Radical innovation has been identified as one of the central topics of innovation management, being relevant to the development process, the categories, and the R&D department’s responsibilities for development. Based on the above three individual research conversations, this research aimed to determine, when the R&D department of a large telecommunications operator engaged in radical innovation, which capabilities they used and how the use of these capabilities was affected by different contextual factors at each stage of the radical innovation development cycle. By comparing the aim of the current research with other researchers’ findings on relevant topics, three gaps in the research were identified, and two research questions were raised, as below: • RQ1: What capabilities do the R&D department of an STO use for each separate activity during its radical innovation development process? • RQ2: Within the radical innovation development process of an STO, which contextual factors explain the differential uses of the R&D department’s capabilities? Following the above research questions and based on the philosophical views of interpretivism and social constructivism, this PhD study uses a qualitative research strategy and a case study research approach for guiding the research design. Based on the data collected from 29 interviews plus a three-month, full-time participant observation, four case studies were conducted, which are the telematics service within China Mobile, the Xi-He system within China Telecom, and 21CN and BT Fusion within British Telecom (BT). By comparing the four cases, the R&D departments’ uses of capabilities in each separate activity of its radical innovation development cycle were identified, and the reasons for the different uses of these capabilities were described in relation to six contextual factors derived from the literature. Based on the four case studies and the data analysis, from the perspective of the R&D department eight theoretical propositions were put forward for an STO to develop its radical innovation. The propositions concerned the capabilities involved at each stage of the R&D department’s radical innovation development cycle, as well as the contextual factors that played the most significant roles in affecting these capabilities at all of the radical innovation development stages. In addition to the eight theoretical propositions, practically, five guidelines were also proposed in this study, which contributes to the understanding of the R&D managers and strategy people of other Chinese and British STOs, in terms of the impacts that the contextual factor of cultural contexts would have on their radical innovation development activities.

This thesis contributes to the discussion around the practice of co-design with children by providing support for reflections to practitioners. The framework that derived from this research aims to increase the awareness on the implications the different aspects involved on co-design session have on its outcome. Researchers with little experience in managing co-design sessions can benefit from it when deciding on their co-design strategies.

Thesis (M.Med.(Haematology)), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 2009 / Introduction Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are increasingly being recognized as key immunological players in immunosuppression and have been seen to be permissive for certain infections. Aim This study aimed to elucidate the role that Tregs play in symptomatic infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB), both with and without co-infection with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV 1) by quantification of these cells at ex vivo. It was then attempted to characterise the behaviour of FoxP3 positive cells in culture with stimulation. Methods Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were purified from uninfected controls, patients with active TB, patients with HIV infection and patients with HIV infection and active TB. The frequencies of Tregs were assessed by flow cytometry at ex vivo and again after four days of culture with stimulation with anti-CD3, Purified protein derivative, tetanus toxoid and HIV peptide superpools (gag and nef). These frequencies were compared between the four groups of patients. The ability of Tregs and effector T cells to proliferate was also assessed. Interferon-γ secretion was used as a measure of effector T cell response to stimulation. vi Results Frequencies of Tregs were significantly reduced in patients with active TB as compared with HIV infected patients and uninfected controls. Co-infected individuals showed a broad range of frequencies which were not significantly different from controls. These frequencies remained stable in culture with the exception of those individuals infected with HIV who showed a decline in the frequency of those cells expressing FoxP3 over the period. Cells expressing FoxP3 were not anergic and responded to stimulation. HIV specific proteins, in addition, resulted in specific effects on the Tregs with a positive interferon response to gag correlating with increased Treg frequencies and FoxP3 expression in CD4+ T cells correlated with the proliferative response of CD4+ T cells to Nef in HIV infected individuals. Conclusions This study shows significant differences of frequencies of FoxP3 positive producing cells in the peripheral blood at ex vivo in patients with active TB. The function of these cells in this population is uncertain and further functional data and long-term clinical follow-up is required. In addition, the frequencies of these cells remained constant over time and showed proliferative response to stimuli (most notably CD3) suggesting that these cells may be generated in the periphery.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree, Master of Medicine in Haematopathology. Johannesburg, 2014 / Mycobacterium Tuberculosis is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality due to infectious diseases worldwide. South Africa has ~20% of the world’s HIV associated Tuberculosis and has the second largest reported numbers of multidrug resistant (MDR) Tuberculosis in the world. Given the complexity of the mycobacterium and its ability to evade the immune system, there is a need for dissecting the immunological response to Tuberculosis including innate like lymphocytes such as gamma-delta T cells. Gamma-delta T cells are of particular relevance as they react to phospho-proteins of mycobacteria. Gamma-delta T cells can be divided into two subsets. Gamma-delta T cells using the Vdelta2 (VD2) segment as the variable segment in their T cell receptor and gamma-delta T cells using an alternative variable segment (non VD2 T cells). We aimed to enumerate both subsets of gamma-delta T cells in the immunological response to Tuberculosis. We collected samples from three patient populations at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital for comparison: HIV positive patients with no evidence of Tuberculosis disease, HIV positive patients with active pulmonary Tuberculosis and a healthy control group. We used a nine colour flow cytometric panel to enumerate the frequency of gamma-delta T cells in these participant groups. We found that the VD2 T cell subset was reduced in the HIV positive group and the dual HIV positive TB positive group compared with healthy controls, which mirrored the loss of CD4 T cells in these patients. Conversely, the non VD2 subset of gamma-delta T cells showed a statistically significant increased frequency in HIV positive patients and dual HIV positive TB positive patients compared to healthy controls. The frequency of gamma-delta T cells, expressed as a percentage of total T cells, was significantly increased in HIV positive patients and not non- significantly increased in the HIV positive TB positive groups compared to healthy controls. This skewing of the gamma-delta T cell repertoire in HIV positive patients and HIV positive patients with active Tuberculosis may have specific immune implications. The mechanism of the loss of VD2 T cells in HIV and HIV associated Tuberculosis has not been elucidated. The loss of VD2 gamma-delta T cells in HIV and HIV associated Tuberculosis may underlie susceptibility to Tuberculosis disease.

The ability to detect small refractive index changes in analytes is of uttermost importance since these index changes can be directly correlated to the presence of small amounts of chemicals of interest within analytes. Photonic devices such as 1D PhC nanocavities are one of the interesting structures to be used as optical sensors due to their capability to integrate with CMOS technology. We present in this study, a simple optical technique of detection based on 1D PhC nanocavities that gives good sensitivity for various types of chemicals. The work reported in this thesis concerned with the designed, fabrication, and characterisation of 1D PhC nanocavity devices based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) material. The objective of this work is to provide an optical wave-guided sensing technology using 1D PhC nanocavity devices in the wavelengths region around 1550 nm. Firstly, the PhC nanocavities were designed and modelled using 2D and 3D Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) computations to provide insight behaviour of the resonator waveguides. The designated PhC nanocavity devices were carefully fabricated via combination of electron beam lithography (EBL) and the dry and wet etching technology. The nanocavity devices were realised using optimised fabrication process to ensure the sensing chips are reproducible and reliable. This is done by careful control at nanometre scale of fabrication process of the PhC nanocavity devices and the microfluidic chip. Then, the devices were paired with the PDMS based microfluidic channel system. The nanocavity devices were characterised and the sensor system were tested for their optical sensing capabilities. The sensitivity of various Q factor values corresponds to the different cavity lengths are studied. The sensor system sensitivity, S were measured via refractive index sensing experiment varying from 135.78 to 245.72 nmRIU-1 with the detection limit, DL of 8 x 10-6 RIU. The sensing area estimated is 2.35 μm2. In addition, through the non-specific interaction experiment, bio molecular proteins BSA as low as 3.125 μg/ml concentrations were detected. Finally, the sensor system thermal responses were measured.

Chack-yung Yu. / Bibliography: leaves 160-175 / Thesis (M.Phil.) -- Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1983

Light sources are an important part of physically-based rendering when accurate imagery is required. High-fidelity models of sky illumination are essential when virtual environments are illuminated via the sky as is commonplace in most outdoor scenarios. The complex nature of sky lighting makes it difficult to accurately model real life skies. The current solutions to sky illumination can be analytically based and are computationally expensive for complex models, or based on captured data. Such captured data is impractical to capture and difficult to use due to temporally inconsistencies in the captured content. This thesis enhances the state-of-the-art in sky lighting by addressing these problems via novel sky illumination methods that are accurate, practical and flexible. This thesis presents two novel sky illumination methods where; the first of which focuses on clear sky lighting and the second one deals with illumination from cloudy skies. The first approach compactly and efficiently represents sky illumination from both existing analytic sky models and from captured environment maps. For analytic models, the approach leads to a low, constant runtime cost for evaluating lighting. When applied to environment maps, this approach approximates the captured lighting at a significantly reduced memory cost, and enables smooth transitions of sky lighting to be created from a small set of environment maps captured at discrete times of day. This makes capture and rendering of real world sky illumination a practical proposition. Results demonstrate less than 4% loss of accuracy compared to ground truth data. The straightforward implementation makes it possible to compute skies at sub milliseconds times on modest GPUs. The second approach focuses on modelling of clouds from whole sky HDR images by using classification and optimisation techniques. This method pre-classifies the input image according to the cloud types of the pixels which improves both the duration and accuracy of the optimisation. The classification process itself compares well with similar processes from meteorological science and classifies whole images with 97% accuracy and individual pixels with an 80% accuracy. The method can be applied to any cloud type as soon as the optical properties are known. When combined with artificial sky lighting models consisting of arbitrary sun position to relight the extracted cloud model any day time simulations can be obtained based on the original single capture. Results for this method demonstrate a performance of 90% accuracy for fully digitally generated environment maps constructed from a single captured environment map when compared with the original capture.

CD4 T helper (Th) cells differentiate into distinct effector or regulatory subsets as needed during the course of an infection. Ikaros is a transcription factor that is necessary for proper thymic T cell development. In order to study the role of Ikaros in peripheral CD4 T-cell differentiation and function, a novel Ikaros conditional knockout mouse in which Ikaros is deleted in mature T-cells (CKO mice) was developed. In this thesis, this model is characterized and used to evaluated how absence of Ikaros affects lymphocyte and myeloid populations in vivo, and CD4 T-cell differentiation into T helper 17 (Th17) and inducible regulatory T cell (iTreg) subsets in vitro. CKO mice had normal thymocyte development and normal percentages of T-cells and B-cells in the spleen. However, they had increased percentages of myeloid cells, and an abnormal population of "naive-like" CD4 T-cells that expressed low levels of CD62L and CD44, markers that identify naive and memory T cell populations. CKO CD4 T-cells cultured under Th17 polarizing conditions showed normal expression of the Th17 factors, RORγt and IL-17A, but overexpressed the pro-inflammatory factors T-bet, IFNγ and GM-CSF. CKO CD4 T-cells had a decreased ability to become iTregs as shown by significantly less Foxp3+ CD4+ T-cells in polarizing cultures, and overexpress T-bet, IFNγ and GM-CSF. Therefore, T-cells that lack Ikaros do not properly differentiate into either Th17 or iTreg lineages, but instead become cells with altered pro-inflammatory characteristics. In conclusion, the data highlights new roles of Ikaros in maintaining proper CD4 T-cell populations in the periphery and in suppressing abnormal pro-inflammatory responses.

Ageing mechanisms affect the thermal properties and creep response of polymericfoams. This research analyses the effects of gas diffusion on the mechanical responseof polymeric foams subjected to periodic loads and studies their durability.A repeat impact machine was developed to analyse changes in the mechanical responseof ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer foams used in running shoes. The equipmentshowed some advantages compared to the standard method used in runningshoes and produced reproducible results. The softening of the material with thedistance run and the reduction in the cushioning properties are mainly due to theyielding and unyielding of the cellular structure and not to a change in the air content. Midsole deterioration in running shoes was measured in controlled running tests.These confirmed the deterioration of the midsole foam, with an increase of the peakplantar pressure and structural damage in the foam after a long run.The diffusion coefficients of Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate (EVA) foams were measuredusing a microbalance where the pressure and the temperature were controlled. Theoreticalanalysis of gas diffusion in foams subjected to repeat impact was carried outand confirmed a negligible gas loss due to diffusion in foams under cyclic loads.

The development, characterisation and testing of a novel all-optical, multi-modal preclinical biomedical imaging system is presented. The system aims to provide a new way of accurately visualising the spatial distribution and activity of molecular structures and processes in small animals by combining 3D bioluminescence tomography (BLT; reconstruction-based 3D imaging of internal bioluminescent reporter distributions), diffuse optical tomography (DOT; reconstruction-based imaging of optical parameter distributions) and optical surface capture techniques. The key principle of the imaging system is to use surface capture results to enhance the accuracy of DOT image reconstruction, and to use the results of both surface capture and DOT to enhance the accuracy of BLT. Presented experiments show that the developed system can reconstruct luminescent source distributions and optical parameters accurately and that small animal imaging is feasible with the system.