Shale gas extraction commonly known as fracking had support from the UK government with their ‘all out for shale’ policy. Despite this industry has struggled to establish itself mainly due to strong opposition from communities concerned about environmental and health impacts. Most research into the impacts of fracking is concerned with either environmental degradation or physical health impacts wh

Amidst global warming, perturbed ecosystems and an ever-diminishing fossil feedstock, a paradigm shift toward renewable and sustainable plastics have emerged. Significant advances have been made in the past decade and several green polymers have entered the market. Much attention has been focused on the catalytic conversion of lignin, as it represents the largest source of renewable platform chemi

Ecological compensation builds on the idea of substitutability, meaning that destroyed values can be replaced or substituted with new values that are equal to the ones lost. Through this equivalence between “lost” and “gained” values compensation is meant to allow dynamic economic development without causing irreversible biodiversity loss. Compensation is increasingly used as a means to reduce the

Can constructed wetlands be used to fight cyanobacterial blooms? Cyanobacterial blooms are more than just a nuisance that prevents swimmers from making the most of the warmest months. Cyanobacterial blooms can cause a wide array of problems such as polluting freshwater reservoirs and causing fish die offs, owing to their ability to grow rapidly and release toxins which are harmful to both humans

The development of new sequencing methods requires new computational pipelines to handle and analyse raw data. One recently developed method is Breaks Labelling In Situ and Sequencing (BLISS), which localise and quantifies DNA double-strand breaks (DSB). Coupling this technique, with RNA sequencing, the interaction of gene expression and accumulation of DSBs can be studied. The RNA-BLISS data anal

Certain retinal diseases that result in partial or complete visual loss due to the death of photoreceptor cells. These diseases can affect all ages, accounting for a significant fraction of blindness among younger adults in the developed world. Currently, no effective cure for these diseases exists. As they kill photoreceptors but leave the remaining retina and visual pathways comparatively intact

Cell death is an important field of biology that is linked to many other topics in medicine and biology. One of the methods to investigate cell death is through high content screening (HCS) which makes use of robotic microscopy. By this technology, cell death associated organelle membrane permeabilisation and the localisation of certain dyes can be visualised and elucidate a substantial amount of

Our oceans are filling up with plastic waste and this fact became the main inspiration for this project. I think it is important that us humans question our consumption and usage of plastic. A way to diminish the amount of plastics ending up in the ocean and nature is through a change in our behaviour and our habits. A lot of the plastics come from using single-use plastics and throwing it away. O

As the clock ticks on our opportunity to limit catastrophic climate change, mitigation efforts are becoming increasingly essential, especially amongst countries with high current or historic emissions. However, these mitigation attempts are not a guaranteed success, especially when the system within which they operate is not understood due to unacknowledged bias in quantitative data. As such, wick

The South Korean boycott movement of Japan that emerged over the summer of 2019 represents a drastic decline in Japan-South Korea relations. This thesis focused on how the boycott movement was framed in the five big national Japanese newspapers over a 50-day period in August and September 2019 in order to understand how the Japanese press constructs South Korean identity vis-àvis Japan. Drawing on

The main purpose of this was to examine the current Chinese satirical/political cartoons by studying anti-corruption cartoons. Also, to answer the question from an online discussion about “whether there are satirical cartoons (讽刺漫画) in China today”. The study follows the concept of political cartoons as a medium of politics and society. The information and the hidden meaning of the cartoons are ex

Japanese labor unions have the last many decades experienced diminishing union density and loss of political power. In contrast, the group of workers who have part-time or limited contracts, so-called non-regular workers, has simultaneously grown. Meanwhile, Japanese LGBTQ people are overrepresented within non-regular work, the same workers who often cannot join unions, due to a union culture of m

The SDGs provide a global policy framework for regulatory actions at national, regional and international levels. However, when it comes to how to locally implement these goals it is important to understand the context of the local reality. This paper has two objectives. It seeks to critically analyse how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) goals are framed by civil society organizations (CSO

Since 2004 when mechanical exfoliation was first utilised to produce single layered samples of graphite, 2D materials have gained interest in the scientific community. With the prerequisite that the initial bulk material has a layered structure, these 2D materials have created an opportunity to examine materials on a very small scale as well as opening the possibility of creating smaller electrica

Several academics, geographical economists and policy makers have sought to investigate the interplay between business clusters and tourism development. This dynamic is significant in emerging nations and less developed rural areas where tourism emergence may affect economic growth, society and environment. While previous studies tend to investigate well established tourism destinations, few have

Microalgae belong to the group of the oldest microorganisms that can grow in both fresh and marine water. Microalgal biomass is a rich source of vitamins, lipids, pigments and essential amino acids. Microalgal biomass can be used without cracking and fractionation or it can be cracked, fractionated and purified to get particular components like vitamins, pigments, omega-3 oils and proteins. But du

This thesis investigates whether freely available, coarse-resolution, Passive Microwave Remote Sensing (PMRS) data (37 GHz) can be effectively used for early warning systems for floods in Malawi. The Shire River Basin in Chikwawa and the smaller-scale North Rukuru River Basin in Karonga were studied using two alternative, ratio-based satellite indices that make use of the signal difference between

If there is suspicion of a crime in the event of a car fire, a legal assessment of the incident is made by an expert within the field. This assessment is a type of risk analysis where the assessment is based on the absence of any fire departments efforts. The assessment can be used as written evidence at a trial and thus form the basis for a decision in court. It is therefore important that these

This paper reports the results of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study that tested predictions on changes in visual word perception. The neural correlates of visual word perception were examined twice over the course of three months. During this interval a group of interpreter students engaged in intense language learning, while a control group completed regular university-level cl

Social anti-individualists suggest that the social environment enters into the individuation of psychological contents. This is defended by the now-famous arthritis thought experiment. Nevertheless, counterarguments have been proposed that aim to undermine the thought experiment. We identify two intuitions that underlie the thought experiment and evaluate five counterarguments in relation to these