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Mutual Support is an in depth exploration of the role and impact of peer support by people with learning difficulties. Built on one of the seven aims of Centres for Independent Living, the project has constructed a model of peer support based on accounts of direct experiences from people with learning difficulties. The overall aim of the research was to construct and critique the Mutual Support model of peer support and people with learning difficulties. This thesis reflects the process of that construction. The overall aim was met through a research situation in which knowledge was constructed in the interaction between the researcher and participants. This provided an opportunity for people with learning difficulties to reflect upon their relationships with one another, and the emancipatory potential of that support. The focus of the research was two pre-existing settings involving people with learning difficulties supporting one another: a Theatre Company using Forum Drama to facilitate changes in attitudes and policy, and a course facilitated by people with learning difficulties who mentored small groups. Methods used within the research were based on an Inclusive Research process which prioritises meaningful research interaction that is accessible and guided by participants. The research process intertwined meetings with advisory groups, and contact with other local groups of people with learning difficulties, with formal data collection within the two main settings. One to one experienced-based narrative interviews with people from the two main settings provided multiple opportunities for participants to speak about their experiences of peer support. These interviews formed the data used in formal analysis, which was a continual process, with subsequent interviews being based on views previously expressed. A further comprehensive descriptive content analysis of data, using the tools of Nvivo8 and mind-mapping, took place prior to the outputs of the whole project being evaluated during group sessions with those who had taken part. The emerging model is one of collective support which challenges assumptions about the role and impact of people with learning difficulties supporting one another and their capacity to engage in insightful interpersonal interaction. Mutual Support has the potential to break down barriers to inclusion. Mutual Support also demonstrates the value that people with learning difficulties place on giving and receiving support from one another. The outputs of Mutual Support include contribution to current debate in the areas of service user involvement, inclusive research, and the academic field of Disability Studies.

Rural and geographically isolated, the majority of Nepalese communities have very low incomes, poor transportation, and scarce health care resources; these people provide the context for this study. The consequences of these deprivations include high maternal and infant mortality rates, high prevalence of infectious disease and poverty. There are therefore exceptional challenges and disparities in meeting health care needs. However the recent advent of modern information communication technology (ICT) or Telemedicine has unleashed a new wave of opportunities for supporting the delivery of health care services. Despite suggestions that telemedicine will offer hope in developing countries there is only limited published evidence to support this claim. Telemedicine is and must remain a process of the delivery of care rather than a technology. The system must connect patients and healthcare professionals in a chain of care, rather than follow the wide array of existing or new and advanced technology. The successful introduction of telemedicine with tangible outputs requires an in-depth understanding of the existing health care system of the country and its challenges; strongly expressed ‘genuine need’ for the service by all the stakeholders as interested partners (patients, practitioners, health care service providers and the public); the actual status of ICT infrastructure in the country and costs. This study used a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach to explore the feasibility, acceptability and impact of a telemedicine system in partnership with Dhulikhel Hospital: Kathmandu University Hospital and with three of its 12 rural, remote outreach centres, and the populations they serve. Participatory, repeated data collection methods included surveys, interviewing, listening and being with staff and communities over a two year period. The researcher and researched engaged in a complex inter-locking journey from which the Unlocking, Unblocking and Validation concepts emerged. The findings of this study emphasise the pivotal role that the rural health care workers play. Telemedicine not only has a place in improving access to healthcare through enhanced communication but it also empowers health care workers. These people need continued support to develop their competencies and boost their confidence within the changing health care environment. In conclusion telemedicine is primarily about people rather than technology. Effective and holistic telemedicine development is built upon a combined, interactive model involving access, communication and empowerment.

The morphological analysis of blood smear slides by haematologists or haematopathologists is one of the diagnostic procedures available to evaluate the presence of acute leukaemia. This operation is a complex and costly process, and often lacks standardized accuracy owing to a variety of factors, including insufficient expertise and operator fatigue. This research proposes an intelligent decision support system for automatic detection of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) using microscopic blood smear images to overcome the above barrier. The work has four main key stages. (1) Firstly, a modified marker-controlled watershed algorithm integrated with the morphological operations is proposed for the segmentation of the membrane of the lymphocyte and lymphoblast cell images. The aim of this stage is to isolate a lymphocyte/lymphoblast cell membrane from touching and overlapping of red blood cells, platelets and artefacts of the microscopic peripheral blood smear sub-images. (2) Secondly, a novel clustering algorithm with stimulating discriminant measure (SDM) of both within- and between-cluster scatter variances is proposed to produce robust segmentation of the nucleus and cytoplasm of lymphocytic cell membranes. The SDM measures are used in conjunction with Genetic Algorithm for the clustering of nucleus, cytoplasm, and background regions. (3) Thirdly, a total of eighty features consisting of shape, texture, and colour information from the nucleus and cytoplasm of the identified lymphocyte/lymphoblast images are extracted. (4) Finally, the proposed feature optimisation algorithm, namely a variant of Bare-Bones Particle Swarm Optimisation (BBPSO), is presented to identify the most significant discriminative characteristics of the nucleus and cytoplasm segmented by the SDM-based clustering algorithm. The proposed BBPSO variant algorithm incorporates Cuckoo Search, Dragonfly Algorithm, BBPSO, and local and global random walk operations of uniform combination, and Lévy flights to diversify the search and mitigate the premature convergence problem of the conventional BBPSO. In addition, it also employs subswarm concepts, self-adaptive parameters, and convergence degree monitoring mechanisms to enable fast convergence. The optimal feature subsets identified by the proposed algorithm are subsequently used for ALL detection and classification. The proposed system achieves the highest classification accuracy of 96.04% and significantly outperforms related meta-heuristic search methods and related research for ALL detection.

Sexual dimorphism of skeletal muscle can occur due to age and many of these age-related changes in skeletal muscle appear to be influenced by gender. In humans, the muscle mass peaks in the second decade while loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia) starts between the third and the fifth decade of life. In system biology, the function of genes still needs to be understood and understanding gene function remains a significant challenge. Several machine learning and computational techniques have been used to understand. However, these previous attempts have not produced enough interpretation of the impact of age on skeletal muscle mass across both gender. Although there are several thousands of genes, very few differentially expressed genes play an active role in understanding the age and gender differences. The core aim of this thesis is to uncover new biomarkers that can contribute towards the prevention of sarcopenia progress in humans according to the gene expression levels of skeletal muscle tissues. The main contributions are the development of machine learning methods based on majority voting of multi-evaluation methods and multi-feature selection methods in order to analyse microarray data and identify subsets of genes related to muscle mass loss in ageing males and females. Previously, statistical methods were used to find important genes related to the impact of age on muscle mass loss. Multi-filter and multi- wrapper based systems are proposed in this thesis to identify different and common sarcopenia-related genes in males and females based on human skeletal muscle. Genes are first sorted using three different evaluation methods (t-test, Entropy and Receiver operating characteristic). Then, important genes are obtained using majority voting based on the principle that combining multiple models can improve the generalization of the system. Experiments were conducted on three different microarray gene expression datasets and results have indicated a significant increase in classification accuracy up to 10% associated with sarcopenia when compared with existing systems.

This study investigated the history of traditional Korean papermaking within its historical context: the relationship with the development of papermaking techniques in neighbouring countries were examined though primary focus was given to the development of materials and tools used. In order to understand the characteristics of historical Korean paper and the development of tools and materials used over time, surveys on Korean and Japanese collections at the British Library and a private Korean collection were carried out. Korean objects dated between the 12th and the 18th century were examined. The data collected from the surveys was compiled in a database and analysed. The data analysis revealed that the thickness of paper was closely related to the thickness of bamboo splints used in manufacture of papermaking screens. Research also included a summary of morphological characteristics and photomicrographs of fibres from nine indigenous plants which were used for traditional Korean papermaking. These standard fibre samples were used as reference to identify the fibres of unknown paper objects surveyed. This fibre identification confirmed the main material to be paper mulberry and, additionally, provided information on supplementary materials including rice straw, reed, hemp, and mechanical wood pulp of coniferous origin — a material that has not been recognised as one of the common supplementary materials in previous studies. In order to provide a better understanding of the materials and tools used in traditional papermaking in Korea, three papermaking experiments were carried out. Firstly, a papermaking experiment was conducted using a mucilaginous substance derived from the roots of Hibiscus Manihot, which has been employed as a formation aid for considerable time in Korea and Japan. Paper samples were then analysed to investigate the physical influence of the substance on the sample sheets. Secondly, a fixed laid screen was designed and sheets were produced using it. The intention here was to support a hypothesis which was proposed by the author in order to explain a possible chronological development of papermaking mould structure in China and its potential spread to neighbouring countries. The last experiment was conducted to simulate a technique of papermaking with reclaimed paper. Although the use of reclaimed paper was recorded in early literature, details of the process were unknown.

Contemporary art is seen as an effective way of communicating complicated science to a range of lay audiences, particularly in the context of medical research. This is the premise of ‘sciart’. However this rationale can limit the cultural significance of artworks by overstating their illustrative capacity, an outcome that severely reduces the creative endeavour of the artist. Based on the first-hand experience of an artist whose career has engaged with the opportunities afforded by ‘sciart’, this study seeks to address the illustration problem by exploring new methods of working across art and science that challenge representations of the inherited neuromuscular disorder myotonic dystrophy, a condition which affects one in 8000 adults in the UK. Hazel, a film made by the artist with the participation of eleven women affected by the condition, is placed at the centre of this as a case study. Pioneering work with the UK Myotonic Dystrophy Patient Registry facilitated recruitment, and it is this process that forms the unique contribution to knowledge of the research. By illuminating the multiple loss experienced by families struggling with physical and social decline, this research offers a practical and theoretical image of the capacity contemporary artists have to shape research into myotonic dystrophy. The study will argue that this capacity is more ambitious than illustration, more extensive than the communication of family insights. Thus it can embrace a much-needed form of research leadership that is built upon an artist’s scope to say powerful things by withholding information. In addition, the employment of feminist literature on ageing and appearance, and sociological research into the decline and isolation of affected families, helps define the particular form of leadership that can arise through extreme personal circumstances. As pressures on services increase, cross-sector influence becomes increasingly important and this thesis and body of practical work explores the future impact of contemporary artists taking a lead in shaping research agendas in the genetic sciences.

The aim of this research study is to understand the impacts of Building Information Modelling (BIM) on communication patterns of construction projects. This has been investigated through the identification of current communication patterns within the construction sector. A communication framework has been constructed which identifies a set of characteristics and defines benchmarks according to those patterns that can be managed during BIM implementation. This thesis has examined the issues surrounding the use of e-mail and BIM and addresses the potential that BIM has to increase electronic communication caused by traditional and disjointed working practices as well as lack of pre-defined communication protocols. This research finds that today the use of e-mail has become inevitable which promotes the exchange of documents as attachments. However, BIM is introducing new ways of working in which the industry is bound to move from a document-centric environment to a more data-driven environment utilising intelligent and data rich information models. The study continues to discuss that the integration of BIM as a collaboration platform is not as advanced as the industry sector perceives and proposes the necessity of a greater understanding of current communication practices, which can be addressed by the development of a conceptual framework of communication. This study has utilised a mixed method strategy with a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and it was divided into two stages. The initial stage employed two research techniques; a pilot study and focus groups. This stage was largely exploratory and set out to understand and observe current trends with regards to construction communication and used an inductive reasoning to generate a hypothesis. The second stage of the study was explanatory to explain the impacts of BIM on communication patterns of construction projects using descriptive analysis as well as using deductive reasoning to achieve a clear demonstration and a validation of the hypothesis. During this stage electronic communication patterns and peoples‘ activities were critically evaluated via data mining techniques on a large dataset provided by a 4Projects, a Software as a Service (SaaS) company. Conclusions of the research highlight the potential for better understanding of the impacts of BIM on communication patterns though the development of a conceptual communication framework and the use of contextualised maturity models. This research has identified opposing views within the industry with regards to the impact of BIM on communication patterns within construction projects. These views are polarised into the belief at one extreme that BIM will lead to improved communication and at the other that BIM will lead to increased unmanaged and unreliable information exchanges during design and construction of projects. The results of this thesis also demonstrate a wide range of concerns around communication practices. These issues are due to the growth of the industry in relation to technology, organisation size, project complexity, cultural changes and innovation. Some of the key cultural barriers include; digital engineering capability and competency, cost-driven culture, shift from document and records management to data and information management, legal and commercial aspects of project contracts, collaborative frameworks, education, training and support and leadership in a digital construction which need to be resolved in order to obtain the most benefit from BIM as a collaboration platform.

This research aims to investigate current volunteer use in public libraries in England. Volunteer use is not a new phenomenon, and has been an integral part of public library provision for many years. However recent Government policies, together with greater financial austerity, have resulted in a change in public service delivery. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of volunteers involved within the public library service, and the growth of community run libraries, resulting in much public and professional concern. An interpretivist research approach was used to investigate stakeholder opinions regarding volunteer use, and involved a two phase process. Initially a Delphi survey explored attitudes of 15 English public library service managers, followed by in-depth investigation of two case study library authorities, located in the North-East of England. Surveys, interviews and focus groups, helped to build a rich picture of volunteer use amongst the groups of stakeholders. Findings clearly indicated that volunteer use has moved from additionality to replacement of staff, and is increasingly being used by local authorities as a solution to budget reductions required as a result of economic austerity. A hybrid approach to library service provision has developed, using a combination of paid staff and volunteers, which indicates a fundamental culture shift within public libraries. Research results identified concerns relating to the long term viability of a hybrid approach, and how this impacted on the wider community in terms of service provision. Key concerns were raised concerning advocacy, sensitivity, the fragility of relationships, and the provision of an accountable and high quality service. Formal and informal control mechanisms need to be employed by library service managers to ensure that they reap the benefits of volunteer use, thereby avoiding social exclusion, clarifying stakeholder boundaries, and delivering a high quality accountable service. Training library managers in new volunteer management skills, and adopting a volunteer relationship management approach may help to ensure that this new arrangement is mutually beneficial for all concerned.

Thesis (MA)--Stellembosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this thesis is to argue for a new metric for determining the moral status of another being. Determining this status is of foundational importance in a number of legal, political, and ethical concerns, including but not limited to animal rights, the treatment of criminals, and the treatment of the psychologically afflicted. This metric will be based upon one’s capacity to morally consider others. In other words, in order to have full moral status, one must be able to have moral concern for others and act upon this concern to even a minimal degree. In doing so, one will be considered to belong to a “moral community”, which affords the member a certain set of rights, privileges, and duties towards other community members. Arguing for the existence of such a community achieves the pragmatic aspect of this thesis. I argue that morality is geared towards group-survival strategies which have been evolutionarily selected for, and thus by organizing societal structures towards the tools which nature has armed us with, we may maximize the powers and capacities of the community members. In order to achieve these aims, I defend a concept of morality as based in emotion, requiring certain neurological structures, which gives the first set of criteria for identifying potential members of the moral community. I then discuss the issue of identifying the capacity for morality in non-human minds, arguing that we may infer moral capacities from behaviourism. In summary, the findings of this paper are that first, morality is essentially emotional in nature and is a product of the nature of our neurological system, although rational processes and enculturation shape particular moral sensitivities and priorities. Second, one can infer the existence of moral capacities in animals from their behaviour, and, at risk of engaging in anthropomorphism, to deny these capacities completely entails solipsism. Thirdly, and most importantly, those who are capable of morally considering others ought to be afforded full moral status themselves and be brought into a “moral community” wherein special rights, freedoms, and privileges allow the members to most efficiently contribute to the community, maximizing the powers and benefits of the community. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van hierdie tesis is om ’n nuwe maatstaf voor te hou waarvolgens die morele status van ’n ander wese bepaal kan word. Die bepaling van hierdie status is van fundamentele belang vir ’n hele aantal regs-, politiese en etiese aangeleenthede. Dit sluit, onder andere, diereregte, die behandeling van misdadigers en die behandeling van diegene met sielkundige probleme in. Hierdie maatstaf sal gebaseer word op die vermoë van die individuele wese om ander moreel in ag te neem. Met ander woorde om volle morele status te hê, moet 'n wese daartoe in staat wees om moreel besorg te wees oor ander en om, ten minste tot ’n minimale mate, na gelang van hierdie besorgheid op te tree. Op grond hiervan kan daar aanvaar word dat daardie wese tot ’n “morele gemeenskap” behoort, wat ook aan hom ’n stel regte, voordele en pligte teenoor ander gemeenskapslede sal besorg. Om ’n argument vir die bestaan van só ’n gemeenskap te maak sal die pragmatiese doelwit van hierdie tesis bereik. Ek argumenteer dat moraliteit ingestel is op groepsoorlewingstrategieë wat evolusionêr geselekteer is. Dit wil sê deur samelewingstrukture op só ’n wyse te organiseer dat dit gebruik maak van die gereedskap waarmee die natuur ons bewapen het, sal ons die bevoegdhede en die vermoëns van gemeenskapslede kan maksimaliseer. Om hierdie doelwitte te bereik, verdedig ek ’n verstaan van moraliteit as gebaseer in emosies wat sekere neurologiese strukture benodig. Dít verskaf die eerste stel kriteria waarvolgens potensiële lede van die morele gemeenskap geïdentifiseer kan word. Ek bespreek vervolgens die moontlikheid om die vermoë tot moraliteit in nie-menslike verstande te identifiseer en argumenteer dat morele vermoëns vanuit gedragsleer afgelei kan word. Ter opsomming is die bevindinge van hierdie tesis, eerstens, dat moraliteit wesenlik emosioneel van aard en ’n produk van ons neurologiese sisteem is, alhoewel rasionele prosesse en verkulturering spesifieke morele sensitiwiteite en prioriteite vorm. Tweedens kan die bestaan van morele vermoëns in diere afgelei word vanuit hulle optrede, en, alhoewel ons hier die risiko van antropomorfisme loop, behels die ontkenning van hierdie vermoëns solipsisme. Derdens, en die belangrikste, diegene wat daartoe in staat is om ander moreel in ag te neem behoort self volledig morele status toegeken te word. Hulle word sodoende in die “morele gemeenskap” betrek waar spesiale regte, vryhede en voordele gemeenskapslede sal toelaat om op die mees effektiewe wyse tot die gemeenskap by te dra om sodoende die bevoegdhede en voordele van die gemeenskap te maksimaliseer.