Primary health care (PHC) is an effective way to "optimize and reorganize the health care service system" and solve the "difficulty in obtaining expensive medical services". In the process of China's promotion of health care reform, PHC has been placed at the core part. In this paper, by tracing the history of the development of China's PHC, and evaluating, analyzing and comparing the current similar policies in the field of PHC in China and Britain, a certain understanding of the effects of China's current PHC policies has been presented. In the end, some suggestions inspired by UK experiences been proposed for the future development of PHC in China. Keywords Primary health care; China; health care reform; UK primary health care

UK Biobank is a British clinical study containing over 40 000 Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) with 100 000 MRI planned of participants aged 44-82 as well as a large amount of related medical data. Analyzing these images with a neural network to find relations between the information in an MRI image and various medical data could lead to interesting medical revelations. While other studies usually focus on improving the network architecture, we instead propose a method to get targeted information out of full body MRI images. This is done by sampling various sub-volumes of the full body images and making a collage specifically tailored to the problem at hand before feeding them to a ResNet50 based network. The images are further analyzed using saliency analysis in order to gain information on what regions the network found important. This method was attempted on a variety of medical data including age, kidney volume, liver fat percentage, and heart volume. The method is used both as a way to increase information density in the input images as well as restricting information, such that we can see how well the network can predict about some medical data point from only some part of the body.The collages are able to increase the information in the images while the more complex representation and non-continuous representation does not cause problems for the network. These collages are also conducive to getting clearer and sharper saliency maps, which may give interesting medical information by showing what regions the network considers relevant. This may reveal otherwise difficult to notice relations between the information in the MRI images and medical information.

Purpose with the thesis is to describe the housing situation in the UK, identify challenges and key solutions to them. To meet the purpose three research questions have been formulated: How has the British housing market developed since world war 2? Which challenges does the British housing market face? Which are the possible solutions to the challenges on the housing market? The method used is literature sources, statistics databases well as interviews and surveys with professionals within the field. Most information was collected in the UK where were based for two months. The result and analyses are divided up in a chapter containing the housing history for UK as a whole to get a solid ground and to better understand the statistics, the main problems and potential solutions. After presenting the history I have identified the main problems in the housing market and their solutions. Problems which have their roots in the past and have developed during the years and solutions which are either new or something which worked in the past. To get a short summary of the history the most important decades are summarised in the following table. Summary 1946-1979 The era had both the Socialdemocratic Labour in power and the right wing Conservatives. The planning agenda was first oriented towards physical planning where the physical was in focus to solve the problems. During the 1960s and 1970s it was the planning which was more focused towards scientific and economic solutions to solve the problems in the cities. New houses were built mostly by the public sector which built more than 1.7 million new homes. Along with the new dwellings towns where also built and dimensioned for about 20000-60000 inhabitants. Prefabrication was introduced in order to build many houses fast and cheap. The overall building of new homes peaked in 1968 and then declined thereafter because of focus on reinvesting in the existing housing. 1980-1999 During the 1980s with the conservative Thatcher in power the view was that the state had too much power, they spent too much money and there was a limitation on free market. This showed in the urban policies which were more entrepreneurial than before. The state put a cap on the public spending which affected the building of new housing. They also sold out their share of the housing market through the “right to buy” act. During the 1990s there was a backlash to the 1980s models and it become more popular to focus on publicprivate partnerships. 2000-2019 The first half of this era had Labour in power and in the other half the Conservatives. What characterised this time was that the population as well as the economy grew but the housing building was stable and low. This meant the gap between dwellings and amount of inhabitants grew. During the first part of the era Labour focused on building and investing in existing areas in order to create better communities but this was abandoned by the Conservatives which focused more on economic growth. The challenges can be divided up in two categories; how we ensure there is more housing built and how we steer and maintain existing houses. On the UK market and specially in London there is a unbalance in the relationship between supply and demand, where the supply is not big enough compared to the demand. The reason to why supply is not enough is because there aren’t enough buildings built and the demand has increased at the same time. In the past the council built their own houses in order to ensure there was enough supply on the market, however the last 40 years the housing market has been left to private sector. The existing properties are sold out by the municipalities in order to fund other sectors within the community. The buyers of different properties are often wealthy people who later let out to the people for a high rent. The thesis present six different solutions, both market oriented and public sector oriented. The solutions are the following: 1. Lowering Construction Cost through prefabrication 2. More Effective and Smaller living 3. Temporary Housing and Temporary Permissions 4. Local Authorities builds new housing 5. Reinterpreting “Land Value” 6. CLT – community owned land trust I have come to the conclusion that since housing is a complex matter we need different sorts of solutions. We need both market oriented and public sector oriented solutions in order to find a solution and an end on the housing shortage. Therefore all six solutions which was presented is valid on different scale solving different angles of the problems with housing shortage.

The basic purpose of the research is to understand the significance of internal marketing in influencing frontline employees'job-related attitudes and service quality. Since rewards are considered to be an important compqnent of internal marketing, this research investigates relationships among frontline employee perceptions of rewards (extrinsic and intrinsic), attitudes (three components of organisational commitment viz. affective, normative and continuance, and job satisfaction), and service quality, in banking call centres. In this context, a conceptual model is presented comprising rewards as the antecedentsa, ttitudes as the mediating variables, and service quality of the frontline employees as the outcome variable. The model is empirically tested through a large sample study that is conducted among 4 call centres of a major retail bank in the UK. Following certain qualitative in-depth interviews at the exploratory stage, structural equation modelling (using AMOS) is carried out on 342 useable questionnaires (response rate of more than 50%), to empirically test the proposed framework for the study. The measurement and structural models, after validation and purification, provided satisfactory fit estimates across absolute, incremental and parsimonious measures. The results highlight the importance of rewards, as part of internal marketing, in maintaining employee attitudes, and improving service quality. Intrinsic rewards (like role clarity, training and skill variety) emerged as the most significant of all, as they were found to impact on service quality directly. Extrinsic social rewards (like supervision and team support) were not found to be significant, while the finding regarding extrinsic organisational rewards-service quality relationship was surprising. Although assumed important for perfon-nance, some had no direct effect (pay, and benefits satisfaction, extrinsic exchange), while others (working conditions and promotional opportunities) exerted a negative direct effect on service quality, although the indirect effect of most of these rewards was found to be positive. However, these rewards were considered important for influencing employee attitudes, which in turn influence service quality. In this context, the importance of employee attitudes like affective commitment and job satisfaction is emphasisedfor service quality. The empirical results of the study also reveal that it is the nature of commitment that matters in commitment-service quality relationship. Affective commitment emerged as the only attitude variable to bear a significant positive relationship with service quality. Job satisfaction was not found to impact on service quality directly, although the indirect effect was found to be positive. Normative commitment impacted on service quality indirectly, while continuance commitment was not found to be effective at all. Besides theoretical and methodological contributions, the thesis also provides strong managerial implications and directions for future research in applying internal marketing for improving service quality of frontline employees in call centres. Keywords: internal marketing, rewards, service quality, commitment, job satisfaction, UK banks, call centres, frontline employees.

This thesis discusses how the restructuring of the UK television industry in the 1980s and 1990s has affected learning and skills development in the sector. It is based on 71 semi-structured interviews with television freelancers and key informants in the industry, and a case study of a small regional independent company developed through semi-structured interviews and three months of participant observation. To investigate the current learning and skills development mechanisms, this thesis engages with community-based learning theories. These are discussed in relation to industry characteristics such as commissioning and independent production and labour market realities related to freelance work and educational provision. The findings reveal that the traditional on the job learning mechanisms within communities of practice are challenged under the new structural context characterised by unrestricted entry and progression and short-term projects within an uncertain employment context. Commercial pressures affect both the access to learning opportunities and the learning experience, mainly because of the lack of legitimate and gradual experiential learning possibilities, short-term involvement in the industry under pressures to perform. The thesis also discusses the realities of the work in a small regional independent production company as well as its benefits and limitations as a venue for community-based learning. This thesis concludes with several policy recommendations which address some of the main challenges to the sustainable skills development in UK television. These recommendations subscribe to the need for introducing legitimate traineeships, entry rules and detaching learning from the commercial pressures in the sector.

This study examines the intellectual capital (IC) disclosure practices in the annual reports of 100 listed UK firms selected from sectors considered to be IC-intensive. It also investigates the possible determinants of such disclosure practices from the three perspectives of corporate governance structure, company characteristics and market factors. IC disclosures were captured using content analysis, and were measured by a disclosure index, supported by word count and percentage of word count metrics to assess the variety, volume and focus of IC disclosure respectively, at both overall and subcategory levels. The presentational formats and locations of IC disclosures were also recorded. The results indicate that the UK firms sampled provide considerable IC information in their annual reports, mainly in text form, with popular use of numerical information, while the use of graphs and pictures for many IC elements remains low. The distribution of IC disclosures, captured in three categories, varies by the three measures of disclosure applied. IC information was found in virtually all sections of the annual report and was most concentrated in the Operating and Financial Review section. IC terms typically used in the academic literature do not feature in the sampled annual reports. The results of the statistical analyses based on the three measures of IC disclosure indicate significant associations with a number of corporate governance factors (i.e. board composition, share concentration, audit committee size and frequency of meeting, board directors¿ shareholding, audit committee directors¿ shareholding, and board directors with cross-directorships), company characteristics (i.e. firm size, profitability, and listing age), and market factors (i.e. `hidden value¿, share price volatility, share turnover, and multiple listing). These findings offer support for a number of theories, such as information asymmetry, agency and signalling theory. The influence of these explanatory factors on human, structural and relational capital disclosures, based on all three disclosure measure metrics, as well as on the format of IC disclosure, was also explored. The study also finds that its IC framework is more effective than a less detailed framework used in prior studies for the purpose of examining IC disclosure practice and its determinants. The study contributes to the further advancement of the state of knowledge in relation to IC disclosure both empirically and methodologically. It provides information users, preparers, regulatory bodies and academics with a state-of-the-art understanding of IC disclosure practices in the annual report. The transparent content analysis process enables future replication and comparison of results. The rigorous measurements of IC disclosure, the greater specificity of disclosure about the location and presentational format, and the more detailed IC research framework can be usefully applied by other studies. By examining the relationship between explanatory factors and IC disclosure, it helps shareholders and other groups of information users as well as the regulatory bodies to identify factors that may encourage IC disclosure in the annual report.

This thesis explores causal attribution statements on performance outcomes given in annual reports of UK listed rms. The objectives are three-fold. First, it analyses the nature and extent of attribution statements provided. Second, it explores corporate governance factors and rm-speci c characteristics that are related to the provision of attribution statements. Finally, it investigates the economic consequences of providing attribution statements by examining their association with the rm's cost of equity capital. Using data drawn from a sample of 142 UK rms listed on the London Stock Exchange, content analysis was used to measure the extent of attributions in the annual reports for the year 2006. The results show that the volume of attribution statement provision is generally low and variation across rms is low. Firms also show a strong tendency to explain performance with internal rather than with external reasons. The results from regression analysis show that the volume of attribution statements and the space given to internal and external attribution statements is associated with the proportion of non-executive directors, director share ownership, audit committee size, market value, gearing, pro tability and new share issues. With respect to the relationship between the attribution statements and the cost of capital, the PEG model was employed to estimate the cost of equity capital. The ndings indicate an association between attribution statement provision and the cost of equity capital, but only for rms with low analyst following. For these rms, more extensive performance explanations and more extensive internal explanations are associated with a higher cost of equity capital. However, attribution statements are unrelated to the cost of equity capital for rms with high analyst following. The thesis makes two contributions in the area of attribution determinants. First, it measures attribution provision with a measure that has not been previously applied in the literature to measure attribution statements. Second, it provides evidence on how rm-speci c characteristics and the rm's corporate governance mechanisms in uence the extent and the type of performance explanations provided by rms. The thesis makes four contributions regarding the e ect of attribution statements on the cost of capital. First, it uses a quantitative approach to directly estimate the cost of capital e ects of attribution statements. Second, it provides evidence that the association between attribution statements and the cost of equity capital is in uenced by an interaction between attribution statements and analyst following. Third, the thesis provides the rst evidence of the relationship between attribution statements and the cost of equity capital in a UK setting. Fourth, it provides evidence that the relationship between disclosure and the cost of equity capital is complex and is in uenced by interactions between disclosure and information intermediaries.

<p> A conventional view of events in contemporary Iraq since 1990 suggests that there were two wars in 1991 and 2003 between Iraq and a US/UK led cohort of countries separated by an interval of relative peace marked by the imposition of economic sanctions on the country. This dissertation proposes an alternative view, arguing that the war with Iraq was one continuous war that began in 1991 and ended in 2003, followed by what is correctly called "belligerent occupation". A process oriented model of violence bridges two divergent literatures in the field of Anthropology-the anthropology of war and the ethnography of violence-and acts as a lens with which to see war with greater definition; and subsequently, to see that there was but one war with Iraq. The understanding ofviolence I propose illuminates the substance and process of war and is articulated through a careful analysis of three realms of violence. The Physical Realm is where harm is done to the bodies of individuals. This realm exists in the immediate context of the Network Realm, where violence is embedded in social institutions and processes. The Network Realm is in turn sustained by the Symbolic Realm, where violence is enmeshed in broader cultural symbol systems that have the power to create and sustain an ethos in which harm towards others is enabled. Each of these realms contributes to the creation and sustenance of war, yet the symbolic realm remains the primary key to enabling violence in both network and physical realms. Each realm of violence is illustrated in this dissertation by examples from the US/UK - IRAQ War, 1991-2003, drawn from my experience of living in the country and extensive historical research. The argument of this dissertation imposes a different structure on how the course of events now unfolding in the geographical region of Southwest Asia is understood. In this narrative there is a series of escalating stages. A long-standing conflict between the governments of Iraq and Kuwait was escalated when the Government of Iraq occupied the country of Kuwait in 1990. When a cohort of countries led by the US government intervened in the occupation of Kuwait, the conflict escalated into a state of war which lasted until 2003. Eventually that war was ended by yet another occupation; this time, however, it was the country of Iraq that was occupied. At the time of completing this dissertation there is a great deal of internal resistance to the occupation of the country-the contours of how it will finally unfold remain uncertain.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Pharmaceutical supply chains are susceptible to disruptions which impact on the operational and financial performance of firms as well as patient safety. This study aimed to explore why the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain (PSC) in the UK is susceptible to the impact of dynamic disruptions and examine how resilience strategies have were employed to reduce the effects of these disruptions. The Complex Adaptive System (CAS) theory was used as a framework in an exploratory research design using mixed-methods. The qualitative data were gathered through 23 semi-structured interviews with key supply chain actors across the PSC in the UK to explore their experiences. The findings from these semi-structured interviews were used to develop a survey which was distributed to a broader spectrum of supply chain actors where the final sample from the survey was (n=106). The data were triangulated to discuss the research findings. The initial results revealed power, conflict and complexities as drivers of vulnerabilities in the PSC. Antecedents for building resilience strategies included visibility, flexibility and joint decision making as recovery strategies and resource sharing as the resistance strategy. CAS provided a systemic approach to understanding PSC resilience rather than in parts. In doing so, it took into consideration the various elements that make up the entire system. Thus, vulnerabilities and resilience strategies were outcomes of the interactions between supply chain actors. The findings demonstrated that CAS, as a theory, provided a framework that was beneficial in exploring and gaining insights into PSC resilience. Also, by combining the two datasets (interviews and survey), an original output was proposed -the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Resilience Framework (PSCRF)- which was used to recommend resilience strategies suitable for mitigating disruptions in the PSC.

In the last 12 years, since the devastating attack on the United States Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, the global community has become increasingly wary. The continuing terrorism on July 7, 2005 on the United Kingdom subway system increased tensions between citizens and immigrants in these countries. I use these two countries to examine the consequences effects that these terrorist attacks have had on, in particular, the Muslim immigrant population. In addition to that, I use Germany as a control, since it has not faced a major terrorist attack, yet has a substantial Muslim immigrant population. In the United States and United Kingdom, I use public opinion data polls and immigration policies before and after the attacks. In Germany's case, I utilize the same data and to assess any correlation to the other two countries data. Using the literature already written, public opinion data polls and policy initiatives enacted before and after these attacks, I examine the overall effect, if any, on the Muslim immigrant population in these countries. The intent of this thesis is to explore if the significant changes in immigration policies after the attacks have occurred due to economic or cultural factors. Because public opinion is central to policy changes, I also consider the implications of public's views on immigration after the attacks, along with the effect all this has on the number of Muslim immigrants entering these countries.