This thesis offers a commentary on the use of an embedded approach to explore variables impacting on employee safety culture at a large manufacturing plant. A mixed method approach was adopted in order to assess the safety culture of the company. The assessment stage consisted of point-of- work observations; unstructured individual interviews, semi-structured focus groups and a safety culture survey. This afforded a detailed insight into a rich array of context-specific variables impacting on employee perceptions of safety in the company, referenced to leadership style, incident reporting, rule breaking / risk taking, time pressure, communication and reactive approach to addressing safety issues. The safety culture assessment was followed by the development and implementation of two safety culture improvement programmes (interventions). Two matched pairs of departments (two experimental and two control) were chosen in which to conduct the interventions. The first intervention comprised a replication (with enhancements) of Zohar’s (2003) safety climate improvement intervention. The results indicated that low trust towards the management and the researcher, the face validity of the intervention, negative past experiences, insufficiently transparent communication and alienation engendered a high resistance to change. Seeking to address the shortcomings of the first, the second intervention represented a more organic approach, in which the improvement programme was designed to mesh with and complement established quality management systems. An improvement in employee safety performance was observed in the first month following its introduction, however, it is also possible that this was a consequence of a lean manufacturing intervention that took place at the same time. Variables affecting the intervention success were further explored though interviews with a sample of safety experts. This resulted in the development of a six stage model for successful safety culture intervention design and implementation. The insights gained from these studies were fed back to the industrial sponsor to contribute to corporate insight and understanding into variables impacting on employee safety culture and the design of successful safety improvement programs.

Phase Change Materials (PCM) absorb and release heat at preset temperatures. Due to their relatively high values of latent heat, they are capable of storing and releasing large amounts of energy during phase change. When a PCM is in its solid phase, it will absorb heat as the external temperature rises. The temperature of the PCM will mirror the external temperature until the melting point of PCM is reached. At this stage, the PCM will begin to melt with almost no change in its temperature. PCM plays an opposite role when the external temperature drops. It releases the stored energy back while going through phase change from liquid phase to solid phase. The present work is a numerical study towards fundamental understanding of the impact of using PCM on enhancement of heat and mass transfer in several scenarios. A numerical analysis has been carried out to determine the impact of presence of PCM on the insulating characteristics of paper board packaging. Two different cases of a layered PCM and uniformly dispersed PCM within the packaging wall are considered. The numerical results illustrate significant reduction in exchange of heat between the exterior and the interior of the packaging. Specifically, the unique concept of utilizing PCM in drying of paper is proposed and a numerical investigation is performed to determine the corresponding transport characteristics. The results indicate that the PCM acts as a heat source and a heat sink alternatingly throughout the conventional paper drying process, enhancing the drying energy efficiency. This study also included presence of gas-fired infrared emitters in the drying process as well for which the spectral absorption coefficient of PCM was measured and incorporated into the theoretical model. Finally, the impact of the presence of PCM in convective air-drying of moist paper is numerically investigated. The hot air ow is generated by an in-line jet nozzle. The air impinges on the exposed surface of the moist paper while the other side is considered to be perfectly insulated. The results provide the corresponding air flow field as well as air temperature distribution in between the nozzle exit and the surface of the moist paper. The results also reveal the enhancement of drying rates with PCM, fundamentally confirming the role of PCM on enhancing the energy efficiency of convective drying of moist paper.

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La présente thèse étudie le cheminement récent de l’économie mauritanienne avec un accent particulier sur les volets relatifs aux politiques choisies pour la gestion du régime de change. La période concernée par cette recherche va de l’indépendance du pays en 1960 jusqu’à la fin de 2013, année au cours de laquelle le pays a mis fin à une succession de programmes d’ajustement structurel entamée une vingtaine d’années plutôt avec le concours du fonds monétaire international et la banque mondiale. Nous avons montré les principales étapes de la politique de change mise en place par les gouvernements successifs avec une tentative d’évaluation des résultats obtenus. La recherche apporte – après avoir figé les contours théoriques de la littérature qui traite du régime de change et établi une rétrospective sur les choix économiques opérés par le pays – des éclairages sur la pertinence des approches suivies par les autorités pour faire face aux défis posés dans ce domaine. Le travail explique à la fois les raisons, et les méthodes utilisées par les dirigeants, pour contourner les impératifs liés à la gestion économique et financière orthodoxe qui a été convenue avec les partenaires au développement. Ce contournement s’est traduit, entre autres, par des dysfonctionnements importants sur le marché de change avec la naissance, et le développement, d’un marché parallèle devenu avec le temps, particulièrement dynamique et important. La thèse analyse les conséquences de ce phénomène et étudie les circonstances dans lesquelles il a été élucidé et corrigé. / This thesis examines the recent progress of the Mauritanian economy with a particular focus on the policy aspects chosen for the management of the exchange rate regime. The period covered by this research ranges from the independence of the country in 1960 to the end of 2013, the year in which the country ended a succession of structural adjustment programs that began around 20 years ago with the support of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. We have shown the key steps of the exchange rate policy put in place by successive governments with an attempt to assess the achieved results. The research brings - after having frozen the theoretical outlines of the literature that addresses the exchange rate regime and established a retrospective on the economic choices made by the country - insights into the adequacy of approaches taken by the authorities to face the challenges posed in this domain. The work explains both the reasons and the methods used by leaders to circumvent the imperatives linked to orthodox economic and financial management that has been concluded with development partners. This circumvention has led, among other things, to major dysfunctions in the foreign exchange market with the birth and development of a parallel market that has become particularly dynamic and important over time. The thesis analyzes the consequences of this phenomenon and studies the circumstances in which it has been elucidated and corrected.

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This dissertation examines literary debates initiated by Tibetan writers and critics in the 1980s and 1990s within the context of a rapidly modernizing society. My broader project is to illustrate how intellectuals position themselves in the field of literary production regarding questions of innovation, the function of literature, periodization, linguistic idiom, and the relevance of Indic kāvya theory, which dominated Tibetan belles-lettres for nearly seven hundred years. What discursive strategies do critics use to stake their literary claims? From what conceptual structures do they draw? How do they effect or resist, and ultimately shape literary change? This dissertation presents a cultural history centered on the concept of discursive formations, while also drawing on theoretical insights in sociology and literary criticism. After demonstrating how translation, publishing and educational activities of monastically trained scholars since the 1940s lay groundwork for the advent of a "New Tibetan Literature," I examine the subsequent development of modem Tibetan literary criticism, focusing on topics of sustained debate. While the bulk of my findings are based on a broad survey of Tibetan-medium literary criticism in the PRC, my selection of significant texts for close reading was informed by seventeen months of fieldwork in Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, and the Tibet Autonomous Region. My research illustrates how Tibetan literary and other journals provide a proxy public forum for intellectuals to negotiate Tibetan literature and culture. Key debates in the 1980s, during which kāvya principles continued to prevail, regarded the criteria for defining Tibetan literature, periodization and the emergence of free verse. By the mid- 1990s, however, free verse was commonplace and western literary theory more available A growing number of critics altogether rejected the kāvya model, suggesting instead that Tibet's literary roots lay in pre-Buddhist writings. An alternate response lay in the nascent formation of a modernist literary movement.

A central concept in evolutionary biology is to understand how new species arise and are maintained. Studying the temporal and spatial distribution of genealogical lineages provides insight into evolutionary processes which govern diversification while the study of disease vectors has additional implications for human health. Within Africa, medically important Aedes mosquitoes provide an interesting case in which to study evolutionary processes because they are behaviourally and morphologically diverse. These mosquitoes are also inherently dependent of forests and so provide an ideal study organism in which to test the refuge hypothesis of historical climate change, which has been suggested as a pivotal force in species evolution. Before their evolutionary history can be determined, reliable identification of target species is required. In Chapter 3, we have developed a PCR mediated method to distinguish between isomorphic species of the Simpsoni Complex and use this method to provide inferences on ecology and species distributions; findings reveal an east-west difference in the distribution of the yellow fever vector Ae. bromeliae and non-vector Ae. lilii across the African continent, while these species meet in Uganda where they use the same larval habitats. In Chapters 4 and 5 we use a standard phylogeographic approach coupled with Approximate Bayesian Computation to uncover the evolutionary history of Aedes mosquitoes. Analysis reveals common phylogeographic signals within Aedes species which show populations have been subject to historical lineage diversification, admixture and recent demographic structure, in accordance with the refuge hypothesis of climate induced vicariance and secondary contact. Findings suggest that recent climate change throughout the late Pleistocene and early Holocene was important in generating African biodiversity. We find additional differences in the population structure of species between East and West Africa which could reflect more general biodiversity patterns within Africa. As the region connecting East and West African populations, Central Africa could be an important area regarding the diversification of species, including diseases and their vectors. We have identified a putative role for ecological speciation; for example in Chapter 4 we have provided additional evidence that worldwide populations of Ae. aegypti stem from a particularly successful source, indicating these mosquitoes possessed a trait integral for range expansion. In Chapters 4 and 5 we find that historical admixture within Africa characterises populations of Aedes mosquitoes and so may have played a key role in their evolutionary success. Since admixture can combine novel combinations of genetic material and raise adaptive potential, admixture may have been selectively advantageous for Aedes mosquitoes. Similarly, climate related secondary contact is likely to have been an important force for the evolution of other forest dependent species within Africa.

Undergraduate medical curricula are required to change and evolve in order to reflect the evolving and changing needs of contemporary medical practice. Making substantial changes to the form and delivery of medical education is challenging. While there is a growing body of research that focuses on curriculum change, relatively little attention is given to the notion of curriculum reform as a process rather than an outcome. In addition, the buildings and learning spaces where curriculum reform and undergraduate medical education are enacted contribute to people's experiences of these spaces. However, this aspect of context is currently neglected in the medical education literature. This thesis investigates the influences, vision, intentions and unintended consequences associated with an undergraduate medical curriculum reform and how the learning place and space of the medical school (where a curriculum is translated) is understood and experienced by key stakeholders (e.g., building designers, teaching faculty and students). Ontologically and epistemologically grounded within the social constructivist paradigm, the overall thesis aim was achieved through four overlapping empirical studies. Using a qualitative exploratory case study approach, data were gathered from document analysis, interviews and focus groups, and enriched by different theoretical concepts. Findings demonstrated that both (re)designing a medical curriculum and the learning space and place where reform is enacted and where teaching and learning occur is extremely complex, multifactorial and shaped and impacted by a myriad of influences and external and internal drivers for change; influenced by numerous voices and differing opinions and perspectives, different values systems, local traditions, history, geographical location and overall context. Finally, as a contribution to scholarship, the collective findings in this thesis advances our understanding of the complexities and unintended consequences associated with curriculum reform and the space and place of learning.

This thesis applies the construction grammar framework to a corpus-based study of the development of post-verbal ge in Chinese. Ge in Mandarin Chinese is widely considered as a general classifier (Li and Thompson 1981, Zhu 1982, Lü 1984). As a classifier, the main function of ge is to categorize the entity denoted by the following noun and enable numeral attachment. Thus, ge is typically preceded by numerals and followed by referential nouns. In a post-verbal position, when the numeral before ge is yi ‘one’, the numeral tends to be omitted. The ‘bare ge’ in post-verbal position is found co-occurring with non-referential nouns and non-nominal elements, such as predicative adjectives and verb phrases. The function of the post-verbal ge with these atypical collocations has attracted much attention in Chinese linguistic research (Zhang, 2003; Lü, 1984; Biq, 2004). One of the features of the previous research is that the researchers focus on a sub-set of post-verbal ge variations and try to provide a generalized claim about all instances of post-verbal ge used in Mandarin. Another feature is that the research focus is on ge alone and little attention has been paid to its co-texts and contexts of use. In addition, very little work has been done on the emergence of the mysterious function of post-verbal ge or the internal links between ge as a classifier and this new function. The main task of this thesis is to identify the semantic and syntactic properties of the post-verbal ge with atypical collocations and to explore how ge developed these properties in the post-verbal position. Within a construction grammar framework, the post-verbal ge with this special function and its co-texts are identified as a construction with a telic and bounded aspectual meaning. This [V ge X] construction of telic and bounded aspectual meaning is different from the classifier construction in terms of morpho-syntactic features as well as semantic and pragmatic properties. With the constructional approach, this research shows that the unit to which changes apply is not ge alone but the [V ge X] construction and the morpho-syntactic and semantic relations between these three elements have changed over time. Furthermore, the investigation into the mechanism of these changes also reveals that the development of micro-constructions of the [V ge X] construction of telic and bounded aspectual meaning occurred in a constructional network, which links different constructions with the [V ge X] schema.

Changing regulations, increased competition, and evolving customers' expectations have necessitated significant organizational changes in the health care industry. This multiple case study investigated the strategies of senior managers from 3 California health care organizations to implement significant change initiatives. The participating organizations had a positive reputation for successfully implementing change. Data from interviews and a review of organizational documents were analyzed through the conceptual lens of Lewin's phases of change model and Kotter's 8-step process for implementing change. The analysis revealed 3 general themes: communications, training, and employee involvement. The managers of each participating organization emphasized the importance of keeping employees informed, and the importance of continuous bidirectional communication between all levels of the organization. They emphasized that communication facilitated a smooth and timely implementation of the planned change; they also noted the importance of training to assist employees in adapting to new job requirements and new technology. However, it was noted that the managers did not undergo any formal training in change implementation. Participants also emphasized the importance of employee involvement in the form of consultation concerning aspects of the implementation. Contrary to Lewin and Kotter's assumptions, the employees had no say in the initial decision to change, how to change or when to change. These findings have positive social change implications by assisting managers of health care organizations to improve their strategies for implementing change initiatives.