Over the past few decades, world population growth, economic development and rapid urbanisation have caused environmental degradation and have brought about many social problems. The concept of ‘sustainable development’ has emerged as an approach to dealing with these issues. ‘Collaborative governance’ is seen by many scholars as a means of implementing the goals of sustainable development and of integrating diverse interests and perspectives in contemporary society. This thesis examines the relationship between sustainable development and collaborative governance in urban planning in South Korea. There are four main research questions: What are the key elements of collaborative governance in urban planning? How does collaborative governance contribute to sustainable development? What role is played by government in working towards sustainable development in a collaborative governance era? What is needed for enhancing future collaborative governance? The questions are examined through two case studies of urban planning in South Korea: in the Si-hwa case study the emphasis is on the topic of conflict mediation; and in the Buk-Gu case study, it is on the topic of collaborative policy-making. Through a review of the relevant literature and the two case studies, the thesis shows that the characteristics of urban planning in South Korea correspond to the general features of collaborative governance identified in the literature, and that collaborative governance is an effective system for achieving the principles of sustainable development. It concludes that a collaborative governance system will evolve towards sustainable development, compensating for any initial weakness in the process, provided that all stakeholders, particularly residents and government, continue to develop their institutional capacity over time.

By using a poststructuralist feminist perspective, this thesis argues that representations of female agency in political violence are told as stories of heroines, monsters and victims through a Myth of Motherhood. I conceptualise the myth as a meta-discourse constituted by different discourses within each type of story. In all stories, a tension between identities of life-giving and life-taking is present which means that motherhood is ‘everywhere’ albeit not necessarily visible. Thus, these stories are versions, perversions and inversions of motherhood. In heroine stories, this takes place as the subject’s heroism is communicated through motherhood/lack of motherhood. In monster stories, the myth is communicated as ‘natural’ femininity is emphasised and defined as that which the monster is not. In victim stories, female subjects are denied agency which means that a life-taking identity is removed whereas a life-giving identity is promoted communicating the Myth of Motherhood. I argue that motherhood is not simply a discourse denying women agency in political violence, but also instrumental as to how agency in political violence is enabled. As such motherhood is ‘everywhere’ in representations of female agency in political violence and fundamental in order to understand how representations of female agency in political violence are gendered.

Conflicting definitions, understanding and consequent limitations in identifying an appropriate body of knowledge present a major problem for educators who wish to define, adopt and teach cultural competence. A standardised meaning of the term enabling specified outcome measures to be identified could assist effective translation and evaluation of its contribution in developing professionalism in undergraduate health care education. In attempting to seek clarity, perception and relevance of cultural competence in a professional undergraduate programme, a review of the literature and a mixed methods case study of a cohort of 63 undergraduate physiotherapists were undertaken. Constructs of cultural competence were elicited using repertory grids and meanings explored with the use of questionnaires, interviews and evaluation in the teaching and learning of the topic. Results gave new insight into undergraduate physiotherapists’ perception of cultural competence vis-a-vis their clinical competence. Interpretations of perception and expressions of cultural competence varied throughout the literature but, despite this, specific learning and resource needs of students studying the topic were identified. Implications of cultural competence in developing professionalism within health care education were highlighted and evaluated. The need for further research into teaching and learning of the topic in physiotherapy education is supported by the study.

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD), a common manifestation of atherosclerosis, is an important healthcare problem with considerable morbidity and mortality. Intermittent claudication (IC) is the commonest symptomatic manifestation of this disease. This thesis investigates the prevalence of PAD in South Asians (people originating from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) and Blacks (Black African, Black Caribbean) and makes ethnic comparisons of its associations with traditional cardiovascular risk factors, inflammatory and haemostatic biomarkers and markers of angiogenesis in these ethnic groups. This thesis also makes associations between common carotid intima media thickness, a marker of pre-clinical atherosclerosis, traditional cardiovascular risk factors and novel biomarkers. Furthermore this thesis validates translated versions of the Edinburgh Claudication Questionnaire into Punjabi and Urdu.

This thesis presents a study of the processes involved in creating the first Nishkam Nursery in 2009 in Handsworth, Birmingham. Led by British Sikhs, the project was embedded in wider work undertaken by the transnational ‘Nishkam’ community of practice. The research aim was to examine: 1) the blend of ideas and values guiding the nursery’s creation; 2) the ways in which the nursery world was configured in and through day-to-day communicative and semiotic practice; and 3) parental responses. I took a linguistic ethnographic approach to data collection and analysis and adopted a case study design. Three orienting theories guided the study: 1) ‘the cultural production of the educated person’ (Levinson, Foley and Holland 1996); 2) ‘policy as/in practice’ (Sutton and Levinson 2001) and; 3) ‘figured worlds’ (Holland et al. 1998). An ethnographic approach was best suited to this theoretical framing. It allowed me to examine the interplay of agency and structure in the creation of the world of this local nursery, in ‘postsecular’ societal conditions characterised by complex diversities and mobilities. It also allowed me to capture the ways in which national policy frameworks were interpreted by local social actors and blended with educational approaches stemming from the Sikh dharam.

The international literature, policy and action up to now have concentrated predominantly on the prevention and treatment aspects of HIV/AIDS, often neglecting the support and care that poor people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) require. The current study addresses this gap by exploring a group of poor PLHAs’ own perceptions of their experience of living with and seeking treatment for HIV/AIDS, the adequacy of the health care services they are able to access and the support programmes for PLHA provided by NGOs and other not-for-profit organisations in the context of Kolkata - one of the largest metropolitan cities in India. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 59 men and women from Kolkata, India. The study reveals that in the case of HIV/AIDS, it is necessary to divide the post-symptomatic phase into pre and post-diagnosis stages, because it emerged that many PLHA had experienced serious delays in obtaining an accurate diagnosis, resulting in the loss of their existing assets, further impoverishing many at an early stage of the illness trajectory. People’s ability to mobilise additional labour assets within their households to ‘earn money in new ways’ and the characteristics of their ‘household relations’ emerged as key explanations of how well households fared during the post-diagnosis phase.

This dissertation delves into re-casted, re-negotiated, and emergent U.S. and Latino perspectives that are resulting from trans-border cultural and national fusion and undocumented Mexican immigration to the U.S. between the years 2000-2015. Five cultural products-- newspaper headlines, literature, music, political cartoons, and memes-- as produced by Mexican individuals on one side of the U.S.-Mexican Border and undocumented individuals on the other, who are part of the millennial generation, are considered against fossilized notions of gender, race, class, and national identity to determine if and how millennial Mexicans and millennial undocumented individuals are leveraging specific cultural tokens to be tools of defiance and to promulgate a re-writing of self.

Thermogenic brown and beige adipocytes convert chemical energy to heat by metabolizing glucose and lipids via uncoupling protein 1 (Ucp1), a process known as non-shivering thermogenesis. Serotonin (5-HT) neurons in the ventral medulla are known to regulate sympathetic efferent neurons in the intermediolateral nucleus (IML) necessary to maintain brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity. Previous studies show that mice lacking central 5-HT neurons are incapable of maintaining body temperature in cold, ambient conditions. Due to this direct linkage between 5-HT and thermoregulation, we hypothesized that central 5-HT neurons may be vital to the regulation of brown and beige adipocyte activity. Given that BAT consumes large amounts of substrate when active, we also hypothesized that inactivation of BAT due to deletion of the regulatory neural circuitry (5-HT neurons) would cause metabolic dysregulation. To test this, we generated mice in which the human diphtheria toxin (DT) receptor was selectively expressed in central 5-HT neurons under control of a Pet-1 promoter. Pet-1 is a transcription factor selectively located in mature, central 5-HT neurons. Coincidentally, some cells within pancreatic islets also express Pet-1, and contain adequate machinery to produce, release, and uptake 5-HT. Systemic treatment with DT eliminated 5-HT neurons and caused loss of thermoregulation, BAT steatosis, and a >50% decrease in Ucp1 expression in BAT and beige fat, indicative of reduced thermal production. In parallel, blood glucose increased 3.5-fold, free fatty acids 13.4-fold and triglycerides 6.5-fold. Intracerebroventricular (ICV) treatment with 1/30th the systemic dose of DT induced an even greater thermoregulatory impairment. The metabolic deficits following systemic DT treatment indicate that central 5-HT neurons are essential for proper metabolic regulation. However, such high levels of glucose and lipids also indicate failure of the pancreatic endocrine program following systemic treatment, likely due to moderate destruction of β-cells expressing Pet-1 and the DT receptor. Because ICV treatment caused even greater thermoregulatory and metabolic deficits, where little, if any, of the toxin would spread systemically, central 5-HT neurons are clearly essential for normal central regulation of metabolism. Interestingly, similar BAT and beige fat defects occurred in Lmx1bf/f/p mice, in which 5-HT neurons fail to develop in utero. Assessment of systemically treated animals using a euglycemic/hyperinsulinemic clamp showed extensive fasting hyperglycemia and systemic insulin resistance, coinciding with reduced glucose uptake in skeletal muscle and BAT. The hyperinsulinemic clamp failed to suppress hepatic glucose and fatty acid production, leading to the conclusion that loss of central 5-HT neurons disrupts central hepatic regulation. In attempts to induce BAT thermogenesis and metabolism, we optogenetically stimulated 5-HT neurons in the rostral raphe pallidus and measured BAT and body temperature along with blood glucose. Unfortunately, these stimulations were incapable of increasing BAT temperature and lowering blood glucose, perhaps limiting therapeutic potential of these 5-HT neurons. We conclude that 5-HT neurons are major players in central regulation of metabolic homeostasis, in part through recruitment and activation of brown and beige adipocytes and hepatic substrate production. Data also suggest that 5-HT neurons regulate glucose homeostasis via undefined neural mechanisms independently of BAT activity and pancreatic insulin secretion. Cumulative data on central 5-HT neurons indicate they are master regulators of whole-body metabolism.

<p>The marine sponge <i>Geodia barretti</i> produces a range of secondary metabolites. Two of these compounds were isolated and elucidated guided by their ability to inhibit settlement of cypris larvae of the barnacle <i>Balanus improvisus</i>. The compounds barettin (cyclo-[(6-bromo-8-en-tryptophan)-arginine]) as E/Z mixture and 8,9-dihydrobarettin (cyclo-[6-bromo-tryptophan)-arginine]) were determined by using mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance and quantitative amino acid analysis.The bioactivity of these brominated dipeptides is in the range of antifouling substances used today: EC₅₀ values of 0.9 µM (barettin) and 7.9 µM (8,9-dihydrobarettin). The compounds were successfully synthesised and then tested in a field experiment to evaluate their antifouling properties. The compounds were incorporated in four different commerical, non-toxic marine coatings. The concentrations of the compounds were 0.1 and 0.01% (w/w) and coated panels were exposed to field conditions for eight weeks. The experiment evaluated the effect of barettin and 8,9-dihydrobarettin on recruitment of the barnacle <i>B. improvisus</i> and the blue mussel <i>Mytilus edulis</i> (major Swedish foulers). The most efficient paint was a SPC polymer, for which the reduction of recruitment of <i>B. improvisus</i> was 89% with barettin (0.1%) and 61% with 8,9-dihydrobarettin (0.1%). For <i>M. edulis</i> the reduction of recruitment was 81% with barettin (0.1%) and 72% with 8,9-dihydrobarettin (0.1%) with the same SPC paint. Furthermore, 14 analogs of barettin and dipodazine were synthesised and tested for their ability to inhibit larval settlement. Two of the analogs have a barettin scaffold and twelve have a dipodazine scaffold. Six of the analogs displayed significant settlement inhibition with the most potent inhibitor being benzo[g]dipodazine (EC₅₀ value 0.034 µM). The effect of benzo[g]dipodazine was also shown to be reversible. Finally, an investigation of the mode of action was performed on 5-HT receptors. Barettin demonstrated a specific affinity to 5-HT_2A, 5-HT_2C and 5-HT₄, while 8,9-dihydrobarettin interacted only with 5-HT_2C of the receptor subtypes tested (5-HT₁-5-HT₇).</p>

The marine sponge Geodia barretti produces a range of secondary metabolites. Two of these compounds were isolated and elucidated guided by their ability to inhibit settlement of cypris larvae of the barnacle Balanus improvisus. The compounds barettin (cyclo-[(6-bromo-8-en-tryptophan)-arginine]) as E/Z mixture and 8,9-dihydrobarettin (cyclo-[6-bromo-tryptophan)-arginine]) were determined by using mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance and quantitative amino acid analysis.The bioactivity of these brominated dipeptides is in the range of antifouling substances used today: EC50 values of 0.9 µM (barettin) and 7.9 µM (8,9-dihydrobarettin). The compounds were successfully synthesised and then tested in a field experiment to evaluate their antifouling properties. The compounds were incorporated in four different commerical, non-toxic marine coatings. The concentrations of the compounds were 0.1 and 0.01% (w/w) and coated panels were exposed to field conditions for eight weeks. The experiment evaluated the effect of barettin and 8,9-dihydrobarettin on recruitment of the barnacle B. improvisus and the blue mussel Mytilus edulis (major Swedish foulers). The most efficient paint was a SPC polymer, for which the reduction of recruitment of B. improvisus was 89% with barettin (0.1%) and 61% with 8,9-dihydrobarettin (0.1%). For M. edulis the reduction of recruitment was 81% with barettin (0.1%) and 72% with 8,9-dihydrobarettin (0.1%) with the same SPC paint. Furthermore, 14 analogs of barettin and dipodazine were synthesised and tested for their ability to inhibit larval settlement. Two of the analogs have a barettin scaffold and twelve have a dipodazine scaffold. Six of the analogs displayed significant settlement inhibition with the most potent inhibitor being benzo[g]dipodazine (EC50 value 0.034 µM). The effect of benzo[g]dipodazine was also shown to be reversible. Finally, an investigation of the mode of action was performed on 5-HT receptors. Barettin demonstrated a specific affinity to 5-HT2A, 5-HT2C and 5-HT4, while 8,9-dihydrobarettin interacted only with 5-HT2C of the receptor subtypes tested (5-HT1-5-HT7).