This thesis re-examines the art historiography of margins and marginality. It has long been recognized that the phenomenon of the marginal - characterized by hybrid forms, and playful scenes of secular subjects - occurred not only on the manuscript page, but also on textiles, maps, furniture, documents, and even within and upon the exterior of the most sacred structures in Christendom. The late Michael Camille argued that in the medieval world these margins were liminal spaces, where artists and patrons explored and defined social relationships through the visual representation of the "other." Camille and those who followed him painted a picture of a highly stratified, stagnant society, in which images reflect the homogenous worldview of a patriarchal elite. The "others" he described were the socially marginalized peoples of the medieval world, and they naturally included women. I argue that this approach not only simplifies the often complex relationships between patrons, artists, and audiences in the creative process, but also denies agency to the viewer. In this thesis, I present three case studies involving women and marginal art that both complicate and contradict this argument. The first case study analyzes three misericords with a shared enigmatic iconography, and demonstrates not only that the presumed audience for these pieces was broader than commonly assumed, but also that the wheelbarrowed woman offered more than a condemnatory vision of medieval femininity. In the second case study, I examine how the social, political, and economic factors impacting late medieval towns gave rise to the image of the dishonest alewife in hell, and consider how such a marginal character operated on a monumental scale in the Last Judgment mural. The final case study focuses on a book of hours with a prolonged production period, and reveals how several female patrons physically manipulated both its pages and margins in the service of spiritual and material desires. Working with concepts developed by theorists such as Alfred Gell, Catriona Mackenzie, and Michel Foucault, this thesis resituates agency in our interpretation of the marginal arts.

The aim of this work is to answer some of the questions left us by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pastor. Prior to his execution by the Nazi regime on 9th April 1945, Bonhoeffer wrote a series of letters to his friend Eberhard Bethge from Tegel Prison, Berlin. In these letters he examined notions of a non-religious Christianity and he wrote out a short outline for a book, sadly never to be written, which would expand on these religion-less thoughts. It is to the vacuum left, by the book that was never written, that this work aims to address itself and fill. There have of course been other works dedicated to such a cause but none have addressed fully the situational theology which gave rise to such thought, with especial consideration given to a ministry and theology of chaplaincy as a backdrop. Thus, this work identifies a correlation of theology and practice between chaplains from the First World War and today, to Bonhoeffer. Religion-less Christianity arose within a climate of war and collapse within the institutional churches in Germany. This situation plunged individual ministries into a deep unknown, for which Bonhoeffer sought an answer. For Bonhoeffer, it would lead to direct opposition of government and church, fighting specifically for the cause of the Jews. For Studdert Kennedy the deep unknown was experienced on the fields of the Western Front and for the commando chaplains, our work would send us to places such as the Falkland Islands, Kuwait, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. This work shows the link between situation and thought through these biographical studies, revealing the roots which allowed the thought of religion-less Christianity to grow in the earth of war for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The worth of this research is that it shows a way forward for ministry today, towards the new millennium, postmodern individual. It records examples of vibrant and truly ecumenical team ministries which flourish during a war fighting situation, underpinned throughout by a sound spiritual discipline. Here we learn what makes ecumenical team ministries truly flourish, in an environment of genuine trust and reliance. A common thread emerges in this study, as advocated by those clergymen examined in this work, working on the margins of society for the institutional church in the last century. We learn that to be successful in a postmodern era, the church must avoid past mistakes and any changes to be made, must be critiqued against the thoughts of Kennedy, Bonhoeffer and George MacLeod. This work concludes that real ministry, to ones community, is what truly matters, underpinned by a sound theology of the cross and strengthened by a maintenance of a spiritual discipline amongst ecumenical team ministries. It holds up the importance of the recognition of the orders of ministry between the churches, as being the final action which leads us towards a true understanding of Bonhoeffer's non-religious interpretation.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the literary response to the Asturian Revolution of October 1934. It will be shown that a distinct type of literature emerged reflecting the increasing political and social polarisation of Spanish society during the first decades of the twentieth century. Through a careful analysis of the texts published within four years of the Revolution, I will demonstrate how a set of writers, whether authors by profession, politicians, intellectuals, or workers, responded to the most important episode of working- class revolutionary action in Asturias before the Civil War. I will show that their aim was to not only record their experiences and thoughts on the events but also to guide and persuade their readers to adopt a particular political stand, often advocating revolutionary or counter-revolutionary action. These texts are examples of a trend set by intellectuals influenced by national and international political developments who sympathised with (and often openly militated in favour of) a political party line. This politically committed social literature displays a set of common features largely determined by the fact that the time span between the October Revolution and the writing of the works is short. The written responses are spontaneous as they were composed in the heat of the moment against a dramatic backdrop of revolutionary defeat and governmental repression. The texts in question are essentially documentary prose works in which the causes, course and outcome of the Revolution are narrated. By analysing the prose narrative works I will demonstrate that there is a gradual development in the literary characteristics of the texts, and that one group in particular deserves to be classified as 'non-fictional novels'. This term highlights the contrasting documentary and fictional nature of these novels, conditioned by a change in the concept of literature and its purpose, which was in turn prompted by the political and social situation facing Spanish society at the time.

In recent years, LDPC codes are gaining a lot of attention among researchers. Its near- Shannon performance combined with its highly parallel architecture and lesser complexity compared to Turbo-codes has made LDPC codes one of the most popular forward error correction (FEC) codes in most of the recently ratied wireless communication standards. This thesis focuses on one of these standards, namely the DVB-S2 standard that was ratied in 2005.<p> In this thesis, the design and architecture of a FPGA implementation of an LDPC decoder for the DVB-S2 standard are presented. The decoder architecture is an improvement over others that are published in the current literature. Novel algorithms are devised to use a memory mapping scheme that allows for 360 functional units (FUs) used in decoding to be implemented using the Sum-Product Algorithm (SPA). The functional units (FU) are optimized for reduced hardware resource utilization on a FPGA with a large number of congurable logic blocks (CLBs) and memory blocks. A novel design of a parity-check module (PCM) is presented that veries the parity-check equations of the LDPC codes. Furthermore, a special characteristic of ve of the codes dened in the DVB-S2 standard and their in uence on the decoder design is discussed. Three versions of the LDPC decoder are implemented, namely the 360-FU decoder, the 180-FU decoder and the hybrid 360/180-FU decoder. The decoders are synthesized for two FPGAs. A Xilinx Virtex-II Pro family FPGA is used for comparison purposes and a Xilinx Virtex-6 family FPGA is used to demonstrate the portability of the design. The synthesis results show that the hardware resource utilization and minimum throughput of the decoders presented are competitive with a DVB-S2 LDPC decoder found in the current literature that also uses FPGA technology.

In recent years, LDPC codes are gaining a lot of attention among researchers. Its near-Shannon performance combined with its highly parallel architecture and lesser complexity compared to Turbo-codes has made LDPC codes one of the most popular forward error correction (FEC) codes in most of the recently ratified wireless communication standards. This thesis focuses on one of these standards, namely the DVB-S2 standard that was ratified in 2005. In this thesis, the design and architecture of a FPGA implementation of an LDPC decoder for the DVB-S2 standard are presented. The decoder architecture is an improvement over others that are published in the current literature. Novel algorithms are devised to use a memory mapping scheme that allows for 360 functional units (FUs) used in decoding to be implemented using the Sum-Product Algorithm (SPA). The functional units (FU) are optimized for reduced hardware resource utilization on a FPGA with a large number of configurable logic blocks (CLBs) and memory blocks. A novel design of a parity-check module (PCM) is presented that verifies the parity-check equations of the LDPC codes. Furthermore, a special characteristic of five of the codes defined in the DVB-S2 standard and their influence on the decoder design is discussed. Three versions of the LDPC decoder are implemented, namely the 360-FU decoder, the 180-FU decoder and the hybrid 360/180-FU decoder. The decoders are synthesized for two FPGAs. A Xilinx Virtex-II Pro family FPGA is used for comparison purposes and a Xilinx Virtex-6 family FPGA is used to demonstrate the portability of the design. The synthesis results show that the hardware resource utilization and minimum throughput of the decoders presented are competitive with a DVB-S2 LDPC decoder found in the current literature that also uses FPGA technology.

In recent years, LDPC codes are gaining a lot of attention among researchers. Its near- Shannon performance combined with its highly parallel architecture and lesser complexity compared to Turbo-codes has made LDPC codes one of the most popular forward error correction (FEC) codes in most of the recently ratied wireless communication standards. This thesis focuses on one of these standards, namely the DVB-S2 standard that was ratied in 2005.<p> In this thesis, the design and architecture of a FPGA implementation of an LDPC decoder for the DVB-S2 standard are presented. The decoder architecture is an improvement over others that are published in the current literature. Novel algorithms are devised to use a memory mapping scheme that allows for 360 functional units (FUs) used in decoding to be implemented using the Sum-Product Algorithm (SPA). The functional units (FU) are optimized for reduced hardware resource utilization on a FPGA with a large number of congurable logic blocks (CLBs) and memory blocks. A novel design of a parity-check module (PCM) is presented that veries the parity-check equations of the LDPC codes. Furthermore, a special characteristic of ve of the codes dened in the DVB-S2 standard and their in uence on the decoder design is discussed. Three versions of the LDPC decoder are implemented, namely the 360-FU decoder, the 180-FU decoder and the hybrid 360/180-FU decoder. The decoders are synthesized for two FPGAs. A Xilinx Virtex-II Pro family FPGA is used for comparison purposes and a Xilinx Virtex-6 family FPGA is used to demonstrate the portability of the design. The synthesis results show that the hardware resource utilization and minimum throughput of the decoders presented are competitive with a DVB-S2 LDPC decoder found in the current literature that also uses FPGA technology.

In recent years, LDPC codes are gaining a lot of attention among researchers. Its near-Shannon performance combined with its highly parallel architecture and lesser complexity compared to Turbo-codes has made LDPC codes one of the most popular forward error correction (FEC) codes in most of the recently ratified wireless communication standards. This thesis focuses on one of these standards, namely the DVB-S2 standard that was ratified in 2005. In this thesis, the design and architecture of a FPGA implementation of an LDPC decoder for the DVB-S2 standard are presented. The decoder architecture is an improvement over others that are published in the current literature. Novel algorithms are devised to use a memory mapping scheme that allows for 360 functional units (FUs) used in decoding to be implemented using the Sum-Product Algorithm (SPA). The functional units (FU) are optimized for reduced hardware resource utilization on a FPGA with a large number of configurable logic blocks (CLBs) and memory blocks. A novel design of a parity-check module (PCM) is presented that verifies the parity-check equations of the LDPC codes. Furthermore, a special characteristic of five of the codes defined in the DVB-S2 standard and their influence on the decoder design is discussed. Three versions of the LDPC decoder are implemented, namely the 360-FU decoder, the 180-FU decoder and the hybrid 360/180-FU decoder. The decoders are synthesized for two FPGAs. A Xilinx Virtex-II Pro family FPGA is used for comparison purposes and a Xilinx Virtex-6 family FPGA is used to demonstrate the portability of the design. The synthesis results show that the hardware resource utilization and minimum throughput of the decoders presented are competitive with a DVB-S2 LDPC decoder found in the current literature that also uses FPGA technology.

Equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) is a macrophage-tropic retrovirus that causes persistent disease in horses and ponies. In addition to its structural proteins, EIAV encodes four regulatory/accessory genes, tat, rev, ttm, and S2. It has been documented EIAV S2 gene expression is essential for disease expression of EIAV. Using a yeast two-hybrid assay, it was shown that S2 protein interacts with human NF-KB2. NF-KB2 plays a key role in the alternative or non-canonical NF-KB pathway. In order to determine if the interaction of S2 with NF-KB2 might be relevant to equine disease, a cDNA representing full length equine NF-KB2 was generated in our laboratory using PCR and rapid amplification of cDNA ends. To our knowledge this is the first time that equine NF-KB2 cDNAs have been recovered and characterized. The sequence of equine NF-KB2 was 95% homologous to human overall, however a major difference was found in the ankyrin repeat region where protein-protein interactions occur. Two splice variants of equine NF-KB2 were found that correspond to splice variants of human NF- KB2. We tested the interaction of EIAV S2 and equine NF-KB2 using the yeast two hybrid system (Y2H) and co-immunoprecipitation. Unfortunately we were not able to detect an interaction between EIAV S2 and equine NF-KB2 in either system. Despite this result, NF-KB2 is an important component in the immune response so we examined its expression in equine macrophages. Moreover we were interested to know if EIAV might affect expression levels of equine NF-KB2, as NF-KB2 is a target of other viruses. Hence, the expression level of equine NF-KB2 was measured in uninfected and infected primary equine monocyte- derived macrophage (eMDM). Using quantitative PCR we determined that equine NF-KB2 gene expression is decreased in eMDM after 3 days post plating, about the time that monocytes start to differentiate into mature macrophages. However EIAV infection of eMDM upregulated the expression level of NF-KB2.

This thesis analyses joint ventures which have been established between Greek enterprises and enterprises from Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Russia. An international joint venture (IJV) is an enterprise established between two or more companies, one of which exercises its entrepreneurial activities in a foreign country. The core set of questions that this thesis addresses consist of motives for the establishment of joint ventures, partner selection criteria, control and conflict inside a joint venture, stability and performance. Another issue addressed is that of the problems which joint venturers face, as identified by Greek businessmen and academics. This framework is deployed upon an extensive body of primary source data gathered in 1994 by field work methods, using an administrated questionnaire largely within the Greek parent companies. Our research relates to evidence on 44 Greek enterprises, groups of companies, or individuals who established joint ventures with Eastern European partners after 1989. The questionnaire design is based on the notion that the expansion of the domestic boundaries of the firm abroad, and its decision to establish an IJV are the outcomes of strategic, financial and country specific motives. The key results of the thesis are that successful joint ventures in Eastern Europe have the following characteristics: 1. Dominant control by the Greek partner over the IJV, when the Eastern European partner is a bureaucrat. 2. Low perceived conflict as regards intensity and frequency over dimensions like transfer of knowledge. 3. High stability as measured by the percentage increase in share capital held by the Greek partner and by resistance to transformation to wholly owned subsidiary status of the IJV. 4. Good perceived financial performance. 5. Evolution of the IJV such that the Eastern European partner increasingly takes on a managerial role and becomes attuned to managerial modes of behaviour. 6. Shared decision making between partners to the IJV beyond the infant stage.

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