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Necrotising myositis is a rare but devastating consequence of invasive group A streptococcal infection. Early presentation could be non-specific, and clinicians might have a low index of clinical suspicion due to the rarity of cases. Prompt recognition and early aggressive surgical management are the cornerstones of treatment to reduce morbidity and mortality. We report the case of a child aged 5 years with necrotising myositis and highlight the successes and potential pitfalls in the treatment of this life-threatening condition.

In these essays, I explore the role of microeconomic heterogeneity on understanding macroeconomic dynamics. Specifically, I seek to examine how shareholder preference distributions shape corporate firm behavior, and how that corporate investment behavior trickles up to aggregate outcomes. In the first chapter, I address the question, “Does household wealth and income inequality influence the decision-making of corporate firms?”. I study a DSGE model featuring aggregate risk, incomplete markets, households that vary in labor income and wealth, and shareholder-owned firms. With household heterogeneity and incomplete markets, shareholder value is not well defined. I resolve this classic problem with a mutual fund that holds the production firms and a private equity sector that forces producers to maximize their net market value (or cum-dividend share price). These intermediaries identify the equilibrium market stochastic discount factor (SDF) as a function of the wealth distribution. My model features endogenous stock market trade and a discount factor derived from equilibrium outcomes, which is unique in this class of models. I use this model to study the interaction between firm behavior and different types of household inequality. I find the increase in household earnings risk observed from 1970 to 2010 causes firms to accumulate more capital, lowering consumption volatility, and explaining 55 percent of the observed decline in dividend yields. I then examine the role of wealth inequality through unanticipated redistribution shocks. More inequality leads to higher investment, wages, and output, though at a significant welfare cost to poor households.In the second chapter, I examine the role of common ownership in shaping aggregate outcomes in a riskless environment. Recent research in Industrial Organization and Finance suggests that shareholders who own large stakes in competing firms can cause those firms to compete less vigorously with each other. This concept, referred to as “common ownership,” suggests that firms maximize weighted portfolio value rather than maximizing individual profit. I embed this theory into a dynamic model to demonstrate how observed empirical increases in ownership concentration can partially explain the secular decrease in payments to labor as a share of output. Increases in common shareholding decrease incentives to invest, increase markups, increase profits, and reduce payments to factors of production. While this is a simplified toy model, it suggests that a well calibrated full model could serve as a useful laboratory for policy experiments related to corporate ownership.In the final chapter, I expand the previous exogenous common ownership model along two fronts. The first extension is switching to a multi-sector final goods aggregation method that imposes more realistic markup behavior as common ownership increases. The second extension involves endogenizing the common ownership parameter. This sets the stage for future research that can allow for examining a transition path between different shareholding states. My initial results suggest that common ownership increases output by nearly 10% and aggregate consumption by 7% due to the increasing return to capital associated with higher markups.

A statistically designed slow speed orthogonal machining experiment was conducted to compare the effects of various metal-working gases upon the cutting process. Several metals with different crystalline structures and materials conditions were utilized (face centered cubic aluminum alloy 6061 with three tempers (T0, T4 and T6), close packed hexagonal AZ31B at two tempers (H0 and H24), and body centered cubic steel alloy 4130 at three levels of hardness (22, 32, and 42 HRC). A single tool material of High-Speed Steel (HSS) was utilized with three different tool rake angles (α) of 25°, 30° and 35°. The cutting fluids utilized were air, argon, and nitrogen. Classic Merchant Force Diagram (MFD) data was collected using a Kistler force Dynamometer and processed using LabVIEW software. The tools were pushed through the 2” long x 0.125” thick piece of stock material at two different depths of 0.004 inches and 0.008 inches. After 10 inches of cut, each tool was studied under a Keyence 3-D microscope in order to quantify the tool wear. High speed, high magnification video was taken of each cut to study all the visible shear angles. The video analysis was completed using KINOVEA video analysis software. The force data was then used to explore different orthogonal metal working models to validate against literature. Statistical analysis was utilized to determine the relationships between visual shear angles and cutting environment. Analysis was made between tool wear and cutting atmosphere.

Significant changes to seasonal ice cover, stratification, and warming are altering the oceanic boundaries between Polar and Atlantic Water masses. The resultant increased mixing and intrusion of Atlantic Waters into the Arctic region is resulting in novel competition between extant microbial communities that drive biogeochemical cycles and underpin the food-web in these regions. However, it remains unclear how extant microbial communities will respond to these new opportunities and challenges. This work aims to provide an insight into how the bacterial and microbial eukaryotic communities present across a transect in the Norwegian Sea may be impacted by predicted future environmental change to the Arctic region through the use of Next Generation Sequencing methodologies. It is revealed that the microbial communities of the region are being partitioned into distinct assemblages that correlate with gradients of temperature and salinity. Analysis of the microbial communities from locations influenced by both Polar and Atlantic waters is used to indicate which components of the microbial communities will be selected for as these waters mix. The results of these analyses suggests the potential for the displacement of bacterial communities found at locations determined to be highly influenced by Polar Water, by bacterial communities from locations found to be primarily influenced by Atlantic Waters. This response appears consistent for all abundance fractions and constituent taxonomic groups within the bacterial community. Analysis of the eukaryotic community suggests a more complex response whereby abundant eukaryotic cold water associated species could dominate over temperate associated species, and different eukaryotic lineages display contrasting responses. Metatranscriptomes are generated for the eukaryotic community to determine the functional differences between the regional communities. Partitioning was observed which matched the gradient of Polar Water influence implying the presence of distinct genetic profiles between regional communities. Each station is observed to feature different profiles of gene expression for genes related to key ecosystem process including primary production, nutrient cycling, biogeochemical cycles, the carbon cycle and metabolic processes. However, despite some differences in the expression of functional profiles, functionality is found to be largely conserved across regional communities, suggesting increase Atlantic Water influence within the sampled region may not result in large perturbations to ecosystem functionality, despite potential changes to community composition. This study has significant implications for the vulnerability of polar associated community assemblages, which may become displaced under predicted increases of Atlantic mixing and warming within the Arctic region.

The main part of this thesis, Chapter 4, contains results on the commutant of a semigroup of operators defined on the Hardy Space of the disk where the operators have hyperbolic non-automorphic symbols. In particular, we show in Chapter 5 that the commutant of the semigroup of operators is in one-to-one correspondence with a Banach albegra of bounded analytic functions on an open half-plane. This algebra of functions is a subalgebra of the standard Newton space. Chapter 4 extends previous work done on maps with interior fixed point to the case of the symbol of the composition operator having a boundary fixed point.

This study advances identity theory, a prominent sociological social psychological theory, by investigating how the moral identity, moral behavior, and emotions operate in different social contexts, specifically when the moral identity is activated (or not activated) and when individuals are alone or in different types of groups. This extends identity theory by including key processes in social identity theory (identity activation and group membership) which have not been examined in the existing literature concerning the control systems approach to identity. A survey and experiment are administered to examine how the moral identity process operates for individuals in different social contexts. The survey measures individuals' moral identities. In the experiment, subjects are placed in a situation where they have an opportunity to behave immorally to gain an advantage over others. Results show that both the moral identity and group membership predict moral behavior in a situation. Direct activation of the moral identity is not required for it to influence moral behavior, which supports the moral identity as a principle-level identity. Implications of the study findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.

This research analyzed how class, \"race'\", and religion are used to resist social differentiation in an African American religious community in Southern California. The methodology for this research is participant-observer and the use of a questionnaire. The research findings indicate that the community's religious ethics, social solidarity and an assimilative collective-consciousness are integral to their social advancement within an oppressive society.

Supplementation with CHO during exercise is widely practised and is known to improve capacity and performance of endurance events. Although there is controversy as to whether supplementation spares muscle glycogen, it is likely that in most situations CHO provides additional energy to prolong the exercise. However, there are conditions, such as high intensity exercise or exercise in the heart, where CHO is reported to be beneficial yet energy supply is not obviously limiting. The purpose of the work described here was to determine whether these observations could be substantial and, if so, what be the mechanism of CHO action. Feeding CHO during prolonged, moderate intensity exercise (60% O2max) in the heat (35°C, 30% RH) was shown to improve exercise capacity by ~14%. The effect was independent of sweetness and was attributed to an increased tolerance of the subjects to a rising core temperature, which may have been related to increased glucose availability and utilisation. Surprisingly, high intensity exercise capacity (75% O2max) at 35°C was also improved with oral supplementation of CHO. However, delivery of CHO by intravenous infusion had no effect on ~1 h time-trial performance at 18°C, contrary to previous reports using oral ingestion. This was despite exogenous glucose oxidation contributing ~20% to total CHO oxidation during the latter stages of the CHO time-trial. The results suggested that CHO supplementation might work by stimulating receptors in the mouth or GI tract. In the final study it was shown that ~1 h time-trial performance at 18°C can be improved by the simple swilling of a non-sweet CHO solution around the mouth. It is concluded that CHO supplementation during exercise contributes to improved exercise performance and capacity through a combination of peripheral and central modulations.