Subnational Foreign Relations in Africa: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of South Africa and Nigeria

This book offers a pioneering comparative analysis of the international relations of subnational governments (SNGs) in two of Africa’s most influential geopolitical actors—South Africa and Nigeria. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from political science, international relations, and legal studies, we examine the motivations, instruments, institutional mechanisms, and challenges shaping the external engagements of SNGs in these leading African economies. Through these case studies, we provide critical insights into how constitutional, institutional, and historical contexts influence subnational international relations from an African perspective. Drawing on these findings, we argue that paradiplomacy in Africa is best understood through the lens of developmental paradiplomacy, where socio-economic imperatives—rather than political autonomy—drive subnational international engagement. Our study demonstrates how the need for practical cooperation and the pursuit of local and regional economic development have been central to the international involvement of African SNGs, i.e. a strategy born out of necessity rather than an expression of political self-determination

Inside ransomware groups: an analysis of their origins, structures, and dynamics

Ransomware is a major cybersecurity threat facing organisations worldwide and has evolved into a highly lucrative criminal enterprise. Over the past five years, Conti, LockBit, and BlackCat/ALPHV have emerged as three of the most prominent ransomware groups, responsible for major cyberattacks across sectors including healthcare, banking, and critical national infrastructure. While these groups are well-known by name and have been discussed in industry articles, blogs, and government briefs, there remains a notable lack of academic research into the groups themselves, particularly regarding their origins, values, membership, and organisational structures. This paper addresses this research gap and aims to advance academic understanding of these and other ransomware threat actors, contributing to the evidence base through which they may be better understood and disrupted. Drawing on the PRISMA systematic review approach and a critical analysis of over 500 dispersed sources, including ransomware group communications, we examine the origins, structure, organisation, dynamics and nature of Conti, LockBit, and BlackCat/ALPHV. Our findings reveal that, while each group is unique, they share several noteworthy similarities: Russian origins, business-like operations, an emphasis on brand-building, strong leadership structures, a propensity for retaliation, use of ransomware-as-a-service models, and deployment of multi-level extortion tactics. These insights provide an evidence-based understanding of how such groups function and compare, while also offering important leads for wider mitigation strategies. Consequently, we make several actionable recommendations to disrupt the ransomware ecosystem including undermining ransomware group branding, targeting affiliate networks, and publicly exposing key members. To our knowledge, this is the first academic study to leverage an understanding of these groups, to synthesise such an extensive body of dispersed material, and to apply robust qualitative methods to derive comparative insights for the security research community. In addition, we leverage our findings to introduce a new conceptual framework through which other ransomware groups can be studied, profiled, and compared in the future

Exploring feedforward neural network explainability using the layerwise relevance propagation framework

Neural Networks (NNs) can learn very accurate solutions to complex problems, but it is rarely clear how. The Layerwise Relevance Propagation (LRP) framework would explain how a given NN would produce a prediction for given data by assigning a relevance score to each data feature in each data example. This would be achieved by propagating each NN layer's output onto each data feature in its input. Other researchers have shown what hyperparameters and architectural choices lead to these explanations beinanalytically correct, however, it is not always possible to apply these in practice. The first chapter discusses the problems and solutions that were explored in this research. The second chapter presents background literature about AI, NNs, model shade, explainability, and LRP. The third chapter compared explanations extracted by LRP to those extracted from white-box models. These were most comparable when the NN architecture was large and when the data that it was fitted on contained many data examples. This established a link between explainability and the predictive accuracy of a NN. The fourth chapter found that explanations generated by LRP can be made correct through hyperparameter optimisation, and the newly-proposed Local LRP (LLRP) framework exceeded the explainability of trained LRP over greyscale and colour images by learning the hyperparameters at each NN layer. Chapter five discovered and analysed why the actual and expected negative relevance representations differ, and the sensitivity of positive relevance was maximised individually instead of trying to mutually maximise positive and negative relevance. A final reflection in chapter six shows that this thesis has contributed to NN explainability by improving the relevance produced by LRP. Future research opportunities were highlighted throughout this work

Reluctant public sector entrepreneurialism among clinical professional managers: Corporate colonisation in the English National Health Service

In public service, the replacement of traditional professional and managerial cultures by a more entrepreneurial ethos has reemerged as a political goal in recent years, presented as a necessary response to acute fiscal challenges. In this paper, we consider the impact of increasing influence of enterprise and entrepreneurial discourses in the UK public sector, specifically in respect of healthcare in the UK. We examine the evolution of managerial and professional identities in healthcare in the UK, considering the evolution of health service management identities from administrator through leader to entrepreneur in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Drawing on an empirical study of a health care organization in the English National Health Service, we examine how engineered competition in this sector drives opportunistic entrepreneurial behaviour among staff, with direct implications for the identity and conduct of professional healthcare managers. Following Deetz on ‘corporate colonization’, we explore the perceived inevitability of this shift, even where it is felt that such changes occur to the detriment of professional and clinical concerns. We integrate these practical and theoretical issues together to critically evaluate how short-term entrepreneurial activity acts as a powerful organizing principle, at the risk of undermining the ethics of care

How to Enhance Sleep for Athletes? A Narrative Review of Sleep Hygiene and Sleep Extension Practices

Sleep is becoming widely accepted as a crucial for athletes, with potential impacts on both performance and recovery, yet despite this, sleep amongst athletes is commonly suboptimal. This review aims firstly to summarise underlying reasons why athletes commonly present with poor sleep with a view to informing subsequent interventions, and secondly, to summarise sleep hygiene and sleep extension practices to potentially offset this, with consideration for the content and delivery approach of such interventions

Accidental and Regulated Cell Death in Yeast Colony Biofilms

The yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one of the most intensively studied organisms on the planet due to it being an excellent eukaryotic model organism in molecular and cell biology. In this work, we investigate the growth and morphology of yeast colony biofilms, where proliferating yeast cells reside within a self-produced extracellular matrix. This research area has garnered significant scientific interest due to its applicability in the biological and biomedical sectors. A central feature of yeast colony biofilm expansion is cellular demise, which is onset by one of two independent mechanisms: either accidental cell death (ACD) or regulated cell death (RCD). In this article, we generalise a continuum model for the nutrient-limited growth of a yeast colony biofilm to include the effects of ACD and RCD. This new model involves a system of four coupled nonlinear reaction–diffusion equations for the yeast-cell density, the nutrient concentration, and two species of dead cells. Numerical solutions of the spatially one and two-dimensional governing equations reveal the impact that ACD and RCD have on expansion speed, morphology and cell distribution within the colony biofilm. Our results are in good qualitative agreement with our own experiments

Raman Spectroscopic Characterisation and Chemometric Analysis of Facial Cosmetics as Associative Trace Evidence

Decorative cosmetics such as facial foundations or finishing powders are widely used and easily transferred upon physical contact. As such, they may be used as associative trace evidence to link people to each other or to places in criminal investigations. To maximise their probative value, it is important to understand the variability amongst representative market products and the degree of sample discrimination that can be achieved. Additionally, it is required that analysis techniques be non-destructive, readily available and relatively inexpensive. Raman spectroscopy is a powerful tool for probing the chemistry of facial cosmetics. As well as fitting the criteria above, it offers the capability of studying a wide range of sample types with minimal prior preparation. The information derived from Raman spectra can help analysts to understand and visualise spectral variability, potentially enabling discrimination between samples. This thesis presents the novel application of Raman microspectroscopy to the analysis of 297 facial cosmetic samples with subsequent chemometric methods for objective spectral interpretation. The analysis of 177 newly purchased cosmetic products revealed the most important chemical components for sample discrimination and highlighted the issue of spectral heterogeneity, leading to the separation of 126 spectrally homogeneous from 44 spectrally heterogeneous samples. Microscopic examination of samples allowed for the assessment of visual homogeneity but revealed that this was not a reliable indicator of spectral homogeneity. Subjective assessment of Raman spectra did not always correlate with the principal component analysis (PCA) models as the dimensionality reduction technique applied different variable weightings. Assessment of PCA loadings showed the primary distinction between samples to be their titanium dioxide polymorph, followed by iron oxide and lecithin content. The effects of ageing were more noticeable visually among the water-based products yet nearly undetectable via Raman spectra. Drastic colour and texture changes were evident after 15 months of passive ageing, as were the detachment of borosilicate glass pigments and silica microspheres from their respective matrices, which may have implications for casework. The spectral changes were more pronounced amongst the aged samples that contained a higher organic composition, indicated by the loss of organic components or their degradation to other species. Furthermore, inter-batch comparisons of some products showed a change of titanium dioxide polymorph used (from anatase to rutile) showing a lack of formulation consistency. Donations of 120 used samples, old discarded products and expired shop testers allowed for the assessment of a set of "real world" samples. Raman analysis of these donated samples and comparisons with their newly purchased counterparts revealed an increase in baseline fluorescence, increased spectral heterogeneity, and extra peaks in the spectral mid-range. These spectral alterations suggest chemical changes associated with ageing, and/or the contamination of these samples, most likely from a biological source. This study describes the first microscopic and Raman spectroscopic characterisation of facial cosmetics within a forensic context, further enhanced by the addition of multivariate data analysis methods, which addresses the need for objective, unbiased interpretation of spectral data. These cosmetic traces may be exploited in criminal investigations in questioned (Q) versus known (K) comparisons, or sample eliminations, or to provide investigative leads. The discovery of a counterfeit product demonstrated the utility of these analyses not just in a crime scene investigation context but also for the verification of genuine consumer goods. The assessment of cosmetic traces on a purely visual basis is not recommended, owing to subjective descriptions and the difficulties associated with analysing interference pigments; the addition of Raman spectroscopy offers much needed enhanced discrimination potential. Raman microscopy is well suited for the analysis of microtraces such as those that might be encountered in casework, and involves less sample preparation than many other analytical techniques such as surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)

The role of apology beliefs for apology tendencies across cultures with varying honor norms

Apologies serve as crucial tools for relationship repair, promoting reconciliation, and demonstrating accountability. However, beliefs about the morality, effectiveness, and responsibility-signaling nature of apologies may vary across cultures, particularly in contexts shaped by honor norms where apologies fit central cultural concerns for morality and strength in ambiguous ways. This study investigates the relation between apology beliefs and cultural honor norms across 14 Mediterranean, East Asian, and Anglo-Western samples (N = 5296). We assessed personal and normative beliefs about apologies and their alignment with apology tendencies (willingness to apologize and past offered apologies) as well as intersubjectively rated honor norms. Results revealed that stronger beliefs in the morality and effectiveness of apologies, as well as perceptions of apologies as admissions of responsibility, consistently predicted greater willingness to apologize across regions and past apologies offered. Against our expectations, honor norms moderated only a few of these relations, with significant interactions suggesting weaker links between apology beliefs and apology tendencies at stronger honor norms. Complementary analyses comparing regional categorizations (Anglo-West, East Asia, and MENA) further supported a picture of relative cultural similarities but also highlighted a wider array of relevant apology beliefs in the MENA region as well as a greater focus on personal morality beliefs in Anglo Western societies and personal effectiveness beliefs in East Asian societies. Our findings underscore the universal significance of apology beliefs in fostering reconciliation while also revealing some cultural variability in how personal beliefs and cultural norms may interact in shaping apology-related behaviors across diverse societies