The alleviation of suffering lies at the core of compassionate end-of-life care, yet little is known about the lived experience of suffering. Motivated by a series of reports on poor care of older people in hospital, this study addresses suffering in older people at the end of life in an acute hospital ward in the United Kingdom. Methods were developed from a synthesis of ethnographic fieldwork and phenomenological interpretation. Data were collected using participant observation on an acute care ward for older people in a hospital in Northern England, over 186 hours between June and August 2015. Data included field notes, documents, photographs and informal interviewing. Staff and patient participants were identified using theoretical sampling. Data were analysed using a hermeneutic approach involving a continuous process of analysis, further data collection, posing of problems and questions, and interpretation. This cyclical approach to the data enabled the development of interpretive perspectives which could then be further explored in the field. Findings suggested that care for older people was shaped by competing ideologies of care and organisational regulatory processes. Particularly when there was ambiguity regarding prognosis, there was a tendency for care to default to a ‘rescuing’ acute care model. Through exploring the experiences of individual patients and placing these in the context of cultures of care, I suggest that iatrogenic suffering was a significant concern that often went unrecognised. Patient-centred goals must be more focused upon avoidance of iatrogenic suffering. Recommendations include innovations in clinical education and multiprofessional working.

This thesis examines the determinants of institutional quality and the process of convergence in the ECOWAS in order to inform policy about the region’s deep integration scheme. The first part of the thesis examines the historical changes that took place in the development of common institutions in West Africa in the pre-independence era. The findings demonstrated that the region exhibited some common institutions, including common currencies, standardised trade rules and protection of trade routes which facilitated regional and international trade. A single administration system helped in the effective implementation of the common institutions. Therefore, historical changes after independence led to the loss of some facets of these common institutions in West Africa. The second part examined determinants of institutional quality and the process of convergence using econometric analysis. The findings demonstrated that the process of convergence could be accelerated if WAMZ and WAEMU work together as one monetary zone under ECOWAS. Moreover, the findings also demonstrated that the level of development, state capacity, FDI, regional trade, history and regional trade partners institutional quality contain useful information in explaining the quality of institutions today. Therefore, ECOWAS’s deep integration goal would require improving some of these factors in order to facilitate the process of developing common institutions and improve their quality. In the long term, a single administration system akin to the colonial era and the Empires of Western Sudan would be desirable. This will require political commitment to do so. ECOWAS members should have the confidence that deep integration is feasible given that it existed in the region in the past.

In 1998 the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement were developed following years of crises faced by the millions of people experiencing forced displacement, especially those internally displaced. These Principles were widely considered to be precedent setting, both historically and normatively. However, the examination of the construction of the international norms that underpin the Principles indicates that there are important epistemological weaknesses in widely used constructivist frameworks that understand normative shifts in international relations. They are critiqued as being impedingly linear, temporally compressed and analytically obstructive in its agent-centric view of norm cascading. This research aims to address some of these gaps with an enhanced life-cycle model using cluster genealogies and the processes of replication and particularization. The reformulated framework is tested for robustness and feasibility using two preliminary cases – UNSC Resolution 1325 and the Chemical Weapons Convention. It is then used to conduct an in-depth original analysis of the development of the 1998 UN Guiding Principles. The findings in the case of the Guiding Principles show, for example, that though the acceptance of the IDP definition was a big leap, the replication and particularization of human rights limits the humanitarian scope of the Guiding Principles, and also brings into question existing humanitarian protection of IDPs under the Geneva Conventions. Meanwhile, rooting them in ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ has not shifted the community of states’ intersubjective take on sovereignty, but it has added to the existing normative tension – individual vs. state – that underpins the very understanding of sovereignty.

The field of cancer genomics is currently being enhanced by the power of Epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS). Over the last couple of years comprehensive sequence data sets have been generated, allowing analysis of genome-wide activity in cohorts of different individuals to be increasingly available. Finding associations between epigenetic variation and phenotype is one of the biggest challenges in biomedical research. Laboratories lacking dedicated resources and programming experience require bioinformatics expertise which can be prohibitively costly and time-consuming. To address this, we have developed a collection of freely available Galaxy tools (Poterlowicz, 2018a), combining analytical methods into a range of convenient analysis pipelines with graphical user-friendly interface.The tool suite includes methods for data preprocessing, quality assessment and differentially methylated region and position discovery. The aim of this project was to make EWAS analysis flexible and accessible to everyone and compatible with routine clinical and biological use. This is exemplified by my work undertaken by integrating DNA methylation profiles of melanoma patients (at baseline and mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitor MAPKi treatment) to identify novel epigenetic switches responsible for tumour resistance to therapy (Hugo et al., 2015). Configuration files are publicly published on our GitHub repository (Poterlowicz, 2018b) with scripts and dependency settings also available to download and install via Galaxy test toolshed (Poterlowicz, 2018a). Results and experiences using this framework demonstrate the potential for Galaxy to be a bioinformatics solution for multi-omics cancer biomarker discovery tool.

This thesis aims to investigate the impact of state fragility on capital inflows and economic growth in Nigeria over the period 1980-2015. In line with existing studies, it adopts an augmented neoclassical growth model where capital is divided into domestic and foreign capital inflows (FDI, ODA and Remittances). Using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to co-integration, significant long-run relationship was confirmed between state fragility, capital flows and economic growth. The results reveal domestic capital to be very significant and contribute positively to economic growth. Similarly it was observed that remittances remain a very crucial form of capital flow to Nigeria and that the presence of state fragility makes it more significant. For ODA a positive contribution to economic growth was observed, however, the presence of state fragility renders it insignificant. In the case of FDI, the study found a negative relationship between FDI and economic growth albeit insignificant. However, the presence of state fragility makes it significant but still negative. A negative relationship was also observed between state fragility and economic growth. These findings, implies that while the issue of state fragility needs to be addressed and concerted efforts put into building state resilience, not just for the direct impact of state fragility on the economy, but also its impact on the economy through other channels such as capital flows.

The major themes of this thesis are the impact of Intellectual Property (IP) systems on foreign direct investment spillovers and bilateral FDI flows. This thesis consists of three empirical studies. The first study integrates in the existing theoretical frameworks the distinct effect of the public IP enforcement element of IP systems on FDI horizontal spillovers. By employing a meta-analysis approach and the ordered probit model estimation technique, it finds that the strength of public IP enforcement in a host country has a positive effect on FDI horizontal spillovers but it dampens the positive effect of IP law protection on FDI horizontal spillovers when it becomes too strong. The second empirical study examines the impact of IP systems on FDI vertical spillovers. This study employs a similar conceptual and empirical approach and finds that the strength of public IP enforcement has a positive effect on FDI vertical spilloversbut a negative moderating effect on the relationship between the strength of IP law protection and FDI vertical spillovers. In the third empirical study, a gravity model is applied to test the effect of IP systems on bilateral FDI flows in OECD countries. Using the Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood, it finds both the strength of IP law protection and the strength of public IP enforcement to have a positive effect on bilateral FDI flows. The broad implication of these findings is that countries should strengthen both their IP law protection and enforcement but apply appropriate measures to mitigate the negative effect resulted from excessive IP protection.

The t h e s i s c o n s i d e r s t h e e f f e c t s of v e h i c l e type on highway t r a f f i c flow. The e f f e c t s of v e h i c l e type on t h e c a p a c i t y of t r a f f i c s i g n a l approaches are examined by t h e experimental d e t e r m i n a t i o n of passenger c a r u n i t s a t i n t e r s e c t i o n s i n London and West Yorkshire and i n a d d i t i o n s a t u r a t i o n flows and lost t i m e s a r e examined. . Vehicle type e f f e c t s a t roundabout e n t r i e s a r e i n v e s t i g a t e d and t h e r e s u l t s of f i e l d o b s e r v a t i o n s r e p o r t e d . Details a r e given of t h e gap acceptance of varying v e h i c l e t y p e s , t h e e f f e c t of v e h i c l e type on delay and comparisons a r e made with e x i s t i n g recommendat i o n s f o r t h e c a p a c i t y design of roundabout e n t r i e s . Observations of t r a f f i c flow on a r u r a l motorway a r e used to demonstrate t h e e f f e c t of v e h i c l e type on speed and observed v a l u e s a r e f i t t e d t o a normal d i s t r i b u t i o n . Overtaking behaviour is a l s o examined and conclusions drawn of t h e r e l a t i v e e f f e c t on c a p a c i t y of v e h i c l e t y p e . A review is given of t h e e f f e c t s of v e h i c l e type on t h e design and o p e r a t i o n of t h e highway system in Saudi Arabia.