BIM (Building Information Modeling) is a new radically different emerging approach to design, construction and facilities management. BIM promises to better facilitate the building development, construction and building operation. In this thesis the domain of small architectural practices is considered and how BIM can be implemented to address the problems both of operational and product efficiency and effectiveness. Research has indicated that guidance on how small architectural practices should implement BIM is lacking (Jung et al 2010). This lack of guidance is one of the reasons why small architectural practices are disinclined to adopt BIM. There is a growing need for more knowledge on how BIM technology and processes can be and should be adopted and what happens when BIM technologies and processes are implemented and used in the practice of architecture. The aim of this thesis is to develop a BIM implementation strategy framework for small architectural practices. To identify of the problems and issues of BIM implementation in a small architectural practice, a two years of case study using action research was undertaken. This involved instigating, participating and observing the implementation of BIM within a small architectural practice. Both the internal and external benefits to the architectural practice were considered. The findings of this BIM implementation research were then recorded and reviewed providing a structured approach to BIM implementation. From this process of review and reflection a revised improved framework and suggested methods for BIM adoption was developed and documented. At each stage of the BIM implementation recommendations are made. The research was undertaken as part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the University of Salford, John McCall Architects (a small architectural practice) and the researcher and author of this thesis. Though being actively involved in the BIM implementation it was possible to understand the issues and document the actions that were taken as part of the BIM adoption. The major limitation of this research is the focus on a single company as the source of evidence and research. This enhanced BIM implementation framework and the suggested working methods represents the primary contribution to knowledge made by this thesis. This framework should be of value to other small architectural practices embarking on BIM implementation.

The Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector often encounters difficulties in attaining satisfactory project performance. The secondary data in this research (literature review) clearly shows that an inability to pre-identify problems leads to projects becoming ‘risky’. This can be due to a lack of meeting certain project targets, i.e., a lack of predicting ‘accurate’ project time and costs, a failure to raise the project’s quality issues and failures in predicting a project’s return on investment. In addition, it has been shown that a major lack of anticipating problems within a construction project can occur because of a lack of providing accurate data/information and a lack of team collaboration between project stakeholders. Much research has been conducted in order to anticipate construction project problems and to attempt to offer technological solutions, including information maturity models. However, in spite of all this, research projects still run into risks. Therefore, this thesis aims to investigate a conceptual framework to support construction project managers in order to enhance project performance. This conceptual framework brings together three main entities: Integrated Collaborative Technologies, Team Collaboration and Proactive Behaviour. These three notable entities are used to support project managers’ strategies in order to successfully fulfil the project. In order for this to be achieved the researcher has met the following objectives: an investigation as to how proactive behaviour impacts on the progress of construction projects, an investigation into how team collaboration relates to proactive behaviour and an investigation into how team collaboration and integrated collaborative technologies can support proactive behaviour. The research design includes primary mixed data analysis and secondary data analysis from the literature review. In order to gather data, semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire have been undertaken by the researcher. The proposed conceptual framework was tested by asking professional experts whether the proposed framework was applicable within a construction project environment. The research shows that there is a relationship between integrated collaborative technologies and team collaboration, and team collaboration and proactive behaviour, and hence these factors impact on project performance. Moreover it has been proved that, in order to achieve a successful outcome, a project requires stakeholders to learn how to collaborate with the support of integrated collaborative technologies. Throughout this ‘iterative process’ construction project managers can enhance their proactive behaviour at an individual level and thus can enhance their ability to pre-identify construction related problems. Arguably, this behavioural change will impact positively on project performance indicators.

Crowd simulation has been widely used to simulate crowd dynamics and their behaviours. However, majority of existing studies can only simulate a specific scenario or behaviour. Although recent developments have attempted to integrate different individual behaviours in order to achieve a more realistic simulation result, it is still very complex and those crowd models often require significant modifications. This study is therefore aimed to develop a generic crowd model, which provides the flexibility to configure and represent different scenarios, as well as the ability to demonstrate individual differences on crowd behaviours. The theoretical principle of the proposed crowd model is based on the combination of force-based modelling and agent-based modelling. A unified core mathematical formula, which contains seven key parameters, is developed to represent the generic behaviour effects. In addition, a Behaviour Library is developed to present a set of basic behaviours by using the unified formula and subsequently, more complex behaviours could be formed by combining the basic behaviours. The proposed crowd model is implemented in a simulation environment by using Microsoft XNA framework. A number of well-known crowd behaviours are tested with the crowd model for validation. The proposed crowd model is further validated by simulating real life experiments and comparing its results. This research study presents a novel approach to simulate crowd behaviour at individual level by introducing a generic crowd model that can be configured into specific scenarios. It introduces a theoretical concept, through which different behaviour effects could be quantified by a unified mathematical formula. As a result, crowd modelling and simulation of different scenarios can be significantly simplified. For future work, the proposed crowd model can be tested under complex environment in order to fine-tune its theoretical model and to expand the Behaviour Library.

This thesis presents a treatise on the rendering of focused sources using wave field synthesis (WFS). The thesis describes the fundamental theory of WFS and presents a thorough derivation of focused source driving functions including, monopoles, dipoles and pistonic sources. The principle characteristics of focused sources including, array truncation, spatial aliasing, pre-echo artefacts, colouration and amplitude errors are analysed in depth and a new spatial aliasing criterion is presented for focused sources. Additionally a new secondary source selection protocol is presented allowing for directed and symmetrically rendered sources. This thesis also describes how the low frequency rendering of focused sources is limited by the focusing ability of the loudspeaker array and thus derives a formula to predict the focusing limits and the corresponding focal shift that occurs at low frequencies and with short arrays. Subsequently a frequency dependent position correction is derived which increases the positional accuracy of the source. Other characteristics and issues with the rendering of focused sources are also described including the use of large arrays, rendering of moving focused sources, issues with multiple focused sources in the scene, the phase response, and the focal point size of focused sound field. The perceptual characteristics are also covered, with a review of the literature and a series of subjective tests into the localisation of focused sources. It is shown that an improvement in the localisation can be achieved by including the virtual first order images as point sources into the WFS rendering. Practical rendering of focused sources is generally done in compromised scenarios such as in non-anechoic, reverberant rooms which contain various scattering objects. These issues are also covered in this thesis with the aid of finite difference time domain models which allow the characterisation of room effects on the reproduced field, it is shown that room effects can actually even out spatial aliasing artefacts and therefore reduce the perception of colouration. Scattering objects can also be included in the model, thus the effects of scattering are also shown and a method of correcting for the scattering is suggested. Also covered is the rendering of focused sources using elevated arrays which can introduce position errors in the rendering.

The relationship between people and nature has long been suffering from a cultural disconnect. In truth, nature is far more readily likened to travel than it is to everyday life; synonymous, as it is, with those faraway ideals beyond the everyday reach of an urban dweller. However, urban environments are teeming with a range of plants and animals, known as urban nature, thus providing the opportunity to shed these exotic associations in favour of a far more accessible experience. In order to do so, the form of contemporary urban nature photography will be examined in this thesis, where any representational trends found to be inhibiting its development will be identified, and ultimately challenged. A combination of photographic practice and reflective analysis was used to challenge these problematic trends. Five experiments were carried out. These served to yield a set of photographs which developed alternative representations of the urban nature subject. The resulting photographs of each experiment were subjected to a means of reflection; based on Gary Rolfe’s three stage method but refocused for compatibility with photographic practice, where observations were drawn from one experiment so as to guide the direction of the following experiment. These experiments culminated in a final project: a definitive body of photographs that served to fuse the findings of each experiment into an alternative aesthetic. Identity became a critical theme underlining the representations of the urban nature subject in this thesis, for the displacement of photographic information began to instil the subject with - to some extent - otherworldly sensibilities. This process challenged the active predisposition toward naturalism in urban nature photography, and began to direct such tendencies toward a much broader aesthetic landscape; engaging with unreserved artistic ideologies so as to develop exclusive representations of the urban nature subject.

The thesis presents a perspective on the possibility of harnessing sociocognitive terminology and related practices to the aim of describing philosophical terminology. In this case, the terminology of the radical constructivist philosopher Ernst von Glasersfeld is surveyed as a starting point. The experimental terminological records produced are re-incorporated into the theoretical basis constituted by the thesis. Therefore, its aim can be seen as twofold; the description of philosophical terminology also entails theory construction. The practice described can be seen as regenerative theory construction. It incorporates elements of formulation and of codification/ language engineering in terms of contemporary computational possibilities. In terms of its theoretical basis, the project extends not only to the terminology used in the corpus texts but also to concepts and terms needed to understand these in the first place. The outlook can be described as heuristic and experimental. The approach breaks down to the following sub-problems. Each can be seen as characteristic for terminology description in the human sciences: (1) The idea of conceptual entities and concept description needs to be adjusted to the field of experience. This starts from sociocognitive terminology and incorporates the anthropological view of concept analysis. (2) The conceptual entity of stereotype has to be accounted for, as the variance of the descriptions of immaterial objects suggests that they can only be apprehended in a radically simplified manner. (3) The application of prototype theory employed as by sociocognitive theory and the Aristotelian concept theory of (post-)classical terminology research needs to be adapted to the description of ideal types. This is compressed into the concept of scientificity. (4) The principles developed need to be compressed into the conventional categories of principle and approach. These categories need to be set in relation to both philosophical concepts and experience. (5) This design of a possible practice needs to be adapted to existing procedures. The existing procedures may be in need of clarification or redefinition against the background of their usage in non-standard contexts. (6) To facilitate this mutual adaptation, peculiarities of the context of philosophical terminography are explored and compressed under the concept of disciplinarity. To this, there is a declarative aspect and a procedural one. (7) The procedural approach to disciplinarity develops an understanding of the intentional aspect of agenda and interest. These orient the development of potential consensus about disciplinarity within the constraints of context and therefore the apparent identity of (sub- (sub-))cultures inside the context. (8) Following these observations, the overall theoretical and methodological construct is tested against exemplary cases. To conclude, a practice for implementing these considerations is suggested. It includes the use of text fragments as units for textographic philosophical terminography and an understanding of computational information management practices appropriate to its principles.

The study of stem cells has received considerable attention in forming many different tissue types, and gives hope to many patients as it provides great potential for discovering treatments and cures to many diseases such as Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, spinal cord injuries and diabetes. This study was concerned with developing algorithms that analyses microscope images of stem cells harvested from the bone marrow or dental pulp of a rabbit, expanded in the laboratory at the Tissue Engineering Center in Alexandria, Egypt, and then transplanted into subcutaneous pouches of the rabbit. The research aimed to detect automatically as soon as osteogenic differentiated stem cells were ready to be implanted in the defective parts, thereby avoiding the cells becoming damaged by bacterial infection. A further requirement was that the algorithms would not use traditional (chemical) markers which eventually lead to the sample being discarded as it dies after adding the marker. A total of 36 microscopy images were obtained from seven separate experiments each lasting over 10 days, and the clinicians visually classified 18 images as showing not-ready osteogenic differentiated stem cells and the remaining images showing a variety of cells ready for implantation. The ready cells typically appeared as a colony, or spread all over the image interconnecting together to form a layer. Initially, image pre-processing and feature extraction techniques were applied to the images in order to try and identify the developing cells, and a t-test was applied to the total cell area in each image in an attempt to separate the not-ready and ready images. While there was a significant difference between not-ready images and the ready images which showed the colony shaped characteristics, there was no significant difference between not-ready images and ready images with the spreading interconnecting layer shape, and so more sophisticated classification techniques were investigated. As the differentiated stem cells are effectively texture based images, each of the 36 images were divided into quadrants to give a total of 144 images to increase the image dataset. Several sets of texture parameters were derived from the grey-scale histogram statistics, Grey-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) spatial frequency components of the images. Some of these parameters were used with traditional classification techniques including cross-correlation, and Euclidean distance measures to try and classify the texture relative to the first image (not-ready) in each experiment and the other images (not-ready and ready) in the experiment. The success rate using cross-correlation was 70%, and 68% for the Euclidean distance approach. Secondly, intelligent classification techniques using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) were considered, using the various texture parameters as inputs to a feed-forward 1-hidden layer MLP using Back-propagation of Errors for training. The ANN approach gave the better results, with 77% using the grey-scale histogram statistics, 73% for GLCM, and 92% for the DCT with 70 spatial frequency components. It was observed for each of the experiments that images became classified as ready for implantation after approximately 10 days, and then remained ready for the rest of the experiment.

The debates related to the representation of the mentally ill in the media have been wide ranging over the last 20 years. Emergent representations have often been stigmatizing, claiming that the mentally ill are violent and dangerous. This study used an emergent methodological design to explore what the current representations of the mentally ill were and identify a case study from the available representations. It then examined the influence that the case study had on the thoughts and practice of experienced mental health practitioners. The study involved 8 practitioners and identified thoughts influenced by reading the case study and an academic article. Practitioner’s thoughts were captured over 3 separate interviews and by practitioners providing written reflections. At the last interview, practitioners were asked to provide comments as to what the experience of taking part in the study had meant to them. Generic themes related to risk, blame and professionalism all emerged. The study also found that practitioners were able to reflect on the influence that the material had on them, finding that only after discussing the reflections in the interviews that they became aware of some of their defensive thoughts and actions. The outcome of the study is that the media continue to present a negative representation of the mentally ill and mental health care, and that practitioner’s thoughts and actions are influenced by the media representation.

This thesis examines the nature of the relationship between Shelley and the thought, politics, and discursive practices of Owenism and Chartism. Its objects of analysis are Owenite periodicals and Chartist newspapers, which I theorise as active in the process of transmission and reception. This thesis locates the reception and transmission of Shelley’s poetry and politics within the broader context of the movements’ political and social commitments. It makes an original contribution to knowledge by demonstrating that the movements used Shelley’s poetry critically and with discrimination. It also argues that Owenite and Chartist approaches to Shelley changed as the movements developed over time in response to historical pressures. I argue that a cultural materialist approach enables us to reconsider the nature of Shelley’s influence and popularity within these movements, something that has become a critical commonplace. It also allows us to distinguish between Owenite and Chartist ‘Shelleys’. I argue that the Owenite periodicals the Crisis and the New Moral World produced a qualitatively different Shelley from the one that emerged in Chartist newspapers such as the Northern Star. Although there was a degree of overlap between the two movements in terms of social commitments and personnel, the parameters set by the formal qualities and discursive strategies of the movements’ print cultures allowed different Shelleys to emerge within them. In terms of content, the Owenites quoted Shelley’s poetry to support their social theories and the most frequently quoted poems were Queen Mab and The Revolt of Islam. The Chartists also used Queen Mab, but were less interested in a feminist poem like Revolt and more interested in poems that allowed them to articulate class conflict. I account for such differences within my broader argument: that the two movements had qualitatively different conceptions of the possibilities of language and aesthetics, and different approaches to social conflict.

The central aim of this thesis was to develop new tracking software employing various image tracking algorithms for tracking the speckled movement of the tendon image captured using dynamic B-mode ultrasound imaging. The algorithms were selected based on the literature related to the tracking of images captured using ultrasound imaging. Experiments were carried out to validate these tracking algorithms in order to enable development of the tracking software. The experiments conducted paralleled the objectives in designing, developing, experimenting and implementing the image-tracking algorithm to track movement of the human tendon in vivo within the speckled ultrasound images. The development of the tracking software focuses on solving the problems of tracking the ultrasound images as well as analysing the tracking movement frame-by-frame to produce useful measurements that can be used to describe the localised mechanical and structural properties of the human tendon. The algorithms tested were Normalised Cross Correlation (NCC), Mean Square Error (MSE), optical flow – Lucas-Kanade (LK) and combination of NCC and MSE (NCCMSE) selected by signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and were tested on both active and passive movements of the patella tendon (knee) and the medial gastrocnemius tendon (ankle). The comparison of the algorithms led to the identification of a single algorithm giving optimal result. The results from all tested algorithm showed NCC to be the closest match to the standard manual measurement. NCC was also the fastest among the algorithms tested and contained fewer errors in tracking. For NCC algorithm, various sizes of the region of interest (ROI) block were also tested and found that 15x15 pixels ROI block size gave the optimum measurement, which was close to the standard manual measurement. The threshold levels also indicated that >0.90 to be the optimum level for optimum tracking. The 2- ROI tracking analysis were also explored to look at the tracking performances when tracking at two different regional sites of the tendon simultaneously, and again the  NCC performed better with 15x15 ROI block size and comparable to the results obtained from the standard manual measurement. Lastly, multiple layers of the tendon were also explored to look at the excursion of the anterior, midsection and posterior layers of the tendon during ramped isometric contraction. This experiment uses all the settings found from previous experiment results, and applied to look at the mechanical properties of the human tendon. The experiments showed that the anterior gave the highest mean stain followed by the mid section and the smallest mean strain was found at the posterior proximal. The experiment also looked at the distal strain, with the result showing that the posterior gave the highest mean strain followed mid section and anterior layer gave the smallest mean strain. The experiment also looked at the performance of posterior layers and distal layers at 50 and 100% force levels. The experimental results showed that the NCC to be the optimum-tracking algorithm. The method described here has the potential to improve clinical knowledge relating to the tendon mechanical properties. The information generated by the tracking algorithm could help to give further insight into the aetiology of tendon injury, repair, response to various training interventions and the time course of tissue adaptation with disease.