The region of the nuclear chart around A~100 is an area of structural changes where different shapes coexist and therefore, an interesting place to study structural evolution and test nuclear models. Within the clement that populate this region, zirconium is one which is expected to present well deformed states, but for which little experimental data has been measured so far. The structure of the 102-108Zr nuclei has been studied using the Interactiug Boson Model (IBM). Energy states and transition probabilities have been predicted and tested using the limited amount of existing experimental data. However, the results of these calculations produced several possibilities, so knowledge about non-yrast. states is needed in order to deepen the understanding of the structural changes in zirconium nuclei. Therefore a. series of experiments to measure non-yrast states of 102- 108Zr are required. A new technique, for separating different states of nuclei, has been developed and tested at the University of Jyvaskyla, using the IGISOL III facility for the known case of 100Nb β-decay into 100 Mo. This technique has been successfully extended to allow the separate study of the gamma.-ray decay of states populated by the different parent states. Lower spin states of 102- 108Zr are populated via beta-decay from 102- 108y' In order to measure the non-yrast states of 102- 108Zr post-trap online spectroscopy will be used at IGISOL IV. IGISOL IV is the improved version of IGISOL 111 and is currently under construction. Part of my Ph.D. consisted of helping with the development of IGISOL IV, the improvements of this facility are explained in this thesis alongside its operation and several tests performed during 2012.

The certification process of safety critical products for European and other international standards typically demand environmental stress, endurance and electro magnetic compatibility testing. Theoretical, or `static testing' also a requirement. Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a tool used for static testing. FMEA is a bottom-up technique that aims to assess the effects of all component failure modes in a system. Its use is traditionally limited to hardware systems. With the growing complexity of modern electronics traditional FMEA is suffering from state explosion and re-use of analysis problems. Also with the now ubiquitous use of microcontrollers in smart instruments and control systems, software is increasingly being seen as a `missing factor' for FMEA This thesis presents a new modular variant of FMEA, Failure Mode Modular Decomposition (FMMD). FMMD has been designed to integrate mechanical/electronic and software failure models, by treating them all as components in terms of their failure modes. For instance, software functions, electronic and mechanical components can all be assigned sets of failure modes. FMMD builds failure mode models from the bottom-up by incrementally analysing functional groupings of components, using the results of analysis to create higher level derived components, which in turn can be used to build functional groupings. In this way a hierarchical failure mode model is built. Software functions are treated as components by FMMD and can thus be incorporated seamlessly into the failure mode hierarchical model. A selection of examples, electronic circuits and hardware/software hybrids are analysed using this new methodology. The results of these analyses are then discussed from the perspective of safety critical application. Performance in terms of test efficiency is greatly improved by FMMD and the examples analysed and theoretical models are used to demonstrate this. This thesis presents a methodology that mitigates the state explosion problems of FMEA; provides integrated hardware and software failure mode models; facilitates multiple failure mode analysis; encourages re-use of analysis work and can be used to produce traditional format FMEA reports.

The main aim of this research project is to investigate the relationship between students and their electronic learning environments, and in particular, how eLearning spaces influence and are influenced by the adaptable and adaptive learning attitudes of the new student generation. In particular, it focuses on what I defined as digital students as young adult students who have grown up with active participation in technology as an everyday feature of their lives. The characteristics of the technologically confident digital students were found to include a strong need for instantaneity, a desire to control their environment and to channel their social life via extensive use of technology.

The population of high-spin isomeric states in neutron-deficient N≈126 nuclei has been studied in order to further understand the reaction mechanism of projectile fragmentation. The nuclei of interest were populated following projectile-fragmentation of a 1 GeV/A 238U beam on a 9Be target at GSI, Germany. The reaction products were selected and separated in the FRS FRagment Separator and brought to rest in an 8 mm plastic stopper placed at the focus of the RISING gamma-ray detector array. The results on the development of an add-back method for the RISING array are presented and discussed for source and in-beam data.

This work arises from a hepatitis C cohort study and focuses on estimating the effects of covariates on progression to cirrhosis. In hepatitis C cohort studies, patients may be recruited to the cohort with referral bias because clinically the patients with more rapid disease progression are preferentially referred to liver clinics. This referral bias can lead to significantly biased estimates of the effects of covariates on progression to cirrhosis.

This thesis describes a method of identifying the influences on schedule delays in projects that develop large software systems. Controlling schedule duration is a fundamental aspect of managing projects because of the financial losses associated with late projects. While challenges with controlling software projects have been investigated, there still seemed to be more to be learned about the interplay of a range of factors during project execution and that affect project duration when developing and integrating software systems within enterprise architecture environment.

The objective of this thesis is to improve battlefield communications capability through improved management of existing platform and fleet level resources. Communication is a critical capability for any platform node deployed on a modern battlefield and enables vital Network Enabled Capabilities (NEC). However, the dynamicity and unpredictability of wireless battlefield networks, as well as the constant threat of equipment damage make wireless battlefield networks inherently unreliable and as such the provision of a stable communication represents a significant technology management challenge. Fulfilling increasingly complex communications requirements of diverse platform types in a chaotic and changing battlefield environment requires the use of novel Resource and Capability Management Algorithms (RCMA) informed by application level context data to manage limited heterogeneous resources at the platform and the fleet level while fulfilling current mission goals.

Taking a problematic user experience with ubiquitous annotation as its point of departure, this thesis defines and explores the design space for Social Object Labels (SOLs), small interactive displays aiming to support users' in-situ engagement with digital annotations of physical objects and places by providing up-to-date information before, during and after interaction. While the concept of ubiquitous annotation has potential applications in a wide range of domains, the research focuses in particular on SOLs in a museum context, where they can support the institution's educational goals by engaging visitors in the interpretation of exhibits and providing a platform for public discourse to complement official interpretations provided on traditional object labels. The thesis defines and structures the design space for SOLs, investigates how they can support social interpretation in museums and develops empirically validated design recommendations. Reflecting the developmental character of the research, it employs Design Research as a methodological framework, which involves the iterative development and evaluation of design artefacts together with users and other stakeholders. The research identifies the particular characteristics of SOLs and structures their design space into ten high-level aspects, synthesised from taxonomies and heuristics for similar display concepts and complemented with aspects emerging from the iterative design and evaluation of prototypes. It presents findings from a survey exploring visitors' mental models, preferences and expectations of commenting in museums and translates them into requirements for SOLs. It reports on scenario-based design activities, expert interviews with museum professionals, formative user studies and co-design sessions, and two empirical evaluations of SOL prototypes in a gallery environment. Pulling together findings from these research activities it then formulates design recommendations for SOLs and supports them with related evidence and implementation examples. The main contributions are (i) to delineate and structure the design space for SOLs, which helps to ground SOLs in the literature and understand them as a distinct display concept with its own characteristics; (ii) to explore, for the first time, a visitor perspective on commenting in museums, which can inform research, development and policies on user-generated content in museums and the wider cultural heritage sector; (iii) to develop empirically validated design recommendations, which can inform future research and development into SOLs and related display concept. The thesis concludes by summarising findings in relation to its stated research questions, restating its contributions from ubiquitous computing, domain and methodology perspectives, and discussing open issues and future work.

Constraint diagrams are part of the family of visual logics based on Euler diagrams. They have been studied since the 1990s, when they were first proposed by Kent as a means of describing formal constraints within software models. Since that time, constraint diagrams have evolved in a number of ways; a crucial re- finement came with the recognition of the need to impose a reading order on the quantifiers represented by diagrammatic syntax. This resulted first in augmented constraint diagrams and, most recently, generalized constraint diagrams (GCDs), which are composed of one or more unitary diagrams in a connected graph. The design of GCDs includes several syntactic features that bring increased expressivity but which also make their metatheory more complex than is the case with preceding constraint diagram notations. In particular, GCDs are given a second order semantics.

The thesis investigates ion behaviour at collisionless shocks, with a focus on two areas of interest. The first area concerns the reflection of particles from collisionless shocks, a necessary mechanism for thermalization at a shock at sufficiently high Mach numbers such as ordinarily prevail at the Earth's bow shock. Previous studies have examined the trajectories of reflected ions with the assumption of a planar shock. In this study, a general framework is developed to describe the trajectory of an ion after reflection, with application to a variety of shock geometries. The conditions allowing an ion to return to the shock after reflection and to return with an increased normal velocity are studied, with three primary parameters considered: the radius of curvature, the magnetic field orientation, and the incident velocity in the shock normal direction. Each of these parameters depends on the shape of the shock and the location of incidence. Results are reported for cylindrical, spherical, and parabolic shock geometries, over ranges of shock curvatures, magnetic field orientations, and incident velocities. Second, we consider the thermalization of the ion distribution initially transmitted through the shock under low Mach number conditions, where reflection is a less significant contributor to thermalization. Previous work has considered the phase area invariant in an exactly perpendicular case. This is generalized to a quasi-perpendicular shock, and invariants of the flow are determined for a Hamiltonian formulation. The evolution of the distribution through the shock is then studied analytically and numerically. Results regarding the shape of phase shells of constant probability, the phase volume within these shells, and the temperature of the distribution are given.