Building multilocal belongings : a comparative study of Somali postcolonial novels in English and Italian

PhD ThesisThis thesis provides a comparative study of contemporary novels written in English and Italian by authors of the Somali diaspora, including Nuruddin Farah, Garane Garane, Ubax Cristina Ali Farah, Igiaba Scego, Afdhere Jama and Shirin Ramzanali Fazel. By reading them contrapuntally, this study offers an original framework for developing a multicultural and multilingual analysis, since it brings Anglophone and Italian literary studies together. The thesis demonstrates how the novels provide a more holistic understanding of Somali literature and an epistemological rethinking of the postcolonial paradigm. The first chapter analyses the representation of spatiality focusing on Mogadishu and Rome, as two fictionalised urbanscapes at the centre of Somali diasporic literature. The chapter shows how authors deconstruct Western narratives of Mogadishu as a failed city engulfed in tribal wars and, also, analyses the strategies of re-appropriation and reterritorialisation of Rome, namely one of the centres of the diaspora. The second chapter shifts the focus on language, investigating Nuruddin Farah’s late works. It claims that his use of Italian suggests a re-examination of the critical terminology employed to describe the relationship between colonisers and colonised; the chapter also proposes a new understanding of Somalia’s civil war period by providing an intertextual reading between Farah’s Links (2005) and Dante’s Divine Comedy. The following chapter, focused on Garane’s Il latte è buono (2005), proposes an innovative approach towards orature: instead of relating it to a generalised African affiliation, the analysis grounds orature within the specificity of the Somali context. Finally, the fourth chapter charts the critically neglected influences of the Italian literary tradition on Somali Italian writers. The chapter illustrates how Italo Calvino’s aesthetics, developed after fighting in the anti-fascist resistance movement (la Resistenza, 1943—45), offers fruitful parallels with that of Somali postcolonial writers. In doing so, the analysis moves away from the conventional reading of postcolonial novels in Italian as unrelated to the national culture and the literary canon. Accordingly, I show how their transnational features should be investigated according to their multiple literary networks, stretching from multilocal backgrounds to the Italian and English literary traditions. Taken together, these chapters propose an innovative multilingual and multicultural reading of Somali novels of the diaspora, inviting us to reassess the current critical approaches, mostly based on same-language analyses. Also, they show how the comparative investigation of Somali diasporic novels, from geographically and culturally distinct areas, advocates for a reassessment of the notion of literary tradition as based on the same nationality and language

Using Ipsative assessment to improve feedback quality and the student assessment experience in university computer science

PhD ThesisAssessment and feedback are important aspects of Higher Education used to provide certification to students and to facilitate learning. Therefore, both practices are important to get right. Despite their significance, the results of the National Student Survey show that assessment and feedback are the biggest sources of dissatisfaction for UK undergraduate students (Ferrell, 2012). This thesis outlines a study that set out to understand the issues faced by undergraduate students’ in their experience of assessment and feedback, and whether the adoption of an Ipsative assessment approach could help to ameliorate these issues. Ipsative assessment focuses on the students’ improvement from the previous assessment and their personal best as opposed to the meeting of external criteria. The focus of Ipsative assessment is placed on the students learning gain and the distance travelled, not on the ability to meet certain assessment criteria (Hughes, 2011; Hughes et al, 2014). This research tracked three cohorts of undergraduate students taking their first Computer Science module in programming at Newcastle University. Case study 1 set out to understand students’ perceptions of issues within their assessment and feedback experience. Data were collected from student focus groups, interviews and questionnaires. Case study two analysed historical online feedback given to previous cohorts on the module CSC1021, programming 1, during the academic years 2012/2013 to 2016/2017. In total, 942 items of feedback were analysed to determine if the perceived issues were consistently present in the feedback given to students. Finally, to investigate the potential impacts of Ipsative assessment, a system called ‘Computing: Ipsative Assessment' was trialled with first-year students. Three main issues were identified to contribute to student dissatisfaction, (i) a lack of assessment literacy, (ii) the mark-driven nature of students and (iii) a mismatch of expectations between staff and students regarding feedback. By encouraging the use of self-reflection and self-guided learning through Ipsative Assessment, these issues could be mitigated

The Pacific self : oceanic narratives and self-representation in accounts of eighteenth-century British voyages of Pacific exploration

This thesis traces the mariner’s oceanic experience in the journals of the voyages of Pacific exploration made between 1764 and 1780 by John Byron, Samuel Wallis, Philip Carteret and James Cook and the published narratives that derived from them. Situated within the emerging field of ‘blue humanities’, the thesis focuses on the account of the ocean and engages with problems of defining and describing the ocean. It examines how the mariners articulated their oceanic experience and how their narrative challenged wider cultural assumptions about the ocean and how it was then absorbed into literary narratives. It argues that the journals of Pacific exploration increasingly emphasized the experience of being at sea and, through the adaptation of that narrative in the texts that followed, were part of a larger shift in the depiction of the ocean. John Hawkesworth’s official adaptation of the first journals published in 1773 involved a process of ‘un-seaing’ by which, to suit literary pre-conceptions, the ocean was marginalised in favour of a renewed focus on landfalls. The adaptations that followed responded to a variety of audiences. Some continued to ‘un-sea’ the texts and focussed on terrestrial encounters. These transferred the “other” of the ocean to the societies found there, part of a developing narrative of colonization. However others, designed to appeal to the more ‘middling-sort’ of reader who might identify with the professionalised accounts the mariners had provided, reengaged with the maritime narrative of the original journals. Here the description of the oceanic experience was revitalised. Thus, the thesis argues, the journals found a place in the literary discourse of the voyage and helped shape a larger understanding of the ocean that challenged its uncertainty and put the mariner’s oceanic experience at its centre

Corporate rebranding : an internal perspective (multiple case study into employee buy-in the higher education sector)

PhD ThesisCorporate rebranding involves the modification or change of the logo, tagline and the corporate brand name and is a common phenomenon in various industries such as telecom and an emerging strategic trend in the higher education (HE) sector. Corporate rebranding strategy often enables an organisation to become more relevant to its target market and improve its positioning (Melewar et al., 2012; Sonenshein, 2010; Vallaster and Lindgreen, 2011; Miller et.al, 2014). Employees play a vital role in, representing the brand values and fulfilling the brand promise to an organisation’s customers (Balmer and Gray, 2003; Balmer 1995; Harris and De Chernatony, 2006). The purpose of this study is to examine how the corporate rebranding strategy is implemented internally and report on how buy-in from employees is achieved. Corporate rebranding studies in extant literature are sparse in the HE sector. To fill this gap, a multiple case study of four UK universities was conducted to explore the complexity of the phenomenon in the HE sector. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted to establish the relevance of major themes uncovered by an extensive literature review. This was followed by thematic analysis of the data. Findings of the study emphasized upon the role of internal brand communication in facilitating employees to accept the new corporate brand and their buy-in. The involvement of employees and the role of leadership in the corporate rebranding process were significant in gaining employee support. Employees who identified with the new corporate brand and who were engaged and committed to their roles expressed a greater degree of buy-in post rebranding. This is an important contribution to the literature on corporate rebranding from an internal perspective. Further research is recommended to measure existing levels of employee engagement and employee identification

Validating Next Generation Therapeutics and Targets in Castrate-Resistant Prostate Cancer

PhD ThesisAberrant androgen receptor (AR) signalling is a key driver of prostate cancer (PC) manifestation and progression. Therefore, therapeutic intervention has focused on interrupting the AR signalling axis using androgen deprivation strategies and direct receptor antagonists, such as enzalutamide, collectively termed hormone therapy. Despite initial efficacy, hormone therapy ultimately fails due to a cohort of resistance mechanisms which enable reactivation of AR signalling and PC progression to a more aggressive form called castrate resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Clinically, CRPC presents as a disease with minimal effective treatment options and therefore, new targets and therapeutics are required to improve patient outcome. Of the characterised mechanisms of hormone therapy resistance that enable progression to CRPC point mutations within the ligand binding domain of the AR enhance promiscuity of the receptor to promote binding and activation by alternative ligands, including enzalutamide. Crucially, next generation compounds are currently in development to improve targeting of clinically-relevant mutated forms of the AR. Other resistance mechanisms include androgen bypass in which AR is controlled by other signalling pathways, including kinase cascades such as PI3K-AKT. Consistent with this phenomenon the kinase SGK1 has been linked to AR signalling and has been postulated to be a potential therapeutic target in CRPC. The aims of this study were to: • better understand the mechanism of action and efficacy of the newly developed JNJ-Pan-AR compound, which is a non-clinically-relevant derivative of JNJ-63576253, across a cohort of CRPC relevant cell lines • validate SGK1 as a therapeutic target and understand whether SGK1 regulates AR activity. This study showed the JNJ-Pan-AR has antagonistic activity comparable to enzalutamide in CRPC cell lines expressing wild-type AR, and significantly outperforms enzalutamide in a clinically-relevant ARF877L point 10 mutant-expressing cell line. JNJ-Pan-AR mediates these effects by binding AR and preventing nuclear translocation and enrichment at key cis-regulatory elements of AR-target genes. For the second aim of the project, it was concluded that SGK1 knockdown significantly reduces proliferation of a cohort of CRPC cell lines, and significantly effects a subset of AR target genes. However, these results were not emulated using SGK1 inhibitors previously used in the literature (GSK650394), with publicly available kinase screen data suggesting that these compounds are highly un-selective. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) on RNASeq data suggested that SGK1 drives a cohort of genes with a similarity to neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC) associated pathways MYC and mTOR. In all, the work has helped define the mechanism of action of a novel next generation anti-androgen which will be of value for understanding which patients would benefit from the clinical candidate compound JNJ-63576253. Furthermore, although the evidence suggests that SGK1 is not strongly implicated in AR regulation, its depletion rather than kinase inactivation using a selective inhibitor impacts prostate cell proliferation suggesting a potential scaffolding role of SGK1 in controlling cell fate. Future studies are required to help define this phenomenon

Poly (ethylene glycol)-interpenetrated genipin-crosslinked chitosan hydrogels for controlled drug delivery

PhD ThesisSmart hydrogels are of increasing interest for controlled drug delivery as they can be used as drug carriers to deliver cargo biomolecules in response to specific physiological signals at tailored rhythm. In this project, pH-responsive hydrogels containing chitosan, genipin, and poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) are investigated. Owing to good biocompatibility and pH-sensitivity, chitosan was used as the main polymeric backbone, while genipin was employed as a low-toxic crosslinker to bridge chitosan molecules. To enhance the level of control in hydrogel microarchitecture and achieve reproducible properties, PEG was added to form semi-interpenetrating networks. The aim of this project was to develop and evaluate injectable and degradable chitosan-genipin-PEG hydrogels and the feasibility of using them to control drug delivery. The chitosan-genipin hydrogels, with and without PEG, were synthesised under mild conditions (37oC, 24 h) and in a range of shapes (disc, bead, and film). The hydrogels had dark blue colour and intrinsic fluorescence (580 nm excitation and 630 nm emission), due to oxygen radical-induced polymerisation of genipin, as well as the reaction with amino groups of chitosan. The bead-shaped hydrogels were discrete and spherical with diameters ranging from 1 to 30 μm. The disc-shaped hydrogels (13 mm in diameter and 8 mm in height) had microporous structures with pore diameters ranging from 11 to 57 μm and average cross-sectional porous areas of 40% to 64%. Compared to disc-shaped chitosan-genipin hydrogels, presence of PEG up to 1.9 mM generated the same effect as increasing the genipin content, yielding structures with a smaller pore diameter, a lower swelling degree in pH 2 buffer and a higher elastic modulus. Considering cost effectiveness and scale-up production, reducing genipin content by the addition of PEG is favourable. Importantly, hydrogels containing higher concentration of PEG (2.9 mM and above) showed a sudden increase in the swelling degree accompanied with a decrease in the elastic modulus. The release profiles of two drug molecules (perindopril erbumine and 1-methyl D-tryptophan) with different solubility from disc-shaped hydrogels revealed their swelling-controlled kinetic, which fitted well to the Korsmeyer-Peppas model, indicating a non-Fickian transport mechanism. Cytotoxicity assays of hydrogel films towards 3T3 fibroblasts showed that the cells retained normal adhesive properties and high viability on gels with 3.1 mM and 4.4 mM genipin but not on gels with 1.7 mM genipin, suggesting a strong correlation between hydrogels’ stiffness and cell attachment/growth. Adding PEG enhanced the viability of 3T3 cells cultured on hydrogel films. To facilitate comparison, the inflammatory responses of DC 2.4 dendritic cells, RAW 264.7 ii macrophage cells, and bone marrow-derived macrophages to uncrosslinked chitosan and crosslinked chitosan-genipin hydrogel films/beads were investigated. Despite induced mRNA expression of some cytokines in all treated cell types (especially up to 2435-fold increase in interferon-β gene expression found in hydrogel film-exposed DC 2.4), no increased levels of five inflammatory cytokines were detected, suggesting the hypo-inflammatory properties of chitosan-genipin hydrogels. The biodegradation of hydrogel films upon exposure to lysozyme and the biodegradation of macrogels after subcutaneous injection in mice were monitored efficiently using the intrinsic fluorescence of hydrogels. Results suggest that the in vivo degradation rate depends critically on where the hydrogel is deposited in tissues. The subcutaneous injection of hydrogel beads induced interferon-β gene transcription significantly and no local skin lesion was observed, suggesting a good biocompatibility in vivo. Collectively, the findings presented in this study provide valuable guidance to further develop these biocompatible, biodegradable, and injectable chitosan-genipin hydrogels as autonomous drug delivery systems

Control and visual navigation for unmanned underwater vehicles

Ph. D. Thesis.Control and navigation systems are key for any autonomous robot. Due to environmental disturbances, model uncertainties and nonlinear dynamic systems, reliable functional control is essential and improvements in the controller design can significantly benefit the overall performance of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs). Analogously, due to electromagnetic attenuation in underwater environments, the navigation of UUVs is always a challenging problem. In this thesis, control and navigation systems for UUVs are investigated. In the control field, four different control strategies have been considered: Proportional-Integral-Derivative Control (PID), Improved Sliding Mode Control (SMC), Backstepping Control (BC) and customised Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC). The performances of these four controllers were initially simulated and subsequently evaluated by practical experiments in different conditions using an underwater vehicle in a tank. The results show that the improved SMC is more robust than the others with small settling time, overshoot, and error. In the navigation field, three underwater visual navigation systems have been developed in the thesis: ArUco Underwater Navigation systems, a novel Integrated Visual Odometry with Monocular camera (IVO-M), and a novel Integrated Visual Odometry with Stereo camera (IVO-S). Compared with conventional underwater navigation, these methods are relatively low-cost solutions and unlike other visual or inertial-visual navigation methods, they are able to work well in an underwater sparse-feature environment. The results show the following: the ArUco underwater navigation system does not suffer from cumulative error, but some segments in the estimated trajectory are not consistent; IVO-M suffers from cumulative error (error ratio is about 3 - 4%) and is limited by the assumption that the “seabed is locally flat”; IVO-S suffers from small cumulative errors (error ratio is less than 2%). Overall, this thesis contributes to the control and navigation systems of UUVs, presenting the comparison between controllers, the improved SMC, and low-cost underwater visual navigation methods

Partisan budget cycles and electoral accountability in the European Union using Household Tax Rates, 1996-2016

Ph. D. Thesis.There is good evidence that prior to a general election the government will seek to increase its chance of being re-elected by lowering taxes or by increasing public expenditure, leading to a politically-motivated cycle in fiscal policy. A potential difficulty with this literature is that few existing studies consider the actual income tax paid by different household types. This thesis uses the net Personal Average Tax Rate (PATR) for 13 different households (by marital status, family size and income) to examine the political budget cycle for 26 European Union countries. It considers the effect of the PATR on the government vote share to analyse the effect of fiscal manipulations and electoral accountability. The data are collected for political and socioeconomic variables over 1996-2016, giving 143 observations on general elections. This is regressed using techniques such as the Generalized Method of Moments and Quasi-Maximum Likelihood estimators. The thesis makes three main contributions. First, the thesis finds that there is opportunistic behaviour by all parties across the EU as both right- and left-wing parties lower the PATR in the run-up to an election, but focusing on married-coupled households with two children. Second, it finds that left-wing parties are rewarded for lower income taxes prior to an election, which is for both for married-couple and single households. However, on differentiating between the older democracies of the European Union and the Central and Eastern European countries, only the right- [left] wing parties are rewarded for an election-year cut in the PATRs in the former [latter] countries. Overall, the thesis finds that a left-wing party is rewarded for opportunistic behaviour. Finally, by analysing consecutive elections that are won by the same party, the thesis finds there is a smaller effect of PATRs on votes in the second electoral term, and this supports rational voter behaviour

Advanced deep neural networks for speech separation and enhancement

Ph. D. Thesis.Monaural speech separation and enhancement aim to remove noise interference from the noisy speech mixture recorded by a single microphone, which causes a lack of spatial information. Deep neural network (DNN) dominates speech separation and enhancement. However, there are still challenges in DNN-based methods, including choosing proper training targets and network structures, refining generalization ability and model capacity for unseen speakers and noises, and mitigating the reverberations in room environments. This thesis focuses on improving separation and enhancement performance in the real-world environment. The first contribution in this thesis is to address monaural speech separation and enhancement within reverberant room environment by designing new training targets and advanced network structures. The second contribution to this thesis is on improving the enhancement performance by proposing a multi-scale feature recalibration convolutional bidirectional gate recurrent unit (GRU) network (MCGN). The third contribution is to improve the model capacity of the network and retain the robustness in the enhancement performance. A convolutional fusion network (CFN) is proposed, which exploits the group convolutional fusion unit (GCFU). The proposed speech enhancement methods are evaluated with various challenging datasets. The proposed methods are assessed with the stateof-the-art techniques and performance measures to confirm that this thesis contributes novel solution

Investigation of oral health assessment measures for the care planning of dependent adults

Ph. D. Thesis.Dependent adults (i.e. eighteen-year-old or older who need or receives assistance due to a reduction in mental capacity or physical capability) can experience oral health problems. Whilst the reasons behind these problems are complex, evidence suggests that caregivers’ limited knowledge about oral health and care may play a role. Oral health measurement instruments could provide one means by which to help caregivers establishing appropriate oral care plans for dependent adults and, thus, preventing or managing these problems. This project aimed to investigate oral health assessment measures for oral care planning of dependent adults through three separate studies. A qualitative evidence synthesis was undertaken to establish an empirical conceptual model of oral health in dependent adults. It showed that oral health in dependent adults is a dynamic and multidimensional construct that consists of four domains: the intactness and cleanliness of oral structures; oral pain and discomfort; oral functions; and noticeable oral health aspects. A systematic review was undertaken to critically appraise published oral health measurement instruments for dependent adults. It revealed many instruments have been proposed, but none of these instruments has been adequately and comprehensively tested to establish strong evidence in relation to their measurement properties, feasibility and interpretability. Finally, a qualitative interview study was undertaken to explore healthcare service providers’ perspectives on barriers and implementation issues in relation to measuring oral health in dependent adults. The consistent theme was that the implementation of oral health measurement instruments may not be easy due to multiple potential barriers. These barriers therefore need to be considered during implementation, including those related to instruments, service providers, dependent adults and implementation environment. The findings in this thesis support a recommendation that multiple perspectives need to be considered when designing and evaluating oral health measurement instruments used to guide oral care planning for dependent adults. By doing this, these instruments are more likely to meet different stakeholders’ needs and, thus, can be successfully implemented.King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Science