This thesis argues that only-childhood was never the sole, and only ever a minor, determinant of only children’s experiences. It analyses autobiographies and oral history interviews of only children who grew up between 1850 and 1950 to show how personal inclinations, parental attitudes, domestic circumstances, geographical location, class, gender, and historical time, alone or in combination, were far more important influences on childhood experiences than only-childhood per se. These factors not only created differences between only children themselves, but also demonstrably influenced sibling children’s experiences. Its findings challenge negative ideas about only children that spread to the public from childrearing manuals through other media from the late-nineteenth century, when numbers of one-child families began to increase. Previous historians have inadvertently maintained these stereotypes by tending to present examples of only children who conformed to them, not seeking alternative explanations for their experiences, and presenting sibling relationships as vitally important. This thesis also questions these largely-positive portrayals of siblings. It additionally shows how some only children use only-childhood as a ‘lens’ through which they present and explain their childhood traits and experiences, attesting to the pervasiveness of only-child stereotypes. By doing so, this research builds upon the work of Raphael Samuel, Paul Thompson, Natasha Burchardt, and others regarding the role of ‘myth’ in adults’ representations of their childhoods. This thesis’ main argument supports sociologists’ suggestions about the influence of factors other than only-childhood, but it takes a more historical and personal approach. It also builds upon, and is informed by, childhood and family historians’ research into the advantages and disadvantages of decreases in family size from the 1870s onwards. Furthermore, it enhances demographic historians’ work on fertility decline by examining why some only children had no siblings, and contributes to the history of emotions by examining loneliness and unhappiness.

Robert Putnam’s 2007 empirical study, E Pluribus Unum, has become the seminal study in a growing body of work which uses statistical methods to measure the effects of ethnic diversity on social capital, or other measures of social quality. Putnam’s study found that ethnic diversity negatively affects social capital in the United States, leading people to withdraw from social contact and ‘hunker down’ at home, alone, miserably watching TV. This study revisits Putnam’s findings and seeks to plug two major gaps across this field: firstly, the absence of any frame of reference for social capital or other measures of social quality, which has led to both a narrowing of the commonly used indicators of social quality and a possible over-stating of the relative importance to overall social quality of those indicators which are employed; and, secondly, the lack of any investigation into how relationships between ethnic diversity and social quality change over time. This study addresses two research questions: Do ethnic diversity and immigration have any effects on a range of indicators of social quality in local areas of England? Do any effects from ethnic diversity and immigration on social quality change over time? The study analyses data from the Citizenship Survey and other sources to investigate whether the rapid increase and spread of ethnic diversity throughout England in the twenty year period from 1991 to 2011 had any measurable effects on indicators of social quality in local authority areas over the period 2001 to 2011. The study finds that ethnic diversity and immigration do have the negative effect on local trust identified by Putnam but that they also have positive effects on some social quality measures, and no effects on others. Broadly, these effects become more positive over time for measures of social cohesion and more negative for measures of social capital. The study demonstrates that the negative, positive and null effects of ethnic diversity are linked to differences in the measure of social quality; when individual-level, attitudinal, proximate measures of social quality are used, like local trust, negative findings are far more likely. The study concludes that ethnic diversity and immigration are not useful explanations for variance in social quality; levels of deprivation and higher-education more strongly account for this. It would be worthwhile to further develop a robust framework for quantitative studies of social quality and to improve methodologies for measuring social quality relationships over time.

Applicants to Medical School must be academically successful to secure a place at university. Despite their success in secondary education and the stringent entry criteria, a significant number of students fail summative assessments at the end of their First Year. This gives rises to the following question: “Why do previously high achieving students fail in the university system?” Existing models seek to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary withdrawal from university and to explain academic withdrawal in the context of an individual’s academic and social integration into a new educational environment, their commitment to the institution and their commitment to Medicine as a career. However, much of the existing literature on failure in the early years at Medical School has focused on pre-university academic ability, as demonstrated by grade achievement at the end of secondary education, and/or faculty’s perspectives of student failure. This dissertation adopts a qualitative approach to understanding success and failure in the first year at Medical School from the perspective of medical students themselves. Their perspectives are explored within the model of withdrawal and persistence proposed by Tinto (1975) and interpreted in the context of existing literature on failure in the early years of higher education in general and in Medicine in particular. These findings are further reframed within an analysis based upon Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice. This analysis considers the students’ field of operation, the relative positions of agents within the field and the capitals which allow them to hold those positions, and the habitus of the agents and the institution itself. Through this analysis, factors that students believe may predispose to success and failure are identified and discussed. This in turn leads to a consideration of how my own understanding and professional practice have developed and might develop in the future.

The aim of the thesis was to examine IPV within BME communities with a particular focus on the South Asian community. Chapter one presents a generic review of treatment on IPV victims. By examining nine studies, seven studies did not examine ethnic differences and findings suggest that interventions are more effective when there is a combination of CBT and advocacy service in reducing psychological effects and re-abuse. Looking at interventions on an individual level (Chapter 2), it was also found that in work with a female BME patient who had suffered from IPV, CBT was effective in reducing the distress she was experiencing from her delusion’s and psychotic beliefs. A number of risk factors were also identified within the assessment stage indicating the likelihood of the patient becoming a victim of IPV. Chapter three provides a critique of the CTS-2 highlighting its cultural applicability in assessing IPV within South Asian communities. Therefore, the CTS-2 was used in the empirical research presented in Chapter 4 to investigate whether differences exist in rates of IPV in South Asian and non South Asian participants. The study found high levels of severe physical violence and associations between participants’ beliefs and their use of violence within relationships.

Directed by the Millennium Development Goal to improve the lives of at least 100 million ‘slum’ dwellers by 2020, national governments and development agencies are driving policy to upgrade and formalise informal settlements. This study is an investigation into the effects of in situ upgrade and formalisation on the vulnerability and resilience of the urban poor in Durban, South Africa. The study examines the relationships between tenure and vulnerability by identifying and exploring how changes to tenure security, introduced through the upgrade process, affect individuals’ exposure to risk and ability to cope, and the ways in which identity and social relations influence those effects. The data are drawn from twenty-four ethnographies of residents living in three low income settlements in/around Durban each at different stages in the upgrade process. The findings of the study show that many residents are better off following an upgrade – ownership claims are better protected, they are more comfortable in their homes and able to improve livelihoods. However, these security and resilience gains are undermined by the high levels of crime and violence that continue post-upgrade and affect the desirability of a location and the ability of people to live there. Furthermore, the manner in which the process is implemented reconfigures local power relations, without meaningfully altering them; thus continuing to tie residents’ wellbeing to social rules administered by informal institutions. These findings challenge conceptualisations of ‘tenure security’ and the conventional orthodoxy of upgrading.

This thesis examines the work undertaken by Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury (1858-1951) to support social reform in Bournville and Birmingham during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It concentrates on her involvement in the development and promotion of Bournville village, the establishment and management of elementary and infant schools in Bournville and her local government work implementing school medical treatment provision in Birmingham. The thesis argues that Taylor Cadbury’s approach to social reform was shaped by her sense of religious faithfulness expressed through social service and by perceptions of women’s maternal expertise, demonstrating that she engaged with maternal work supporting social welfare as a form of religious service. Interpretation of Taylor Cadbury has been informed by the production of a revised catalogue of her largely unexplored personal archive within the Cadbury Family Papers. This catalogue enhances access to papers created and preserved by Taylor Cadbury and provides insight into the religious and social discourses within which she defined her identity and social work. By combining archival cataloguing with analysis of Taylor Cadbury’s philanthropic and municipal activities, this thesis offers a distinctive contribution to scholarship exploring how women identified with religion and maternalism in their social reform work during this period.

Zipf’s law is one of the empirical statistical regularities found within many natural systems, ranging from protein sequences of immune receptors in cells to the intensity of solar flares from the sun. Verifying the universality of Zipf’s law can provide many opportunities for us to further seek the commonalities of phenomena that possess the power law behavior. Since power law-like phenomena, as many studies have previously indicated, is often interpreted as evidence for studying complex systems, exploring the universality of Zipf’s law is also of potential capability in explaining underlying generative mechanisms and endogenous processes, i.e. self-organization and chaos theory. The main purpose of this study was to verify whether Zipf’s law is valid for city sizes, city numbers and population extracted from natural cities. Unlike traditional city boundaries extracted by applying census-imposed and top-down imposed data, which are arbitrary and subjective, the study established the new kind of boundaries of cities, namely, natural cities through using four location-based social media data from Twitter, Brightkite, Gowalla and Freebase and head/tail breaks rule. In order to capture and quantify the hierarchical level for studying heterogeneous scales of cities, ht-index derived from head/tail breaks rule was employed. Furthermore, the validation of Zipf’s law was examined. The result revealed that the natural cities had deviations in subtle patterns when different social media data were examined. By employing head/tail breaks method, the result calculated the ht-index and detected that hierarchy levels were not largely influenced by spatial-temporal changes but rather data itself. On the other hand, the study found that Zipf’s law is not universal in the case of using location-based social media data. Compared to city numbers extracted from nightlight imagery, the study found out the reason why Zipf’s law does not hold for location-based social media data, i.e. due to bias of customer behavior. The bias mainly resulted in the emergence of natural cities were much more frequent than others in certain regions and countries so that making the emergence of natural cities was not exhibited objectively. Furthermore, the study showed whether Zipf’s law could be well observed depends not only on the data itself and man-made limitations but also on calculation methods, data precisions and scales and the idealized status of observed data.

Le traitement de l'information sensorielle par le cortex cérébral requiert l'activation harmonieuse de micro-circuits neuronaux excitateurs et inhibiteurs interconnectés, ciblant les neurones pyramidaux de couche 5. Ces derniers élaborent les signaux de sortie corticaux et reçoivent un ratio de 20% d'excitation (E) et 80% d'inhibition (I). La dérégulation de cette balance E-I ou du système sérotoninergique conduit à des neuropathologies telles la dépression et la schizophrénie mais les interrelations entre la sérotonine et la balance E-I sont inconnues. Nous avons montré que la 5-HT endogène module la balance E-I en fonction du type de récepteur 5-HT recruté (1A, 2A, 3, 4, 7) et de sa localisation spécifique dans la colonne corticale. Ces données électrophysiologiques constituent la première évidence pour une action modulatrice fine de la sérotonine corticale sur la balance E-I et révèle la ségrégation fonctionnelle des récepteurs 5-HT dans les réseaux de neurones sensoriels.

Le segment Nord-Ouest himalayen (Kohistan-Ladakh et Karakorum, NE Pakistan et NO Inde) est une zone appropriée pour étudier les étapes de la convergence de deux continents (Inde et Asie), en contexte océanique puis continental sur 110 Ma. Une approche pluridisciplinaire (géologie structurale, pétro-géochimie, thermo-barométrie, géochronologie Ar-Ar) a été utilisée. Les étapes intra-océaniques de la convergence sont étudiées via les séries d'arc du Nord-Ladakh. Cette étude permet de raccorder l'arc océanique du Kohistan à l'W, à la marge active tibétaine à l'Est. L'étude des isotopes du Sr, Nd et Pb des laves d'arc fournit des rapports isotopiques élevés rappelant l'anomalie " DUPAL ". Des laves adakitiques et riches en Nb-Ta et Ti sont également présentes. Ces données suggèrent l'interaction entre liquides issus de la fusion de la croûte subduite et le manteau, à la suite de la subduction de la ride néo-téthysienne, comme déjà proposé pour l'initiation de l'obduction de l'ophiolite d'Oman, en réponse à une inversion tectonique: la remontée de l'Inde vers le Nord. Les étapes de la convergence post-collisionnelle, après une phase de raccourcissement NE-SW entre 60 et 40 Ma, sont marquées par une partition de la déformation: Une bande E-W de dômes recoupe les structures précoces, dans un contexte de raccourcissement N-S et d'extrusion verticale, associée à un métamorphisme HT dans le faciès des granulites et à un magmatisme à affinité mantellique (25 - 5 Ma). Cette granulitisation de la croûte asiatique pourrait être liée à un apport de chaleur mantellique lié au détachement du slab indien. La faille décrochante du Karakorum sert de limite entre Karakorum et Tibet et accommode l'extrusion latérale de celui-ci. Des granulites sont exhumées dans la zone de faille probablement d'ampleur lithosphérique. Le déplacement le long de la faille semble hétérogène, avec un rejet total de 300 km basé sur la corrélation des blocs de Lhasa et du Karakorum.

<p>Black liquors are presently combusted in recovery boilers where the inorganic cooking chemicals are recovered and the energy in the organic material is converted to steam and electricity. A new technology, developed by Chemrec AB, is black liquor gasification (BLG). BLG has more to offer compared to the recovery boiler process, in terms of on-site generation of electric power, liquid fuel and process chemicals. A prerequisite for both optimization of existing processes and the commercialization of BLG is better understanding of the physical and chemical processes involved including interactions with the refractory lining. The chemistry in the BLG process is very complex and to minimize extensive and expensive time-consuming studies otherwise required accurate and reliable model descriptions are needed for a full understanding of most chemical and physical processes as well as for up-scaling of the new BLG processes. However, by using these calculated model results in practice, the errors in the state of the art thermochemical data have to be considered. An extensive literature review was therefore performed to update the data needed for unary, binary and higher order systems. The results from the review reviled that there is a significant range of uncertainty for several condensed phases and a few gas species. This resulted in experimental re-determinations of the binary phase diagrams sodium carbonate-sodium sulfide (Na2CO3-Na2S) and sodium sulfate-sodium sulfide (Na2SO4-Na2S) using High Temperature Microscopy (HTM), High Temperature X-ray Diffraction (HT-XRD) and Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA). For the Na2CO3-Na2S system, measurements were carried out in dry inert atmosphere at temperatures from 25 to 1200 °C. To examine the influence of pure CO2 atmosphere on the melting behavior, HTM experiments in the same temperature interval were made. The results include re-determination of liquidus curves, in the Na2CO3 rich area, melting points of the pure components as well as determination of the extent of the solid solution, Na2CO3(ss), area. The thermal stability of Na2SO3 was studied and the binary phase diagram Na2SO4-Na2S was re-determined. The results indicate that Na2SO3 can exist for a short time up to 750 °C, before it melts. It was also proved that a solid/solid transformation, not reported earlier, occurs at 675 ± 10 °C. At around 700 °C, Na2SO3 gradually breaks down within a few hours, to finally form the solid phases Na2SO4 and Na2S. From HTM measurements a metastable phase diagram including Na2SO3, as well as an equilibrium phase diagram have been constructed for the binary system Na2SO4-Na2S. Improved data on Na2S was experimentally obtained by using solid-state EMF measurements. The equilibrium constant for Na2S(s) was determined to be log Kf(Na2S(s)) (± 0.05) = 216.28 – 4750(T/K)–1 – 28.28878 ln (T/K). Gibbs energy of formation for Na2S(s) was obtained as ΔfG°(Na2S(s))/(kJ mol–1) (± 1.0) = 90.9 – 4.1407(T/K) + 0.5415849(T/K) ln (T/K). The standard enthalpy of formation of Na2S(s) was evaluated to be ΔfH°(Na2S(s), 298.15 K)/(kJ mol–1) (± 1.0) = – 369.0. The standard entropy was evaluated to be S°(Na2S(s), 298.15 K)/(J mol–1 K–1) (± 2.0) = 97.0. Analyses of used refractory material from the Chemrec gasifier were also performed in order to elucidate the stability of the refractory lining. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis revealed that the chemical attack was limited to 250-300 μm, of the surface directly exposed to the gasification atmosphere and the smelt. From XRD analysis it was found that the phases in this surface layer of the refractory were dominated by sodiumaluminosilicates, mainly Na1.55Al1.55Si0.45O4.</p>