The central aim of this thesis was to develop new tracking software employing various image tracking algorithms for tracking the speckled movement of the tendon image captured using dynamic B-mode ultrasound imaging. The algorithms were selected based on the literature related to the tracking of images captured using ultrasound imaging. Experiments were carried out to validate these tracking algorithms in order to enable development of the tracking software. The experiments conducted paralleled the objectives in designing, developing, experimenting and implementing the image-tracking algorithm to track movement of the human tendon in vivo within the speckled ultrasound images. The development of the tracking software focuses on solving the problems of tracking the ultrasound images as well as analysing the tracking movement frame-by-frame to produce useful measurements that can be used to describe the localised mechanical and structural properties of the human tendon. The algorithms tested were Normalised Cross Correlation (NCC), Mean Square Error (MSE), optical flow – Lucas-Kanade (LK) and combination of NCC and MSE (NCCMSE) selected by signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and were tested on both active and passive movements of the patella tendon (knee) and the medial gastrocnemius tendon (ankle). The comparison of the algorithms led to the identification of a single algorithm giving optimal result. The results from all tested algorithm showed NCC to be the closest match to the standard manual measurement. NCC was also the fastest among the algorithms tested and contained fewer errors in tracking. For NCC algorithm, various sizes of the region of interest (ROI) block were also tested and found that 15x15 pixels ROI block size gave the optimum measurement, which was close to the standard manual measurement. The threshold levels also indicated that >0.90 to be the optimum level for optimum tracking. The 2- ROI tracking analysis were also explored to look at the tracking performances when tracking at two different regional sites of the tendon simultaneously, and again the  NCC performed better with 15x15 ROI block size and comparable to the results obtained from the standard manual measurement. Lastly, multiple layers of the tendon were also explored to look at the excursion of the anterior, midsection and posterior layers of the tendon during ramped isometric contraction. This experiment uses all the settings found from previous experiment results, and applied to look at the mechanical properties of the human tendon. The experiments showed that the anterior gave the highest mean stain followed by the mid section and the smallest mean strain was found at the posterior proximal. The experiment also looked at the distal strain, with the result showing that the posterior gave the highest mean strain followed mid section and anterior layer gave the smallest mean strain. The experiment also looked at the performance of posterior layers and distal layers at 50 and 100% force levels. The experimental results showed that the NCC to be the optimum-tracking algorithm. The method described here has the potential to improve clinical knowledge relating to the tendon mechanical properties. The information generated by the tracking algorithm could help to give further insight into the aetiology of tendon injury, repair, response to various training interventions and the time course of tissue adaptation with disease.

Within the UK, the Gambling Act 2005 remains the primary piece of legislation that governs how the gambling industry is regulated. The Act established the following licensing principles upon which gambling practices should be based: that gambling should not be a source of crime or disorder, be associated with crime or disorder or be used to support crime; gambling should be conducted in a fair and open way; and children and other vulnerable people should not be harmed or exploited. Reflecting the general principles of corporate citizenship, the Gambling Act 2005 implies that those organisations which provide gambling products and services should integrate ethics and social responsibility within their operational and strategic frameworks and within their corporate governance. This thesis focuses on employee and consumer perceptions of responsible gambling in general, and specifically in terms of the utility of responsible gambling tools that are available to them. It reviews literature relating to corporate social responsibility and responsible gambling from a variety of perspectives ranging from those who propose that the ultimate responsibility rests with the consumer to those who recommend that gambling organisations should be able to demonstrate compliance with responsible gambling initiatives. The primary data analysis is based on two studies: one focusing on responsible gambling perceptions of 17 employees from a leading Internet gambling provider; and a second study based on 425 consumer perceptions of responsible gambling provisions which were elicited using an Internet based questionnaire. The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis whilst statistical applications including linear regression and multinomial regression were used to analyse questionnaire responses. The analysis highlights factors that undermine the current approach of responsible gambling which is based on the principle of self-identification, self-help and self-regulation by the consumer. For example, it proposes that employee and consumer perceptions of responsible gambling are based on the following four components: perceptions of potential conflicts of interest with a system; willingness to engage with responsible gambling tools; the perceived effectiveness of the responsible gambling systems and the level of responsibility associated with marketing activities. In addition, it distinguishes between financial motives in terms of those who gamble to earn income and those who gamble to win money and it highlights that human factors, such as the need for autonomy and mastery are as significant as social, financial, escape and arousal factors in influencing an individual’s decision to gamble. The study recommends a review of the way in which gambling addiction is diagnosed and research and treatment are funded. This will include challenges for policy makers and providers of gambling products and services in terms of how responsible gambling may further be improved in the future.

Background: The inclusion of women in the armed Forces is becoming increasingly commonplace, with figures currently standing at 10.2% of the regular Forces in the United Kingdom (UK). This is set to rise with the introduction of the new Ground Close Combat (GCC) ruling which came in earlier this year (2017), allowing women to serve on the frontline with their male colleagues. However, alongside these changes, women already face stressors and exposure to combat in the Forces that potentially contribute to difficult transitions back into everyday life when leaving the military environment. The aim of this study was therefore to engage with and explore the experiences of female veterans psychological health and wellbeing as they transition from the Forces into civilian life, understanding the different processes they encounter as they transition. Methodology: Six female veterans who fit the inclusion criteria were recruited for the study. In this qualitative study, semi-structured, one-to-one, in-depth interviews were conducted and analysed in accordance with Charmaz's (2006) Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) guidelines. This iterative and inductive analytical process was utilised to construct an understanding of the participant's experiences and understandings of their transition. Findings: Concurrent with the CGT approach, nine theoretical categories developed from the analysis of the interviews, including role reversal, sexism and loss. These contributed to the development of a transition model, representing an interaction between the military environment, no mans land and the civilian environment. Findings indicate that experiences of transitioning faced by female veterans are complex, and involve gender-related issues. The findings also suggest that problems with mental health such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are common, and are heightened by additional stressors specific to women's experience in the military and civilian environments. Discussion and Conclusion: These findings suggest that female veterans health and psychological wellbeing experiences in the military are parallel to those they experience in civilian life. Consistent with previous literature, the female veterans interviewed appear to have experienced their transitions differently to male counterparts, with additional stressors present throughout their transitions. These stressors contribute to the uncertainty of identity, stigma and a loss of military ways when transitioning back into a civilian society. Consequently, more services that are tailored to female military veterans, are proposed, in order to support the increasing number of female veterans that will present in the future. This has implications for therapeutic practice in counselling psychology, whereby a deeper understanding of the difficulties and challenges experienced by female veterans during transition into civilian life can inform therapeutic interventions and signposting to specific services tailored their needs.

The thesis explores priority setting in the National Health Service. It focuses on the changing way in which rationing issues are dealt with in the wake of the Health Service reforms and the separation of function between purchasing and providing health care. It examines how managers within sample District Health Authorities justify their priority-setting agenda. Two connected themes are also analysed. One is how health needs assessment and the call for a 'primary care led NHS' presage a more dominant role for Public Health medicine in informing purchasing. Secondly, how evidence based medicine together with the use of clinical protocols/guidelines, measurement of outcomes and the use of clinical/medical audit, become factors in the decision making process. Theoretically, the thesis attempts to demonstrate a practical use for the Foucauldian concept of 'governmentality' as a framework with which to analyse contemporary changes in health policy. The principal concern is the role experts play within the problematisation of government associated with liberalism. This includes their role within the institutions and technologies of governance that reflect the notion that the strength of the liberal state is derived from securing the well being of the population. In turn this reflects the self-critical dynamic within liberal problematisations of defining the legitimate boundaries of government responsibility in a society made up of autonomous individuals. The PhD is based on semi-structured interviews (32 in total), conducted with the Chief Executives and principal directors of six English District Health Authorities, together with the Chief Officers of their associated CHCs. The District Health Authorities were selected - after a general review of Health Authority Purchasing Plans for 1996/97 - from those Authorities that acknowledged the rationing debate in their purchasing intentions and represented a cross-section of gainers and losers with respect to the new funding formula.

Laboratory diagnosis of tuberculosis is often difficult and time consuming. This study has evaluated some new strategies for improved isolation and detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in clinical specimens. This work was conducted over several years examining samples from the a high tuberculosis prevalence population in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and in the low tuberculosis prevalence setting in Queensland, Australia. Commercial nucleic acid amplification technologies were evaluated and compared with in-house real-time quantitative PCR strategies for both pulmonary and extrapulmonary specimens and for paraffin embedded tissue samples. The study examined strategies for the detection of multidrug resistance strains through the use of Lipa assay to detect mutations in the rpoB gene. Variable numbers of tandem DNA repeat (VNTR) typing was applied to samples from Saudi Arabia and Queensland, Australia to assess their discriminatory power and to demonstrate the diversity and uniqueness of strains of M. tuberculosis in distinct geographical regions. A combination of VNTR typing targeting six ETR loci and an additional three polymorphic MIRU loci was applied to a strains of MTB to enhance discrimination of strains. The results demonstrated that culture remains the "gold standard" for diagnosis and that a liquid culture system is essential for timely isolation of mycobacteria. Direct nucleic acid techniques are valuable diagnostic tools in samples where AFBs can be demonstrated but have markedly reduced sensitivity in AFB smear negative MTB culture positive samples. A combination of VNTR and MIRU typing provides excellent discrimination of strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This stable typing strategy relies on PCR which allows for real-time epidemiology of transmission to be monitored.

Research demonstrates that perspectives of health and illness vary by social and cultural context. This has implications for the ways in which people experience and respond to health and illness and becomes particularly important when people face major social and cultural change through migration. This is explored in this study through the relationship between health and place. The location for the study is a Chinese community centre, in which the centre members are first generation migrants from Hong Kong, China and Vietnam, aged 50 and over, who have spent the larger part of their lives living in the UK. The study uses the concept of therapeutic landscapes as an analytical lens through which to explore understandings of health and illness, issues of identity and belonging, and practices of wellbeing as they are enacted outside of formal healthcare settings. As an ethnographic study, the primary means of data collection has been through participant observation. This included regular attendance at the community centre to participate in activities and events over a period of ten months from August 2013 to May 2014. Twenty one formal interviews were also conducted with members of the community centre, the majority in English, and several in Cantonese. The migration stories of the participants in the study are explored as gendered experiences; that is, that the men and women experienced, and spoke about, migration differently. For the women in particular, their experiences of migration were recalled as a time of profound loneliness and isolation. Understandings of health and illness among the centre members are also explored. A shared understanding of health as a holistic and collective concept was expressed. In particular, they spoke about maintaining a positive attitude in the face of difficulties, about their own health in terms of family and social relationships, and the importance of being together and being active. The choices that they make around the use of Chinese and/or biomedicine are also explored within the context of this understanding. The experiences of migration and the understandings of health and illness are further explored through a consideration of the everyday practices, and associated materialities, that constitute the day-to-day life of the centre. These are explored as ways of re-connecting with the past and maintaining a sense of identity, but also as ways of negotiating both continuity and change at the same time. The role of the community centre in the lives of its members, and the ways in which they interact with one another in this particular place, is approached through the concept of therapeutic landscapes. The day-to-day activities, and the ways in which the centre members participate in these are presented as everyday practices of care; as the enactment of a particular understanding of health and wellbeing that helps to create a sense of identity and belonging at the community centre, which in turn contributes to the health and wellbeing of the centre members.

Kuwait is subject to fast urbanization and industrialization. This development has increased traffic and other anthropogenic activities resulting in air pollution. Such activities are linked to increasing levels of emitted VOCs. Exposure to VOCs may result in both acute and chronic health effects. VOCs are a major factor in the production of low level ozone which itself has serious effects on health. Air pollution monitoring stations established by Kuwait EPA measure total hydrocarbon vapours, not individual compounds. The practical part of this study was done to assess the levels of identified VOCs in different areas in Kuwait, to identify the health risks associated with observed levels and to manage human health risks associated with VOC emissions. Air sampling was by grab sampling, taking 130 ambient air samples from areas representing residential, commercial and industrial areas. Gas samples were analyzed within 24 hours using EPA method TO15. The results showed mean concentration of TVOCs less than 399 mg/m3 in 78% of the studied sites, however, the remainder were much higher than a mean concentration ten times this in the city centre. Published data established that the measured concentrations of VOCs had known health effects on general populations. Attention was therefore focused upon the sources and points of release of named VOCs enabling practical and pragmatic action. Links were identified between affluence and the species and quantity of VOCs. Vehicles dominate affluent areas and workshop emissions dominate poorer areas. The petroleum industry was less important than expected as a source of VOCs, but work is required on emissions which drift seawards. Recommendations include developing an air emission inventory, an environmental reporting system, and a risk management plan as well as a series of local studies to identify sources and take local action.

With this thesis project I plan to create an embodied and sonic interactive experience. The theoretical basis brings together Somaesthetic Design and Deep Listening practices in the form of a movement based, sound installation. The results of engagement aim to develop awareness and with deep engagement produce a nonduality state. Taking influence from works by David Rokeby, Eliane Radigue, Bernard Leitner and Rian Treanor, this project revolves around the physical navigation of a soundscape with a secondary outcome of increasing awareness along with aiding stress and anxiety. The project also focuses on the importance of sound and its under representation in Interaction Design. The research began with a number of experiments taking cues from the mentioned practices, and to determine the overall effects of certain sounds when coupled with bodily engagement. After analyzing the relevant data the project underscores that the combination of sonic and embodied interaction can lead to positive therapeutic effects.

This Creative Writing thesis argues for the need to rethink our understanding of climate change and focuses on the response of creative writers to this phenomenon, whilst also offering its own creative contribution. The critical component aims at articulating a post-climate change poetics. It reviews the mainstream literature in popular science writing, fiction and poetry from the point of view of a political frame-analysis of climate change, to demonstrate how a certain understanding of climate change maps onto conventions of literary genre. The thesis takes the view that many mainstream literary attempts to negotiate climate change are compromised by the teleological way in which they conceive of the phenomenon. As an alternative position, it draws on the work of climatologist Mike Hulme and physicist and cultural theorist Karen Barad to encourage participation in climate change as a condition for negotiating its meaning. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass is proposed as a model for literary production informed by this poetics and as a model for the author’s own creative practice. The creative component of this thesis is an intra-generic text presenting the fictionalised narrative of a cycle expedition the author made from Salford to the Greek island of Ikaria in the summer of 2010. This substantial work aims to interrogate, imagine, and enquire into the epistemology of a post-climate change world.

Two studies were performed to detect aetiology of acute diarrhoea in hospitalized children aged under five years in Tripoli, Libya. In the first study, two hundred and thirty-six stool samples were obtained. Of these, 118 were from patients admitted for acute diarrhoeal disease, and 118 age and sex-matched concurrent controls were admitted for other reasons. In the second study, eight hundred and ten stool specimens were collected 405 from patients and the same number from controls. All were admitted to the AIjala Children’s Hospital, Tripoli, Libya. The first study was conducted between August 1st 1997 and 31st October 1997 and the second study was conducted between January 1st 2003 and 31st December 2003. One or more enteric pathogens were isolated from 55.9% of patients and 13.6% of controls in the first study and 68.1 % of patients and 12.6% of controls in the second study. In the first study, the organisms were identified from stool of patients; Escherichia coli 22.9%, rotavirus 15.3%, Campylobacter 7.6%, Proteus 7.6%, Klebsiella 4.2%, Entamoeba histolytica 4.2%, Cryptosporidium 2.5% and Giardia lamblia 1.7%, Salmonella was not isolated in both studies, because not growth on ordinary media were used (MacConkey agar and Blood agar) but usually growth on Salmonella-Shigella medium where not used. In the second study, enteropathogens identified were: rotavirus 30.4%, Escherichia coli 16.5%, Entamoeba histolytica 12.5%, Campylobacter 6.7%, Giardia lamblia 3.7%, Cryptosporidium 3.2%, Klebsiella 2.9%, Proteus 2.2%. Libyan children under six months of age were the most susceptible to acute diarrhoea requiring admission to the hospital. This was remarked in 46.6% of patients in the first study and 43.2% in the second. Exclusive breast feeding in Libyan children was of a very low percentage. In the first study it was 19.5% and in the second 29.1%. Children use dummies were about 3 times more at risk of diarrhoea than the non users in the first study (OD: 5.95,95%, CI: 1.120-2.37, p<0.001) and RR: 3.1 and (0: : 2.986ý 95%. Cl: 2.13-4.16, P<0.001) and RR: 23 in the second, this fell to children being twice as much at risk of contracting diarrhoea. Watery stool was the most common stool consistency of patients in both studies. Fever was the most common clinical feature associated with acute diarrhoea in the two studies (72.9% and 71.6% respectively). Vomiting was present in 51.7% of patients among the first study and 58.3% among the second. Moderate and isotonic dehydration were the most common degree and type of dehydration across both studies. In the second study, Rotavirus peaked during the winter (cold season) while bacteria and parasites peaked during the summer and autumn seasons. API 20E and API Campy were used to identify bacterial isolated by cultures and the number of confirmed cases decreased from 142 to 112 samples. Polymerase Chain Reaction was adopted in the second study to confirm detection of Campylobacter spp. these were identified by API Campy technique, where all Campylobacter spp. were identified as the same as detected by API Campy and for 24 samples.