This dissertation contributes to our knowledge about the development of Maltese cooperatives, placing the process in a wider historical and ideological perspective. More importantly it delves into the learning that goes on in and around co-operatives. Finally it contributes to the discussion about the potential which co-operatives have in enabling communities to work towards a more equitable world. Three were the guiding questions. What do people learn in the co-op, as they get involved in setting up and running a community-owned enterprise? What do people learn from the co-op, as they interact with it in its day-to-day business? What do people learn for the co-op, as they turn towards co-operation to create a more equitable world? To answer these questions, I first conducted research about the origins of co-operation in Britain, the dissemination of the model across the British Empire, and its development in Malta. Then I conducted a case study research with two Maltese rural co-operatives, one at the village of Mġarr, the Mġarr Farmers’ Co-operative Society, and the other located at Manikata, Koperattiva Rurali Manikata. I interviewed ten co-operators from each case study, followed up by a group discussion with each co-op’s committee. I analysed the transcripts by making reference to authors who have contributed to the discussion around democracy, critical citizenship and critical pedagogy. The case studies show that in co-operatives people learn how to turn personal problems into collective struggles. They develop their personal and collective identities in their activism. They learn to assume responsibility in contributing towards the common good, becoming aware that taking action is a learning process at the individual and the collective level. The case studies also show that people learn from co-operatives in different ways. The co-operatives under study both organised non-formal educational activities open to the members of the community. They provided goods and services to the wider community, and customers learned as they interacted with both co-ops. Activists from both co-ops sought to build bridges with civil society and with political authorities in their search for alliances over to achieve their objectives. In doing so they could open up learning spaces beyond the confines of the co-op. Finally the research makes the case for co-operatives by showing how they have the potential to give voice to local communities. They can ‘claim spaces’ where individual abilities are turned into collective strength through participation in democratic dialogical processes. Cooperatives can scale up the struggle for legitimacy around local structures of feeling as they develop into oppositional or alternative discourses to the status quo.

The concept of co-optation offers vocabulary to discuss how concerns and demands of feminist movements are transformed on their way to, and within, mainstream organizations and policymaking. However, applications of this concept can have problematic implications, failing to grasp the complexity of social change efforts and contributing to divisions, rather than alliances, between different groups that work and fight for gender equality. This article argues that conceptual tools from organizational institutionalism can help to avoid these pitfalls by capturing the ambivalence of organizational change initiatives, and allowing us to identify not only counterintentional effects, but also subtle and unexpected opportunities of organizational gender equality work. I illustrate my arguments with empirical examples from research on gender equality work in Austrian universities.

En la presente tesis se han introducido y estudiado nuevas nociones de función co-radiante de valor real extendido y de valor conjunto, definidas en un cono de un espacio euclídeo. El estudio exhaustivo que se hace de ellas ha permitido hacer contribuciones en el análisis multivaluado no convexo, así como disponer de herramientas matemáticas adecuadas para analizar con un nivel de generalidad superior, las tradicionales funciones de producción que en la teoría económica se las denomina funciones de rendimientos decrecientes a escala. Se proponen las funciones alfa-co-radiantes que incluyen funciones como las de Cobb-Douglas de grado alfa y las de elasticidad de sustitución constante. Asimismo, se presentan representaciones convexas de las funciones alfa co-radiantes y se hacen algunos aportes para las funciones cóncavas y homogéneas de grado alfa. Los resultados de mayor relevancia en esta tesis se basan en las nociones originales de aplicación multivaluada coradiante, así como en la de aplicación multivaluada inversa co-radiante. Las aplicaciones multivaluadas co-radiantes de valor no convexo son importantes para el moderno tratamiento matemático de las tecnolog´ıas de producción. Se presenta un análisis minucioso de estas aplicaciones desde el punto de vista de la convexidad abstracta. Esto ´ultimo posee un conjunto de técnicas para problemas no convexos, usando ideas provenientes del análisis convexo. Los principales resultados son las representaciones externas para aplicaciones multivaluadas co-radiantes y para aplicaciones multivaluadas inversas co-radiantes, valiéndonos de aplicaciones multivaluadas denominadas elementales o generadoras. Asimismo, se define la función coste asociada a una aplicación multivaluada de producción y se hace un análisis de esta función en el esquema de la convexidad abstracta. Finalmente, se establecen condiciones que permiten recuperar una aplicación multivaluada primitiva a partir de la función coste. Cabe mencionar, que la convexidad abstracta tiene importantes aportes en áreas como la Optimización Global y la Teoríıa del Transporte ´ Optimo; por consiguiente la tesis se enmarca en un área de investigación de gran interés en la actualidad, que va más allá del esquema económico que motivó la presente investigación. / In this thesis have been introduced and studied new notions of co-radiant function of extended real and set value, defined in a cone of a Euclidean space. The comprehensive study that is made of them has allowed contributions in non-convex multivalued analysis, as well as the availability of proper mathematical tools to analyze with a level of greater generality, the traditional functions of production which in theory economic are known as diminishing returns to scale functions. Alpha-co-radiant functions that include alpha grade Cobb-Douglas and constant elasticity of substitution functions are presented. Also, convex representations of alpha co-radiant functions are presented and some contributions to the concave and homogeneous functions of alpha grade are made. The results of greater relevance in this thesis are based on the original notions of co-radiant multivalued map, as well as on inverse co-radiant multivalued map. The co-radiant multivalued maps of non convex value are important to the modern mathematical treatment of the production technologies. A thorough analysis of these maps is presented from the point of view of abstract convexity. This last has a set of techniques for not convex problems, using ideas from the convex analysis. The main results are the external representations for co-radiant multivalued maps and inverse co-radiant multivalued maps through multivalued maps called elemental or generating maps. Also, the cost function associated with a multivalued map of production is defined and an analysis of this function in the scheme of abstract convexity is made. Finally, conditions are established in order to recover a primitive multivalued map from the cost function. It is worth mentioning, that the abstract convexity has significant contributions in areas such as Global Optimization and the Theory of the Optimal Transportation; therefore the thesis is part of an area of research of great interest today, which goes far beyond the economic scheme that gave rise to the present investigation. / Tesis

Today in the United Kingdom (UK), ageing is considered to be an important aspect of social life in general and although overall South Asian Indians (SAIs) are relatively young compared to the indigenous white population, the number over the age of 60 is rapidly increasing. Over the last decade or so evidence-based practice within social work has been given a great deal of emphasis in public and professional life. This study is based in this spirit and emanates from personal and professional experience of working with an ageing population from a South Asian Indian background and focuses on the second and third generation of this settled minority. The aspect of co-residence within South Asian Indian cultures has been given little attention both within academic and professional studies. The key aims underpinning this work and of the research reported in this thesis were to illuminate and explicate the problematical and challenging expectations of ageing, co-residence and care within different generations of SAIs in Leicester. Thus this study investigates the expectations of co-residence and care amongst a cohort of second and third generation SAIs who have been settled in the UK for 30 or more years. Using interpretivist theoretical perspectives, 12 participants (8 from the second generation and 4 from the third generation of SAI ‘settlers’) were interviewed using in-depth semi-structured one-to-one interview techniques to collect data regarding their views and understandings of co-residence and care within the context of living in the UK. The data collected was thematically analysed and three themes, co-residence, expectations and acculturation/enculturation were identified for detailed exploration and analysis. Using interpretivist perspectives, these themes were used to identify meaningful patterns of behaviour and sentiment and to analyse the underlying symbolic sociocultural systems within the context of ageing within the SAI community in the United Kingdom. The research highlighted the onset of some enculturation processes and a rapid change in social attitudes, particularly in relation to altruism, concepts of family, a gap in understanding the expectations of co-residence between generations and the impact of these on second generation SAIs. The older participants yearned to be looked after by their adult children, feared being on their own and displayed anxiety at the prospect of not being looked after in their old age. They experienced and expressed concern at a loss of control in the decisions relating to co-residence for their current and future lives. The study points to the lack of wider scale academic and practice-based research studies focused on the impact of changes in culture and family expectations, particularly in relation to co-residence, and recommends that :(a) the academic and professional discourses and theories on ageing incorporate aspects and experiences of migration and diversity of cultures and (b) researchers, practitioners and policy makers examine the needs of the ageing SAI communities in the UK in order to explore policies, procedures and initiatives that could enhance various forms of family living and to develop relevant evidence - based practice. The outcomes of the research have implications for teaching and for practice. This is particularly so in cases where there has been a perceived failure to adopt understandings and practices in response to the identified changes. To this end a flow chart was developed that is recommended to be used as a guide and a tool for initial assessment for practitioners when working with this vulnerable group. It is hoped that this guide will have utility in terms of scope and reach when applied to the analysis and understanding of ageing in SAI communities in the UK.

This thesis is developed in the context of investigating the health co-benefit of decarbonisation. Health co-benefit refers to the collateral benefit which arises from decarbonisation policies external to the main intended benefit of climate change mitigation via the reduction of Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Health co-benefit of this kind often arises via the corresponding reduction in air pollutants when GHG is reduced. This is because GHG and air pollutants such as particulate matter are often derived from the same source - the combustion of fossil fuels which drive economic activities. Existing literature in the health co-benefit of decarbonisation fail to give consider the effect of socio-economic variables such as income and education on the expected health co-benefits, and this is where the thesis begins. The backdrop of health co-benefit modelling and the need to incorporate socioeconomic considerations provide the impetus to develop a health economics model. However, in many ways this health economic model deviates from the health co-benefit studies methodologically and instead follows the tradition of the Health Capital Model developed by Grossman (1972). This is due to the micro-economic nature of this health economic model which employs standard economic theory and technique of optimisation, which differs from the fundamentally empirically driven approach of health co-benefit studies. The health economic model developed here is an opportunity to address some of the short-comings of the Health Capital Model. The health co-benefit background however provides some concrete context and inspiration for the application of the theoretical insights which can be drawn from this model. The main contribution of the model develop in this thesis from the theoretical point of view lies in the division of the lifecycle analysis of health into two distinct but related phases of childhood and adulthood. The two phases are specified with different assumptions reflecting the differing characteristics of childhood and adulthood. The most important distinction between the two phases is the manner in which investment in health capital (using time and goods resources) enters the modelling framework. In the childhood phase, health investment augments or increases the existing stock of health capital, while during the adulthood phase health investment prevents the decline of health but does not increase its stock. I believe this better reflects the biological behaviour of health over one's life than the HCM which implicitly assumes that new stock of health and existing stock are perfectly substitutable. In my model, this substitutability is possible only during the childhood corresponding with the body and mental development. On the other hand, during adulthood when them body no longer grows, health investment may only preserve health. After developing the model, I went about to test it empirically. I used the Understanding Society youth questionnaire to test the child model and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to test the adulthood model. Due to the way that optimisation problem was specified, the terminal end time conditional in the optimal control model became another endogenous variable. This variable is treated empirically as the life expectancy at the national level. I find that in general the empirical data strongly supports the theoretical propositions of my model. It should be noted here that since the main contribution of this thesis is in theoretical development, the empirical efforts were designed primarily with the intention of validating the propositions of the model, and not really for direct policy application. This is also reinforced by the use of ordered logit models where the coefficients of the independent variables on the dependent variable generally have no meaning, where we only concentrate on the signs of the relationship. Having successfully developed the model, it is applied in two policy settings. Firstly, through reformulation of the model gives the inclusion of socio-economic variables in the measure of Relative Risk (RR) a theoretical grounding. We utilised the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data to compute RR across 180 countries in the world and regressed with World Bank data on ambient particulate matter pollution as well as GDP per capita. The former variable represents the exogenous rate of depreciation while the latter socio-economic variables, particularly income. I find that the RR is negatively associated with the GDP per capita at the national level. Using the estimated coefficients with the help of Professor Crawford-Brown we attempted to forecast how GDP per capita will interact with the health co-benefits of decarbonisation under a range of future scenarios. The second application of the model is in its use to predict the inequality implications of decarbonisation policy. This is performed by taking the second order partial derivative of an endogenous variable such as health, as will be described in detail later. This approach is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the prediction of inequality over range of policies and variables. The inequality implications and predictions according to this model are not tested empirically here. However, they are perhaps the most fruitful area for future research.

Jag har länge skrivit pop-musik till andra artister, ofta i session tillsammans med andra låtskrivare, men varje gång jag försökt skriva musik som jag själv ska framföra har det tagit stopp. Jag bestämde mig för att ta itu med detta och utmana mig själv att övervinna de hinder som ofta dyker upp. Därav ägnade jag delar av våren 2019 med att undersöka de upplevda skillnaderna mellan att skapa musik åt mig själv och att skapa musik åt andra. Syftet med detta arbete var att undersöka skillnaderna som uppstår när jag skapar musik till mig själv gentemot när jag skapar åt andra, för att hitta ett arbetssätt som fungerar så bra som möjligt för mig. Genom att skriva och producera i olika konstellationer fick jag lärdomar om hur jag fungerar, inte minst när det gäller hur jag upplever skillnader i frihet och kontroll när jag skriver till olika mottagare. Efter flertalet sessions hade jag lyckats ta fram så många som nio olika låtar, och med det kom minst lika många insikter och lärdomar. Utifrån detta material skedde ett urval bland låtarna, som så småningom ska bli en EP.

Peanut allergy is a public health concern which affects a significant proportion of the population. Accidental exposure to peanut can cause severe and fatal reactions in peanut allergic individuals and currently their only safeguard is to practise careful avoidance. Identification and protection of at-risk members of the allergic population is critical in managing this life-threatening condition. This thesis produces key data to enable this. A prospective study was performed on 60 peanut allergic participants to determine thresholds of reactivity to peanut using oral challenges with incrementally increasing amounts of peanut protein. Following a double-blind placebo-controlled peanut challenge, participants received three further peanut challenges, two with co-factors: sleep deprivation and exercise, and one without. Severity was measured using a numerical scale derived from symptoms and serum tryptase was measured at each challenge. A total of 187 challenges were performed. Findings were that the median amount of peanut protein which induces a reaction in 10% of the population (ED10) was 12.3mg (95% CI 7.3,20.4) equivalently this suggests that 90% of the allergic population will not react to doses below this level. Both sleep deprivation and exercise have a significant effect on lowering reaction threshold (ED10), by 5 times and 2.5 times respectively. Separately there is a reduction in threshold with successive challenges. Co-factors also significantly increased symptom severity during challenge reactions. In particular sleep deprivation significantly increased the severity of gastrointestinal symptoms suggesting that a stressful stimulus may affect intestinal permeability. Evidence was provided for the importance of asthma as a risk factor which increased the severity of respiratory symptoms during reaction. Using a novel visual analogue scale for measuring the participant’s perception of severity, a poor correlation was observed between the participant’s perception of the reaction and the overall numerical severity score, suggesting that participants misperceive severe symptoms. This thesis provides the first data showing that symptom patterns in repeated challenges show a high degree of homogeneity within individuals, but importantly that this symptom homogeneity is also observed across individuals. Lastly the utility of serum tryptase in identifying food allergic reactions has been disputed previously. This thesis provides evidence of its value and identifies a rise cut-off of 30% as being diagnostic of a food allergic reaction, but cautions that acute levels must be compared with baseline as this rise may occur within the normal range.

Este trabalho procura proporcionar um conhecimento o mais abrangente possível do que é dito e estudado sobre o risco, área negligenciada em Portugal. O risco, veremos, é humano, cultural, social re político e a sua percepção depende em grande escala da forma como é comunicado, particularmente pela comunicação social. É sobre esta última que recairá a análise de conteúdo que além de confirmar a hipótese de que os riscos são tratados de forma exagerada, dramatizada, e priveligiando o acessório em detrimento do essencial.

Organic semiconductors are of interest because low processing temperatures and cost which make such materials candidates for flexible electronics. The charge transport properties of the material are largely dependent on solid-state arrangement of the molecules. This thesis focuses on co-crystallization as a means to achieve [2+2] photodimerization with organic semiconductors, the impact the co-crystal former has on mobility, the use of a co-crystal former to obtain different conformations of a flexible system, and the ability to detect the change in conformation by infrared spectroscopy. [2+2] photodimerization is studied as a way to alter the orientation of the π-systems in the solid state. To align a semiconductor building block into an orientation suitable for [2+2] photodimerization a co-crystallization method was used. The result of the photoreaction is the formation of a dimer in which the π-systems of the semiconductor building block are in a different orientation then before. Changes in the physical properties of the material through photodimerization are explored as a method for patterning thin films. The impact the second component has on the overall mobility in our system is examined. The second component is not expected to act as a semiconductor and the impact on mobility the by its inclusion in the solid is unknown. The impact of a second component on mobility is studied by observing the mobility of multiple co-crystals along with the mobility of the single component. It was found that the mobility could be increased by a factor of approximately 200 with addition of a second component. The mobility change seen in the two-component crystals is equated to the changes observed in the crystal packing. The conformation a molecule adopts in a solid can vary. It was discovered that the addition of a second component can be used to select the major conformation a bithiophene adopts in a solid. The change in conformation changes the orientation of the π-systems between molecules within the solid. The ability for a second component to alter the conformation of a bithiophene is explored. Infrared spectroscopy is used as a facial method to detect the change in the bithiophene conformation.

This study was a qualitative assessment of the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions used in the treatment of co-occurring disorders, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse. The qualitative assessment was an interview with a number of open ended questions and scales for the respondents to report preference. Interviews were conducted through the Wounded Warriors Project. Participants were males between the ages of 18 and 40, and were of multiple ethnicities. The interview questions primarily addressed whether or not the respondents received services and which services they felt were most beneficial. The interviews were anonymous and confidential, in the interest of preserving the privacy of the respondents. The results yielded by the data revealed that a small minority received services through the Veterans’ Association (VA), and were happy with the services they received. The majority of participants did not receive services through the VA for a variety of reasons which included long wait times, complicated administrative procedures, lack of transportation and lack of knowledge about which services were available. Veterans who did not receive services through the VA, received services through other venues, such as the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP). These services included medication, individual therapy, peer support groups and twelve step meetings. Data collected revealed that a combination of these services, used simultaneously, was more effective than one service or no services at all.