The present thesis is an enquiry into the nature and consistency of the idea of music as a metaphor throughout the works of the English philosopher and physician Robert Fludd (1573/4-1637). Fludd was very fond of a view of the world in which man is made of the same elements and the same proportions of the cosmos. Though this idea was slowly losing credit amongst the intellectuals of the time, Fluddean thought made some impact in the British Isles, and even more so on the continent: Johannes Kepler, for instance, wrote extensively about Fludd’s use of numerical symbolism, and stressed the differences between his own idea of harmony of the spheres and Fludd’s. After Fludd’s death, his ideas were still taken seriously amongst certain intellectual circles, e.g. in England (John Webster) and Poland (John Amos Comenius), and Fluddean thought influenced German musico-theoretical writers such as Athanasius Kircher, Andreas Werckmeister, and Johann Walther. But the subsequent centuries witnessed a general obliviousness towards Fludd. His figure began to re- emerge only in the second half of the 20th century in an increasing number of essays, papers, articles and a few books dedicated to him. What is still lacking, though, is a reassessment relying upon a more organic approach, which takes into account the entirety of Fludd’s publications and the wide range of topics covered in them. My work attempts to address this issue. The musical metaphor is one of the strongest leitmotifs in Fluddean publications, thanks to its being fit for representing man, the cosmos, and their interrelationship. Indeed the monochord, which well before Fludd was the preeminent practical and philosophical demonstration of the Pythagorean ‘divine’ proportions, rules the pages of Fludd’s earlier volumes. In later volumes, though, a new instrument takes its place: the more up-to-date weather-glass, surprisingly also linked to musical proportions. I argue that the new scientific instrument retains some of the monochord’s traits, thus representing an original re-arrangement of ‘ancient’ music; in fact, Fludd even applies it to the human pulse – an under-studied topic that I survey in detail. Following the whole Fluddean opera omnia is a task that gives one a glimpse of Fludd’s reactions to the deep changes that the intellectual and scientific world was undergoing from a perspective that has been, so far, largely neglected. This opens up to new fascinating outlooks on music, medicine and science at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

This thesis deals with recognition of vehicles with image captured by one camera. The image is always taken as a front view of a vehicle passing one specific place in case of various lighting conditions. The aim is to implement classification method with regard to robustness, reliability and computional complexity. The method is implemented in Mircosoft Visual Studio 2013 using the OpenCV library.

Data collected in life sciences studies mostly include a genotype description of the organism, a phenotype characterisation of the organism, and experiment-specific covariates including a description of experimental procedures and laboratory (environmental) conditions. Here, phenotype measurements are taken for Neurospora crassa (wild type) growing on agar in the standard laboratory conditions. I define a phenotype as a set of traits including apical extension velocity, branching angle, and branching distance. I use the above measures (traits) to model (estimate) biologically complex filamentous fungi network as a simplified 'In Silico Fungus' consisting of series of straight lines. Phenotype data, under the central limit theorem, is often characterized by means and standard deviations. Subsequently, P values are used to show statistical validity. Here, I question whether making normality assumption based on the popularity of such approach is always justified. Therefore, I test three different scenarios by making different assumptions about the data collected. (1) Firstly, I use the most popular approach: I assume the phenotype data comes from the continuous, normal (Gauss) distribution. Thus, I predict the future measurement outcomes by using normal (Gauss) parametric approximation. (2) Secondly, I use the most intuitive approach: I do not make any assumptions about the data collected and use it to predict the future measurement outcomes by withdrawing values pseudo randomly from the actual, raw, and discrete dataset. (3) Finally, I use the strategy balanced between the previous two: I construct a customised, continuous, and non-parametric distribution based on the data collected. Thus, I predict the future measurement outcomes by using kernel density estimation method. Subsequently, I implement all of the strategies above: (1), (2), and (3) in the in silico fungus programme to compare the computer simulation outcomes. More specifically, I compare the surface coverage, expressed as the proportion of the surface occupied by the fungus. Obtained results show that the differences between different data regimes (1), (2), and (3) are significant. Therefore, I conclude that the correct assessment of the data normality is crucial for the correct interpretation and implementation of scientific observations. I suspect the described data classification process determines successful implementation of biological findings especially in the fields such as medicine and engineering.

Infectious diseases continue to kill millions of people every year and are a significant burden on the socio-economic development of developing countries. After many years of international policy aimed at containing diseases, it has recently become an explicit aim to move towards elimination of infectious diseases. However, if this is to occur, it will be necessary to have highly eficacious diagnostic tools to ensure infected individuals are identified and treated. However, the diagnosis of infectious diseases in the developed and developing world requires the full integration of complex assays in easy-to-use platforms with robust analytical performances at low cost. Many relevant bioanalytical technologies have been developed for use in laboratories and clinics, including the current gold standard for the diagnosis of tuberculosis and malaria. The miniaturization and integration of complex functions into lab-on-a-chip (LOC)technologies using microfluidics have only had limited success in translating diagnosis assays out of a centralized laboratory to point-of-care (POC) settings, because they still remain constrained due to chip interconnection and they are either not likely to go out of research laboratories or are not appropriate for low resource settings. In this thesis, a new microfluidic platform was developed that reduced the dependency of the diagnostic procedure on large laboratory instruments providing simplicity of use, enabling the patient sample to be processed and diagnosed on a low cost, disposable biochip. Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices, which are commonly used in mobile phone technologies, were adapted to provide controlled microfluidic functions by shaping the SAW using particular designs of electrodes and phononic structures. The control of lateral positioning of the SAW was demonstrated using a slanted finger interdigitated transducer (IDT) in a frequency tuneable manner allowing microfluidic functions such as mixing, moving and merging, sequentially performed using a single IDT both on the substrate and on a disposable chip. Alternatively, phononic bandgaps were designed to break the symmetry of the SAW in a tuneable manner and gradient index phononic crystals (GRIN-PC) lenses were designed to focus the SAW and successfully increased the amplitude of the wave by a factor 3 while the focal position could be tuned with the frequency. The potential of these techniques was demonstrated by controlling the amplitude and direction of water jet towers by the use of a phononic horn structure that allowed the enhancement of energy at defined positions and by propelling and directing a macrometer scale object in water using a slanted IDT. As proof of concepts of diagnostic devices for the developing world, an immunoassay for tuberculosis using only mobile phone technologies (SAW, light-emitting diode(LED) and complementary metaloxidesemiconductor (CMOS) camera) was demonstrated with a limit of detection of 1 pM, which is the limit required in an interferon-release assay. This limit of detection was only achievable because of the ability of SAW to increase the mixing and to reduce the non-specific binding. Furthermore, a method to enrich malaria infected cells, based on SAW and isopycnic gradient, was also demonstrated and showed an enrichment up to 100x in the equivalent of a fingerprick of blood in 3 seconds. This technique will allow to reduce the limit of detection of the current gold standard. This platform not only opens a clear road toward POC diagnostics due to its size, cost, versatility and ease in integration, but has also the potential to provide useful tools in laboratory settings for large scale, high throughput technologies.