile platforms. Shopping journey and behaviour models establish how to segment the consumer base, capturing a complexity of their behaviours, by assigning value to fashion retail. This research helps apparel retailers to develop appropriate marketing strategies in m-retail focusing on maximizing customer benefits and satisfaction by fulfilling retailers’ value creation and delivery.
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Evans, Jeffrey G. M. "The criminal prosecution of inter-male sex, 1850-1970 : a Lancashire case study." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2016. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/618363/.
Full textAbstract:
The thesis addresses two related issues. Firstly, the lack of an accurate longitudinal reading of the incidence of indictable prosecutions predicated on the criminalisation of sexualised behaviours between males for the period 1850-1970; that is, consensual conducts (including 'victimless' behaviour discriminately criminalised) together with coercive behaviours. The results of the enumerative part of this investigation demonstrate significant variations in the frequency of prosecutions during what was a seminal period of criminalisation of such conduct. The rarity of cases of the later nineteenth century, followed by a slow, and sometimes erratic, increase during the inter-war years (1919-1939) preceded a more energetic period of prosecutions in the two decades about the publication of the government commissioned 'Wolfenden' Report (1957). The primary sources used to produce this accurate longitudinal count of the criminal prosecutions and, in particular, the Calendars also provided the evidential basis for the second task of this investigation. To date, there has been no in-depth longitudinal reading of the treatment of such cases by the four main constituent 'players' within the Criminal Justice System that were charged with the practical realisation of Parliament's abstract criminalisation. This thesis provides both a quantitative and qualitative reading of the sometime consistent and divergent attitudinal relationship between these four 'players' in the prosecution of sexualised conduct between males: the prosecution, defence, adjudication and presiding judiciary. The practical criminalisation of inter-male sex 1850-1970: A Lancashire case study. These two complimentary readings are contextualised within a number of contingent realities of the period that suggest the criminalisation of sexualised behaviours was not a major policing priority for much of the period. Further, that when such cases did come to trial the success rate and, therein further prosecutions, was heavily reliant on the role of the defendant cooperating with their own conviction. Finally, the choice of these investigatory goals was in large part addressed by a reading of the specialised historiography within this relatively new field of study and thereby in part an attempt to light-up previously unexplored territory.
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Ghafir, Ibrahim. "A machine-learning-based system for real-time advanced persistent threat detection and prediction." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/618896/.
Full textAbstract:
It is widely cited that cyber attacks have become more prevalent on a global scale. In light of this, the cybercrime industry has been established for various purposes such as political, economic and socio-cultural aims. Such attacks can be used as a harmful weapon and cyberspace is often cited as a battlefield. One of the most serious types of cyber attacks is the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), which is a new and more complex version of multi-step attack. The main aim of the APT attack is espionage and data exfiltration, which has the potential to cause significant damage and substantial financial loss. This research aims to develop a novel system to detect and predict APT attacks. A Machine-Learning-based APT detection system, called MLAPT, is proposed. MLAPT runs through three main phases: (1) Threat detection, in which eight methods are developed to detect different techniques used during the various APT steps. The implementation and validation of these methods with real traffic is a significant contribution to the current body of research; (2) Alert correlation, in which a correlation framework is designed to link the outputs of the detection methods, aiming to find alerts that could be related and belong to one APT scenario; and (3) Attack prediction, in which a machine-learning-based prediction module is proposed based on the correlation framework output, to be used by the network security team to determine the probability of the early alerts to develop a complete APT attack. The correlation framework and prediction module are two other major contributions in this work. MLAPT is experimentally evaluated and the presented system is able to predict APT in its early steps with a prediction accuracy of 84.8%.
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Halliwell, Victoria. "Mapping professionalism : a tale of two journeys." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2013. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/315705/.
Full textAbstract:
The focus of this research study is occupational therapy students’ perceptions of employability and professionalism. Using some key principles of grounded theory, data was collected through the Ideal ***Inventory (Norton 2001), through a focus group and through seven individual interviews with final year students on a part time BSc (Hons) Occupational Therapy degree programme. The thesis maps two journeys, that of the researcher from novice to more experienced and that of the student occupational therapist from recruitment to graduation examining the trajectory of development for both. The thesis focuses on some pertinent methodological issues around researcher distance and creativity in the study; the term used for this is contamination. The work of Charmaz (2006) on constructivist grounded theory and Clarke (2005) on situational mapping in grounded theory have been used to provide reference points in my research to support the researcher’s engagement with data. It is suggested that the research is situated in the borderlands of modernist and postmodern ideas. There is a critique which focuses on theory, its value and purpose in the study and in grounded theory more generally. Analytical tools and the way in which these support understanding of the data are also debated. Relational Situational Maps (Clarke 2005) were used to engage and display data, to show assumptions about relationships between data and to highlight sites of contamination. Mapping the data in this way has assisted in the researcher to see the data differently and to engage with it more interestingly. Consideration is given to the interpretation of meaning in the data analysis, including the labelling of categories and sub- categories and the consequences of this for dissemination. A greater understanding of professionalism for occupational therapy students has been gained by undertaking the study and the importance of role models, authenticity, a prospective professional identity, personal values and the alignment of these to professional ones are discussed. Individual conceptualisations of professionalism alongside external professional regulation are also considered. Recommendations for curriculum development as a result of this study have also been identified.
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Wallace, Stephanie Julia. "Developing methods to measure sentence severity and assess disparity in sentencing in the criminal courts of England and Wales." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2015. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/621010/.
Full textAbstract:
This doctoral research focuses on sentencing, and more specifically, disparity in sentencing in the courts of England and Wales. Previous research in this area has introduced bias into the samples by focusing solely on custodial sentences and therefore failing to consider the more common non-custodial sentences. This thesis overcomes this methodological problem. There are two parts to this research: the first part develops a sentence severity scale based on the principle of proportionality, and includes the full range of sentences meted out by the courts in England and Wales. The second part of this research then uses the new scale to assess disparity based on the extra-legal factors of the case. Data from the Offender Assessment System (OASys) was merged with data from the Police National Computer (PNC), which provided information on the offence and resultant sentence, as well as information relating to the socio-demographic characteristics of the offender. Goodman Row Column Association analysis was used to model the association between the offences and sentence categories. This model was then extended to control for three legal factors - offence plea, previous history of offending, and the number of offences the offender was sentenced for - which must all be taken into consideration when sentencing offenders. This analysis provided a series of scores for each of the sentence categories allowing them to be arranged by magnitude, ranging from the least to most severe sentence. To anchor the scale and make the scores less arbitrary, linear interpolation was used. This estimated the equivalent number of days in custody for the non-custodial sentences using the modal days in custody for each of the custodial sentence categories. The new sentence severity scale was treated as the dependent variable in which to model sentencing disparity using multilevel modelling. Here a number of legal and extra-legal variables were considered to try and explain the large amount of sentencing variation between offenders. After controlling for the legal factors of the offence this research found there to be significant sentencing disparity. Consistent with previous research, female offenders were sentenced less severely than male offenders, and White British and Irish offenders were also sentenced less severely than 'like-situated' Black offenders. However, offenders in the White other category were sentenced less severely than the White British and Irish group. This research also found that unemployed offenders were sentenced more severely than those in employment prior to sentencing, although the research did find that those on benefits were sentenced less severely. Finally, offenders who do not live in permanent accommodation were also sentenced more severely. The results of this research suggest significant disparities in the sentencing of offenders in England and Wales.
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Powell, Stephen. "Innovating the development of work focussed learning in higher education." Thesis, University of Bolton, 2013. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619892/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis presents my practice as an action researcher in higher education (HE) over a ten-year period, developing courses for students who were unable to take advantage of the existing provision in the institutions in which I worked. The knowledge I gained and practices that I developed contributed to a series of cycles of action research and the conclusions I draw at the end of the thesis are used to propose a further cycle. The curricula that I developed and delivered were designed for students who had a strong commitment to their work and wanted to improve it, but at the same time wanted to gain academic qualifications; the central premise behind this work being that, 'work can form the basis for learning, which can then be accredited by higher education'. Although study was based around the work that a student did, their employer had no formal relationship with the university offering the courses. Students were attracted to a package that offered personalised and flexible learning at a cost that was affordable to them. The contributions to knowledge that I make relate to the organisation of teaching, the nature of the innovative curriculum design and the collaborative curriculum change processes carried out. Using this approach, learners make improvements in their work context to gain academic credit from the scholarly practices they have applied to inform and evaluate their activities. The findings suggest that a curriculum design using a teaching and learning strategy based on action-inquiry, delivered entirely online, can be successful in enabling students to work full-time and gain academic credit at a full time rate. However, the results also revealed that there are significant institutional barriers that need to be overcome to implement such a curriculum design that is radically different in having a non-traditional curriculum and unique ways of working. The key recommendation from this body of work is that radical curriculum innovations in HE are more likely to be successful if a separate business unit is established with control over its own capability development. By having control over processes, staffing, and a technical systems infrastructure, a separate business unit is able to respond to the new and different demands placed on it, developing its own culture and identity that fit with a new business model.
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Braddock, Sharon. "Does a physiotherapy cognitive behavioural chronic low back pain programme alter patients' health locus of control?" Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2016. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/617670/.
Full textAbstract:
BACKGROUND: Health locus of control (HLOC) is a person’s belief of where responsibilities for his/her health condition lies. It is associated with health attitudes, behaviours and outcomes in non-specific chronic low back pain (NSCLBP). It is unknown whether a physiotherapy cognitive-behavioural chronic low back pain (CBCLBP) programme affects patients’ HLOC. AIMS: To examine: (1) the effect of a six-week CBCLBP programme on the patients’ primary outcome-HLOC, and also pain intensity, disability, fear-avoidance belief (FAB) and self-care attitude; (2) the association between changes in pain intensity, disability and FAB and changes in HLOC; and (3) the cost of producing any effect. METHODS: In an A-B-A same-subject design, patients referred to the CBCLBP programme with high FAB (TSK score > 37) were recruited. Patients attended a six-week programme. Outcomes were measured four weeks before (-4 weeks), at the start, at completion, 3- and 6-months after the programme. Friedman’s ANOVA and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests determined changes between phases. Multiple regression determined the relationship between HLOC and outcome of interest. Significance was set at 0.05. RESULTS: A total of 70 patients were recruited. Fifty-five patients entered the programme and all completed 6-months follow-up. The CBCLBP programme significantly improved HLOC (p < 0.001), pain intensity (p < 0.001), disability (p < 0.001), FAB (p < 0.001) and self-care attitude (p < 0.001), with such improvement being sustained for 6 months. Changes in HLOC explained 6%, 0.5% and 31.9% variances in changes in pain, disability and FAB respectively, after controlling other variables. Increased internal locus of control (ILOC) was a significant predictor of reduction in FAB (p=0.002). HLOC was not predictive of reduction in pain intensity or disability. Mean provider cost of the programme was £285.82 per patient. CONCLUSION: Our 6-week CBCLBP programme was effective in changing a person’s belief about where responsibility for his/her health condition lies. It also improved their pain, disability, FAB and attitude to self-care. Making patients believe that they can take control, and they are the one responsible for their NSCLBP management is linked to reduction in FAB, highlighting the potential importance of improving ILOC in attaining better FAB outcome. We have also provided guidance to managers and budget allocators that this costs £285.82 per patient.
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Baxter, Patrick. "Ghost developments on film : an experimental ethnographic exploration of place and space in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/618444/.
Full textAbstract:
How can film and social research be used to interrogate the relationship between a marginalized place and its vacant spaces - what I refer to as Ghost Developments? This research project investigated aspects of the post-Celtic Tiger Ireland newly built environment through the production of an experimental ethnographic documentary film and an accompanying scholarly text. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, the Republic of Ireland experienced one of the most dramatic property market collapses in recorded history, resulting large swathes of vacant and/or unfinished housing and commercial property throughout the country. My hometown and county Longford was one of the places that suffered disproportionally as a site of what became known as ‘ghost estates’ - unfinished housing estates, though it should be noted there remained a paucity of social or artistic research into vacant commercial property. In my research I have expanded on the popular term ‘ghost estate’ to arrive at ‘ghost developments’ as a new conceptualization within ruin studies that seeks to explore the aesthetic, artistic, historical, relational, material and experiential qualities of a range of ruined spaces in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, and furthermore what they can tell us about the social dynamics of place. I use the ‘ghost development’ conceptualization as a social and filmic device that not only questions how vacant space has been represented in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, but furthermore to propose the idea that through these spaces we can begin to think of the categories of urban/rural/suburban not solely as spatial delineations but as sets of social practices which are negotiated differently depending on social setting or location. My film A Place Where Ghosts Dwell employs a number of different styles, film modes and techniques to narratively tease out the spaces between ethnographic film and the essay-film to create an artistic film that is subjective and intersubjective, stylized and socially contextualized. As an experimental ethnography, this project (text and film) is both artistic and social research.
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Nyoni, Green Agrippah. "Exploring the problems and possibilities of capacity building in refugee organisations : the case of Manchester refugee support network (MRSN)." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2016. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619018/.
Full textAbstract:
The following thesis has engaged an empirically informed liberationist’s analysis to investigate the role of discriminatory tendencies in the destruction and demonizing of asylum seekers in the UK. The argument is that the hostility directed towards asylum seekers appears to be rooted in a racist connotation that has been perpetuated by successive governments through the legislation of immigration laws that criminalize this group will be explored. Refugees and asylum seekers, by virtue of their position in British Society, face discrimination because of the embedded hegemony of the masked sociological racism, which has replaced biological racism. Successive governments’ control of asylum seekers through immigration has brought to this group a life of destitution and the inability to integrate and develop active citizenship. This study was done with the partnership and participation of Manchester Refugee Support Network (MRSN), which is a refugee led organisation that advocates for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers thus giving a voice to the voiceless. A triangulation approach which involved participatory action research, encompassing formative activities and comparative and liberating perspectives in the quest for social justice was used. This approach inspired the participants to develop participatory and collaborative principles, which in turn presented a channel for them to have a voice. As a result of this the participants were able to challenge and educate those who had oppressed them. The formative approaches in the feedback of my data analysis given to the participants in strategic meetings not just gave them the freedom of deliberation and having the final decision on the course of action to follow but also taking the lead in the implementation. The key actions included improving the services provided by MRSN, fundraising, and developing new campaigns, hence building its capacity. The capacity building entailed the exploration of suggested new projects and training of community leaders to embrace collaborative principles, which aimed at improving governance in community organisations and MRSN. New fundraising strategies were explored in order to seek flexible funds that would allow for projects that had in the past proved difficult to get despite being of paramount demand for example immigration advice. Campaigns included the fight for Basic Rights, Right to Work and against destitution, and the campaigns became more inclusive, and focused on the agenda set by the participants and directed at the right people and were educational.
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McElroy, Michael. "Boundary condition assessment and geometrical accuracy enhancement for computational haemodynamics." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619019/.
Full textAbstract:
Cardiovascular diseases cause over 47 % of all deaths in Europe each year. Computational fluid dynamics provides the research community with a unique opportunity to investigate cardiovascular diseases with the intent of enabling optimised, patient-specific medical therapies. Incorporating physiologically accurate geometries and boundary conditions into computational fluid dynamics simulations can be difficult tasks and are a concern for researchers. This thesis analyses the impact various inlet and outlet boundary conditions can have on the outcome of a simulation. It also presents a novel, semi-automated process that prepares accurate geometrical models for haemodynamic simulations. Firstly, rabbit and human aorta models were used to analyse the impacts of boundary conditions on haemodynamic metrics used for understanding cardiovascular disease pathology. Comparisons were made between traction free, Murray’s Law, three-element Windkessel, and Murray’s Law/in vivo data hybrid outlet boundary conditions. Steady-state, transient, fully-developed and plug-type inlet boundary conditions were also investigated. Results showed that when advanced models such as the three-element Windkessel are unavailable, the Murray’s Law based outlet returns the most physiologically accurate haemodynamics. Results also showed that prescribing a transient simulation and a fully-developed flow at the inlet are not required when the focus is only on the flow within the aorta and around the intercostal branches. Secondly, a sensitivity test was conducted on the simulation of Left Ventricular Assistive Device (LVAD) configurations. The effects of flow ratios between the LVAD and aortic root on haemodynamic metrics were quantified. The general irregular sensitivity of the subclavian and carotid arteries to flow ratios indicates that the perfusion and wall shear stress-based haemodynamic metrics within these arteries cannot be accurately predicted unless the flow ratios are incorporated into the preoperative planning of the optimal LVAD configuration. Finally, a semi-automated reconstruction process combining magnetic resonance angiography and optical coherence tomography data was developed. The process was successful in its ability to create an accurate geometry in a relatively short time. This forms the foundation on which more sophisticated methods can be developed.
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Kadambari, Seilesh. "The impact of advances in molecular virology on the clinical epidemiology and management of central nervous system viral infections in infants." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619288/.
Full textAbstract:
Molecular virological techniques have rapidly replaced cell culture as the diagnostic tool of choice across NHS laboratories. This thesis studies two of the commonest causes of CNS viral infections in infants less than 90 days of age to determine whether the introduction of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) based techniques have impacted significantly on their management and epidemiology. Congenital CMV (cCMV) is the commonest congenital infection in the UK and a leading cause of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). In the absence of a screening programme the great majority are detected in early childhood outside the time when antiviral therapy has been shown to be effective. This thesis describes a series of coordinated pilot studies that suggest that it is potentially feasible to integrate testing for cCMV using salivary PCR into the Newborn Hearing Screening Programme (NHSP) and start appropriate antiviral management within the first month of life. A programme of work that needs to be conducted before potential national implementation is also outlined. Conventional molecular techniques were used to characterise the variation of five genetic loci of CMV in congenitally infected infants to better understand the current and future medical interventions available. Enterovirus (EV) infections most commonly infect young infants. PCR has been shown to detect viruses with greater accuracy than cell culture. National data over a 10 year surveillance period were analysed to demonstrate a seven fold increase in viral meningo-encephalitis diagnosis rates associated with increased use of PCR. Enteroviruses accounted for 92% of all cases of viral meningo-encephalitis in those aged less than 90 days. The year on year increase in EV infections coincided with increasing PCR-based laboratory diagnosis, which accounted for 36% of reported cases in 2000 and 92% in 2011. These data provided the rationale for the design and implementation of a British Paediatric Surveillance Unit (BPSU) study characterising the burden of EV and human parechovirus meningitis in children aged less than 90 days. This thesis supports the notion that advances in molecular virology can significantly inform the investigation and management of CNS viral infections (as exemplified by cCMV) and alter the apparent epidemiology (as exemplified by EV infections in infants less than 90 days old).
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Abbas, Syed Muhammad Ali. "Design and analysis of social network systems (SNS)." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2016. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619490/.
Full textAbstract:
In the last few years, online Social Network Systems (SNSs) thrived and changed the overall outlook of the Internet. These systems play an important role in making the Internet social, a hallmark of Web 2.0. Various such systems have been developed to serve a diverse set of needs. SNSs provide not only a space for self-representation, but also mechanisms to build and maintain one’s social network online. A lot of studies have been carried out on such systems to identify how people develop cultures of communication, sharing and participation and also to identify the network structure of such systems. In this thesis, we carry this line of research forward. Our aim is the identification of some key user characteristics and social processes which result in the emergence of a social network. These might help future platform and application developers in creating better, more efficient and more open and user-friendly SNSs. Specifically, we make the following three major contributions: a) One of the distinct features of an SNS is the public listing of friendship links - social network. Most of the personal details such as hometown and workplace information have been hidden from non-friends, but the list of friendships remains open. Being a true representation, people use their real names as their screen names. Such names alone contain detailed cultural information about their ethnicities, religion and even their geographical origins. Our first contribution is that we have made good use of such information by inferring ethnic classification of users of Facebook. We identified how clustered and segregated the overall social network is when users’ inferred ethnicity is taken into account. Different cultures have different behaviours with distinct characteristics. This rich information can be used to develop an understanding and help create diverse applications catering for specific ethnicities and geographical regions; covering both the dominant and non-dominant groups. We have identified ethnicities of a subset of Facebook users with their friends and studied how different ethnicities are connected among and within each other. A large social network dataset of four thousand Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) students have been selected from Facebook. We have extensively analysed this dataset for its network structure and also its semantic and social structure. Our work suggests our dataset is clustered and segregated on ethnic lines. b) To develop a user liberating SNS where the control and the ownership of rich personal data is in the hands of SNS users, a clear understanding is required of how such systems on an individual and group level are developed and maintained. Never before in Social Sciences was it possible to study society on such a large scale. These systems have facilitated the study of individuals both at a local and global scale. However, at the moment very little knowledge is available to identify how people develop their friendship in reality. So for example, it is not known whether in SNSs people meet others based on their attributes and interests, or if they simply bring online their real lives’ social networks. And more specifically, what processes does one go through to develop her social network. To fill this knowledge gap in this thesis, as our second contribution, we have used a computer simulation technique known as Agent-Based simulation, to develop four simulation models based on both individuals’ affinities and environmental aspects. Specifically, we have developed models of student interaction to develop social networks. Three University’s datasets which include Caltech (Nodes 762, Edges 16651), Princeton (Nodes 6575, Edges 293307) and Georgetown (Nodes 9388, Edges 425619), have been used to check the performance and rigour of the model. Our evidence suggests that ‘friend-of-a-friend’ (FOAF) best represents social interactions in Caltech University. In the case of Princeton and Georgetown, we found a multitude of social and structural processes involved, which are: attribute based (same dormitory, major or high school etc.), social interaction, random meet ups (through parties or other social events) and current friends introducing new friends. c) We observe that in the main, SNSs are centralised, and depend solely on central entities for everything. With huge personal data on such SNSs, advertising and marketing agencies have made very sophisticated systems to gather information about people. It is a goldmine for them for personalised advertisement. Also various governmental agencies have been using SNSs as an excuse to curb potential threats both legally and illegally, to obtain information on numerous users (people). In order to deal with such issues inherent in centralised client-server architecture, as the third contribution of this thesis, we have proposed and implemented a completely decentralised SNS in a peer-to-peer fashion. Our implementation is done in an open source Peer-To-Peer (P2P) client Tribler. To handle the dynamicity of users in a P2P system – their availability, we have developed mechanisms to deal with it. This SNS has been evaluated on a deployed system with real users. This prototype establishes the feasibility of a totally distributed SNS, but its practicality when scaled to a full system would require more work.
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Alexoulis-Chrysovergis, Aris Christos. "Investigation of novel control strategies for promoting motor learning in the upper limb with a haptic computer exercise system in able-bodied adults and those with motor impairments." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/618443/.
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Motor impairments caused by stroke and cerebral palsy (CP) are common and often affect the function of the upper limb, which to be restored requires rehabilitation. As positive outcome is correlated to how early and intensive therapy is and since the resources of the healthcare providers are limited, robotic devices have been introduced to provide adjunctive therapy. The algorithms that control the manner those devices apply forces to the impaired limb are called haptic control algorithms (HCA) and to this date there has not been conclusive evidence as to what the behaviour of these algorithms should be. One type of HCAs is error augmentation (EA) which is a rather understudied but promising approach. This work presents to the literature two novel control strategies of the EA type that incorporate adaptive features namely Error Augmenting Adaptive(EA) and Error Augmenting Proportional (EA). Those two algorithms were implemented for and deployed to a single point of attachment robotic rehabilitation system. The effectiveness in inducing motor learning of the developed algorithms was evaluated in a trial with able-bodied participants and compared against a third more established assistive HCA namely Assistance As Needed (AAN) and a control condition (no forces). Four groups (one per condition) practised reaching movements with a speed and accuracy requirement using their non-dominant arm to interact with the robot under a visual rotation of a 100o. To assess learning kinematic measures were collected to measure their performance on reaching and circle-drawing movements. Also, bilateral transfer to the arm that did not receive practice was assessed. Changes in the participants’ valence, arousal and dominance were assessed with a Self-Assessment Manikin questionnaire. All groups learned to move their non-dominant arm under a visual perturbation showing comparable improvements in all key measures (p < 0.05). Passive movements and EAP led to greater improvement in movement smoothness (p < 0.05) and resulted in more retention of the improvements after a washout block (p < 0.05) was introduced. Conversely, EAA showed a better effect on improving mean velocity (p < 0.05). All groups performed similarly in terms of improving movement error and duration but EAA and AAN achieved peak performance faster (p < 0.05). Similar improvements were measured on the arm that did not receive any training which were fully retained post-washout indicating that bilateral transfer occurred and led to better retention (p < 0.05). The findings of this work indicate that different attributes can be exploited from the developed HCAs to induce motor learning and improve different aspects of the movement suggesting that multimodal training protocols tailored to the needs of the patient are the way forward. Also, this work showed that bilateral transfer training has great potential in upper limb rehabilitation and the positive effects of the different HCAs on the arm that received practice transfer to the one that did not receive training. It is recommended that the findings of this work to be further investigated in experimental therapy protocols for those who suffer from neurological impairments such stroke and CP.
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Ikpehai, Augustine. "Cross-layer energy efficiency of PLC systems for smart grid applications." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619370/.
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Though opinions are still divided over the specific choices of technology for smart grid, there is a consensus that heterogeneous communications network is most appropriate. Power line communication (PLC) is promising because it is readily available and it aligns with the natural topology of power distribution network. One of the emerging realities is that the communication system enabling smart grid must be energy-efficient. This thesis employs a cross-layer approach to address energy efficiency of PLC networks in different smart grid scenarios. At network layer, this work exploits the topology of a PLC-enabled advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to improve the probability of successful packet delivery across the network. The technique, termed AMI clustering, leverages the traditional structure of the low voltage (LV) network by organising the smart meters into clusters and locally aggregating their readings. Improvement in packet delivery inherently reduces energy wastage. Next, the adaptation layer exploits the low data rate transmission techniques to reduce the energy requirements of PLC nodes. To achieve that, this work developed a network model in NS-3 (an open-source network simulator) that considers PLC transceivers as resource-constrained devices and interconnects them to emulate home energy management system (HEMS). The model was validated with experimental results which showed that in the home area network (HAN), low-rate applications such as energy management can be supported over low-power PLC networks. Furthermore, at physical layer, this thesis proposes a more energy-efficient multi-carrier modulation scheme than the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) used in most of the current PLC systems. OFDM is widely known for its high peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR) which degrades energy efficiency of the systems. This thesis found that by employing vector- OFDM (V-OFDM), power requirements of PLC transmitter can be reduced. The results also showed the energy efficiency can be further improved by using a dynamic noise cancellation technique such as dynamic peak-based threshold estimation (DPTE) at the receiver. By applying the proposed methods, packet delivery can be improved by 3% at network layer (which conserves energy) and reduced data rate can save about 2.6014 dB in transmit power. Finally, at physical layer, V-OFDM and DPTE can respectively provide 5.8 dB and 2.1 dB reduction in power requirements of the PLC transceivers. These signify that if V-OFDM is combined with DPTE, future PLC modems could benefit from energy-efficient power amplifiers at reduced cost.
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Akhtar, Imran. "Dynamic managerial capabilities : the case of international student recruitment at the UK higher education institutions." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619491/.
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The thesis explores and examines the role of dynamic managerial capabilities as they apply to the international student recruitment efforts at The United Kingdom Higher Education Institutions (UK HEIs). Although dynamic capabilities literature has attracted a fair amount of attention, the relationship between the dynamic managerial capabilities and firm performance have been under-explored in prior research, in particular in the context of UK HEIs. This study affords an opportunity to forge a link between theory and practice. The study takes a mixed methods research approach to data collection. First, a large panel data set was acquired from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The dataset was refined by focusing on 100 UK HEIs with students from 100 countries studying within 15 subject disciplines. This is then substantiated with research, student employability and student satisfaction rankings data. Furthermore, a survey of middle to senior managers responsible for internationalisation from 165 UK HEIs produced a response rate of 20% (n = 31). Fourth, a large British university is selected for interviews and qualitative data collection. Middle to senior managers were interviewed using semi-structured interviews (n = 10) to assess how they sense the need for change and to determine some of the mechanisms used in opportunity recognition and capture. While the results confirm the importance of resource-based explanations when assessing the performance of UK HEIs. In that founding history, university rankings, reputation and location are key determinants, especially for the Russell Group universities. The results indicate that dynamic managerial capabilities, as latent variables, are also important. Within-group performance differences exist despite the degree of resource parity. Evidence was mixed in respect of the effectiveness of dynamic managerial capabilities in the international function; with some respondents claiming that intervention from senior management teams is often limited in their effect. The thesis is one of a small but growing number of empirical studies on dynamic managerial capabilities. In keeping with other studies in this emerging field, it has had to face several methodological challenges. The mixed methods approach is used as one means of meeting some of these challenges.
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Crouch, Jason James. "Mediated messages : constructions of intimate communication through the use of digital technologies, and the extent to which such encounters can be conceptualised as one-to-one performance." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619496/.
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In the 21st Century a majority of the world’s population carry in their pockets devices that promise connection to others over distance. The instant connectivity offered by technologies of communication is somewhat of mixed blessing combining the allure of interaction and the threat of availability. Much of the advertising gloss for the technologies of communication – smartphones, video conferencing and social networks – relies on selling the idea of real human connection at a distance. This study sets out to explore the nature of mediated communications between individuals in the context of a perceived opposition that conceptualises technology as either distancing or enhancing what it is to be human. The research frames mediated interactions as one-to-one performance, an approach which encourages the unexpected and playful whist embracing vulnerability. In exploring the nature of the one-to-one performance scholars and audiences stress their experiences as personal, at times intense and certainly intimate. Here intimacy is engaged with as both a subconscious technological fluency as well as intrapersonal closeness, placing such interaction in the socio-cultural context of late capitalism. It is concluded that rather than technology enframing a commodified experience of the world, intimate interrelations are possible and inevitable. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the research question and contextualises the inquiry in regard to my own personal and professional background. Chapter 2 details relevant concepts, scholarship, performance practice and cultural context and serves to place the work in a lineage of other practice. Chapter 3 describes, documents and interrogates the research practice, including inspirations and experiments alongside the final works. Chapter 4 conceptualises the practice within a phenomenological framework, analysing contemporary communications technologies as part of an expanding perceptual toolset with which we co-shape our reality and placing technical infrastructure within a framework of late capitalism. The final chapter concludes the complimentary writing and clearly enumerates the findings.
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Leib, Thomas. "The role of destination image and personality in co-branding of Baltic region tourism destinations : a case of Germany as a source market." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2014. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/626/.
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Marketing and branding are inseparably linked, since the ultimate goal of marketing is to establish a brand in the mind of the consumer (Ries & Ries, 2002). Branding can be considered as one of the most meaningful and important aims and objectives of marketing (Cai, 2002). Interest in brand partnerships or co-branding, a concept where two or more brands facilitate each other in the market with the collective objective to establish a brand more effectively compared to what a brand could achieve on its own (Bengtsson & Servais, 2005; Chang, 2009) is increasing. However, literature to date has not addressed a topic of destination co-branding. Small destinations with a limited tourist offering may be particularly able to benefit from collaborative marketing strategies, such as co-branding. The Baltic States are individually small destinations, relatively new on the international tourism market and, thus, not high in volume or oriented towards the typical mass tourism (Coles & Hall, 2005; Hall, Smith, & Marciszweska, 2006; Nilsson, Eskilsson, & Ek, 2010). It is therefore important to understand potential marketing strategies and approaches that might increase the touristic appeal of the region. This thesis is the first attempt to fill this void in the tourism and marketing literature. The central question that this thesis will address is, what role destination personality and destination image play in the market perceptions of co-branding destinations, and their impact on tourist satisfaction, as well as behavioural intentions. The primary research focuses on tourists’ perceptions of destination co-branding, as influenced by the perception of the destination image and destination personality. It adopts subjectivism of ontology as the underlying research philosophy and an inductive approach. Semi-structured interviews with 26 tourists to the Baltic States were undertaken; 13 interviews with actual tourists and 13 with potential tourists. Data were inductively coded and categories of description were identified, organised into coherent themes and linkages between them were drawn, which resulted in a framework of co-branding as informed by perceptions of image and personality. The findings demonstrated that apparent differences exist between actual and potential tourists in the clarity of their image and personality perceptions as they pertain to the individual states. Actual tourists can clearly identify commonalities and differences among the three countries, while potential tourists have difficulties recognising differences. Overall, Estonia’s personality is described as modern, stylish and young; Lithuania seems backwards, distanced, rough and proud, Russian-Polish influenced, religious and held back. Latvia, the reflective, quiet and rural but also metropolitan country seems blurred and still needs to find its own identity. With regard to the image perceptions, these countries are perceived as each being unique in their own way, yet belonging together through their history and, as such, offering the perfect holiday destination. While Latvia does not play a prominent role in their image associations, Estonia is perceived as having Finnish or Nordic influences; Lithuania does not stand out and is not in the tourism spotlight. Co-branding, as a marketing strategy, was seen as beneficial, as it would increase the visibility of the individual states but also the competitiveness of the entire region on the international tourism market. The aim of co-branding should not be the assimilation of the destinations, but to emphasise their similarities and differences to create awareness, visibility and interest among tourists. The contribution to knowledge of this thesis is in addressing the concept relevant to a highly competitive tourism industry through the lens of perceived destination image and personality concepts. It explores how it would affect tourists’ perception of the region. It makes an original contribution to knowledge by first determining the current perceived image and personality of a region that has been largely neglected in academic research and still carries a negative connotation of the Soviet bloc in consumers’ minds (Huettinger, 2008). Second, tourists’ perceptions of a co-branding approach for the region with similar historical, geographical, and cultural background is explored. Finally, a model of destination co-branding based on the destination image and destination personality is built. The thesis shows that small destinations with a limited tourist offering would be able to benefit from collaborative marketing strategies, such as co-branding, as it offers great potential to enhance the market attractiveness of an entire region when individual destinations target similar market segments and offer complementary products or services.
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Greenall, Paul Vincent. "The investigation, assessment and formulation of stranger sexual violence." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2015. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/200/.
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Stranger sexual violence remains a matter of public concern. A key challenge which confronts criminal justice personnel dealing with such crimes is to understand the causes of the attacks and their meaning for the perpetrator. This thesis presents a portfolio of published works which address this challenge. Firstly, the diverse nature of some very rare and distinctive sex offender sub-types is explored. These include those with a mental illness, a personality disorder and/or those who sexually assault adult female strangers, including rape and sexual homicide. This is achieved by examining case files from high and medium secure forensic services, official data held by the National Crime Agency, and the latest research in this area. Using quantitative and qualitative research methods, important difference in relation to offender previous histories, offence behaviours and offence motivation are highlighted, as well as the differing contexts and circumstances in which stranger sexual violence occurs. These findings suggest that although rare, sex offender types have many similarities to other offenders, knowledge and understanding of these important ‘within-group’ differences are required by criminal justice personnel. Secondly, a new development in forensic clinical practice is presented. Referred to as ‘index offence analysis’ this is a formal and structured analysis of a crime, which helps to capture different offence behaviours and motivations, to ensure they are included in the assessment process and the final case formulation This thesis therefore suggests important ‘within group’ differences exist among men who engage in similar types of stranger sexual violence and such differences can be identified by a detailed analysis of their offending. Consequently, knowledge of such violence is required in order to understand how and why an offence occurred where and when it did. The findings of this thesis have important implications, not only for clinical practice but criminal investigations.
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Morad, Sabariah Binti. "An exploration of a teaching school programme in Malaysia : towards democratic education." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2015. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/617262/.
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The thesis is an exploration of the Teaching School programme in Malaysia. The programme was conceived by the policies of the Government of Malaysia, implemented by the Ministry of Education and realized by the teacher training institutions in Malaysia. It is a school programme that is explored in terms of Dewey’s conception of education. In political terms it aspires to be the ‘showcase’ for the teacher training institutions of Malaysia. In addition, for other Malaysia primary schools it is to be a point of reference in their attempts to modernise and increase the quality of primary schools in Malaysia, as a foundation for making the country more globally competitive. In the exploration to be better informed of the teaching school programme under study, the stance of the study is qualitative. It mainly used interviews, observation and the study of policy documents as a means of data collection. The thesis draws upon Schostak and Schostak’s (2008) “Architectures of the Social” framework in researching the range of alternative visions and rationales to analyse and evaluate the differences between the Teaching School on paper and in practice. In sum, by using the “Architectures of the Social” framework the thesis explores the relationships between the Conceptual Domain, the Practical Domain and the Material Domain to provide significant insights into the implementation of education innovations. The key insights focus on the development of the democratic potential of the teaching school as a ‘social architecture’ for schools as a basis for the democratic development of society. It challenges the current practices of schools and argues for a real change towards a more democratic development to create better primary schools in Malaysia. The key to developing schools is the involvement of the ’voices’ of the people in ways that involves a clear alignment between the policy vision at the level of the Conceptual Domain, the interpretation of policy in practice in Practical Domain together with appropriate resources in the Material Domain required to fulfill the potential of the teaching school programme in Malaysia. However, it is argued, the visions are not sufficiently understood, nor are the practical mechanisms and resources for its implementation fully appropriate. Furthermore, the democratic potential of the vision has not been realized. This thesis argues that a way forward is to explore the democratic legacies of Dewey and other progressive educators in the context of contemporary democratic theory drawing upon such theorists as Rancière.
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Bushnaq, Taqwa Abdulraheem. "Diet and lifestyle factors associated with vitamin D status in healthy women living in the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2016. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/556/.
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Background: Vitamin D is integral to bone health and skeletal growth. There is now growing evidence that vitamin D deficiency is one of the most common diseases worldwide, not only in countries with limited sunshine, such as the United Kingdom (UK) but also in countries with substantial sunshine, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Aims: The aim of the research was to study vitamin D intake and lifestyle factors that may affect vitamin D production in women adopting different clothing styles within two countries, Saudi women in the KSA, as well as the UK covered (UKc) and the UK uncovered (UKun) women. Methods: The study methods were designed to collect participants’ dietary vitamin D intake, sun exposure routine, other influential lifestyle factors, and vitamin D status. Participants were asked to complete, a vitamin D questionnaire (which included: demographic information, food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) and sun-exposure questionnaire), a 3-day food diary, and a blood sample was taken. A total of 192 participants were recruited and of these 145 completed the vitamin D questionnaire. The 3-day food diary were completed by 57 women, and 79 women gave a blood sample. Data were explained as mean±standard-deviations or percentage(frequency). Statistical test including ANOVA and Chi-square was used to determine differences between groups. Regression modelling was used to determine predictors of doctor-diagnosed vitamin D deficiency. Results: The FFQ estimation of dietary vitamin D intake was 3.6±3µg/day, 9.2±11µg/day, and 8.6±6.5µg/day, for the KSA, the UKc and the UKun group respectively (p˂0.01). The 3-day food diary estimation of dietary vitamin D intake was 1.4±1.3µg/day, 1.0±1.0µg/day, 3.3±3.2µg/day, for the KSA, the UKc and the UKun group respectively (p=0.03). Bland-Altman plot showed the two methods had low agreement, mean difference -3.93µg. The sun-exposure assessment at peak-time was 2.3±2.8hour/day, 3.0±2.4hour/day, 1.2±1.4 hour/day for the KSA, the UKc and the UKun group respectively (p˂0.01). Whereas, assessment of fractions of exposed body surface area (BSA) at peak-time was 0.11±0.04, 0.09±0.03, 0.14±0.09 for the KSA, the UKc and the UKun group respectively (p˂0.01). The reported data of vitamin D status showed that previous diagnoses of vitamin D deficiency reported by 28.3%(n=41) of the participants, KSA 8.3%(n=12), UKc 17.9%(n=26) and UKun 2.1%(n=3). The collected blood samples showed that 79%(n=15) of the KSA group had vitamin D deficiency, with average level 7.53±6.91ng/ml. However, vitamin D level of the UK groups could not be obtained. Logistic regression modelling identified that supplements use and reasons for supplementation, log of average BSA exposed at peak hours and residency were predictors of being diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency of the total population (n=192). Conclusion: Dietary vitamin D intake was very low for all the study groups regardless of residency. Sun-exposure habits varied between the group and this was most significant factor in previously diagnosed vitamin D deficiency. It may be difficult to change sun-exposure habits due to cultural or religious reasons and therefore dietary factors need to be studied to identify alternatives to sun-exposure in those who do not wish to expose their skin.
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Vernon, John. "Teaching nursing students using an adaptation of the spirit of motivational interviewing : an action research case-study." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2016. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/617332/.
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This study examines the impact that a teaching adaptation to the clinical engagement strategy known as the Spirit of Motivational Interviewing had on the attitudes, values and beliefs of qualified nursing students towards their own learning. This Spirit of Motivational Interviewing consists of several constructs (partnership, acceptance, compassion and evocation) and the proposed adaptation for the purposes of teaching is the addition of the construct of self-awareness. In order to qualify and practice as a nurse, the Nursing and Midwifery Council require that the delivery of care is based on the person-centred values of acceptance, respect and empathic understanding. Role modelling has been traditionally used as a way to transmit these values, but the creation of much larger classes as a result of a move by nurse education into universities has made this far more difficult to achieve. The study examines research that suggests the deployment of the person-centred approach of Carl Rogers by educators leads to improvements to a range of outcomes such as motivation, self-esteem, grades, disruptive behaviour and absenteeism. It takes the position that the use of the adapted Spirit of Motivational Interviewing can transform learning, leading to changes to the attitudes, values and beliefs of students so that they become less distorted and prejudicial and more open, expansive and discerning. Participants in the study were a group of qualified nursing students on a substance misuse course, and their teachers. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected. In order to ascertain views about the nature of teaching and learning, interviews were conducted with both nursing students and with teaching staff, and the students were asked to complete empathy questionnaires. Findings from the quantitative data revealed a statistically significant increase in student empathy at the end of the substance misuse module. The qualitative data indicated that the students and nurse teachers interviewed shared similar views about the value of forming collaborative relationships in order to enhance the learning potential of students, and this was best achieved through a process of encouraging and validating student experiences. Students felt that the willingness of teachers to share aspects of themselves was important in relationship formation. Some felt that attendance at the module had moved them in the direction of becoming more person-centred when they engaged with patients and clients. When an adaptation to the Spirit of Motivational Interviewing is used for the purposes of teaching nursing students it seems able to increase student engagement in learning. When self-awareness, partnership, acceptance, compassion and evocation is shown by the teacher and through a process of role modelling and reciprocity by the students, it appears to be capable of changing the attitudes of students to becoming more person-centred towards the care of patients and clients. The study suggests that this teaching approach should be considered by all schools of nursing as a way of transmitting these values.
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Teklemariam, Aron. "A finite element approach to study skeletal muscle tissue." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2016. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/617509/.
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This dissertation investigates force generation in muscle using a finite element (FE) approach to model electrical activity and mechanical force production within skeletal muscle. The work proposes new FE models design/formulations to answer specific research questions related to skeletal muscle properties. The focus is on two specific determinants of skeletal muscle force: the activation and the connective tissue. A FE model was created and designed to study the impact of the dielectric and geometric (pennation) properties of the muscle tissues on the electric activation signal detected on the skin surface by bipolar electrodes (surface electromyography, sEMG). The model shows that when considering parallel muscle fibres the tissue, attenuated mainly frequencies in the physiological range (92-542 Hz). This study revealed a strong impact of the muscle fibres pennation angle, on the detected signal (low pass filtering effect); suggesting that the low pass filtering behaviour observed in experimental data is due to the geometry (curvature or pennation) rather than the dielectric properties. The model informed recommendations for sEMG experimental protocol to increase the inter-electrodes distance when measuring sEMG of pennated muscles. A micromechanical model of the muscle tissue was created to explore the influence of the connective tissue properties (endomysium) on the total muscle force production. The constitutive model was used to study the mechanical consequence of clustering of fibres due to the remodelling of the motor units, which occurs with ageing. An FE model with a bundle of 19 fibres was designed and simulated activating 21% and 37% of the fibres in a distributed and clustered pattern. Results showed for both activation levels that the pattern of the strain distribution changed with an increased deformation toward the centre of the bundle. This could lead to excessive unbalanced stresses if higher deformations are involved. The micromechanical model can be used to study muscle force determinants at a fascicle level. It showed the importance of the fibre distribution during the muscle activation and the consequences of age related alterations on force production.
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Harbisher, Anne. "Student engagement and value co-creation : a model of university and student impacts on the quality of educational outcomes." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619766/.
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Student engagement is a phrase that is now common in the vocabulary of academics and higher education managers but there is little clarity about what it actually means and how this can be encouraged and harnessed. The theories around student engagement have emerged from the educational discipline and have been quite isolationist. This study integrates these theories with those of value co-creation to give a different and additional perspective that has a valuable contribution to theory and practice. The study uses the UK Engagement Survey from the Higher Education Academy as a basis for developing a model of student engagement. Undergraduate students at a university were surveyed using the amended UKES instrument and a sample size of 891 was obtained. The survey instrument included qualitative open comments that were analysed alongside the quantitative data. SPSS was used to generate descriptive and comparative statistics and exploratory factor analysis, which was further, developed using AMOS into confirmatory factor analysis to specify a model of student engagement. The additional items used from the value co-creation literature significantly enhanced the final model outcomes. The study has made important contributions to the areas of method, in its use of the amended survey incorporating qualitative aspects, of theory in the integration of theories from different academic disciplines and of practice, in the development of a useable model that had implications for use in universities.
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Palmer, Pauline Margaret. "Changing times, changing values : an exploration of the positionality and agency of teacher educators working in higher education." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619874/.
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Over recent decades, education in England has been subject to increasing government intervention, with a parallel impact on teacher education itself: the ‘quality assurance’, monitoring and surveillance that has become part of the culture of schooling is also present in teacher education. Moreover, government drives to increase the role of schools in initial teacher education and a turn to a more technical view of teaching, based on a series of identified competences and skills, has had an impact on teacher educators working in higher education institutions. Alongside addressing the impact of change on this aspect of their role, teacher educators based in higher education have also had to contend with recent pressures to engage with ‘research and knowledge exchange’, and move more towards traditional academic research roles. However, the majority of teacher educators working in universities in England enter this role on the basis of their ‘recent and relevant experience’ in schools, rather than any academic attributes. They have rarely had a research background or training. This thesis explores the impact of these developments on a small group of teacher educators based in one institution, focusing on their narratives of change and their response to managerial shifts and their repositioning in the institution. Viewing their accounts through the lens of Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner and Cain’s (1998) work on ‘Figured Worlds’, it explores the way they talk about their changing roles, their perceptions of the extent of their professional agency, and their narratives of self in the context of change. The analysis suggests that, within the context of the wider political, economic and managerial changes that have an impact on their environment, teacher educators are subject to powerful neoliberal discourses that require them to re-position themselves, individually and as a group; they achieve this with varying degrees of success, albeit at some cost. Underpinning their stories is a deep sense of loss of professional agency and identity. The thesis argues that fundamental changes in values of the meaning of teaching and teacher education undermine teacher educators’ agency, despite their attempts to resist and adapt to change.
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O'Sullivan, Rachel Ann Sarah. "Establishing sustainable school-based teacher research activity as a mechanism to support teachers' career-long professional development." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619931/.
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Upon election, the coalition government in England (2010 – 2015) were swift to introduce reforms intent on improving standards of education in England. Central to the reforms were measures designed to improve the quality of both teaching and teachers, factors widely recognised as lying at the heart of educational improvement. A national network of Teaching Schools was announced, outstanding schools that would lead and develop career long teacher development. The work of all Teaching Schools would be underpinned by six core strands of professional development including a requirement to engage in research and development activity. This thesis reports on the extent and nature of research activity occurring at six Teaching Schools in the North West of England. The research findings offer insight into the potential for school-based teacher-research activity to support meaningful professional development within the teaching profession. Furthermore, findings indicate the conditions required to facilitate teachers in their research endeavours such that research activity may become established as a meaningful and sustainable expectation of practice. Analysis of the data makes clear the real potential for school-based teacher-research activity to underpin career-long professional development and learning. However, the results indicate that existing levels of teacher research literacy are low and teachers require support, guidance and access to research resources and expertise. School leadership emerged as a highly significant factor in creating a research-rich environment in which research is valued and celebrated. However, the strongly ‘top-down’ model of organisation evident in each research-active school has implications for the long-term future of a research agenda. An absence of ‘bottom-up’ momentum is likely to leave the research agenda vulnerable to staff change or shifting priorities either of which may cause the agenda to collapse, a factor that was not acknowledged by participants. This research adds to existing knowledge on the benefits of teacher-research activity and provides robust evidence for politicians, policy makers and practitioners that a blend of ‘bottom-up’/‘top-down’ organisation is required to build a self-sustaining model. A blended approach existing within a research-rich school culture and supported by research expertise offers the potential to establish a sustainable model of teacher research activity. This research indicates that research active teachers are enabled to effectively interrogate their practice and find answers to their professional questions and problems. Research offers teachers the means to become empowered, agentic professionals who through ongoing inquiry, learning and professional development are positioned to become more effective in their practice.
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Witham, Gary. "Carer positioning in supporting someone living with cancer and dementia : a narrative approach." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619934/.
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Background: Evidence suggest that for people living with cancer and dementia the exploration of memory loss is superficially based upon patient or carer disclosure. Patients tend to underplay the importance and extent of memory problems in cancer consultations and staff found assessment challenging, avoiding exploring memory without an obvious therapeutic gain. Compared to cancer patients without dementia, people treated for cancer with pre-existing dementia are diagnosed at a later or unknown stage, receiving less treatment with more treatment complications and poorer survival. This highlights the challenge for carers in advocating and negotiating treatment choices with their relative. Aim: To examine the challenges of informal carers supporting someone with cancer and dementia within the United Kingdom Methods: In depth interviews were conducted with 7 informal carers using a narrative approach to examine the construction of their experiences. Recruitment took place at a Psycho-oncology unit at a tertiary cancer centre in the north west of England between July 2014-March 2015. Two participants were recruited external to the NHS through snowballing techniques. Both NHS and University ethical approval was obtained. Results: The findings demonstrate how informal carers navigate a path through complex cancer treatments and support their relative. A cancer diagnosis often requires multiple treatment visits to an oncology centre and this can be challenging for carers. They find that they need to co-ordinate and manage both health professionals and their care recipient(s) in terms of getting access to appropriate services and support. This process can be particularly challenging in the presence of a cognitive impairment that often demands effective communication with different agencies. Carers frequently experienced multiple challenges include dealing with the stigma that is characteristic of the dementia experience and the added complexity of negotiating this within a cancer care context. Issues of decision-making, best interests and quality of life were also of central concern for carers. Conclusions: Carers within this particular context face complex challenges that are not necessarily obvious and appear under reported. Their role is often rendered invisible by the nature of the care recipients’ condition. We suggest health professionals need to respond to and support carers in different ways that do not stigmatise and hence discriminate against them.
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Drinkwater, Kenneth Graham. "Belief in the paranormal : measurement development and evaluation." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619951/.
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This thesis evaluated paranormal belief measurement. Particularly, it considered the weaknesses of existing published measures. An extensive literature review identified frequently used paranormal scales and common associates. Consideration of identified measures produced a comprehensive pool of items (see Dagnall et al., 2010a and 2010b). Analysis of these items assessed the factorial structure of paranormal belief. Research progressed through four discrete phases that evaluated measurement of paranormal belief. Phase I: Exploratory factor analysis: Respondents completed a 64-item scale. Analysis supported a conceptually coherent and internally reliable 8-factor solution (haunting/ghosts, extra-terrestrial, superstition, religious beliefs, psi [premonition/psychokinesis], extra-sensory perception, astrology, and witchcraft). Phase II: Confirmatory factor analysis: Tested the emergent structure (47-Items) further. Respondents completed items retained from phase I alongside additional items (indexing astrology and witchcraft) to create a 50-item scale. Following removal of items sharing excessive variance, analysis confirmed an 8-factor solution. The emergent measure demonstrated good internal reliability and validity (content and face). Phase III: Alongside the emergent scale, respondents completed established paranormal measures (Revised Paranormal Belief Scale and Australian Sheep-Goat Scale), a series of probabilistic reasoning tasks and a measure of proneness to reality test deficits. Results revealed the new measure was psychometrically sound, contained coherent subscales, assessed construct breadth and correlated positively with established measures. In addition, non-believers perform less well on perception of randomness reasoning tasks. Finally, belief in the paranormal correlated positively with proneness to reality testing deficits. Phase IV: Further examined the newly constructed measure alongside mental toughness to assess validity and reliability in a real world context. Findings were in line with previous phases, suggesting excellent levels of consistency, while correlational analysis produced ideas for additional development of paranormal items and subscales. Measurement of the current MMUpbs, psychometric performance and subscale coherence, reveal improvements for future item design.
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Soler, Andres Ruiz. "Numerical investigation of haemodynamics in spiral-inducing grafts using Eulerian and Lagrangian frameworks." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619956/.
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A large range of vascular diseases require the replacement of blood vessels. Bypass grafting is a widely used treatment, in particular for high risk-patients, and consists of the connection of autologous/prosthetic graft and veins/arteries in order to repair the regular blood supply through occluded or damaged vessels. However, the development of stenosis due to thrombosis, atherosclerosis and intimal hyperplasia, linked to unfavourable haemodynamic patterns, reduces the long-term efficiency of the treatment. The identification of the natural blood motion as a swirling flow in the whole arterial system has resulted in new promising lines of research in cardiovascular devices in order to increase the patency rates of graft anastomoses by reproducing this physiological phenomenon. The impact of the proposed research lies in the numerical investigation of the influence of different design parameters of novel spiral-inducing grafts on haemodynamics, with the objective of understanding the physics of the problem and determinating the most relevant geometrical parameters. Conventional Eulerian metrics highlighted the effects of the ridge cross-sectional shape and, particularly, the position of the ridge around the perimeter of the graft on inducing an enhanced swirling blood flow. The Lagrangian approach, which assumes the blood as a heterogeneous solid-liquid suspension, allows to assess the individual behaviour and movement of representative particles travelling in the continuous phase and again highlighted the influence of the ridge orientation from this perspective. The correlation between distributions of friction forces and terminal locations of particles in the wall of the host artery showed a predominant deposition in regions of low wall shear stress, in agreement with those assumptions that were initially considered as optimisation criteria.
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Lister, Devina. "Telling the untellable stories of women living with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619994/.
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Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a common, chronic bowel illness involving the presence of unpleasant bodily sensations and pain. In the current research the ‘stories’ women living with IBS had to tell were studied as part of a multi-layered narrative ‘bricolage’ (Kincholoe, 1991) analysis. The language used to discuss women living with IBS in a primarily scientific and deductive literature, was argued to be problematic, and reinforce gendered notions of IBS as a ‘women’s disease’ (Dixon-Woods and Critchley, 2008). Informed by the researcher’s positioning as a feminist and a woman living with IBS based in the UK, this feminist-narrative study was carried out and placed women’s standpoints (Harding, 1991) at the forefront of IBS research. Participants who volunteered to take part were women living with IBS and who were based in ‘Western’ countries, such as the UK, USA and Australia. Each of the participants completed a diary for one-week, completing at least one entry per day by writing or drawing about what was meaningful to them, reflecting upon their everyday lives and experiences of IBS and illness. Diaries were used a means of conducting narrative inquiry, which takes human experiences seriously as the phenomena of interest (Clandinin and Connelly, 2006). The diary method also facilitated adopting a stance on illness as ‘embodied’ experiences, transcending a divide between the mind and body (see for example, Bendelow, 2009). The research aims were to explore stories the women had to tell about their lives, whilst also considering if Western ‘cultural scripts’ (Miller, 2005) of femininities and of chronic illness informed the personal story constructions. The interpretations presented how the diverse and nuanced accounts explored embodied experiences of bodily shame, suffering, hope to ‘be positive’, and efforts to keep going when faced with the challenges of living with a chronic illness. Consistent with past literature (Björkman et al., 2013) illness was emplotted into the women’s stories in gendered and culturally meaningful ways, such as by drawing upon narrow Western feminine body-ideals. Whilst the women could not contain their ‘leaky bodies’ (Shildrick, 1994), this did not prevent them constructing stories about trying to keep up an appearance of normalcy and able-bodiedness. In addition to providing valuable new knowledge about stories of IBS, illness and gendered embodiment, this research showed the promise of adopting a creative and playful approach to conducting feminist research. The thesis itself was conceptualised by the ‘insider’ researcher as having been symbolic of what it was like to complete a PhD when experiencing intermittent illness. Poetry-as-method thus provided a valuable vehicle for the research during the interpretative process, but also in realising the potentials of artful research in creating space for innovative and politicised social action.
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Page, Frances Carole. "A study exploring the factors that shape and continue to influence the personal epistemologies of student teachers of secondary English." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2018. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619953/.
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This thesis explores the formation of personal epistemologies and their impact on the development of professional subject knowledge in beginning teachers of English. The inquiry draws on a small sample of Secondary English student teachers studying for a Postgraduate Certificate of Education qualification (PGCE) at a university in the UK. The research explores the development of student teachers’ ‘personal epistemologies’, or belief systems concerning the nature of knowledge. It emphasises the importance of the affective, as well as the cognitive dimensions of the development of subject knowledge and identity. The thesis shows how autobiographical memory feeds into personal epistemology and argues that as this remembering becomes overlaid with new contexts and pedagogical learning, and permeated by the dominant discourses which surround the subject, a sense of shift emerges, entailing disconnection and reconnection, continuity and disjuncture. These temporal shifts encompass beliefs, pedagogy, context and inter-subjectivity, which meld to provide a sense of dynamism and fluidity in personal epistemology. Whilst such shifting perspectives might generate tension and uncertainty, it is argued that there is also a sense of energy and praxis as new learning emerges. The research identifies the need for spaces which provide opportunities for reflexive and transformative questioning that puts the self at the heart of the inquiry. It is argued that affect, memory, discourse and cognition are intertwined in complex ways in the development of student teachers’ personal epistemologies, and that it is important for teacher educators and policy makers, as well as for student teachers themselves, to understand the complexity of these entanglements and their role in the development of subject knowledge for teaching. The research employs a paradigmatic shift from interpretive, constructivist research methods to post-structural methodology in order to engage with the complexity and multiplicity of the voices emerging. Hope is identified as a powerful concept running through student teachers’ personal epistemologies. However, there is also evidence of what might be termed the ‘limitations of hope’ and the shutting down of hopeful voices through negative discourse. This research argues for student teachers’ hopeful voices to be heard, listened to, and explored as part of the multiplicity of voices emerging in the process of becoming a teacher. The outcomes of this research offer teacher educators conceptual resources with which to examine the process of professional knowledge development. Although the focus is on the personal epistemologies of beginning teachers of secondary English, the conceptual framework underpinning this study could be utilised to explore personal epistemology more widely.
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Henry, Veronica. "Mind the gap : academically successful African Caribbean heritage students, learning identities and the cultural assets mediating learning." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2015. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/618043/.
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This study identified the factors that support African Caribbean heritage children in achieving academically. Additionally, it explored and developed an understanding of the interaction between identity and learning and it is hoped contributed to a deeper understanding of the concept of ‘blackness’ through the narrative accounts of African Caribbean heritage individuals’ interactions between their learning careers, identities and wider lives, including the cultural assets mediating learning. Studies of the school experiences and educational performances of African Caribbean heritage children, (boys in particular) have on the whole tended to attribute the rationales for underachievement to cultural factors such as Black masculinity and peer group pressure (Sewell 1997); Black families’ home environment (Driver 1982; Green 1985); structural constraints of school organisation; teacher racism and government policies (Gillborn 1997; Gillborn and Youdell 2000). This study points to the ways in which structural issues in the form of macro and micro-aggression impact African Caribbean heritage children’s academic attainment. A specific contribution of the study has been to address the gap in literature surrounding the academic achievement/underachievement of African Caribbean heritage individuals. The participants’ stories revealed that African Caribbean lives in Britain are not necessarily dysfunctional but are complex, challenging and rich, and should not be viewed simply as deficient but as having rich and useful cultural capital. This study recognises the intersectionality of Black people’s experiences as not only raced but also classed and gendered, both in oppressive structures and in their personification and enactment through the agency of personalities and actions. This complex interweaving of organisation and agency required a theoretical framework that was equally capable of examining the subtleties of these dynamics. As such, this study was enabled through an original hybridity of intersectionality, CRT and narrative analysis.
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Abualhamael, Zeyad Waleed H. "The power of productive organisational energy in relation to leadership style and job satisfaction : the context of Saudi Arabian universities." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619873/.
Full textAbstract:
Leadership as a research concept has been for many years – and still remains – an area of significance. The topic of leadership has been researched and debated a great deal; however, the leadership style adopted by higher education institutions within a particular context and culture has been considered very little. The primary aim of the Doctorate research study carried out herein is to examine and evaluate the relationship between leadership styles, i.e. transformational and transactional, productive organisational energy and academic and administrative staffs’ job satisfaction in public and private universities of Saudi Arabia. In fact, during the latest few decades, the leadership body of literature has expanded beyond the focus on traits and behaviours and also provided the theoretical basis for understanding the nature of each variable, which is highlighted in the research study. The present study was based completely on the quantitative research method approach. Data for the research were collected from the academics and administrative staff of two higher educational institutions in Saudi Arabia through the use of a survey questionnaire which was sent to more than 1,400 potential respondents. A theoretical framework was also assessed in an empirical study in Saudi Arabia, to examine the impact of leadership style on job satisfaction and the mediating role played by productive organisational energy – as observed in the relationship between leadership style and job satisfaction. The study is significant for practical purposes, as it can benefit organisations in identifying their need for a specific leadership style, in order to boost their employees’ productive energy and satisfaction. The relationship between leadership style, productive organisational energy and job satisfaction was tested theoretically and empirically. The research determined that in the public King Abdulaziz University, transformational leadership predicted neither job satisfaction nor productive organisational energy to a significant level, though transactional leadership did so. Conversely, for the private Dar Alhekma University, transformational leadership did predict job satisfaction and productive organisational energy to a significant level, but transactional leadership did not manage to do so. Finally, a review of some of the limitations of the research study and several areas of future research are provided on the basis of the empirical and theoretical findings.
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Byrne, Angela Dianne. ""He wouldn't be seen using it ..." : a critical examination of the influence of men's facial skincare on male identity." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/620377/.
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This thesis presents the results of an empirical study investigating the use of facial skincare products by men in the UK. It examines the under-researched area of how men negotiate facial skincare usage in terms of masculine identities. Men’s facial skincare remains a ‘culturally sensitive’ area (Hall, 2015). The existing literature on various types of ‘capital’ (Bourdieu, 1979) does not adequately describe the cultural and social benefits for men using facial skincare products to improve their appearance. Furthermore, ‘gender capital’ (Bridges, 2009) fails to explain sufficiently how men protect their sense of masculine identity whilst using a potentially feminising product. The research explores the consumption of a diverse range of products within this growing sector of consumption that supposes men should seek to improve their overall body image (Cornwall et al., 2016). The study offers an insight into how modern men relate to products that were previously positioned in relation to women’s beauty. The research adopts a social constructionist approach. Firstly, a framework based on the approaches of Williamson (2002) and Van Leeuwen (2005) for semiotic analysis is developed and used to illustrate the various signifiers of masculinity applied by advertisers for audiences. The second stage of the research is focussed on qualitative interviews and the first of two focus groups with men about their responses to advertisements for male skincare products and their feelings about male skincare and masculine identities in the 21st Century. Final stage data collection explores how pressures on appearance informs identity ideals involved interviews with younger males supplemented by a focus group. In addition, industry representatives express their views in a series of interviews in order to provide a means by which to understand current trends and issues surrounding men’s facial skincare products. Key findings from this study highlight how men escape accusations of being vain or effeminate whilst using a product that retains a feminine inference. The reliance on women to guide decision-making provides a context that enables men to preserve their male identity by distancing themselves from seeming to be overtly interested in a ‘beautifying’ product. The contested concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell, 1995) and Cooley’s (1902) ‘looking glass’ analogy are brought together through the concept of ‘looking glass capital’ to illustrate how men who use facial skincare products benefit from an improved appearance and how they go about protecting gender ideals.
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McGrath, Brendan Anthony. "Advances in multidisciplinary tracheostomy care and their impact on the safety and quality of care in the critically ill." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2018. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/620231/.
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Tracheostomy is one of the first recorded surgical procedures and refers to an incision into the windpipe at the front of the neck, classically performed by surgeons to relieve airway obstruction. A tracheostomy tube can be inserted to maintain airway patency. The majority of tracheostomies are now performed the critically ill, typically whilst dependent on invasive respiratory support. Analysis of tracheostomy-related critical incidents helped to understand the frequency, nature and severity of problems that can occur at initial placement or during subsequent use. If problems occur, significant harm may rapidly develop, especially in the critically ill. Recurrent themes that contributed to avoidable mortality include poor emergency management and limitations in infrastructure, equipment provision, staff training and education. Many of the problems identified are amenable to prospective, multidisciplinary quality improvement strategies. This thesis describes my published work in this area. An underlying challenge to improving care lies in the fact that care requires input from many clinical disciplines. Complex patients need care in specialised settings that are not always adequately trained and supported in delivering safe tracheostomy care. My research has evaluated the impact of a co-ordinated multidisciplinary approach using bespoke resources, staff education, infrastructure changes and patient champions to direct healthcare improvements. I have critically appraised my bespoke resources and evaluated and justified the use of a variety of quality and safety metrics to define better care, both at patient-level and using institutional process measures, reflecting better coordination of care, contributing to significant cost savings. Further opportunities to build understanding of the nature of tracheostomy problems in ICU and the success of quality improvement initiatives will be discussed. Future aims are to not only improve care but also to perform a detailed economic analysis and capture knowledge on how to best implement necessary changes rapidly in today’s complex NHS.