http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/ The University of Queensland en Fez http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:276411 Naming deficits are commonly experienced post-stroke and, given their high incidence and detrimental consequences, these impairments are frequently targeted in the treatment of aphasia. Evidence suggests that certain techniques can facilitate naming in aphasia, however, the neural mechanisms underpinning training-induced success remain unclear. This thesis aimed to advance our understanding of the mechanisms responsible for naming facilitation in the unimpaired brain and, importantly, to elucidate the neurocognitive substrates of naming facilitation in aphasia. Further, it aimed to determine whether such effects differ based on the type and timing of prior facilitation. The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies forming part of this thesis achieved these aims by utilizing two targeted language tasks that have been demonstrated to be effective facilitation techniques in individuals with aphasia. The level of processing required (either at the semantic or phonological level) in each language task was deliberately manipulated and allowed investigation of the potential locus of any positive effects upon subsequent naming performance. By manipulating the timing of prior facilitation using these tasks, either over the short-term (a period of minutes) or the long-term (a period of several days), the studies were also able to investigate the longevity of any facilitation effects. To our knowledge, no other neuroimaging studies have utilized this design to explore the underlying mechanisms involved in successful overt picture naming following facilitation, with targeted tasks over different timeframes, in individuals with aphasia and healthy controls. The thesis is comprised of four studies: semantic and phonological facilitation studies in both healthy individuals and in aphasia. The semantic studies investigated the behavioural and neurocognitive effects of naming facilitation using a semantic task in the absence of the phonological word form, and the time course of such effects. One experiment using this facilitation technique was conducted upon healthy controls and a second experiment, using exactly the same technique, was conducted upon individuals with aphasia. Although both subject groups benefited behaviourally from facilitation with a semantic task, different patterns of neural activation were evident. Modulation of activity was identified within regions associated with lexical-semantic processing, over the long-term for controls and over both the long- and the short-term for participants with aphasia. However, short-term facilitatory effects for control participants were found in regions linked to episodic memory and object recognition mechanisms. The phonological studies explored the effects of naming facilitation from a phonologically-based auditory repetition task administered in the presence of a picture. An experiment using this technique was conducted with healthy controls and a separate experiment with individuals with aphasia. Greater positive behavioural effects were shown in this phonological study than in the semantic study, for both controls and participants with aphasia. Additionally, the neuroimaging results suggested that the facilitatory effects arising from a phonological task were less selective, engaging regions associated with phonological and semantic processing in both controls and individuals with aphasia. For both subject groups these effects were evident over the long- and the short-term, with the short-term effects for control participants contributed to by modulation of activity in an area known to be involved in phonological processing. In summary, both techniques were effective in facilitating subsequent picture naming in controls and participants with aphasia to varying degrees. Taken together, the facilitation effects of a semantic verification task appeared to be somewhat selective in engaging regions associated with more efficient lexical-semantic processing during subsequent naming. On the other hand, an auditory repetition task was slightly more effective and less selective, engaging regions linked to both semantic and phonological processing, consistent with a strengthening of the connections between the two levels of processing. Although no distinct patterns emerged across individuals with aphasia regarding broader mechanisms of recovery, the results did provide evidence that right hemisphere mechanisms may be supportive of naming facilitation rather than maladaptive, and highlighted the involvement of regions not traditionally associated with language processing, particularly the cerebellum. Together, these experiments suggest that distinct neurocognitive mechanisms underlie the facilitation of naming by semantic and phonological tasks in both subject groups. An advance in our understanding of these mechanisms will inform the therapeutic facilitation of naming in the recovery of word production abilities following neurological injury. Therefore, these findings may aid the development of theoretically driven treatment selection methods and ultimately result in the provision of more targeted therapy for individuals with aphasia. 2012-06-27T00:00:00Z Shiree Heath http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:194264 West Nile Virus (WNV) has emerged as a major cause of viral encephalitis. Since its outbreak in the United States 27,000 people have presented with clinical WNV disease resulting in 1074 fatalities. WNV causes a range of disease from mild febrile illnesses to severe and fatal encephalitis. To date, there are currently no therapeutic agents or vaccines available to treat WNV infection in humans. In order to address this, a better understanding of the mechanisms responsible for viral neuroinvasion and neuropathology are required. Using a range of in vitro and in vivo studies, we have investigated the routes by which WNV enters the CNS. Virus replication was observed in the brain microvascular endothelial cells in mice that succumbed to WNV encephalitis. Moreover, we demonstrated that infection of a polarized HBMEC with WNV induced apoptosis. Microarray analysis of WNV-infected HBMEC’s revealed that WNV elicited the expression of cytokines that have been shown to contribute to permeablization of the BBB. These findings suggest that WNV can enter the CNS through the BBB via multiple mechanisms. Real-time RT-PCR performed on WNVinfected HBMECs identified two host genes involved in the host cellular anti-oxidant response that were differentially regulated during viral infection. Furthermore, the addition of the antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine, restored cell viability and decreased viral replication, indicating that oxidative stress contributes to WNV-induced pathogenesis. The current state of knowledge regarding the pathogenesis of WNV encephalitis is based on studies that have defined the role of systemic immune responses to WNV. Limited investigations have been undertaken to determine the contribution of brain cells in the defence, or damage to the brain once WNV has gained access to the CNS. Real-time RT-PCR results in conjunction with in vivo CBA assay data, suggested several candidate host genes that could contribute to the pathogenesis of WNV. Thus, it is necessary to further define the mechanisms of WNV induced pathogenesis as this will aid in the development of targeted strategies to prevent neurological infection and mitigate neurological diseases in affected individuals. 2010-01-30T00:00:00Z Rebecca Biron http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:106367 2007-08-24T00:00:00Z Redden, Guy Francis http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:291271 2013-02-12T12:27:27Z Nguyen, Tai Minh http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158675 The nineteenth century has long been a source of fascination for Australian writers and historians as the origins of white settlement are continuously disentangled. As rapid changes in technology, economic restructuring and political innovations in the last thirty years have made the questions of values and future direction more urgent, re-evaluations of the past, focused by the Bicentennial of white settlement in 1988, have played a role in this quest. This thesis will discuss the ways in which certain aspects of the nineteenth century are represented in the recent Australian imaginary and what these representations imply about contemporary Australian culture. It will become clear that in recent times, Australian historical disciplines have been enriched by a proliferation of voices and methods. However, most historical novelists and historians do not paint the voices unmediated – there is a system of ethics in most interpretative frameworks. This thesis will analyse fictional representations in terms of the ethical debates informing both modern literature and historiography. There will be three subject areas: “Depictions of Britain”, “Convictism” and “Relations with Aborigines.” The first chapter will examine various representations of nineteenth-century Britain in recent Australian literature. This will include examinations of the relevant sections in Barbara Hanrahan’s The Albatross Muff (1977), Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1988), Michael Noonan’s Magwitch (1982), Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997), David Malouf’s The Conversations at Curlow Creek (1996) and Bryce Courtenay’s The Potato Factory (1995). The prison settlements of colonial Australia have been an equally popular subject over the period under discussion. Therefore, the second chapter will examine Jessica Anderson’s The Commandant (1975), Come Danger, Come Darkness (1978) by Ruth Park, Rodney Hall’s The Second Bridegroom (1991), Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish (2001) by Richard Flanagan, Christopher Koch’s Out of Ireland (1999) and Thomas Keneally’s novel The Playmaker (1987). As interjections to these accounts will be the historical arguments of Robert Hughes, Michael Roe, Stephen Nicholas, Ian Duffield and Lloyd L. Robson. In the third chapter, recent representations of social and personal relations between Aborigines and white settlers will be examined. The chapter will focus upon Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves (1976), Liam Davison’s The White Woman (1994), Grace Bartram’s Darker Grows the Valley (1981), Jack Davis’s Kullark (1984), Rodney Hall’s The Second Bridegroom (1991), David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon (1993) and Thomas Keneally’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972). Representations of violent relations will also be examined. There are copious fictional accounts of settlers slaughtering Aboriginal people. Among others, the thesis will consider Mudrooroo’s Dr Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (1983), Mark Svendsen’s Poison Under Their Lips (2001), Carmel Bird’s Cape Grimm (2004), Queen Trucanini by Nancy Cato and Vivienne Rae Ellis (1976), Jack Davis’s Kullark (1984), Eric Willmot’s Pemulwuy: The Rainbow Warrior (1987), Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2005), Robert Drewe’s The Savage Crows (1976), Thea Astley’s A Kindness Cup (1975) and Sam Watson’s The Kadaitcha Sung (1990). Parallel to these studies will be discussions of the historical works of Henry Reynolds, Geoffrey Blainey, Bain Attwood, Keith Windschuttle and Lyndall Ryan. 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Duthie, Fiona http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:273250 Nitridation of Si has been a fundamental processing for many solid thin film applications. In recent decades, significant efforts have been devoted to fabricate SiN thin films as SiN has been considered as the primary candidates for the microelectronics mechanical system (MEMS) or even nanoelectronics mechanical system (NEMS). There are a number of pathways to fabricate SiN and the quality of the SiN varies with the different techniques. Among these fabrication techniques, nitridation of Si is a commonly used technique for generating the nucleation sites for the further growth of SiN. Although the nitridation of Si has been widely used, the fundamental mechanism of the nitridation evolution is unclear. In this MPhil project, nitridation of silicon wafers by a rapid thermal heating process with both nitrogen and ammonia as precursors was investigated by transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, and ellipsometry analyses. It was found that, under ammonia gas, the growth of nitride film was limited to 0.5 nm, whilst under the nitrogen atmosphere, a nitride film of 5-10 nm could be formed at 1200°C. The limited growth in ammonia suggests formation of high-quality passivating layer. The significance of this project is to provide insight information of evolution of Si nitridation, which is scientifically important and technologically necessary. 2012-04-26T00:00:00Z Rene Chaustowski http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158696 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Marion, Guy http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158365 This thesis argues for the substantial place that the Northern Territory, as a site and as an idea, has had in mainstream Australian visual art in the twentieth century. It contends that its presence is the result of two coincident tropes: first, the perception of the Territory as the surviving remnant of Antipodal imagining and, second, its construct as the “essential Australia”. It will be argued that in the twentieth century, notions of the outback, came to reside in the Northern Territory alone, and that Australian artists sought out the Territory as the arena in which these notions might be tested and transformed. Based on the idea that the antipodal journey to the Australian continent has come to a close with the settlement of the Northern Territory by non-Indigenous people, this thesis looks at what Euro-Australian artists have discovered there. Their journeys did not issue in a significance that would galvanise easy identification. The land and its original inhabitants were deemed to defy the usual European ideas of acculturation, where human artifice provides signifiers of “civilisation”. This thesis will explore the configuration of the landscape as pristine - full of promise or foreboding - and the perception of the Indigenous people as alien and vulnerable. It will be shown that the apparent superficiality of acculturation in the outback also led to an interrogation by artists of notions of civilisation, so that human interaction rather than human artifice became its primary signifier. Fundamental to the focus on the Territory has been the trope of the “primitive”. The thesis will, in part, look at how primitivism and its definition have underpinned Australian art discourse, in relation to art produced in response to the Northern Territory by Euro-Australians. In particular, the thesis will look at the essential relationship between primitivism and modernism in the Territory context. It will also address the connection between loss and primitivism, ensuing from the notional conclusion of the journey of promise, and will canvass the attempts to ameliorate such loss. Cultural constructions such as those identifying the Territory as the “essential Australia” provide another context for the development of Australian visual art in the twentieth century, as it shifted from antique European tropes to those made in our own image. These new tropes, ostensibly arising from knowing the land and people, came to be characterised by cliché, especially spiritual cliché. However, in significant ways, visual artists who actually visited the Territory provided nuanced responses to these constructions without jettisoning entirely a desire for spiritual import. Indeed these journeys to the Northern Territory saw the revisiting of spiritual motivations in Australian art by some leading artists, coinciding with those discerned in modernism itself. Through analysing work in a range of modes created by leading Australian artists of European descent, the thesis traces the impact of the Northern Territory in the Euro-Australian imaginary, both as a site of spiritual aspiration and as an arena of social contract. The Northern Territory is identified with Aboriginality in a way that no other part of Australia is. Indeed it is argued here that in the twentieth century there was and still is a cleavage of the Northern Territory from the rest of Australia, as the latter came to be regarded as Europeanised space. This has made contemporary art by non-Indigenous Territorians invisible. As a result of the emergence of the Aboriginal art industry from the 1980s, and the decisions of some Euro-Australian artists to become familiar with the Territory over time, various forms of social contract have been enacted as the basis for art practice post-Cyclone Tracy. This has coincided with and complicated post-modernism’s challenge to mainstream Western art, which had, by the 1980s, reached Australia. The effects of post-modern plurality and “decentring” on the practice of these artists are also canvassed. This thesis concludes with the work of artists resident in the Territory who model a future for non-Indigenous art practice applicable in a broader context. 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Murray, Daena http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:215510 2010-09-03T00:00:00Z Vela, Petar. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:276890 2012-07-02T00:00:00Z Natalie Maree Cowley http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:284871 2012-11-14T00:00:00Z Ong, Shu Hwa http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:253557 2011-09-28T00:00:00Z Carroll, Peter John. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:218521 This thesis is a dialogue between John Dewey’s philosophy of education and Christian theology. The study employs Dewey’s educational work as a means of developing pedagogical strands inherent within Christian theology. By using Dewey’s pedagogical texts as a heuristic device, the research highlights the pedagogically-laden nature of theology. The research opens up new space for dialogue between Dewey Studies and Religious Studies. The research is primarily concerned with Dewey’s educational texts, particularly “Interest in Relation to Training of the Will,” “My Pedagogic Creed,” The School and Society, The Child and the Curriculum, Democracy and Education, and Experience and Education; Dewey’s works on religion are secondary to this study. The methodological approach includes hermeneutics, mutually critical correlation, and pragmatism. Following the lead of Dewey scholar James Garrison, the study has three main parts: the seeds of experience and creation, the stem of knowledge and action, and the fruit of learning and revelation. Part 1 addresses the seeds, or starting point, of both education and theology. Experience is the starting point of Deweyan pedagogy, but given the amorphousness of this concept, “experience” is explored in terms of Dewey’s doctrine of interest, his emphasis on practical needs, and the naturalistic basis of learning. In the sections of theological dialogue, it is shown that Dewey’s concepts of experience are useful in establishing a doctrine of creation that is not eclipsed by the doctrine of redemption. Dewey also helps establish strong links between divine creation and human creativity (Chapter 3). Dewey’s ideas on experience are not as smoothly correlated with Friedrich Schleiermacher’s notion of religious experience, primarily because of Dewey’s naturalism (Chapter 4). Part 2, the stem, is dedicated to the relationship of knowledge to action. The Deweyan topics addressed here are Dewey’s attitude toward dualisms, the nature of educational method, Dewey’s notion of habit, and the school curriculum. In Chapter 5 the theological dialogue partners are a range of contemporary theologians who have attempted to rethink the role of practice, especially in relationship to doctrine. This discussion progresses into Chapter 6 where likenesses between Dewey’s curriculum and the Rule of Saint Benedict are established. Part 3 concentrates on the fruit of education. The Deweyan topics are the two-sided nature of learning (active/passive), the experiential continuum, and the reconstruction of experience. All these themes have a common concern for the recreation of existing experience into a blooming, fecund experience. In Chapter 7 the theological theme is revelation; in Chapter 8 the topic is Rowan Williams’ doctrine of revelation. In both chapters it is shown that viewing revelation as education emphasises human agency while allowing space for discontinuities in human experience. Broadly speaking, the intended readers can be divided into two categories. One group is theologians specialising in theological education (including Christian education, religious education, and inter-religious education), practical theology, and spiritual formation. The other group is Dewey scholars and other educational researchers interested in spirituality and religion. Through a correlation of theology and education, this study contributes to both fields of research and to dialogue between the fields. John Dewey has sometimes been characterised as anti-Christian. Occasionally this is due to Dewey’s rhetorical excesses towards theological straw-men; other times this is due to interpreters’ fixation on A Common Faith and their consequent failure to understand Dewey’s overall project. But, as this thesis shows, Dewey’s pedagogical work is a resource rich in theological potential. 2010-10-15T00:00:00Z Aaron J. Ghiloni http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158811 This project analyses the ways in which national representations inflect and account for discursive variations in the media texts of a specific global media event, in this instance, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Watching and reading media representations of the Olympic Games is the only way most of us experience this international sporting event. Sports scholars have analysed the media’s impact on the development and growth of sport worldwide and its representations of race and gender, but there has been little close analysis of sports commentary. The central questions posed by this dissertation are; what is the role of television commentators in creating the emotional tone and verbal narrative for the visual text, and how does the commentary convey information about national identity? What socio-linguistic tools are currently available to assist in such an analysis? Driven by these questions, this project extends and applies a development of Labovian theories of narrative structure, in particular the elements of orientation and evaluation. In Labov’s original schema orientation covered basic information such as answers to who, when, what, and where? Orientation in this study includes these, as well as two additional types; orientation to audience clauses maintain a shared ground of communicative participation, and empathetic orientation clauses encourage an empathetic response. For Labov evaluation provides crucial points of assessment throughout a narrative and points the receiver towards a preferred reading. This study extends the concept of evaluation to include evaluations about the emotional impact of the spectacle. These elements of emotive address are included in an overall category of emotionally oriented language, as a contrast to the technically oriented language of sportscasting, the descriptive 'calling the play' clauses. This dissertation thus develops a socio-linguistic tool to analyse the interplay between technical information and emotive narrative within the commentary. This tool is then applied to texts from the Australian based Seven Network and the United Kingdom’s British Broadcasting Corporation. The Opening and Closing Ceremony broadcasts are qualitatively analysed with reference to Dayan and Katz’s theories about media events, but also in terms of orientation and evaluation. Acting in the Labovian sense as an abstract, the Opening Ceremony ritually creates the narrative significance of the sporting contests which follow, while the coda or Closing Ceremony enacts ritual closure and a return to everyday life. The sporting contests book-ended by these two ceremonies, the middle complicating actions and results, are imbricated in the Olympic Movement’s philosophy of Olympism, enunciated during the Opening, and are represented from within specific media frames which work to create emotive identification with the nation. Two events are selected for comparative micro-analysis, the men’s 1500m swimming final and the men’s coxless pair rowing final, because in these events the two nations, Great Britain and Australia, battled for medals. A hypothesis that the Australian commentary was more emotional and nationalistic than the British commentary was tested, with the conclusions showing that assumptions about stereotypical British reserve were more likely to be explained by the lack of recent UK sporting success and media framing of these results, than a national disinclination for commentators to emote during live broadcasts. Within the overall analysis, however, specific modes of address, such as creating a phatic community, evaluations about the emotional impact of the spectacle, and technically oriented language did differ significantly between the two broadcast commentary teams, both in content and temporal placement. The excesses of the Australian broadcasts were in part explainable by the commercial Network context, but were also underpinned by the sustained achievements of Australian athletic-heroes on the global stage. An integral aspect of the commentary analysis is the personalisation and individualisation of the sporting hero within the event narrative. This thesis re-examines and extends notions of the sports hero within the context of national identity formation as supported by evidence collected from the texts. 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Mitchell, Andrea http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158347 There is much we do not understand about the relationship between linguistic expressions and their cognitive functions. The mechanisms that underlie aspectual coercion are no exception. Aspectual coercion describes the interpretive effects that follow the realignment of temporal semantic mismatches between the verb and an external modifier. It is assumed that the reinterpretation of sentential information is dependent upon an extra-linguistic process absent from surface level structure. Attempts to account for this effect have focused on the aspectual characteristics of the verb and how these features interact with temporal modifiers. Prominent among these is Jackendoff's enriched compositional hypothesis (1997, 2002, 2003) that posits a two-step coercion process consisting of the temporal alignment of sentence level semantic features, followed by the insertion of conceptual (CS) structure. Such insertion is a necessary prerequisite for the coercion process that distinguishes simple (e.g., The light shone for an hour/until dawn) and enriched composition (e.g., The light flashed for an hour/until dawn) respectively. This dissertation examines the effects of punctual verbs externally modified by the adverbials for and until. It is particularly concerned with the on-line coercion effects for sentences that contain point action verbs (e.g., flash) and an achievement sub-class known as change in a state of affairs (CSA) verbs (e.g., borrow). The processing mechanisms that underlie such verbs modified by for and until have particular implications for the enriched compositional hypothesis and the process known as iteration (i.e., The light flashed for an hour/until dawn). This approach predicts that the iterative sense (i.e., multiple flashes) that emerges within such contexts will be the same across both adverbial types. A set of empirical studies presented here shows results that are partially compatible with this assumption. The enriched composition hypothesis does not, however, address CSA verb/modifier sentence combinations (e.g., The student borrowed the book for a week/until it was recalled). The present results for those sentences showed significantly longer processing on CSA verb/for combinations. This finding is attributed to aspectual verb switching, triggered by the adverbial for and the following insertion of CS that reflects an extended process (e.g., The student borrowed the book to read for a week). The studies presented here identify theoretical and empirical gaps for the enriched compositional hypothesis in terms of what characterizes sentence-level coercion shifts. The on-line processing implications that emerge for aspectual coercion show that the temporal semantic features pertinent to a verb type [atelic/telic] [durative/punctual] [homogenous/ heterogeneous] and modifier type [durational/bounded] contribute to linguistic and cognitive sentence-level interpretation. The type of coercion appears to depend upon both the temporal semantic feature of the verb and durative modification. Point action verbs are temporally [punctual], [atelic] and [homogeneous]. Such verb types lack internal structure and so rely on the [bounded] [durational] features of for and until to trigger an iterative effect. Access to CS supplies this sense of repetition. CSA verbs in contrast are also temporally [punctual] and [atelic], but encode a [heterogeneous] feature that allows for internal change. In such cases the [durational] feature of for selects for a process reading. This selection is dependent upon the available [heterogeneous] feature that internally switches the verb from an achievement to an extended process (i.e., an accomplishment reading). The insertion of such a process is extra-linguistic and thus accessed via CS in a manner similar to iteration. This effect does not emerge with until (i.e., The student borrowed the book until it was recalled) due to its [bounded] feature that places an inherent end upon the verb and consequent overall sentence level interpretation (i.e., the subsequent return of the book). In sum, the present studies refine and extend upon the assumptions made by the enriched compositional hypothesis. The overall findings further support a common theoretical argument advocated in lexical semantics, namely that the internal structure of a verb contributes to linguistic and cognitive sentence-level functions. 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z DeVelle, Sacha Leigh http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:290511 2013-02-05T09:37:40Z Leishman, Shaneen Joy http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:217228 2010-09-27T00:00:00Z Cornelius, Kenneth D. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:171001 Interpretation is an implicit part of today’s programming; it has great power but is overused and has significant costs. For example, interpreters are typically significantly hard to understand and hard to reason about. The methodology of “Totally Functional Programming” (TFP) is a reasoned attempt to redress the problem of interpretation. It incorporates an awareness of the undesirability of interpretation with observations that definitions and a certain style of programming appear to offer alternatives to it. Application of TFP is expected to lead to a number of significant outcomes, theoretical as well as practical. Primary among these are novel programming languages to lessen or eliminate the use of interpretation in programming, leading to better-quality software. However, TFP contains a number of lacunae in its current formulation, which hinder development of these outcomes. Among others, formal semantics and type-systems for TFP languages are yet to be discovered, the means to reduce interpretation in programs is to be determined, and a detailed explication is needed of interpretation, definition, and the differences between the two. Most important of all however is the need to develop a complete understanding of the nature of interpretation. In this work, suitable type-systems for TFP languages are identified, and guidance given regarding the construction of appropriate formal semantics. Techniques, based around the ‘fold’ operator, are identified and developed for modifying programs so as to reduce the amount of interpretation they contain. Interpretation as a means of language-extension is also investigated. Finally, the nature of interpretation is considered. Numerous hypotheses relating to it considered in detail. Combining the results of those analyses with discoveries from elsewhere in this work leads to the proposal that interpretation is not, in fact, symbol-based computation, but is in fact something more fundamental: computation that varies with input. We discuss in detail various implications of this characterisation, including its practical application. An often more-useful property, ‘inherent interpretiveness’, is also motivated and discussed in depth. Overall, our inquiries act to give conceptual and theoretical foundations for practical TFP. 2009-03-20T00:00:00Z Colin Kemp http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:294463 2013-03-22T11:26:44Z Xiao, Tania http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222871 2010-11-29T16:26:12Z Hutt, James. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:278151 2012-07-27T00:00:00Z Yang, Kun http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:106089 2007-08-24T00:00:00Z Han, Chih-Lu. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:157891 The term Polabian Slavs is a generic name applied to the westernmost branch of the Western Slavs, now almost extinct. Those people are often referred to as Wends, but mainly in older historiography. In the Middle Ages they occupied the territory more or less corresponding to the former state of East Germany, the region enclosed by the Baltic Sea in the North, the Oder-Neisse rivers in the East, the Ore mountains in the South and the Elbe-Saale rivers in the West (see map 1). In Central Europe, with the exception of the Baltic Prussians and Lithuanians, some of the Polabian Slavs resisted Christianisation and remained stubbornly pagan until the middle of the twelfth century. In the course of history the Polabian Slavs came under increasing political pressure from the Franks and later from the Empire, in the period between the eighth and the twelfth centuries. From the north they were also hard pressed by the Danes and in some periods from the east by the growing strength in Poland of the Piast dynasty. By the end of the twelfth century most of the Polabian Slavs fell under German or Danish political control. Some of them in the central region, what is now the Land of Brandenburg, and the tribes in the South were fully incorporated into the Empire. Others, like the Obodrites and some of the Veleti in Western Pomerania, became part of the Empire as autonomous duchies ruled by the local princes, while the island of Rügen and the adjacent mainland territories, although they continued to be ruled by the Slavic dynasts, had to acknowledge Danish suzerainty. The whole territory, despite some areas being under the Danish crown, became subject to strong German political and cultural influence. Assimilation and German colonization facilitated the process of the Germanization of almost the entire area between the Saale-Elbe and Oder-Neisse rivers. Over the centuries the Polabian Slavs have almost entirely disappeared as a distinct people. However, the process is not fully completed even today, for a small Sorb minority still retains its distinct cultural identity. The modern Sorbs, numbering around 100,000 people are living today in eastern Germany in the region of Lusatia (Lausitz in German or £užica in Sorbian), mainly around Bautzen and Cottbus. Approximately 60,000 of them still speak a Slavonic language. Although this work does not deal directly with the Sorbs of Lusatia, it is dedicated to those surviving Polabian Slavs. [No abstract available - text taken from Introduction] 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Zaroff, Roman http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:213012 Intercellular communication is an essential aspect of multicellular life. In the animal kingdom, molecular signalling pathways fulfil this requirement and provide a conduit for information transfer between cells. The origins and ancestral conditions of these signalling pathways can be inferred via comparisons of their structure and deployment in living species. As sponges are one of the earliest branching metazoan phyla, investigations within this lineage provide an important outgroup to which the extensive data on bilaterian intercellular signalling pathways can be compared. Of the handful of signalling pathways that direct animal development, I focus on the Wnt, Notch, Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), and Hedgehog signalling mechanisms. To determine their origins, I employ a comparative genomics approach and annotate the incidence and domain architectures of core pathway components in the genomes of representative species across the Holozoa. From this analysis I infer that the Notch, Wnt, and TGF-β pathways are metazoan synapomorphies, whereas the Hedgehog pathway is restricted to the Eumetazoa sensu stricto. Of note, I identify pre-existing functional modules within these pathways that may have provided a foundation for their emergence in the metazoan lineage. The Notch signalling pathway is a key regulator of cell fate decisions during bilaterian development, but has been little studied in non-bilaterian organisms. I report that the genome of the emerging model demosponge Amphimedon queenslandica encodes orthologues of many canonical Notch signalling genes, and further, that these genes also possess many of the short functional motifs and domains that underwrite pathway functionality. Notably, Amphimedon possesses an expanded repertoire of Notch ligands and of Fringe glycosyltransferases. These additions indicate that significant modifications to the ancestral regulation and activity of the Notch pathway may have occurred in the demosponge lineage. To place this inventory of Amphimedon Notch signalling genes into an organismal context, I assay the spatial expression of the Amphimedon Notch receptor and five Delta ligands across a developmental series. I reveal that these genes are differentially expressed during embryogenesis and development of the Amphimedon parenchymella larva. In order to assess the significance of these expression patterns, it was necessary to undertake a descriptive study of Amphimedon developmental morphology. To this end, I sectioned developmental stages and stained them with haematoxylin and eosin. This enabled me to track the ontogeny of diverse cell types and infer the relative timing of morphogenetic events. Utilising this cytological information, the expression of Notch ligands can be linked to the development of the ciliated posterior pigment ring, the anterior pole cells and the intra-epithelial flask cells and globular cells. The cell-type specific expression of Notch ligands leads me to propose that Notch signalling is involved in the determination and differentiation of multiple cell lineages during Amphimedon development – a role that is comparable to the proposed ancestral function of this pathway in the Eumetazoa. Of note, many of the cells expressing Notch ligands in Amphimedon larvae have putative sensory functions. If these cells are directly related to the sensory cells of eumetazoans, this may indicate that Notch signalling has been active in sensory development since the dawn of the Metazoa. Notch signalling is also active in Amphimedon post-embryonic development – during larval settlement and metamorphosis. I demonstrate that Notch ligands are expressed in multiple domains in competent larvae, most notably in the anterior pole cells, which are the primary sites of contact between a larva and the benthos. Using a chemical inhibitor of the Notch pathway, I show that blocking Notch signalling significantly perturbs the ability of Amphimedon larvae to settle and undergo metamorphosis. These experiments suggest an additional role for the Notch pathway in regulating the critical transition between free-swimming larvae and benthic adults in Amphimedon. 2010-08-23T00:00:00Z Gemma Richards http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:269112 2012-03-06T11:26:03Z Sadler, D. Royce (David Royce) http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:233146 The aim in this thesis was to extend research on theory of mind (ToM) development in children with autism spectrum disorders (including high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome) through three key areas. First, the candidate sought to investigate the link between ToM and social skills in a novel manner. Second, the candidate sought to further investigate the link between ToM and language and to compare groups with high-functioning autism (HFA) versus Asperger syndrome (AS) in this respect. Specifically, the impact of vocabulary and grammar on ToM test performance in each diagnostic group was investigated. Third, the candidate sought to investigate whether impairments in ToM may be amenable to change. This was investigated via a training study designed to teach children with an ASD (who failed the false belief test at pretest) to understand beliefs via cartoon thought bubbles. A total of 118 children (41 with HFA, 44 with AS, three with Pervasive Developmental Disorder- Not Otherwise Specified, and 30 age-matched typically developing children) between the ages of four and 12 years were tested over four studies. In Study 1 the correlations between ToM and social skills on a newly developed scale (Peterson, Slaughter, & Paynter, 2007) as rated by teachers were investigated, while Study 2 used parent ratings. The links between ToM and language (grammar and vocabulary) were investigated in Study 3. Study 4 was a training study of ToM via thought bubbles, extending upon Wellman et al. (2002). Impairments in ToM were found in children with HFA across studies. Their false belief test performance was consistently significantly poorer than both typically developing children and children with AS. In contrast, children with AS demonstrated relatively spared ToM abilities (at least by an average age of eight). Indeed, they performed similarly on ToM tasks to their chronological and verbal mental age and general intellectual ability-matched typically developing peers. The relationship between ToM and social skills for each group was found to differ depending on the rater. Positive correlations were observed for the HFA group with teacher ratings, but not parent ratings, which were non-significant, consistent with earlier studies (e.g. Hughes, Soares-Boucaud, Hochmann, & Frith, 1997) using a different social skills measure. In contrast, positive correlations were observed for the AS group with parent ratings, but not teacher ratings, which were non-significant. Language, in particular grammar, appeared to be especially important for task success in children with AS. In contrast, a more general language factor appeared to be important for HFA. Training children with ASD in ToM using thought bubbles was significantly effective and showed some generalisation beyond the trained false belief task. Theoretical discussion of these findings, potential practical applications, and challenges for future research conclude this thesis. 2011-03-07T00:00:00Z Jessica Paynter http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:155162 2008-09-22T00:00:00Z Ms Liana Joseph http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158780 The memoir “The Other Country” and the essay “Inspiration is Power” examine i) contemporary experiences of autism and ii) the representation of autism disorder in scientific and autobiographical writing. “The Other Country” is a memoir of four years in the life of its author Michael Whelan, and his family, in the care of his son, Charlie. In February 1998, Charlie was diagnosed with autism, and in that moment Michael and his family’s lives changed. The memoir describes in four parts a four-year journey through a father’s experiences: Part 1, ‘Welcome to Holland’, the family’s feelings of fear, grief and dislocation following diagnosis; Part 2, ‘Look at Me’, the chaotic process of research and treatment, and intense early intervention programs; Part 3, ‘The Enchanted Cottage’, the slow process of recovery that the family went through; and Part 4, ‘The Long Way Home’, the transformation of Charlie, Michael and his family and notions of home and normalcy. The title, “The Other Country”, in this context refers to the largely invisible parallel society inhabited by anyone who lives outside the mainstream. The accompanying critical essay, “Inspiration is Power”, examines the influence of the discourses of biomedical science and parental pathology on the representation and understanding of autism. Specifically, among autism narratives, the medical voice has an overwhelming authority and power in characterizing autistic disorder and experience for the lay reader. This discourse contests the moral authority of parental autobiographical writing, which, by contrast, characterizes autism as a personalized invading “other” and thief of their child. Through a critique of specific aspects of identity, narrative, evidence and authority, the essay suggests a register of rhetorical moves that may be employed to influence, and consequently empower, the reader of autism narratives. 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Whelan, Michael http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:138912 2008-05-27T00:00:00Z Willans, Raymond Francis http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:285825 2012-11-19T00:00:00Z Williams, Benjamin James http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:215512 2010-09-03T00:00:00Z Woolfrey, James Leslie. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:107356 2007-08-24T00:00:00Z Hee Sheng Shi Fashu Sim http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:107103 2007-08-24T00:00:00Z Hughes, Carolyn Mary. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:106353 2007-08-24T00:00:00Z Thomson, Kirsteen Adele http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:106921 2007-08-24T00:00:00Z Litster, Annette Lorna http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:199830 This is a thesis about Lutherans and their schools in Australia. There have been Lutheran schools in Australia for more than 170 years. The first three schools were established in 1839. Currently there are eighty-three Lutheran schools with total enrolments of approximately 37 000 students. In the intervening period there have been two great waves of development. The first began with the first schools in 1839 and reached its climax at the end of the nineteenth century before the advent of state schools and the anti-German sentiment of the Great War caused a period of decline. The second wave, fuelled by government funding and some disillusionment with state schools, gathered its momentum in the last half of the twentieth century and is still in full flow. This thesis deals with the first wave, the eighty years of Lutheran schooling history from 1839 to 1919. It is an exercise in educational historiography and takes a biographical approach. According to its title it focuses on the lives and roles of the male leaders who dominated the church’s educational endeavours during this period. The subjects of the eight biographies are chosen to be representative of regions, eras and issues. They are: August Kavel, the founder of Australian Lutheranism and its schooling system; Daniel Fritzsche, the first Lutheran tertiary educator; Wilhelm Boehm, founder of the Hahndorf Academy in South Australia; Rudolph Ey, a Lutheran pastor and teacher in South Australia; Theodor Langebecker, a Queensland Lutheran pastor and educator; Carl Krichauff, a Lutheran teacher and journalist; Wilhelm Peters, the founder of Concordia College in Adelaide; Georg Leidig, the founder of Immanuel College in Adelaide. The main themes pertaining to Lutheran schooling which the thesis explores are: relations between church and state; relations between schools and the church; schools adjusting to mainstream educational realities; preservation of distinctive traits; regional contrasts; teacher formation and educational standards; American influences; German roots. As a thesis this history attempts to establish, by means of a number of biographies and the exploration of various themes, the answer to a basic question: what were the main events, issues, personalities and forces which impinged on Lutheran schooling in its first eighty years in Australia and how did they contribute to its unique character? 2010-03-18T00:00:00Z Richard Hauser http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158669 Art galleries have traditionally been seen as entertainment venues aimed at the elite. In an attempt to alter this perception, galleries are shifting their focus to become more responsive to visitor needs. Contemporary policies explicitly pursue more equal access and participation, and new strategies are being developed to make galleries more appealing to people who would not usually visit them. One such visitor-focused strategy that is increasingly being utilised is the staging of special events. Special events enable galleries to inspire and attract new visitors, as well as respond to changing visitor needs and expectations. With the increased use of special events however, it is important that galleries develop an awareness of how their visitors understand and respond to such events. To explore this issue, this study investigates visitors’ perceptions of special events in galleries and their motivations to attend such events. A qualitative approach is taken to facilitate the ability to illustrate, in visitors’ own words, the contemporary perceptions of, and motivations for attending special events at galleries. Intensive interviews and focus group interviews were conducted with visitors attending two different special events at two different galleries: The Nature Machine Summer Children’s Festival, a week long festival at the Queensland Art Gallery; and International Women’s Day at the National Gallery, an afternoon of fundraising lectures at the National Gallery of Australia. From the interviews, a set of categories were developed that represent the main motivations visitors have for attending special events at galleries. A set of categories were also developed to represent the perceptions visitors have of what defines a special event at a gallery, and how special events differ from a gallery’s day-to-day program. These findings are important because they can help galleries more fully understand both their visitors and their programs. This therefore enables the development of more relevant events, programs, marketing campaigns and audience-development strategies. By exploring visitor perceptions, this study augments the understanding of how the special events at galleries are changing people’s perceptions of galleries. The research into motivation is subsequently essential for understanding the attributes of special events that are important to stimulating visitation. 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Axelsen, Megan http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:272878 2012-04-19T00:00:00Z Taylor, Michael http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:273759 2012-05-08T00:00:00Z Long, Fei http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:192347 Peripheral mechanisms of endogenous pain control are significant. Increasing studies have clearly produced evidence for the clinical usefulness of opioids in peripheral analgesia. The immune system uses mechanisms of cell migration not only to fight pathogens but also to control pain within injured tissue. It has been demonstrated that peripheral inflammatory pain can be effectively controlled by an interaction of immune cell derived opioid peptides with opioid receptors on peripheral sensory nerve terminals. Animal and clinical studies have clearly shown that activation of peripheral opioid receptors with exogenous opioid agonists and endogenous opioid peptides are able to produce significant antinociception. Although studies on topical opioid application are promising, the goal remains to develop peripherally selective opioid compounds, suitable for oral and/or intravenous route of administration to improve clinical pain relief. The use of drug delivery and targeting may be the key to effective development of many novel and existing therapeutics to enable optimal therapeutic use of such molecules. Drug targeting using liposomes as carriers holds much promise, especially in reducing toxicity and targeting delivery to pathological sites of inflammation. Adhesion molecules such as the intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) is locally induced or enhanced in a multitude of clinical diseases where inflammation and immune cells are involved. In particular, ICAM-1 plays an important role in peripheral analgesia at both the endothelial and immune cell–neuronal level. This peripheral analgesic pathway has yet to be fully exploited in pharmaceutical formulation and clinical pain management. In this thesis, long circulating immunoliposomes incorporating ICAM-1 monoclonal antibodies were prepared to create a delivery system with the unique properties of binding to adhesion molecules that are increased only at the site of tissue injury with the intent for further use as drug carriers. Loperamide hydrochloride (loperamide HCl), a peripherally selective mu-opioid receptor (MOR) agonist, was encapsulated in the liposome formulation. Immunoliposomes were prepared using an optimised method for the coupling of low concentrations of antibody to liposomes, thereby preventing the loss of antibody through the derivatisation, extraction and activation process. This is especially suitable for limiting ligand conjugates that are isolated or synthesised in small quantities such as monoclonal antibodies. The optimised method has been demonstrated to provide versatile, reproducible and efficient conjugation, with high antibody conjugation efficiency and high drug entrapment efficiency. The ICAM-1 targeted immunoliposomes taken into in vitro and in vivo studies had a mean particle size of 296 nm +/- 6.8 nm and a mean loperamide HCl encapsulation efficiency of 3.981 +/- 0.078 mg/ml of liposome suspension. Targeting efficacy of the immunoliposomes was assessed on primary high endothelial venules (HEV) cells, which were isolated and cultured from rat lymph nodes. Specificity of binding and cellular uptake was assessed by fluorescence microplate spectroscopy on tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) activated and non-activated HEV cells at 4oC and 37oC. Results indicate that ICAM-1-mediated targeting of liposomes to ICAM-1 expressing cells in vitro is rapid and specific, with minimal cellular internalisation. The degree of anti-ICAM-1 immunoliposomes bound was significantly increased following pre-treatment of HEV cells with the inflammatory cytokine TNF-alpha. Negative control binding experiments resulted in low binding values. Pre-incubation with excess anti-ICAM-1 monoclonal antibodies significantly inhibited the binding of ICAM-1-targeted immunoliposomes to TNF-alpha activated HEV cells, further demonstrating the specific nature of the liposome-cell interaction. In addition, the liposome formulation was shown to be stable against leakage of encapsulated drug in both PBS and serum using in vitro dialysis. In vivo studies in rats with Freund’s Complete Adjuvant (FCA)-induced inflammation of the paw demonstrated significant and prolonged antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory efficacy over the 48 h study period following intravenous administration of loperamide HCl-encapsulated anti-ICAM-1 immunoliposomes. Evaluation of paw pressure threshold (PPT) of the loperamide HCl-encapsulated anti-ICAM-1 immunoliposome group demonstrated a peak antinociceptive effect between 7 h to 10 h following liposome administration. PPTs and paw displacement volumes of control groups (empty conventional liposomes, loperamide HCl-encapsulated conventional liposomes and loperamide HCl solution) were not significantly different across all time points over the 48 h period. Incorporation of ICAM-1 monoclonal antibody targeting ligands to the surface of the liposomes labelled with tritiated cholesteryl hexadecyl ether ([3H]-CHE) in biodistribution studies showed increased localisation to peripheral inflammatory tissue, with no significant distribution into the central nervous system (CNS). In conclusion, the work presented in this thesis provides a novel drug delivery system that is capable of targeting pathological sites of inflammation. Developing a drug delivery system to provide site-directed analgesia by delivering exogenous opioid agonists to peripheral opioid receptors within inflamed tissue may provide an effective alternative for the management of chronic arthritic and other inflammatory conditions, whist simultaneously decreasing distribution of the drug to other sites in the body. In this way diminishing central opioid mediated side effects (e.g. sedation, respiratory depression, tolerance, dependence) and of typical side effects produced by nonsteroidal and steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. 2010-01-13T00:00:00Z Susan Hua http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:260203 The thoroughbred racehorse Phar Lap (1927–1932) remains an enduring and popular icon in Australian culture. As a result, representations of the horse’s achievements and biography have appeared regularly in newspaper reports, magazine articles, film, television, museum displays, and other media in Australia. Like other popular icons, narratives recalling Phar Lap are highly stylised. These narratives intersect with dominant Australian cultural values and cast Phar Lap as a national hero, a battler, a mate, and a victim, to create culturally-laden meanings. In many cases, the various Phar Lap stories have been shaped around the popular Bush narrative of Australian national identity and have aided in the wide dissemination and continual re-interpretation of this important ideology. Despite his popular appeal and widespread use in Australian culture, there has been little academic commentary or examination of Phar Lap as a cultural icon. Sporadic mentions of the horse have appeared in various survey histories of Australian sport and culture and there have been only sparse attempts to analyse the importance of representations of Phar Lap to Australian history, culture and identity. Neglect of Phar Lap is curious. Firstly, for such a prominent marker of national values and ideologies to remain outside the purview of critical interrogation is unusual when compared to other cultural icons in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Secondly, as both a transmitter and product of Australian culture, Phar Lap facilitates investigation into mythology, iconography, sport, and representations of the past. This thesis attempts to remedy the dearth of critical study of both Phar Lap, and Australian sporting icons more generally. It does so by adopting a deconstructionist sensiblity that acknowledges that representations of the past are inherently the products of agents in the present and, subsequently, do not recall the past objectively but rather reflect the attitudes and beliefs of their creators and their socio-historical contexts.The thesis is guided by the intersection of Phar Lap’s iconography and his representation in Australian culture since he burst onto the horseracing scene in 1929. It is this intersection that generates the study’s key concepts. There are three key foci: Phar Lap as an exemplar of a particular form of Australian national identity, the salience of interpreting multiple forms of memory for sport history, and the value of Alun Munslow’s deconstructive approach to interrogating social memory. Thus, the subject matter is not only the historical figure of Phar Lap, but also some of the various media that have remembered him. Such media are important, as the wide array of texts that remember Phar Lap provide salient insights into the creation of the highly significant versions of his story that are familiar in Australia. With this in mind, Chapter One begins the thesis by challenging the most rigid element of Phar Lap’s memory: the supposed sacredness of the working-class status of the horse’s human support staff, particularly owner/trainer Harry Telford and owner David Davis. It does this by examining the complex intersection of popular sporting novels with the contemporary sporting press to create a context that was hostile to Telford and, later, Davis. This hostility did not last. As Chapter Two shows, popular written histories of the horse from the 1960s onwards began to embrace and celebrate the Bush origins of Telford and Phar Lap’s previously ignored strapper ‘Tommy’ Woodcock. Specifically, it looks at the influence of elements of historian Russel Ward’s seminal work The Australian Legend and structural changes in the Australian publishing industry that influenced Phar Lap’s representation in Australian popular culture from 1945 onwards. From here, this thesis begins its examination of three non-written forms of Phar Lap’s memory. Chapter Three focuses on the evolution of the taxidermed and preserved hide of Phar Lap in the Melbourne Museum in Victoria. This chapter argues that Phar Lap’s multivalence has assured his retention in this prominent cultural institution as the artefact moved from scientific to cultural exhibit following changes in museum practice. Chapter Four examines the feature film Phar Lap: Hero to a Nation against the broader contexts of national identity and the Australian film revival that began in the 1970s. This chapter addresses the implication of the nationalistic film-making project, which took root in 1970s, for a version of the Phar Lap narrative tailored to suit new, emerging concepts of Australian national identity. The body of this thesis concludes with an examination of contested claims about the horse’s nationality in statues in Melbourne, Australia and Timaru, New Zealand. As Chapter Five argues, rarely in memories of the horse or in wider Australian and New Zealand historical and cultural discourses have the two Antipodean nations been so compelled to directly consider their mutual neighbours’ past. Phar Lap’s role as an exemplar of Australian national culture contrasts starkly with the desire in New Zealand to “reclaim” the horse’s identity for the nation and region in which he was born. 2011-11-02T00:00:00Z Mark O'Neill http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:215336 This PhD project has explored the use of novel nitroxide annulated porphyrinic macrocycles as photosensitisers (PSs) for photodynamic therapy (PDT). The PSs have been synthesised, structurally, photophysically and photochemically characterised and investigated biologically through cell assays to determine their potential as photoactivated anticancer drugs. Tetra-nitroxide annulated phthalocyanines (Pcs) were initially investigated. Each of these compounds exhibit four annulated nitroxide-containing rings in a rigid, planar arrangement with fixed distance and geometry with respect to the macrocycle core, which is a novel structural motif in Pc chemistry. The presence of the nitroxides purportedly has two effects: to quench fluorescence and to increase photochemical singlet oxygen production by the compound. While nitroxides, as paramagnetic compounds, are non-fluorescent, their reduction to diamagnetic hydroxylamines results in an increased fluorescence yield. In this way, the nitroxide Pcs can potentially be used as probes for metabolic activity in biological systems, where the primary fate of the nitroxide moiety is reduction. Here, the fluorescence properties of the nitroxide-annulated Pcs were investigated through reduction of the nitroxide moieties by biologically significant reductants and calculation of fluorescence quantum yields. The singlet oxygen quantum yields of the Pcs were determined by two methods, the chemical trapping of singlet oxygen and the direct observation of singlet oxygen luminescence. While the quantum yields of the Pcs were promising when compared to clinically relevant PSs, the tetra-nitroxide Pcs did not exhibit increased quantum yields with respect to their nitroxide-free analogues. Additionally, there was minimal photodynamic action in cell assays. Subsequent fluorescence microscopy confirmed that this was most probably due to the fact that the Pcs were not localising within the cells. To improve the photodynamic action of the Pcs, two polymer-based delivery strategies were employed to enhance their delivery in biological environments. Firstly, the nitroxide Pcs were coupled to linear polymers to create polymer Pc hybrids. The second method involved the encapsulation of the nitroxide Pcs within polymer-based micelles. The synthesis of the polymer Pc hybrids was via a fast and efficient Atom Transfer Nitroxide Radical Coupling (ATNRC) reaction. The hybrids were synthesised as Mg, Zn or free-base (2H) Pc complexes, with either hydrophobic or hydrophilic polymer arms. The hybrids displayed high fluorescence quantum yields and reasonable singlet oxygen quantum yields. Again, these attributes this did not extend to any cell growth inhibition, even for the hydrophilic derivatives. Micellisation of the Pcs with a poly(styrene)-poly(acrylic acid) (PSty-PAA) star diblock copolymer afforded micelles with a range of concentrations of Pcs encapsulated within the glassy PSty core. Fluorescence studies showed that the micelles protected the nitroxide moieties from reduction by ascorbate, a result that could find application in EPR imaging and oximetry. During singlet oxygen experiments, the micelles were found to perform as nanoreactors, supramolecular assemblies which provide a reaction volume for other reagents. Pcs in the micelle cores effectively generated singlet oxygen and while this failed to escape the micelles, it was very effective in the oxidation of a hydrophobic model compound. Although there are potential applications for the micelle systems in waste-water remediation, these systems were ineffective in the PDT assays. With the difficulties associated with the biological delivery of the nitroxide Pcs in mind, hydrophilic mono-nitroxide annulated porphyrazine (Pz) macrocycles were designed and synthesised. Pzs exhibit many of the favourable optical properties of the Pcs. Synthesis of these compounds proceeded via Linstead macrocyclisation to give the target MgPz with A3B type substitution. A nitroxide-free A4 Pz was also isolated as a side-product. Transmetallation and/or hydrolysis gave access to Mg and Zn A3B and A4 carboxylate Pzs. These compounds were structurally characterised and their fluorescence characteristics investigated. The 1O2 quantum yields of the Pzs were also studied. Significantly, nitroxide annulation was found to enhance 1O2 generation of the Pzs relative to nitroxide-free analogues. The Zn carboxylate Pzs were shown to effectively inhibit the growth of tumour cell lines in PDT assay and the MgA4 carboxylate displayed strong 2-photon fluorescence within the cytoplasm of NFF cells. Experiments on freshly excised skin showed the carboxylate Pzs to be highly effective 2-photon PSs for PDT. In conclusion, we have identified several carboxylate Pzs which should be tested further in in vivo PDT experiments. 2010-08-29T00:00:00Z Nicole A Blinco http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:107312 2007-08-24T18:45:40Z Duthie, Grant Malcolm http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:220314 ABSTRACT Poor fitness in the able extremely low birth weight (ELBW) population exists alongside deficits in growth, respiratory function, motor ability, learning, socialisation and behaviour. This thesis investigated what physical sequelae of ELBW were persistent and associated with long term problems of fitness, whether there was persistent disparity between able ELBW children and their term born peers in functional outcomes of self perception, competencies and behaviour and assessed the relationship between those outcomes and poor fitness or other mild physical impairments. The predictive validity of early assessment to identify those ELBW children most at risk of poor outcomes long term was investigated. Subjects The 54 ELBW participants (31 male; mean birth weight: 771g, SD147.8g; mean gestational age: 26.6 weeks SD = 2.04 weeks) had a mean age of 12years 6months and the 55 term born comparisons (28 male; at least 37 weeks gestation) had a mean age of 12years 5months. Methods Fitness (VO2 max) was calculated from a 20m Shuttle Run performance. All children completed Motor Assessment Battery for Children (MABC), functional tests of postural stability and strength, respiratory function tests and growth measures. The Harter Self Perception Profile was completed as a measure of self report. Parents completed The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Possible predictors of long term outcome, including birth weight, gestational age, multiple birth status, head circumference and preschool motor assessment scores, were retrieved from records. Procedures Testing was conducted in a single session at a centralised testing centre. Children were tested individually according to set protocols by a trained tester who was blinded as to the child’s group. Results Study I: Fitness in ELBW and term born 11-13year old children. The ELBW group was less fit than the control group with 45% at or below the 10th percentile for V02 max and had poorer functional stability and motor scores. Over 70% of the ELBW group was rated as having a definite motor problem on the MABC. There were differences between the groups on growth, strength and respiratory function. Motor control was the most powerful predictor of V02 max in both the ELBW and the control group. Study II: Parent and child perceptions of aspects of competency and behaviour. Parents of the ELBW group reported less competence and greater behavioural problems in their children but the ELBW children did not differ from their term born peers on self report. On parent report, the ELBW group had less social, school and activity competence with 33.3% of the group scoring within the clinical range on overall competence compared with 9.1% in the comparison group. Parents of the ELBW group reported more social, thought, and attention problem, and more delinquent behaviour in their children than were reported by the parents of the term born children with 14.8% of the ELBW group scoring within the clinical range on overall behaviour compared with 2.3% in the comparison group. Study III: The relationship of fitness and mild motor impairment with competency in ELBW and term born 11-13 year old children. For both the ELBW and the term born children, scholastic competence was associated with motor scores and social competence was associated with both fitness and motor scores, but the association of fitness with successful engagement in activity (rho = 0.567) occurred only in the ELBW group. Fitness and mild motor impairment both had stronger relationship with competencies for the ELBW group than for the term born children as both fitness and motor scores independently predicted CBCL total competence score for the ELBW but not the term born group. The difference between the ELBW and the term groups on CBCL total competence was weakened but persistent when adjusted solely for motor or fitness score but was no longer significant when adjusted for both fitness and motor scores implicating fitness, as well as mild motor impairment, as having independent association with competence measures in ELBW children. Study IV: The relationship of fitness and mild motor impairment with behaviour outcomes in ELBW and term born 11-13 year old children. There was association between fitness and social and attention scores for both groups and association of fitness with the CBCL thought scale for the ELBW group. Motor impairment had association with social and attention problems in all children, but had further association across most of the domains of the CBCL behaviour problem scales in the ELBW children. Motor impairment, but not fitness, independently predicted CBCL overall behaviour score for the ELBW group. Study V: The predictive validity of early motor scores on long term motor outcomes in able ELBW survivors. Early motor assessment, NSMDA score at 4 year old follow-up, independently predicted the MABC scores of the ELBW group at 11-13 years of age. Gestational age, birth weight, multiple birth or head circumference at 4 years did not independently predict long term motor impairment within the ELBW group. 4 year old postural control score rather than neurological score was associated with long term motor outcomes within the able ELBW group at 11-13 years of age. Conclusions Able ELBW 11-13 year old children have poor fitness and deficits in growth, strength, respiratory function, motor ability and postural stability relative to their term born peers. Only the motor impairment score was independently related to fitness for both the ELBW and the term born children. ELBW 11-13 year old children also have poorer competence and behaviour on parent report compared with their term born peers but have comparable sense of their own competence, behaviour conduct and global self worth as their peers. Fitness is related to competence for 11-13 year old ELBW children, independent of its association with motor impairment, with the significant levels of poor fitness in the ELBW group implicated as a barrier to participation. Mild motor impairment is independently related to both competence and behaviour outcomes for 11-13 year old ELBW children. Early motor score, rather than any perinatal measure examined, was the only valid marker of long term motor outcomes within the ELBW group. 2010-11-14T00:00:00Z Marcella Danks http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158284 The bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas is one of few elasmobranchs capable of living in, and moving freely between, freshwater (FW) and seawater (SW). Despite this remarkable ability, very little is known about the osmoregulatory physiology and ecology of this species. Bull sharks are common in the Brisbane River, a tidal river in subtropical Australia that has about 90 km of habitable water and salinity gradient from 33‰ (seawater) at the mouth to 0 ‰ (freshwater) in the upper reaches. The presence of bull sharks in the Brisbane River, and the accessibility of this system, provides a unique opportunity to investigate how this species osmoregulatory ability allows it to utilise freshwater, estuarine and marine environments. The distribution, size structure and movement patterns of bull sharks in the river and surrounding marine environment were investigated by capture, tagging and acoustic tracking. A total of 712 bull sharks were captured in Brisbane River and Moreton Bay. Juvenile bull sharks showed a strong preference for the upper FW reaches with the catch per unit effort (CPUE) in upper FW reaches (1.18 sharks per hr) significantly higher than Moreton Bay and the river mouth (0.08 and 0.09 sharks per hour) Presence of open umbilical scars indicate that bull sharks are born at 65 – 83 cm Total length (TL). Size composition in the river was strongly skewed towards juveniles, with neonates contributing 68% to the riverine population. Although neonates dominated the catches, animals between 85 – 130 cm were not uncommon and this together with tag recapture data indicates that bull sharks remain in the Brisbane River from birth until approximately 140 cm when they move to a marine environment. Six animals were tracked using acoustic tags. Three juvenile animals tagged in freshwater reaches showed very similar movement patterns remaining in the upper reaches and did not encounter any changes in environmental salinity. Two out of three animals tagged in the estuarine reaches moved upstream and downstream and were exposed to large and rapid fluctuations in environmental salinity resulting in a need to osmoregulate in hyper and hypo-ionic environments. Plasma osmolality of bull sharks captured along a salinity gradient from FW to SW was always hyperosmotic to the environment, ranging from 642 ± 7 mOsm.kg¯&sup1 (FW animals) to 1067 ± 21 mOsm.kg¯&sup1(SW animals). In FW animals, sodium, chloride and urea were 208 ± 3, 203 ± 3 and 192 ± 2 mmol.l¯&sup1 , respectively. Plasma sodium, chloride and urea in SW-captured C. leucas were 289 ± 3, 296 ± 6 and 370 ± 10 mmol.l¯&sup1, respectively. This osmoregulatory strategy necessitates active Na+ and Cl- secretion by the rectal gland in SW and active conservation of these ions in FW. Despite the increased importance of the rectal gland in hyper-ionic environments, there was no difference in the rectal gland mass of C. leucas captured in FW and estuarine environments (20–28‰) of the Brisbane River. Juvenile C. leucas captured in freshwater (FW) (3 mOsm) were acclimated to seawater (SW) (980 – 1000 mOsm) over sixteen days. A freshwater group was maintained in captivity over a similar time period. In SW, juvenile sharks regulated all plasma osmolytes to the same degree as adults captured in SW showing that juveniles are capable of osmoregulation in SW and that preference for FW is due to behaviour rather than a physiological constraint. Gill, rectal gland, kidney and intestinal tissue were analysed for maximal Na+/K+- ATPase activity. Na+/K+-ATPase activity in the gills and intestine was less than 1 mmol Pi.mg¯&sup1 protein.h¯&sup1 and there was no difference in activity between FW and SW acclimated animals. In SW, rectal gland Na+/K+-ATPase activity (9.2 ± 0.6 mmol Pi.mg¯&sup1 protein.h¯&sup1) was significantly higher than FW animals (5.6 ± 0.8 and 9.2 ± 0.6 mmol Pi.mg¯&sup1protein. h¯&sup1). Na+/K+-ATPase activity in the kidney of FW acclimated animals (8.4 ± 1.1 Pi.mg¯&sup1 protein.h¯&sup1) was significantly higher than SW animals (3.3 ± 1.1 Pi.mg¯&sup1 protein.h¯&sup1). These differences were attributed to the increased importance of the rectal gland to secretion of Na+ and Cl- in SW and the need for the kidney to actively reabsorb Na+ and Cl- in freshwater. Despite large biochemical changes in the rectal gland, structural changes were less obvious. There was no difference in rectal gland cross sectional area, lumen area, rectal gland vein area, number of secretory tubules or secretory cells per secretory tubule in FW and SW acclimated animals. At a cellular level, there was no difference between the degree of basolateral and lateral folding, number of mitochondria or number of desmosomes per tight junction. Tight junction width was significantly greater in SW acclimated animals. The number of red blood cells in the interstitial tissue was also significantly higher in SW acclimated animals reflecting an increased perfusion of the capillaries of the rectal gland. The lack of large morphological changes reflects the small amount of FW habitat in the Brisbane River and the fact that animals are exposed to increasing salinity when they move downstream. Results of acoustic tracking showed that animals were capable of moving rapidly between salinity gradients. Do determine the extend and timing of plasma and erythrocyte solute properties, animals captured in freshwater (FW) were acutely acclimated to 75% seawater (SW), and 100% SW. Blood samples were taken at 0, 12 and 96 h following transfer to 75% SW and 24 h and 72 h after transfer to 100% SW. A control group in FW was subjected to the same sampling regime. Upon transfer of C. leucas to 75% and 100% SW, plasma Na+, Cl-, K+, Mg&sup2+, Ca&sup2+, urea and TMAO concentrations all increased significantly but disproportionately. Plasma Na+ and Cl- increased immediately, followed by an increase in plasma urea. Erythrocyte urea and TMAO concentrations increased significantly following transfer to 75% and 100% SW, however changes in erythrocyte inorganic ion concentrations were insignificant. Haematocrit, haemoglobin and mean cell haematocrit did not differ significantly after transfer to seawater, however, plasma water was slightly reduced after 24 h and 72 h in 100% SW. Red blood cell (RBC) water content was elevated 24 h after transfer to 100% SW but returned to FW levels after 72 h. Juvenile bull sharks tolerated rapid and significant increases in salinity by rapidly increasing plasma osmolality to be hyperosmotic to the environment whilst maintaining a tight regulation of their intracellular fluid environment. Results from this research indicate the juvenile bull sharks spend several years in the Brisbane River before moving to a marine environment. Despite a preference for the FW reaches, juveniles are capable of living in both FW and SW and osmoregulate equally well in both environments. The bull sharks ability to live and move between FW and SW is due to their rapid control of plasma and erythrocyte ion and water content via the action of the rectal gland, gills and kidney. 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Pillans, Richard David http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:106217 2007-08-24T00:00:00Z Seebungkert, Benchamaporn. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158047 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Saunders, Aaron Marc http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158779 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z Playsted, Cameron William Skerman http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:244925 Many people love opera. Far many more find it utterly absurd. For the latter, the idea that there exists a form of dramatic entertainment that utilizes all the trappings of the theatre – the sets and costumes, the make-up and lighting – but in which all the dialogue is sung, beggars belief. The purpose of this commentary is to set down the contemplations of a composer who, no less bemused than most by the matter, has attempted better to understand the operatic proposition by writing one for himself. As varied as such contemplations have been, a systematic approach has been adopted in the present document, categorizing identifiably discrete areas for consideration, but moving always towards the alliance of all such elements in the multidisciplinary form under scrutiny. Reference is made throughout, to a wide range of works from many disciplines in the hope both of clarifying and invigorating the account. It was, however, considered indispensable to an honest appraisal of the subject at hand, that two areas of concern to the author be aired at the outset. The first of these relates to questions regarding the utility of music and the belief, expressed herein, that such evaluation is quite inappropriate. The second relates to the belief, equally strongly held, that a good deal of musical critique is deleterious to the understanding and enjoyment of music. The commentary proper gets under way with a discussion of the nature of music itself – whether it is a language, and if not, then what? – whether it has meaning, and if so, then by what means? The discussion then moves on to the world of words and the consideration of language in everyday usage, and then in the area of linguistic art. The focus of this passage moves from the general, to the specifics of language as drama, this area seeming to offer the most advantageous comparison with music. Poetry is touched upon lightly. The field of incidental music is taken up as the first meeting point between words and music by reason of the fact that for a majority of people in the developed world it represents the place of most common encounter with words and music combined. It is also an area in which music is clearly understood to be subservient to language and it therefore provides a starting point for a journey from one condition of relative value to another. The next area for examination is that of song; first the popular song (and in particular “Les feuilles mortes” by Kosma and Prévert) along with some discussion of translation and appropriation, and then the art song, through a brief account of Schubert’s Der Erlkönig. There is then a consideration of opera itself and an attempt to draw some conclusions, based on the previous discussions, concerning the extent to which libretto and music can be truly and beneficially alloyed in a dramatic work. The decline and final disappearance of spoken dialogue is cited as evidence of the progressive musical domination of the genre. But, in turn, questions arise as to the viability of the sung dramatic discourse. Matters of mutual responsibility between collaborators are also discussed. Finally, there is a brief account of how these contemplations informed the composition of The Hoop of the World, along with a few of the measures that were adopted in response to certain perceived difficulties inherent in the operatic form. The composer is not yet clear as to whether or not a true personal reconciliation with the genre as a whole has been achieved but there is a deeper sense of engagement with the proposition that may well lead to further creative exploits. The folio of works includes two instrumental works, Marteaux suspendus, for solo piano, and “x,y” for percussion ensemble. There is no mention of these works in the critical commentary, as such relationships as they bear to the operatic work are of a purely technical nature and of no relevance to the principal chosen topic of discussion. 2011-08-02T00:00:00Z Alan Lawrence http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:283631 2012-10-19T00:00:00Z Ngongo, Yohanis