Wolverhampton Intellectual Repository and E-Theses
WIRE is the open access repository for research publications and outputs by researchers based at the University of Wolverhampton.
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Recent Submissions
Item Critical review on the sustainability of metal additive manufacturing: environmental and economic perspectives(Scilight Press Pty Ltd, 2025-07-15)Manufacturing is an important pillar of socio-economic development, but it has a large carbon footprint and causes serious damage to the ecosystem. There is significant pressure on the manufacturing sector to embrace eco-friendly manufacturing technologies to reduce its environmental burden. Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM) is a rapidly evolving field with promising prospects to balance the economic and ecological concerns. Recently, manufacturing businesses started to examine MAM as a potential route to strengthen their eco-footprint and improve sustainability performance. The shift from Conventional Manufacturing (CM) processes to MAM requires significant capital investment, staff training, and possibly changing the business model. This may lead to hesitancy among enterprises to take on such risks without guaranteeing the sustainability benefits of MAM. This paper conducts a comprehensive review and critical evaluation of the environmental and economic impacts of MAM. The paper draws guidelines on the best production contexts that enable the fulfilment of environmental goals and maintain economic viability through MAM technologies. In general, Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) techniques are considered environmentally friendly and cost-effective for small-scale production of lightweight small parts with complex shapes and relatively high resolution. In contrast, Direct Energy Deposition (DED) processes are valuable for repairing and manufacturing large-scale parts that have medium shape complexity and relatively low resolution.Item Self-attentive generative adversarial network-based authorship attribution in historical texts(University of Wolverhampton, 2025)Authorship Attribution is the task of identifying the author of an unknown text. Given the large number of disputed texts and widespread use of pen names in humanities, especially in historical and literary texts, this study aims to follow a deep-learning-based approach to perform authorship attribution in historical texts. This thesis introduces a novel approach to authorship attribution in historical texts, addressing the complexities of authorship disguise and deception. By utilising deep learning, specifically a Self-Attentive Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), this research proposes a novel methodology – Reverse Authorship Attribution Technique (RAAT) – to identify and mitigate attempts to hide or mimic authorial style. When authors deliberately hide their identity, the RAAT method generates imposter documents to augment the disguised writing styles, enhancing the model’s ability to detect such hidden authorial styles. The core contribution of this research is the development of RAAT, which generates training datasets with deceptive and disguised text samples, significantly improving authorship attribution accuracy. To quantify and analyse authorial style, the study introduces StyleQuant, a unified and extensible representation framework for capturing authentic and obfuscated authorial styles, including those produced through disguise or deception, as generated via RAAT. The results demonstrate that RAAT, in combination with self-attentive GANs and StyleQuant, significantly improves authorship attribution models, making them remarkably robust towards such obfuscation attempts. The experimental results show that the proposed methods achieve or are close to the state-of-the-art performance on the Project Gutenberg corpus, spanning from the 15th to the 19th-century literary works. The evaluation metrics, including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score, demonstrate the effectiveness of RAAT in identifying true authorship, even in the presence of concealed impostor writing styles. In some experiments, the explicitly generated impostor document quality has been evaluated with similarity comparisons with the original text using metrics such as ROUGE-1, Jaccard Similarity, Overlap Coefficient, and Cosine Similarity. This research contributes to the authorship attribution by its practical relevance within the digital humanities domain, particularly for analysing historical literary texts. The proposed methods are evaluated using curated datasets from the Project Gutenberg corpus, covering works dated between the 15th and 19th centuries, showcasing their applicability to real-world textual analysis. Overall, the thesis establishes a robust framework for identifying true authorship in historical documents and offers a foundation for future studies exploring broader applications of computational authorship attribution in literary scholarship.Item In vitro investigation of the anticancer activity and molecular mechanisms of action of albumin nano-encapsulated copper/zinc diethyldithiocarbamate in human pancreatic cancer cells(University of Wolverhampton, 2025)Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains one of the deadliest cancers, with a 5-year survival rate of 12%, and is projected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality by 2030. Chemotherapy remains the main treatment option but offers limited benefits due to toxicity and chemoresistance, underscoring the need for novel, effective therapies. Disulfiram (DSF), an FDA-approved anti-alcoholism drug, has demonstrated potent anticancer activity when chelated with Cu²⁺ or Zn²⁺ ions to form copper diethyldithiocarbamate (Cu(DDC)₂) or zinc diethyldithiocarbamate (Zn(DDC)₂). However, the clinical anticancer application of DSF is hindered by a short plasma half-life (<4 minutes) and bioavailability challenges from separate Cu/Zn supplementation. To address these limitations, we developed albumin-based nanoparticles (Alb-CuDDC and Alb-ZnDDC) that encapsulate Cu(DDC)₂ or Zn(DDC)₂ to achieve stable, soluble, and long-circulating formulations. Alb-CuDDC and Alb-ZnDDC nanoparticles exhibited potent anticancer efficacy in PDAC patient-derived cultures from primary, circulating and metastatic sites, under normoxic, hypoxic and spheroid conditions. The albumin formulations showed effective cytotoxicity across a panel of PDAC cells and had similar IC₅₀ values to free drug (Alb-CuDDC: 193 ± 11 nM vs Free Cu(DDC)2: 210 ± 76 nM and Alb- ZnDDC: 7076 ± 612 vs Free Zn(DDC)2: 7122 ± 487 nM). Furthermore, Alb-CuDDC and Alb-ZnDDC synergistically enhanced the activity of gemcitabine and paclitaxel. To evaluate the potential for acquired resistance, long-term exposure studies were conducted in PANC1 and MDA-MB231 cells. Resistance emerged to Alb-ZnDDC but not to Alb-CuDDC or free DSF + Cu. The resistant cell lines (PANC1ZR6 and MDAMB231ZR7) represent a significant finding, being the first report of such resistance in the context of dithiocarbamate-based agents. Transcriptomic analysis led to the identification of a putative resistance mechanism which implicated cysteine protease inhibitor, CST1, as a mediator of Alb-ZnDDC resistance. This study highlights Alb-CuDDC and Alb-ZnDDC as promising nanotherapeutics for PDAC. However, the resistance profile of Alb-ZnDDC underscores the superior therapeutic potential of Alb-CuDDC. Moreover, the identification of CST1 provides insight into resistance mechanisms and highlights potential targets for overcoming similar resistance pathways.Item Road safety of micro-mobility and vulnerable road users: Insights and issues from a world café(Taylor & Francis, 2025-07-01)Road traffic incidents are responsible for the loss of ∼1.19 million lives annually and the 50 million people who sustain injuries. Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) account for a significant portion of these data, constituting 70% in Europe and 50% in the United Kingdom (UK). Addressing these alarming fatality rates requires initiatives such as the European Union’s Vision Zero, which aims at eradicating road collision fatalities and serving as a model for global action. Similarly, the UK is committed to realizing its transport vision 2050, emphasizing seamless, safe, net-zero, interconnected, cost-effective, accessible, and dependable transportation for all. Effective implementation of appropriate safety interventions hinges on understanding the challenges VRUs face. While previous studies have delved into challenges encountered by specific VRU groups, this research fills a gap by comprehensively examining difficulties encountered by various VRUs. Therefore, this study aims to adopt a co-creation process to expose insights and issues shared by VRUs across Oxfordshire, UK, and to identify collective solutions that could improve road safety. The study adopted a world café method, which fosters an environment where diverse perspectives and ideas are explored through open-ended conversations. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data identified critical areas for intervention: infrastructure, behavior, technology, environment, law enforcement, and awareness. Apart from the interventions, the research underscores the need for end-user involvement in mobility infrastructure planning, as safety requirements vary among VRU categories, emphasizing the urgency of adopting a human-centric design approach to reduce road injuries and fatalities and ensure equal accessibility and safety for all.Item Bibliometric analysis of the thematic, structural, and social aspects of research in dance medicine and dance science from 2007 to 2024(SAGE, 2025-12-31)Introduction Scientific peer-reviewed journals are crucial for disseminating scholarly information. Bibliometrics, the application of statistical methods to analyze academic literature, offers a quantitative approach to evaluate research output, assess quality, and examine patterns in publication, authorship, and thematic trends. This study employed bibliometric analysis to comprehensively examine the landscape of Dance Medicine and Science (DMS) research, including its quality, demographic characteristics, and thematic evolution. This study aimed to fill this gap by analyzing the dissemination of DMS research output between 2007-2024 using bibliometric indicators. We sought to answer key questions about the field's annual scientific production, publication venues, journal comparisons, geographical distribution of authors, cross-institutional and international collaborations, gender parity in authorship, and thematic trends in current DMS research. Methods: Using the Web of Science Core Collection© Digital library, we filtered articles using dance-related search terms: "dance", "science", "medicine", and "education". From this search, we extracted 2,750 peer-reviewed articles to construct our analyses. We utilized visualisation of similarity (VOS) software as well as descriptive statistics to tabularise, visualize, and explore bibliometric maps of science and medical articles related to dance. Results: The Journal of Dance Medicine & Science (JDMS) led in quantity of publications with over 304 articles in the seventeen-year period. Most DMS research is produced by authors in North America, Europe, and Australia, primarily examining Western dance styles. We observed a higher proportion of feminine names among first authors in DMS research, though further analysis is needed to understand overall gender distribution across all author positions. The field showed an annual growth rate average of 11.04% in publications. Our network analysis revealed distinct clusters of research themes, highlighting the multidisciplinary nature of DMS. Conclusions: Our analysis revealed significant growth in DMS research over the studied period. The Journal of Dance Medicine & Science emerged as the leading publication venue. Geographically, we found a concentration of research output from North America, Europe, and Australia, highlighting potential areas for expanding international collaboration. Gender distribution among authors was nearly balanced, with a slight majority of female first authors. Thematic analysis identified three primary research clusters: injury prevention, performance enhancement, and dance education, providing insight into the field's current focus areas. These findings offer a comprehensive overview of the DMS field, illustrating its evolution, key contributors, and emerging research themes, while also identifying areas for future development and collaboration.
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