The level of brutality and violence against children abducted and forcefully conscripted by the Lord¿s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda pricked the conscience of humanity. The suffering of the people in northern Uganda was described by Jan Egeland, the former United Nations Under- Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, as ¿the biggest forgotten humanitarian crisis in the world¿. This study is primarily concerned with the plight of child soldiers in northern Uganda and how their effective reintegration and rehabilitation (RR) could lead to successful peacebuilding. The study is premised on the hypothesis that ¿the promotion of the RR of former child soldiers by providing psychosocial support based on traditional and indigenous resources may contribute to conditions of peace and stability in northern Uganda.¿ The main contribution of this research is that it explores the relevance of psychosocial support based on the traditional and indigenous resources to the RR of child soldiers and peacebuilding of war-torn societies. Psychosocial support based on traditional and indigenous resources as an element of peacebuilding has been the neglected element of peacebuilding by the liberal peacebuilding interventions in most war-torn societies. For example, while traditional and indigenous resources in northern Uganda have been instrumental in the RR of former child soldiers, most scholars and policy makers have largely paid attention to the usual official government and United Nations structured top-down interventions that emphasize Western approaches of peacebuilding. More so, the official approaches have tended to marginalize the plight of former child soldiers in the reconstruction and peacebuilding of northern Uganda. Yet, failing to pay sufficient attention to effective RR of child soldiers could undermine the peace dividends already achieved in northern Uganda. The study also analyses the limitations of psychosocial support based on traditional and indigenous resources in the RR of former child soldiers. It further examines why Western approaches of psychosocial support in the RR of child soldiers have remained in use in spite of the criticisms levelled against them. The study examines other peacebuilding interventions, both official and unofficial, that have been implemented in northern Uganda. In terms of key findings, the study establishes that traditional and indigenous resources are still popular and have been widely used in northern Uganda in the RR of child soldiers. Majority of former child soldiers who were interviewed observed that they found traditional and indigenous resources more helpful than the Western models of psychosocial support. However, it was also established that there is a significant section of former child soldiers who found Western models more relevant in their RR processes. Based on these findings, the study recommends an integrative and holistic model of psychosocial support that blends good elements from both traditional and indigenous resources and Western approaches with greater emphasis on the former.

Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is one of the most important polymers in use today for packaging due to its outstanding properties. The usage of PET has grown at the highest rate compared with other plastic packaging over the last 20 years, and it is anticipated that the increase in global demand will be around 6% in the 2010 ¿ 2015 period. The rheological behaviour, thermal properties, tensile modulus, permeability properties and degradation phenomena of PET/clay nanocomposites have been investigated in this project. An overall, important finding is that incorporation of nanoclays in PET gives rise to improvements in several key process and product parameters together ¿ processability/ reduced process energy, thermal properties, barrier properties and stiffness. The PET pellets have been compounded with carefully selected nanoclays (Somasif MAE, Somasif MTE and Cloisite 25A) via twin screw extrusion to produce PET/clay nanocomposites at various weight fractions of nanoclay (1, 3, 5, 20 wt.%). The nanoclays vary in the aspect ratio of the platelets, surfactant and/or gallery spacing so different effect are to be expected. The materials were carefully prepared prior to processing in terms of sufficient drying and re-crystallisation of the amorphous pellets as well as the use of dual motor feeders for feeding the materials to the extruder. The rheological properties of PET melts have been found to be enhanced by decreasing the viscosity of the PET i.e. increasing the ¿flowability¿ of the PET melt during the injection or/and extrusion processes. The apparent shear viscosity of PETNCs is show to be significantly lower than un-filled PET at high shear rates. The viscosity exhibits shear thinning behaviour which can be explained by two mechanisms which can occur simultaneously. The first mechanism proposed is that some polymer has entangled and few oriented molecular chain at rest and when applying high shear rates, the level of entanglements is reduced and the molecular chains tend to orient with the flow direction. The other mechanism is that the nanoparticles align with the flow direction at high shear rates. At low shear rate, the magnitudes of the shear viscosity are dependent on the nanoclay concentrations and processing shear rate. Increasing nanoclay concentration leads to increases in shear viscosity. The viscosity was observed to deviate from Newtonian behaviour and exhibited shear thinning at a 3 wt.% concentration. It is possible that the formation of aggregates of clay is responsible for an increase in shear viscosity. Reducing the shear viscosity has positive benefits for downstream manufacturers by reducing power consumption. It was observed that all ii three nanoclays used in this project act as nucleation agents for crystallisation by increasing the crystallisation temperature from the melt and decreasing the crystallisation temperature from the solid and increasing the crystallisation rate, while retaining the melt temperature and glass transition temperatures without significant change. This enhancement in the thermal properties leads to a decrease in the required cycle time for manufacturing processes thus potentially reducing operational costs and increasing production output. It was observed that the nanoclay significantly enhanced the barrier properties of the PET film by up to 50% this potentially allows new PET packaging applications for longer shelf lives or high gas pressures. PET final products require high stiffness whether for carbonated soft drinks or rough handling during distribution. The PET/Somasif nanocomposites exhibit an increase in the tensile modulus of PET nanocomposite films by up to 125% which can be attributed to many reasons including the good dispersion of these clays within the PET matrix as shown by TEM images as well as the good compatibility between the PET chains and the Somasif clays. The tensile test results for the PET/clay nanocomposites micro-moulded samples shows that the injection speed is crucial factor affecting the mechanical properties of polymer injection moulded products.

This thesis addresses corporate approaches to CSR stakeholder engagement in the pharmaceutical industry in the UK and Germany. Its objective is to undertake mainly exploratory qualitative research to investigate how the selected sample manages CSR. The data was primarily accessed and collected from senior executives within major pharmaceutical companies. Multiple research methods were employed to gather rich new empirical evidence which focuses on the CSR practices and perceptions of CSR managers in both countries. To examine how this ¿sensitive¿ sector responds to what could be termed the ¿CSR Challenge¿, a critical realist perspective and six codes were chosen to map the practices and to compare similarities and differences between the two countries. This research contributes to the academic literature in this field by filling significant gaps in an area which was previously under-investigated. Ultimately, the findings are employed to examine a prespecified framework which was originally developed by the author based on secondary data in separate research. Overall, the results inform, re-examine, and improve this recently published framework. The updated explanatory framework which results from the research is the main conceptual contribution of the thesis. It serves as a management tool which includes the contextual factors which influence decision-makers¿ practices and perceptions portrayed as a set of inter-related management steps. This new conceptualisation is designed to be of practical use for decision-makers when managing their stakeholder engagement activities. As a result, this research is essentially applied and normative in nature. In addition, this work presents an original contribution to the literature in its field which should be of interest to academics.

Since the 1970s there has been rapid expansion of higher education provision in Libya and also concerns about quality versus quantity of education amid calls to reform higher education in Libya. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the current pedagogic approaches of geography teaching in Libyan universities. This information has been obtained by seeking the perceptions and attitudes through questionnaires of university teachers and students from eight Libyan higher education institutions, representing a range of locations and types of institution. A comparison was also made to UK geography teaching, using published information to indicate possible alternative approaches. The results from students were to a large extent consistent with the results of teachers, although there were some differences between the newly established institutions and the others. Respondents showed dissatisfaction towards many issues related to the teaching of geography at this level, notably the lack of specialized degrees; the inclusion of non-geography modules in courses; the integration of environmental issues within the curriculum; educational resources; the current conditions of laboratories; the teaching methods used by teachers; lecture presentation methods; the illustrative aids used by teachers; and the current fieldwork strategy. This study highlights the need for revision of current pedagogic approaches to geography teaching in Libyan universities, in which the UK¿s model may be a useful guide.

This dissertation focuses on the ‘theo-political’ core of US Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism. The political militancy characterizing two Millenarian/Messianic movements such as Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism constitutes a still under-researched and under-theorized aspect that, at present, is paramount to address for its immediate and long terms implications in the highly sensitive and volatile Israeli-Palestinian issue, in the US and Israeli domestic domain, and in the wider international community. Although processes of the ‘sacralisation of politics’ and ‘politicisation of religions’ have already manifested themselves in countless forms over past centuries, Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism are unprecedented phenomena given their unique hybridized nature, political prominence and outreach, mobilizing appeal amongst believers, organizationalcommunicational skills and degree of institutionalization.

With over one hundred years of commercial cultivation, sugar cane is one of the most valuable agricultural botanical resources in the World. This position is not only based on production of sugar from sugar cane but also it is, to a great extent, as a result of the increasing importance of sugar cane by-products and side industries. Furthermore, with the advancement of science; awareness of inharmonious growth of materials and energy consumption, and the desire to minimize the negative impacts of industrial pollutants and materials, the scope for using sugar cane is still developing rapidly. Bagasse, molasses and filtered mud are the most important by-products in the process of production of sugar from sugar cane. Among these by-products, bagasse is both a biomass resource for producing energy and is one of the most important agricultural wastes, which can be used in different side industries. Therefore, it was chosen for study in this research as it offers considerable potential as a source of energy. Bagasse is often used as a primary fuel source for sugar mills; when burned in quantity, it produces sufficient heat energy to supply all the needs of a typical sugar mill, with energy to spare. To this end, today a secondary use for this waste product is in combined heat and power plants where its use as a fuel source provides both heat and power. With a suitable energy production technology, bagasse can be used as a fuel in CHP for high efficiency energy generation. Today, with regard to the low efficiency of traditional methods, the high cost of disposal of waste materials and environmental pollution, the use of modern methods such as anaerobic digestion for the production of biogas has increased. The collected biogas from the process of anaerobic digestion provides a renewable energy source similar to natural gas, but with less methane and lower heating value, that is suitable for use in CHP plants. In this research, a comparison with different bagasse energy production technologies leads to the selection of anaerobic digestion as the most suitable for use in Iran. Then a typical biogas CHP is assumed, and the biogas system is designed. Finally, the potential for the development of biogas CHP plants with bagasse in Iran is addressed through a study of the economic and environmental aspects.

Ever increasing applications of nanomaterials (materials with one or more dimension less than 100 nm) has raised awareness of their potential genotoxicity. They have unique physico¿chemical properties and so could have unpredictable effects. Zinc oxide (ZnO) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) are widely used in a number of commercial products. There are published studies indicating that some forms of these compounds may be photo-clastogenic in mammalian cells. What has not been investigated before is the effect of nanoparticles from these compounds in human germ cells. Thus the present study has examined their effects in the presence and absence of UV light in human sperm and compared responses to those obtained with human lymphocytes using the Comet assay to measure DNA damage. The effect of nanoparticles (40-70nm range) was studied in human sperm and lymphocytes in the dark, after pre-irradiation with UV and simultaneous irradiation with UV. The studies do provide some evidence that there are photo-genotoxic events in sperm and lymphocytes in the absence of overt toxicity. The cytotoxic and genotoxic potentials of ZnO and TiO2 as well as their effect on phosphotyrosine expression, were examined in the human epithelial cervical carcinoma cells (Hela cells). This was done to try and determine the underlying molecular events resulting from their exposure to ZnO and TiO2 nanoparticles occurring at the same time as DNA is damaged. Concentration- and time-dependent cytotoxicity, and an increase in DNA and cytogenetic damage with increasing nanoparticle concentrations were reported in this study. Mainly for zinc oxide, genotoxicity was clearly associated with an increase in tyrosine phosphorylation. Nanotechnology has raced ahead of nanotoxicology and little is known of the effects of nanoparticles in human systems, let alone in diseased individuals. Therefore, the effects of TiO2 nanoparticles in peripheral blood lymphocytes from patients with respiratory diseases (lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma) were compared with those in healthy individuals using genotoxic endpoints to determine whether there are any differences in sensitivity to nano-chemical insult between the patient and control groups. The results have shown concentration dependent genotoxic effects of TiO2 in both respiratory patient and control groups in the Comet assay and an increasing pattern of cytogenetic damage measured in the micronucleus assay without being statistically significant except when compared with the untreated controls of healthy individuals. Furthermore, modulation of ras p21 expression was investigated. Regardless of TiO2 treatment, only lung cancer and COPD patients expressed measurable ras p21 levels that showed modulation as the result of nanoparticle treatment. Results have suggested that both ZnO and TiO2 nanoparticles can be genotoxic over a range of concentrations without either photoa-ctivation or being cytotoxic.