This doctoral thesis investigates an issue faced by the IT consultants and associates of Princeton Pragmatics, a small IT consulting services start-up in New Jersey, USA. Since the summer of 2017, the companies in the USA relying on IT solutions, particularly in sectors such as financial services, experienced a rapidly emerging trend adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) and modern forms of automation. As a result, the IT professionals’ typical work is gradually becoming automated, threatening the...

Background: Development of ultra-short chemotherapy for tuberculosis (TB) is thwarted by drug-tolerant bacillary persistence and a lack of surrogate endpoints to predict outcome from early clinical studies. Characterising bacillary elimination amongst TB patients may provide important new information. Bacilli harbouring intra-cytoplasmic lipid bodies (LBs) may represent a drug-tolerant phenotype, responsible for delayed bacterial clearance. Methods: Malawian adults with pulmonary TB were treated with standard 6 month therapy. Two quantitative sputum culture methods were used to...

Studying cell motility is of vital importance for health, for knowing how cells behave and are affected by, and can themselves cause, disease. Mathematical modelling of such behaviour has proved beneficial for furthering knowledge of important motility processes in many different cell types. This work aims to define and analyse data-integrated mathematical models for cell motility in 2 and 3 dimensions, specifically applied to glioblastoma tumour cells and surface-attached P. aeruginosa bacterial cells. Models are...

Abstract This study looks at instructors perceptions of blended learning (BL) at a Medical School (MS) in one of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The study also looks at the effects of instructors perceptions on implementation of BL in the classroom. And the effect of student perspectives on instructors perceptions of BL. The study is important as it looks into the impact and effectiveness of technology in the classroom, from an instructor’s perspective in...

The purpose of this thesis is to examine which data captured by experiential learning technology can be used to understand more about students’ perspectives, mindsets and skills. The objective is to examine how technology-enabled real-time analysis of learner data can be used by learning facilitators and instructional designers to improve the practice of experiential learning in higher education institutions. The study adopts an anti-positivist perspective that acknowledges habit as a driver of deterministic behaviour and...

Traditional approaches to studying dog bites have predominantly used epidemiological methodology to understand risk factors and prevention centred on education about dogs’ body language. Instead, in this project dog bites are explored from the perspective of those directly affected, as a victim or a dog owner. The objectives of this study included understanding how dog bites are perceived and experienced and how the context of individual lived experiences influences these perceptions and practices around dogs....

Aircraft wings in high-speed flight experience detrimental flow unsteadiness. Its interaction with the flexible wing structure and resulting dynamic loads are addressed in the certification specifications which stipulate a cruise design point free from any structural vibration and buffeting. One such flow unsteadiness is shock buffet and its inherent dynamics near the onset of unsteadiness are addressed herein. Specifically, an extensive experimental dataset of a large aircraft wing geometry and complementary scale-resolving simulations are scrutinised....