UQ Theses (RHD) - Official collection - UQ eSpace

A Hubterranean View of Syntax: An Analysis of Linguistic Form through Network Theory

Julie Louise Steele — 2010-04-23T00:00:00Z

Language is part of nature, and as such, certain general principles that generate the form of natural systems, will also create the patterns found within linguistic form. Since network theory is one of the best theoretical frameworks for extracting general principles from diverse systems, this thesis examines how a network perspective can shed light on the characteristics and the learning of syntax. It is demonstrated that two word co-occurrence networks constructed from adult and child speech (BNC World Edition 2001; Sachs 1983; MacWhinney 2000a) exhibit three non-atomic syntactic primitives namely, the truncated power law distributions of frequency, degree and the link length between two nodes (the link representing a precedence relation). Since a power law distribution of link lengths characterises a hubterranean structure (Kasturirangan 1999) i.e. a structure that has a few highly connected nodes and many poorly connected nodes, both the adult and the child word co-occurrence networks exhibit hubterranean structure. This structure is formed by an optimisation process that minimises the link length whilst maximising connectivity (Mathias & Gopal 2001 a&b). The link length in a word co-occurrence network is the storage cost of representing two adjacently co-occurring words and is inversely proportion to the transitional probability (TP) of the word pair. Adjacent words that co-occur often together i.e. have a high TP, exhibit a high cohesion and tend to form chunks. These chunks are a cost effective method of storing representations. Thus, on this view, the (multi-) power law of link lengths represents the distribution of storage costs or cohesions within adjacent words. Such cohesions form groupings of linguistic form known as syntactic constituents. Thus, syntactic constituency is not specific to language and is a property derived from the optimisation of the network. In keeping with other systems generated by a cost constraint on the link length, it is demonstrated that both the child and adult word co-occurrence networks are not hierarchically organised in terms of degree distribution (Ravasz and Barabási 2003:1). Furthermore, both networks are disassortative, and in line with other disassortative networks, there is a correlation between degree and betweenness centrality (BC) values (Goh, Kahng and Kim 2003). In agreement with scale free networks (Goh, Oh, Jeong, Kahng and Kim 2002), the BC values in both networks follow a power law distribution. In this thesis, a motif analysis of the two word co-occurrence networks is a richly detailed (non-functional) distributional analysis and reveals that the adult and child significance profiles for triad subgraphs correlate closely. Furthermore, the most significant 4-node motifs in the adult network are also the most significant in the child network. Utilising this non-functional distributional analysis in a word co-occurrence network, it is argued that the notion of a general syntactic category is not evidenced and as such is inadmissible. Thus, non-general or construction-specific categories are preferred (in line with Croft 2001). Function words tend to be the hub words of the network (see Ferrer i Cancho and Solé 2001a), being defined and therefore identified by their high type and token frequency. These properties are useful for identifying syntactic categories since function words are traditionally associated with particular syntactic categories (see Cann 2000). Consequently, a function word and thus a syntactic category may be identified by the interception of the frequency and degree power laws with their truncated tails. As a given syntactic category captures the type of words that may co-occur with the function word, the category then encourages consistency within the functional patterns in the network and re-enforces the network’s (near-) optimised state. Syntax then, on this view, is both a navigator, manoeuvring through the ever varying sea of linguistic form and a guide, forging an uncharted course through novel expression. There is also evidence suggesting that the hubterranean structure is not only found in the word co-occurrence network, but within other theoretical syntactic levels. Factors affecting the choice of a verb that is generalised early relate to the formation and the characteristics of hubs. In that, the property of a high (token) frequency in combination with either a high degree (type frequency) or a low storage cost, point to certain verbs within the network and these highly ‘visible’ verbs tend to be generalised early (in line with Boyd and Goldberg forthcoming). Furthermore, the optimisation process that creates hubterranean structure is implicated in the verb-construction subpart network of the adult’s linguistic knowledge, the mapping of the constructions’ form-to-meaning pairings, the construction inventory size as well as certain strategies aiding first language learning and adult artificial language learning.

Aid Effectiveness and Health: Challenges, Tensions and Opportunities

Rebecca Dodd — 2010-04-23T00:00:00Z

Provision of aid has long been influenced by the political priorities of donors, and there is substantial evidence that the administrative rules and regulations of donor organisations create problems for recipient countries. For as long as this fact has been understood, there have been efforts to address it: most recently, spear-headed by the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and its associated efforts. This thesis seeks to deepen understanding of this tension by examining the aid relationships in the health sector using analytical frameworks drawn from governance, political economy and health policy. Part 1 ‘defines the territory’ by describing the aid effectiveness challenges faced in the sector in qualitative and quantitative terms. Part 2 seeks to understand why these challenges persist by examining the political and institutional forces which affect provision of aid from (following Reich) ‘above, within and below’. I begin by looking at the ‘high’ political forces affecting aid provision by locating health aid as an instrument of international relations. Then, I look in greater detail the central tension in governance of health aid: the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ between efforts to promote greater coherence and the reality of diversity. Finally, I explore the internal (institutional) forces within aid agencies which affect a particular dimension of aid provision: the length of donor commitments. Part 3 presents in-depth case study research which demonstrates how the political forces from above, within and below play out in practice. The emerging conclusion is that the aid effectiveness agenda, as set out in the Paris Declaration, is only ever likely to be partially successful, for two reasons. First, because global health governance is inherently iterative, dynamic and diverse it cannot be regulated through further global processes (such as aid effectiveness). Second, the aid effectiveness agenda is structured around simple concepts and solutions which (while useful for global advocacy purposes) are no match for the political, institutional and economic complexity which characterises the aid relationship at country level. Indeed, the diversity that global health creates at country level has to be managed by recipient countries themselves, according to their timetable, and in a way tailored to their own context and circumstances.

A Journey to Re-Empowerment: A Phenomenological Description of the Experiences of Male Victims of Crime

Haynes, Jennifer — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

There has been, to date, minimal research on the experiences of male victims of crime. The research into gender differences in the experiences of criminal victimization have tended to focus on women leaving the male experience to be extrapolated from that of women. This study uses phenomenology to describe the experiences of men who are criminally victimized. The men described an eight phase process of victimization: What Happened Was, the Emotional Wince, He Stole My Power, Let Me Tell You How It Felt, Coming To An Understanding Of The Crime, Regaining Control, Consciously Taking Back Power and Its Over Now, Its Not Important. The main goal of the men was to reclaim their lost sense of personal empowerment, stolen in the instance of the crime. The men also had a need to talk through the crime and its aftermath. A supportive listener assisted the man through the process to re-empowerment, whilst a non-supportive listener could complicate the criminal experience, invalidate the victim and result in the man either disengaging from the support process or adopting the non-confirmatory reactions of the listener. Thus the listener held considerable power. Recommendations include police in-service training and the increased use of community conferencing. It is particularly recommended that some attention be paid to rehabilitating the term victim given that men do not easily accept the notion of being a victim.

A kinematic analysis of articulatory function in dysarthric and non-dysarthric speakers with Parkinson’s disease

Min Wong — 2012-05-06T00:00:00Z

The most common articulatory impairment reported in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) is imprecision of consonant production, although, it is noted that depending on the level of severity of PD, articulation of vowels may be affected. It has been hypothesised that the imprecision of consonant production is the result of limited range of movement, slowness of movement, muscle rigidity and reduced force of movement of the articulators. To date, the majority of research has utilised descriptive analysis, acoustical techniques and non-speech physiological measures in the investigation of articulatory function in individuals with PD. The application of dynamic investigation, specifically electromagnetic articulography (EMA) is limited. In an attempt to add empirical data to the body of research, the present thesis aims to use EMA to investigate tongue function in dysarthric and non-dysarthric speakers with PD during sentence production and rapid syllable repetition. Additionally, the present thesis also aims to explore the effects of increased loudness on tongue function in dysarthric speakers with PD. A total of 15 individuals with PD participated in this research. The participants were further divided into two groups, dysarthric speakers with PD (n = 8) and non-dysarthric speakers with PD (n = 7) based on the findings of perceptual speech evaluation. A total of 11 neurologically healthy participants also participated in the study to serve as normal controls. EMA was used to examine the tongue tip and tongue back movements during sentence production and rapid syllable repetition. The lingual kinematic parameters examined included maximum velocity, maximum acceleration, maximum deceleration, duration and distance of tongue movement. In Chapter 2, the lingual kinematics in a group of seven non-dysarthric speakers with PD were examined using EMA, matched with seven normal controls. The tongue tip and tongue back movements were examined during the production of an alveolar sentence Tess told Dan to stay fit and a velar sentence Karl got a croaking frog, respectively. The subclinical lingual kinematic deficits documented in the non-dysarthric speakers with PD included significantly prolonged duration of lingual movement, significant slower rate of sentence production and reduced speed measures (i.e., maximum velocity, maximum acceleration/deceleration) of lingual movement. However, no significant differences in the distance/range of lingual movement were reported. In Chapter 3, the lingual kinematics during alveolar and velar sentence production in a group of eight mild dysarthric speakers with PD were examined, and matched with eight normal controls. During alveolar consonant production, the dysarthric speakers with PD had similar range but prolonged duration of lingual movement; during velar consonant production, the dysarthric speakers with PD had increased range but similar duration of lingual movement. The dysarthric speakers with PD also had increased speed measures of lingual movement primarily in the release phase of consonant production. Having examined the lingual kinematics in dysarthric speakers with PD (DPD) and non-dysarthric speakers with PD (NDPD) separately, a between groups comparison was essential to determine the factors that may contribute to dysarthria in PD. Hence, Chapter 4 compared lingual kinematics in the DPD group, the NDPD group and a group of 11 normal controls during alveolar and velar sentence production. Results showed that both the DPD and NDPD groups had deviant articulatory movement during consonant production that resulted in longer duration of consonant production. When compared to the NDPD group, the DPD group primarily had increased range of lingual movement together with increased speed measures of lingual movement that resulted in comparable duration of lingual movement. The lingual kinematics in a subgroup of five DPD and five NDPD were further explored in Chapter 5 by examining the tongue tip and tongue back movements during rapid /ta/ and /ka/ syllable repetition. The results showed that although the DPD, the NDPD and the normal control groups had comparable rapid syllable repetition rates, significant between groups differences were documented for most of the kinematic parameters. Chapter 6 sought to examine, in detail, the tongue tip kinematics of two dysarthric participants with PD during habitual and loud alveolar sentence production as well as rapid /ta/ syllable repetition. Results showed that the two participants with PD exhibited lingual kinematic deficits in all three speaking conditions with marked individual differences. Positive effects of increased loudness on lingual kinematics were also documented. Overall, the findings of the present thesis are contrary to proposed theories that suggest that the clinical features of hypokinetic dysarthria in PD, including articulatory imprecision, is the outcome of reduced range of articulatory movement. The prolonged duration of lingual movement may plausibly be due to the increased range of lingual movement rather than slowness of lingual movement. Further, increased loudness may contribute to increased tongue function in individuals with PD. The noticeable individual variability documented has important clinical implications. This thesis provides the largest kinematic study of lingual function in individuals with PD using EMA to date. It is anticipated that this research will provide a baseline for further longitudinal study of articulatory function in individuals with PD.

Alcohol consumption in Muslim Arab and Asian samples: a test of the cognitive model

Mrs Tayyiba AlMarri — 2008-09-24T00:00:00Z

Algorithms for Collision Hulls and their Applications to Path Planning

Zane Smith — 2010-06-28T00:00:00Z

The potential benefits that automation could bring to a wide variety of real-world tasks are numerous and well recognised. There has been significant research undertaken into automation in general, but for real-time automation of complex systems (involving complex geometries and dynamics) the problem is far from a solved one. One of the key tasks in a surface mining operation is that of using shovels or excavators to load material onto haul trucks for transportation. Since it is such a crucial task to a number of production cycles, it is a clear area where the productivity and safety benefits of automation could have a large impact. A number of projects are being undertaken concurrently to move towards first partial, and then full, automation of this mining subsystem. This thesis focusses on the collision avoidance problem, specifically on forming a collision hull that distinguishes between intersecting and non-intersecting configurations of two objects. Techniques from computer graphics are leveraged to develop a data structure that stores and organises relevant information about real-world systems for motion-planning tasks, ensuring that the necessary data is available and in a form suited to the task at hand. The Minkowski Sum operation, which can be used fairly directly to form the collision hull of two convex objects under translation, is extended to develop an operation to form the exact collision hull of two arbitrary objects to determine the applicability of such a scheme to complex systems in real-time. A level of detail solution is then proposed, where the Minkowski Hull of bounding hierarchies allows unnecessary parts of the hull to be calculated only in a coarse manner, thus offsetting a lot of the computational cost for any given test. This approach is investigated for both translational motion and joint-space motion. Collision detection is not collision avoidance, and so the algorithms developed in the thesis are tested in a number of applications, to demonstrate their suitability to the collision avoidance task. The applications (discrete collision prediction, visibility graph path planning, and the formulation of a Model Predictive Controller) are restricted versions of the true problems with some simplifying assumptions, but they show the algorithms to be capable both in their execution speed and the information that they provide.

All in vitro platform for rapid protein engineering and analysis based on Leishmania tarentolae

Kovtun, Oleksiy — 2012-10-18T16:58:00Z

All-optical 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate apparatus: construction and operation

Humbert, I. L. H. — 2013-03-12T20:45:17Z

All the World's a Stage: Constructing and Performing the Textual Self in Charlotte Brontë's Fiction

Mari Webb — 2009-09-09T00:00:00Z

Charlotte Brontë’s problematising of first-person narrative foregrounds the fluidity of the concept of identity and insists on its constructed nature. Brontë uses specific narrative techniques in The Professor, Jane Eyre and Villette to achieve this foregrounding, which leads to a complex and sophisticated exploration of the individual’s relationship to society, and how this influences the way individuals construct their identity. Each of these novels presents a different example of such self-construction through the characterisation of the first person narrator. Brontë’s questioning of the stability of the self encourages readers to be aware of such constructs. In my first chapter, I look closely at how narrative authority is parcelled out in Brontë’s nineteenth-century society, and what influence the conferring or withholding of such authority has on the construction of a narrative self. The next three chapters are devoted to discussion of specific examples of narrative self-construction in Brontë’s first-person novels, how her protagonists deal with narrative authority, and the difficulties inherent in speaking or writing with such authority for nineteenth-century women in particular. Individuals construct a sense of their self through telling stories. Brontë’s fiction asks the question, if “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life” is this tantamount to denying women the right to an arena for the construction of a self at all? What role do readers play in the construction of a narrative self for a writer? In the concluding chapter my aim is to open out my analysis of Brontë’s fiction by examining the idea of narrative as a place more generally for imaginative self-construction. I structure the chapter around J. Hillis Miller’s argument in On Literature that the role of reading and writing in this regard has irrevocably changed in the twenty-first century due to the influence and popularity of the on-line world.

ALP Premiers: Delegates of the Party, Autonomous Actors or Somewhere in Between?

Danielle Miller — 2011-03-07T00:00:00Z

This thesis investigates the role of selected Australian Labor Party (ALP) premiers from 1915 to 2007. The ALP began as what Duverger terms a ‘mass party’, and as such, developed internal structures designed to subordinate the parliamentary wing to the extra-parliamentary wing. However, the substantial social change of the last half century, (particularly the decline of many ‘blue collar’ industries and the emergence of television), has led many political scientists, most notably, Kirchheimer, Panebianco and Katz and Mair, to hypothesise that in order to ensure their continued existence, mass parties have evolved into new types of party organisations. A cornerstone of these new models of political organisation is the increasing autonomy of the parliamentary wing, in particular the leadership. Scholars within Australia, including Jaensch, Ward and Marsh, have applied these models in order to understand changes within Australian political parties. Most of this scholarship has focused on the federal wing of the party. This thesis, however, focuses on the state level because this is where unions affiliate to the party and where ties between the parliamentary party and the party organisation are comparatively easier to examine. In this thesis I explore the careers of four ALP premiers from the Queensland branch of the party. Queensland, with its long history of Labor governments, provides an ideal context to locate my research and the four case studies have been strategically selected from different points in the branch’s history in order to trace the degree to which the role of parliamentary leader of the ALP has evolved. I have chosen two premiers from the mass party era and two from the electoralist party era. I utilise archival and interview material to examine the careers of T.J. Ryan (1915-1919) who led the first majority Labor government in Queensland, Vincent Clair Gair (1952-1957) who was the final Labor premier of the mass party era, Wayne Goss (1989-1996) who returned Labor to power after thirty-two years on the opposition benches, and finally Peter Beattie (1998-2007) who replaced Goss as Labor leader and went on to dominate Queensland politics for much of the next decade. These four case studies lead to three central conclusions. First, that Labor premiers in the modern era enjoy greater freedom than their predecessors. Secondly, even though the prominence and power of the party organisation and affiliated unions has declined, Labor leaders continue to face political consequences for neglecting or displeasing the wider party. Finally, my thesis finds, that as would be expected in a literature that seeks to map general trends, the evolution of labour parties, as a specific party type, has not been adequately addressed. My thesis concludes that while labour parties have been forced to adapt in similar fashion to other types of political parties, they also appear to possess structures and historical links that generate resistance to evolutionary pressures.

Alterations in mucin expression in common malignancies

Walsh, Michael — 2012-07-04T00:00:00Z

Alternate nightly haemodialysis in the home setting

van Eps, Carolyn Louise — 2013-01-04T14:47:52Z

Alternating steering control-response compatibility: Compatibility, age, practice, strategy and instruction effects on performance characteristics of driving a simulated underground coal mine shuttle car.

Christine Zupanc — 2008-10-09T00:00:00Z

A macroscopic chemistry method for the direct simulation of non-equilibrium gas flows

Lilley, Charles Ranald — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

The macroscopic chemistry method for modelling non-equilibrium reacting gas flows with the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is developed and tested. In the macroscopic method, the calculation of chemical reactions is decoupled from the DSMC collision routine. The number of reaction events that must be performed in a cell is calculated with macroscopic rate expressions. These expressions use local macroscopic information such as kinetic temperatures and density. The macroscopic method is applied to a symmetrical diatomic gas. For each dissociation event, a single diatom is selected with a probability based on internal energy and is dissociated into two atoms. For each recombination event, two atoms are selected at random and replaced by a single diatom. To account for the dissociation energy, the thermal energies of all particles in the cell are adjusted. The macroscopic method differs from conventional collision-based DSMC chemistry procedures, where reactions are performed as an integral part of the collision routine. The most important advantage offered by the macroscopic method is that it can utilise reaction rates that are any function of the macroscopic flow conditions. It therefore allows DSMC chemistry calculations to be performed using rate expressions for which no conventional chemistry model may exist. Given the accuracy and flexibility of the macroscopic method, it has significant potential for modelling reacting non-equilibrium gas flows. The macroscopic method is tested by performing DSMC calculations and comparing the results to those obtained using conventional DSMC chemistry models and experimental data. The macroscopic method gives density profiles in good agreement with experimental data in the chemical relaxation region downstream of a strong shock. Within the shock where strongly non-equilibrium conditions prevail, the macroscopic method provides good agreement with a conventional chemistry model. For the flow over a blunt axisymmetric cylinder, which also exhibits strongly non-equilibrium conditions, the macroscopic method also gives reasonable agreement with conventional chemistry models. The ability of the macroscopic method to utilise any rate expression is demonstrated by using a two-temperature rate model that accounts for dissociation-vibration coupling effects that are important in non-equilibrium reacting flows. Relative to the case without dissociation-vibration coupling, the macroscopic method with the two-temperature model gives reduced dissociation rates in vibrationally cold flows, as expected. Also, for the blunt cylinder flow, the two-temperature model gives reduced surface heat fluxes, as expected. The macroscopic method is also tested with a number density dependent form of the equilibrium constant. For zero-dimensional chemical relaxation, the resulting relaxation histories are in good agreement with those provided by an exact Runge-Kutta solution of the relaxation behaviour. Reviews of basic DSMC procedures and conventional DSMC chemistry models are also given. A method for obtaining the variable hard sphere parameters for collisions between particles of different species is given. Borgnakke-Larsen schemes for modelling internal energy exchange are examined in detail. Both continuous rotational and quantised vibrational energy modes are considered. Detailed derivations of viscosity and collision rate expressions for the generalised hard sphere model of Hassan and Hash [Phys. Fluids 5, 738 (1993)] and the modified version of Macrossan and Lilley [J. Thermophys. Heat Transfer 17, 289 (2003)] are also given.

A Magic Bag: The Power of Confectionery in the Lives of Australian Children

Toni Risson — 2011-11-16T00:00:00Z

Fairy floss is pure sugar: watching someone conjure bolls of pink gossamer from a fairy floss machine is pure magic. If the production of confectionery is like alchemy, confectionery counters have the power to cast a spell upon young consumers and, furthermore, children’s consumption offers escape from the ordinary into the realm of the fabulous and enchanting. Because of this extraordinary appeal, confectionery is still synonymous with childhood, despite David Gillespie’s recent claim that sugar is Sweet Poison (2008), and it performs an ever-increasing number of roles in a multitude of spaces across the physical and cultural landscape of Australia. One might assume that the appeal of confectionery is simply gustatory, but confectionery has more in common with fairytales than food. This is a thesis about lollies, an Australian term for the cheap sugar confectionery bought mostly by children. In particular, it examines the role lollies played in Australian childhood throughout the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. By repositioning sugar confectionery as magic, it challenges dominant narratives of devaluation and demonisation that reduce the complexity of lollies and their cultural significance. I propose that the social world is made up of two separate and hierarchical domains—the ordinary world and the magical world—and that lollies belong to the latter, a proposition based on Emile Durkheim’s two-world model. Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque “second world” (6) corresponds with children’s experience of lollies as magic and reveals the subversive potential of confectionery because it inverts hierarchical norms, thereby elevating coarse laughter, food throwing, and the grotesque body. After first developing the idea of a magical world, this thesis employs five magic tropes from popular literary story lands to explore five aspects of the power that lollies exert over, and bestow upon, children. Using Wonderland as a food model for the early decades of the twentieth century, Chapters Two and Three link the power of lollies to deprivation and to the jewel-like spectacle of the lolly counter. Chapter Four explores the use of lollies as toys, especially in the postwar period, when the expanding world of children’s entertainment paralleled the lands above Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree. The child as consumer is then examined: since lollies are cheap, they give children their first taste of consumer power and demonstrate children’s sophistication and influence in the marketplace. Finally, I explore the subversive nature of lollies and the disgust produced by the violation of food norms, both increasingly evident toward the end of the century. Lollies are simultaneously enchanting and empowering. As magical objects in an ordinary world, they represent luxury, beauty, fun, consumer power, and subversive pleasure as well as gustatory adventure.

Ambient Information Display

Jones, Paul Robert — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

Ambient Information Displays provide alternate means of displaying information that does not require the direct attention of the user. As the amount of information that people need to process each day grows, alternative methods of information consumption need to be explored. Ambient Displays provide a way of doing this by exploiting peoples peripheral processing capabilities. Significant previous research has investigated the development of different types of displays and analysed the ways that users interact with these displays. Commercial Ambient Information services in the form of wireless devices driven from central servers are available overseas. Little research however has been performed in the field of reusable frameworks for the display of Ambient Information. This work explores two assertions: Many apparently different Ambient Displays can be characterised in terms of a number of common functional modules. The common modules can be developed and reused to greatly simplify the implementation of later Ambient Displays, without each type of display needing to have the same inputs, outputs, or management methodologies. After a background exploration into devices, software structures and the current stateof- the-art in ambient technologies, an iterative development process is utilised to characterise in detail the components required. These components are to be reusable across multiple displays, so that subsequent implementations can be built more quickly and economically. The completion of the iterative process results in a number of developed components that were reused through each of these example displays. To validate the choice of components, a number of thought-experiment style implementations are conducted, where each potential application is analysed and an implementation utilising the developed components is proposed. The fundamental aspect of the proposed set of components is Scenario Based Information Transformation. The assertion is that displays consist of transformations of data from one form to another; the underlying work performed by any given application can be modelled in terms of a transformation scenario. To support applications based on top of scenarios, the following components are required: - Underlying web framework providing the basic environment in which to develop applications. - Executors application installed on local users machines, performing the actual transformation work in taking data from sources and transforming it for the outputs. - Authentication/Identity Management web application supporting the OpenID protocol, and managing identity information for each user. - Configuration Storage allowing for the separated/private storage of user information. - Scenario Dispatch providing the bridge between web applications and the underlying communication method for executors. Analysis of a range of typical applications shows that using these components, applications that monitor different physical or electronic data sources and produce outputs in many varied forms using a variety of communications technologies can be easily developed. In parallel to the software development, hardware output devices are explored. SunSPOT wireless sensor devices and lost-cost USB connected devices are both investigated, each providing quite different experiences and usage possibilities, and allowing several demonstration applications to be fully implemented and tested. The results of this work confirm that it is possible to share components between ambient displays, and to characterise many different displays in terms of a set of common functional components. Display authors need not build the entire infrastructure for new displays, lowering the cost barrier for the design of new displays, and the introduction of new data sources into an ambient information environment.

Ambivalent Fictions: Youth, Irony and Affect in American Smart Film

Deborah Thomas — 2009-12-10T00:00:00Z

Smart film, a term coined by Jeffrey Sconce in his 2002 Screen article, “Irony, Nihilism and the New American ‘Smart’ Film”, refers to a wave of controversial, contemporary American films characterised by irony, quirky black humour, deadpan performance and an observational, blank style. Apart from Sconce, there has been little theorisation on smart cinema within the field of American screen studies. This thesis redresses this gap by providing the first extended study on smart film. It draws on, and adds to, the framework provided by Sconce, via the examination of a particular ‘subset’ of smart films concerned with the representation of youth and adolescence. These specifically target a more adult, ‘smart’ niche audience, who derive pleasure from their ironic ‘cleverness’, and ‘arty’ sensibility. In particular, this project focuses on the way these films are differentiated from more mainstream narrative cinema by their generic, affective and ethical structures. Following Sconce, this thesis analyses the constituents of the ‘art of the smart’—of the aesthetic strategies that differentiate the smart youth film, and the modes of address that may encourage, or discourage, particular experiences of affectivity and ethical engagement in the films’ portrayals of their youthful, anti-heroic protagonists. This includes a discussion of their cinematic origins, their production contexts with specific reference to institutional shifts in American independent cinema, and the way their reception is particularly aligned to the cultural tastes and consumption patterns of ‘Generation X.’ This thesis argues that smart film necessitates the development of more far-reaching ways of theorising the intersection between cinema, genre and youth. It extends the current theorisation on melodrama and the teenpic by arguing that smart film incorporates stylistic and thematic features, which both intersect with these established generic modes for representing youth and the family, and, at the same time, reflect a paradigm shift away from them as a result of their emphasis on irony and black comedy. It explores the cultural significance of their representations of youth, and their familial relationships, and the way this relates to social and cinematic constructions of youth and the family over time. This draws particular attention to their engagement with more serious, socially relevant, and taboo acts of sexual transgression, and how this is problematically mediated by what may appear as an ‘inappropriate’ aesthetic of black comedy. Much of the distinction of smart youth films lies in the way they challenge normative modes of cinematic representation via their portrayals of youth, which combine psychological realism with blank, ironic affect. This has specific implications in terms of their spectatorship and reception, and leads to a central concern in this thesis to determine the ways in which irony and distanciation create ambivalent modes of engagement in these films. This is specifically examined in relation to character, drawing on the cognitive framework provided by Murray Smith’s “structure of sympathy”, and the analysis of their ironic, anti-naturalistic strategies of performance, which complicate a realist construction of character subjectivity, authenticity, and allegiance. However, this thesis also argues that an astute examination of smart film’s formal content and narrative construction often reveals key moments of sincerity, character authenticity, and avenues of empathy that may allow for a momentary emotional connection with character and the filmic world. The final chapter focuses on the ethical dimension of these films, their relationship with nihilism, and the question of whether youth films have a responsibility to offer positive role models and ethical guidance. It discusses the way that irony functions as a strategic gesture, which can offer incisive moral and social criticisms, but is complicated by the lack of cues for how to morally judge, or emotionally relate to, characters and their actions. Overall, smart films’ ambivalence suggests that the spectator may be required to extend their paradigms of response, particularly in the way these films articulate their ‘taboo’ content. This necessitates an examination of the dialogic, intersubjective process of the way the materiality of the film intersects with the socialised, contextual body of the spectator to embrace the possibility of a more active, intellectual spectatorship. Specifically, this incorporates an evaluation of the social cognitions, epistemology, and pleasures derived from the contemporary circulation and comprehension of irony, and how this can generate an understanding of smart film in relation to their affective and ethical regimes. Finally, this thesis concludes with an examination of the influence of smart film on television and current post-ironic trends in American cinema.

Ambushers or Sponsors? An Examination of Sponsorship Linked Advertising.

Sarah Kelly — 2009-07-02T00:00:00Z

This research proposes that a construct called Sponsorship Linked Advertising (SLA) is valuable in understanding how brand and corporate advertising link to sponsorship and event marketing. SLA includes both ads that communicate a link to a sponsored event (tiedness) and those that demonstrate, through their overall design, an event’s motif or theme (themedness). In its themed form, SLA differs from creative advertising by virtue of the fact that creative advertising can exist independent of any sponsorship link, whereas sponsorship linked advertisements intentionally unite a sponsorship and an event either implicitly and/or explicitly. With sponsorship investment estimated to be $45.2 billion worldwide (International Events Group 2009) and leverage advertising (i.e., advertising that is employed to heighten awareness of sponsorships or better articulate sponsor-event links) reflecting a similar amount, empirical examination, validation and implementation guidance of SLA as a leveraging strategy is critical. The unique marketing opportunities associated with popular sporting, charitable and arts events also attract non-sponsoring companies which also seek to affiliate with the event, an activity known as ambushing (McKelvey and Grady 2008). Examination of SLA is therefore important in an increasingly competitive and cluttered global sponsorship arena, in which ambushing is becoming a pervasive practice, attracting considerable attention from event organisers, sponsors and policy makers alike, while also detracting from or diluting intended sponsorship communications. Despite widespread use of SLA, no empirical validation of this strategy has been undertaken to date. The present research addresses this gap. Initially, the SLA construct is defined, categorised, and measured through content analysis, then a series of experimental studies are used to achieve empirical validation of the SLA construct. Streams of sponsorship and advertising effectiveness research, along with theories of associative learning, attribution and persuasion, are used to guide examination of SLA effectiveness in new empirical work. Specifically, a series of experiments are used to examine consumers’ cognitive, affective and behavioural responses to SLA. The first experimental study tests a main effect of ad type as well as interactive effects of tiedness and themedness with sponsorship availability (i.e., knowledge of true sponsor) on outcomes including nature and type of thoughts elicited, ad scepticism and sponsor motive attributions. Findings from this study suggest that SLA exposure induces more positive thoughts, less ad scepticism and more favourable attributions than exposure to Non SLA. These results provide initial evidence that consumers process SLA differently to other ad types and interestingly, may derive enjoyment from, or at least exhibit less ad scepticism towards viewing SLA. Finally, the influence of competitive context on sponsor recall is tested by simulating exposure to ambush and/or SLA ad types following a sponsorship announcement. Findings provide evidence to support a memory interference hypothesis and imply that accuracy of sponsor recall is diminished by presence of an ambush ad, but that this effect is moderated by presence of SLA leveraging a previously announced sponsorship. Taken together, the results of this series of studies provide an empirical measurement of SLA strategy and demonstrate construct validity. Further, interpretation of the results gives rise to specific creative strategies for practical implementation. Ecological validity is built into the design by using real events within ad stimuli and investigating SLA in the competitive context in which it occurs. Hence, the results are said to be generalisable to real-world situations, and the resultant creative strategies are arguably contextually valid. This research contributes to existing marketing and sponsorship literature by proposing and empirically validating a new construct. Theoretically, it examines consumer response to SLA by combining information processing and resistance based perspectives. It extends traditional views of ambushing by offering empirical evidence of the practice being widespread and extending to low level sponsors and event “free riders”. Practical implications of this research extend to advertisers and sponsors faced with the challenge of effectively leveraging huge sponsorship investments and assessing return on such investment. Empirical testing of ambushing effects has important implications for the debate on increased regulatory intervention of such practices, a debate centred upon tension between balancing fair marketing practice with the rights of sponsors and event organisers.

AMELIORATION OF POTASSIUM DEFICIENCY IN RAINFED CROPPING SYSTEMS IN THE SOUTH BURNETT REGION OF QUEENSLAND

Jason Perna — 2011-11-21T00:00:00Z

Abstract The Ferrosols of the South Burnett region were considered to be good soils in the early days of agriculture. Continuous cropping of these soils has resulted in a reduction in their chemical and physical fertility. One aspect of this reduction has been the decline in K status, especially in the subsoil. The change to conservation tillage has accentuated nutrient stratification giving high nutrient concentrations in soil surface layers (0-10cm) and lower concentrations in the subsoil (20-40cm). The stratification could be attributed to the lack of mixing of surface applied fertilisers, the annual return of crop residue to the soil surface, and the cycling of nutrients from deep soil layers to shallow layers through nutrient uptake by plant roots. Dry periods during the summer cropping season are common due to the highly variable, summer-dominant rainfall pattern of the South Burnett. As the topsoil dries out, crops will forage for moisture and nutrients from lower in the soil profile where K reserves are smaller. The combination of dry periods and stratified K reserves has resulted in an increasing incidence of K deficiency symptoms in summer crops. The objective of this research was to investigate K application strategies for conservation tillage farming to improve profile K distribution in the South Burnett region in order to overcome the negative K balance and the crop K deficiencies associated with the stratified profile and dry weather. To meet these objectives requires the application of K in bands. Published studies have shown that for soils that have stratified nutrients, if the soil K is low, especially in the subsoil, and dry conditions have existed over the growth period, then there is a significant increase in crop yield with subsoil banding of fertiliser over broadcast fertiliser placement. There are a number of issues that needed to be investigated to determine the optimum method for applying fertiliser K in a band. When banding immobile nutrients such as K there is the potential for there being insufficient root volume in contact with the fertiliser for optimum plant uptake. There are a number of options available to overcome this potential problem. The first would be to take advantage of root proliferation, a plant’s natural response to a heterogeneous supply of nutrients. A significant increase in root length density is promoted by concentrated zones of K in this soil when the ratio of the K concentrations in the fertilised zone to the K concentration in the unfertilised zone is greater than 9 (Chapter 6 and Chapter 7). However, this root proliferation is not to the extent that would be expected with N and P, and it can not be stated with certainty that it is K promoting root proliferation, and that this is not a form of secondary promotion such as where the concentrated K is resulting in a concentrated zone of N in the form of NH4+. The results also show that root proliferation does not appear to be promoted when the ratio is equal to or less than 4.5 (Chapter 3). Another option is to add N and/or P in a fertiliser band with K to promote root proliferation. Combinations of these nutrients applied together in a band in the Ferrosol soil of the South Burnett will remain in the position of application (Chapter 5), ensuring the maximum potential from root proliferation could be achieved. There were concerns regarding the toxic effects that can occur when blending high concentrations of different nutrients together. However, there were no adverse effects on root access and root absorption from concentrated fertiliser blends containing K, N and P (Chapter 4). The addition of N and/or P in a fertiliser band will promote root proliferation over having K only in the fertiliser band (Chapter 6). However, this increased root volume in contact with the K fertiliser did not result in an increased absorption of K from the fertiliser band by the plants. Although plant tissue K was below adequate concentrations, mass balance calculations of K showed that there was sufficient applied fertiliser K for adequate plant tissue K concentrations to be reached. Modelling indicated that under the initial conditions and the conditions prevalent at 45 DAS, the plants would have been able to absorb sufficient K for plant tissue K concentrations to be above adequate levels. The most likely reasoning for the insufficient plant uptake of K was soil K was rendered unavailable to the plant. What happened to the original K which was initially plant available can not be confirmed conclusively. It was hypothesised that over the growth period there was fixation of K by the soil, due to the high concentration of K in the fertiliser band (movement of K into ‘fixed’ pools in the soil), resulting in reduced levels of plant available K. Root volume in contact with fertiliser can be increased by increasing the soil volume fertilised, although this would reduce the concentration of the nutrient and reduce the potential for root proliferation. This concept was explored with a pot trial that exposed plants to different volumes of soil fertilised with the same quantity of K fertiliser (Chapter 7). The volume of soil fertilised has no effect on the cumulative plant uptake of K up to 70 days after sowing. It was concluded that this occurred as a result of the increased root length density in concentrated K zones (root proliferation, although not to the extent that would be expected with N and P), and physiological plasticity (increased plant uptake rate). When 25% or more of the soil volume contains the fertiliser K there was sufficient root volume in contact with the fertiliser to permit uptake and therefore no need for root proliferation. Where smaller soil volumes were fertilised; root length density increased in the vicinity of the fertiliser to the point where sufficient root volume was in contact with the fertiliser. When small soil volumes are fertilised with K, such as in a band, there is also an increase in root length density in the vicinity of the fertiliser, but not to the extent required for adequate plant uptake of K. In this situation it appears that there is physiological plasticity (increased plant uptake rate of K) to make up the shortfall. When only a small proportion of the soil is fertilised, such as in a band, the volume of soil in contact with the K fertiliser is minimised and, consequently the quantity of K that can be fixed by the soil is reduced. This results in a higher concentration of plant available soil K, in the soil solution and as exchangeable K. This greater plant available K is able to buffer increased uptake rates that occur to compensate for the small volumes of soil containingK fertiliser, and the resultant lack of root volume in contact with the K fertiliser. However, this increased uptake rate on its own is insufficient for adequate K uptake, requiring root proliferation to increase the root volume in contact with the K fertiliser to a point where the combined plasticity is sufficient to ensure adequate plant uptake of K.

Amending and Defending Constitution

Tessa Jones — 2012-04-30T00:00:00Z

I begin by evaluating four theories: mereological essentialism, the occasional identity thesis, four-dimensionalism and the constitution view. I compare the solutions these theories offer to puzzles of material constitution with particular attention being paid to their treatment of Leibniz’s Law, the ontological status of objects and the distinction between objects and their matter. If a lump of clay constitutes a statue, the lump of clay and the statue are metaphysically distinct such that they are distinct kinds, but numerically one thing—the statue as constituted by the lump of clay. I defend this view against criticism that it collapses into identity or substance dualism, exploding reality with unnecessary objects. I amend constitution to better account for cases of composite objects and to better solve puzzle cases involving change in parts over time. Finally, I go on to apply constitution to an unorthodox puzzle for theories of objects—the problem of the individuation of events. Events are things that happen. If we grant that events are in the same or similar ontological category to objects, there is a strong analogy between the problem of material constitution and the problem of events. In signing the US Constitution you may also do your bit to ratify it. However, the signing and the ratifying have different properties. I suggest that the signing and the ratifying are distinct in kind, but are not two separate events. I develop a constitution relation—a contingent, irreflexive, asymmetric and transitive relation—for events. This relation has the potential to be applied to the mind-body problem.

American "Idealogue": Freemasonry, Brotherhood, and the Democratic Imaginary in Herman Melville.

Michael Brunckhorst — 2011-07-21T00:00:00Z

This dissertation examines four important early works by Herman Melville with the aim of discovering, in part, the substance and meaning of the author‘s engagement with the symbols and philosophies of Freemasonry. The goals and beliefs of the Fraternity — liberty, tolerance, equality and universal brotherhood — were also distinguishing features of both Enlightenment thought and the virtues that drove the American Revolution. In consequence Freemasonry became a major cultural force in America from the early years of the Republic to the late nineteenth century; its ideological ties to the nation were celebrated publicly, and often. With this in mind, I have examined how Melville‘s fictional treatment of nineteenth-century political and cultural ideologies was informed by a number of factors: the relationships between Melville, his family and their position in American history; and his deployment of Masonic iconography in a literary exploration of the antebellum period. My analysis of Typee, Mardi, White-Jacket, and Moby-Dick, is also concerned with the value of his fiction as a dialogue between the author and the culture from which it arose. Like most literary works of the period, Melville‘s novels mediate between the author‘s own personality and public sociality. In the context of this mediation and what I argue is the advocatory nature of his texts, I suggest that — more than any of the nation‘s literary figures since James Fenimore Cooper — Herman Melville not only wrote about America, but to America. Melville‘s literary pursuit of the democratic ideal, and his complementary articulation of the notion of brotherhood, may be read as effectively scrutinizing the many polarities in nineteenth-century American society: matter and spirit, private and public, secrecy and revelation, individual and nation. I argue that by privileging the simple republican paradigm over the complex realities of his own time, Melville may be seen as an impractical idealist — an "idealogue" — whose work encourages a re-thinking of antebellum society‘s basic political and social tenets. Indeed, I suggest that his dream of national regeneration — essentially a call for the restoration of Jeffersonian political values — was a richly conceived but necessarily ― "imaginary" democracy.

A Methodology for Developing an Extensible Mineral Information Model

Xu, Hua — 2011-02-17T00:00:00Z

A Methodology for the Design of Energy Efficient Comminution Circuits

Zeljka Pokrajcic — 2010-08-09T00:00:00Z

Comminution, or particle size reduction, involving crushing and grinding, is a highly energy intensive process. This is largely due to the prevailing use of tumbling mills for grinding, where the nature of the particle breakage process is unconstrained and random. This indiscriminate nature of breakage contributes to the inefficient use of energy and may not promote liberation of valuable minerals in the ore. It results in high energy consumption and the generation of critical size material and ultra fines, both of which are difficult to process. The total demand for minerals is increasing to meet the requirements of the developing world and beyond. As a result, large reserves of high grade ore deposits have already been depleted. This has seen the need to mine and process ever lower grade, more competent and finely disseminated ores at much higher throughputs and finer product sizes. The inefficient nature of the comminution process coupled with ore reserves of declining head grade and the imminent introduction of a carbon trading scheme, suggests that the long term viability of the mineral processing industry depends on developing new methods and strategies to improve the efficiency of all processes. This will facilitate higher throughput rates at lower energy consumption. This is particularly important for the comminution process, as it is the most energy intensive part of a mineral processing circuit. A review of the current comminution circuit design practices reveals a general view that the comminution circuit design process is complicated and inexact involving the consideration of many interacting factors. A trend has been the repeated design and installation of large, low capital cost and uncomplicated crushing and grinding circuits. These normally feature one or two stages of crushing, followed by one or two large tumbling mills and a single classification stage. For most new comminution circuits, the general configuration and layout are more similar than different, where the size of the tumbling mills are dictated by the target product size and the throughput rate. The methodology for energy efficient comminution circuit design presented in this thesis challenges the popular trend of large and generic comminution circuits. The methodology promotes a better understanding and use of the ore properties and options to reduce energy consumption, including: • The inclusion of pre-concentration techniques at the head of a comminution circuit. The purpose of pre-concentration is to remove coarse size liberated gangue from later stages of processing and energy intensive particle size reduction. The selection of pre-concentration techniques is based on inherent ore textures and ore properties at a large scale. • The use of more efficient comminution equipment and autogenous grinding techniques. Through the re-distribution of comminution energy in a comminution circuit, the generation of problematic size fractions such as critical size material and ultra fines can be minimised or even eliminated. This aids the overall efficiency of the comminution process and minimises power usage for the same throughput and product size. It also limits the consumption of grinding media and the associated embedded energy resulting from grinding media manufacture. • The selection of the coarsest possible target product size(s) for a comminution circuit. This is achieved by thorough analysis and understanding of mineral liberation data of a coarse stream in a comminution circuit and the options and methods available to separate composite valuable mineral bearing particles from mainly liberated gangue in the stream. When these energy efficient strategies are combined in the design and configuration of a comminution circuit, energy savings are likely to be significant. However, it is difficult to accurately quantify the impact on energy savings and circuit operation when all three energy efficient strategies feature in the design of a comminution circuit. Instead, studies in this thesis have shown that the use of just one these strategies in the design of a comminution circuit can: • Reduce the total energy consumption by up to 42% (when compared to a conventional crushing and grinding circuit) through the use of more efficient comminution equipment and autogenous grinding techniques. This equates to grinding energy and grinding consumables savings in excess of $11M per annum for a typical 5Mtpa concentrator. It also can reduce the operating costs by up to a half. • Reduce the energy required for size reduction by 46% when liberated non-sulphide gangue is removed from a coarse stream in the comminution circuit and from further size reduction. This opportunity is identified by the thorough examination of mineral liberation data of this stream. The rejection of gangue at this point in the comminution circuit can provide a saving of approximately $3.5m per year in total grinding costs. It is noted that these energy savings can be at the cost of greater capital cost investment and, some may say, increased operating complexity. Incorporating the energy efficient strategies in a design methodology for comminution circuits can have a few significant implications: • It can increase size and value of the resource being treated as the rejection of liberated gangue by pre-concentration can decrease the mine cut-off grade. • It can improve performance of downstream separation processes as less gangue is present in the feed and the feed size distribution is narrower, allowing for better separation efficiency. • It can reduce the consumption of grinding consumables and minimise the associated energy used it their manufacture. • It may require higher capital cost investment but this is likely to be off set by the reduced energy and grinding media consumption as well as increasing energy costs and the introduction of a carbon trading scheme. This thesis develops and demonstrates a methodology, or a conceptual framework, for comminution circuit design which links together energy efficient design strategies which can reduce all forms of energy consumption and their cost.

A Methodology for Training XCS Agents to Optimise Team and Individual Performance on Path Planning Problems

Kuang-yuan Chen — 2012-01-05T00:00:00Z

Path planning for multiple agents is a challenging problem for navigation in dynamic environments, especially for real-world applications such as air transportation. This thesis explores the use of Genetic-Based Machine Learning (GBML) techniques – and the eXtended Classifier System (XCS) approach in particular – for designing general optimal or near-optimal solutions to path planning problems for Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) environments. The approach is developed and evaluated on a simplified 3D multi-agent path planning problem from Air Traffic Management (ATM). A decoupled heuristic approach is used, in which XCS agents are first trained to find path planning solutions which are optimal or near optimal for their particular performance objectives. Then a separate supervisor agent, analogous to an air traffic controller, is used to assign priority dynamically among aircraft agents in order to resolve conflicts. Although the case study is a path planning problem in simplified ATM environments, many challenges still needed to be overcome in order to make this approach systematic. First, the long action chain problem was encountered. As indicated in literature, the traditional approach to using XCS on multi-step problems has difficulty in exploring all states in an environment with more than 10 steps, because solutions are biased to be accurate for those states explored more often, but inaccurate for those unexplored or less-explored states. To overcome this problem, we show that by designing an appropriate local reward function, instead of using the traditional delayed-reward feedback mechanism, XCS can be used to generate optimal or near-optimal heuristic solutions to the ATM path planning problem. Secondly, safety is an important issue in air transportation. The challenge was how to ensure that safety constraints are taken into account as far as possible during learning. A general solution for biasing XCS to avoid undesired actions is developed and shown to significantly improve safety on the 3D path planning problem. The third main challenge was how to generalise from the hand-crafted local reward function solution to a more generalisable approach based simply on path fitness. The traditional approach to multi-step problems in XCS is to use delayed rewards with discounting. But this approach either fails to work or works poorly for many path planning problems. This is known as the aliasing state problem in path planning. To overcome this problem in our ATM environment, we developed a new means for feeding delayed rewards into XCS. In this approach the user simply needs to provide the global reward function and XCS learns a suitable local reward function. We show that the approach achieves results which are almost as good as the hand-crafted solution. Another practical challenge was to reduce the size of the rule set used by XCS. The size of the rule set used in Learning Classifier Systems has a large effect on the computation time and resources used during training and evaluation. Some new genetic algorithm operators are developed and shown to reduce the rule set size by 20-40%. Finally, a Q-learning system was developed for solving the agent prioritisation problem. The controller agent uses Q-learning to assess how much flexibility agents have in their path planning solutions and to give priority to agents with less flexibility. We show that this leads to significantly improved team performance over fixed priority schemes, without unduly affecting individual agent’s performance. In summary, the main contributions of this thesis are: (1) developing a novel mechanism to feedback a global reward from the last step to previous steps in XCS to derive a suitable local reward function; (2) developing a way of incorporating domain knowledge to prevent undesired actions to XCS; (3) providing new parent selection and genetic algorithm operators in XCS to reducing the final rule set size, which may also be a contribution in the Genetic Algorithm realm more generally; (4) demonstrating a prototype of an off-line path planning system in air transportation.

A Microfluidic Platform to Enable Screening of Immobilised Biomolecule Mixtures

Michael Hines — 2010-08-30T00:00:00Z

Abstract This thesis describes the design, fabrication and operation of a microfluidic device for the screening of biomolecule mixture surface mediated effects. The characterisation of a surface immobilisation strategy that will allow the robust attachment of candidate biomolecules on a substrate for use in cell culture applications. This is carried out in the form of a modified and optimised layer-by-layer surface immobilisation strategy and its subsequent thorough and robust characterisation. This was achieved by compiling and critically analysing large amounts of quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D) data and the model utilised to provide meaningful, physical data as an output. QCM-D data was combined with surface plasmon resonance (SPR) data to validate the assumptions used within the QCM-D model package. Further evidence demonstrating the presence of the multilayer, as described by QCM-D and SPR, is achieved using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). These results show that the multilayer surface is robustly attached to the substrate and consists of a large amount of water whilst being able to immobilise mixtures of four proteins. A custom protocol for fabricating these two layer devices was devised and is presented. Scale limitations have been overcome to provide mixing capabilities for large extracellular matrix molecules to be immobilised on the previously described, microfluidically generated surface immobilisation strategy. The optimisation and characterisation of the mixing within this microfluidic device, affected by the incorporated staggered herring bone mixer is also shown. Using dynamic force spectroscopy (DFS) along with a custom designed force curve data processing and analysis package, the spatial localisation of a mixture of four immobilised biomolecules was determined. The aim of this study was to compare the spatial localization of a mixture of four biomolecules created by; standard cell culture protocols (adsorbed from bulk onto tissue culture polystyrene) and a surface created via microfluidic deposition on top of a previously described surface immobilisation strategy. The design and robust application of this custom analysis package allows the definition of a “Barricade of Specificity” such that interactions between an antibody functionalised AFM tip and a surface composed of a mixture of proteins, to be categorised as either a “true” specific interaction, or a non-specific interaction. The application of this Barricade of Specificity thus allows the spatial localisation of four immobilized biomolecules to be determined with a large degree of accuracy as a result of the large rage of non-specific interactions surveyed and the strict definition of a valid rupture force. The final chapter details the application of the microfluidic platform to enable high throughput screening of the effects of extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules, singly and in combination, with regards to the effect on the expression of cell surface markers on umbilical cord blood (UCB) derived CD34+ cells. Careful selection of candidate ECM molecules, cytokine and oxygen concentration has resulted in little difference in the effect on UCB derived CD34+ cells differentiation state after seven days in culture. The major effect has been the maturation towards lymphocyte and leukocyte precursors. However, of the four ECM molecules tested individually, in binary and in quaternary combinations, osteopontin (Opn) and laminin (Ln) demonstrated differences compared to other surfaces tested. In order to further assess the effect of these protein surfaces on the cell surface marker expression of UCB derived CD34+ cells, further tests are warranted for increased periods of time to enable greater discrimination in marker expression and thus increase our understanding of the fundamental biology of this rare and clinically useful cell source.

Amino Acid Digestibility and Requirements of Broiler Chickens

Mulyantini Ni Gusti Ayu — 2009-01-30T00:00:00Z

The dietary requirement for protein is actually a requirement for the amino acids contained in the dietary protein. The efficiency of protein utilization depends to a large extent on the amino acid composition of the diet. Although a large volume of published amino acid digestibility values for poultry feedstuffs is available, there are still many gaps in our knowledge on digestibility and utilization of amino acids. The major focus of this thesis was to examine several aspects of amino acid digestibility and utilization in broiler chickens. Initial studies examined the performance of two commercial broiler strains fed diets formulated on total or digestible amino acids. The objective of this study was to determine the individual bird response to 4 different diets formulated on: 1) total amino acids; 2) digestible amino acids (book values)using the same ingredient as diet 1; 3) digestible amino acids values determined on the same ingredients as used in diet 1: and 4) digestible amino acids but formulated commercially. The results show that birds given diets formulated on digestible amino acid basis, grew faster, ate more feed and converted it into body weight more efficiently, and had a higher proportion of body protein (P<0.05) than birds given diet formulated on a total amino acid basis. It was also shown that males broiler were significantly faster growing, consumed more feed and had better feed efficiency than do female broilers. There was also a significant (P<0.05)sex x diet interaction for weight gain. Whilst, males always grew faster than females, the difference was much greater for those given the digestible amino acid formulated diets. The studies reported in Chapters 5 and 6 was conducted to determine the digestible methionine, lysine and threonine requirement of broilers during the starter and finisher periods. The minimum digestible methionine requirements to maximize weight gain for starter was similar with grower. Digestible lysine requirements to maximize weight gain represent a decrease 25%, respectively from starter to grower. The lysine digestible requirement for weight gain decreased from 11.4 g/kg diet (0 to 3 wk) to 8.5 g/kg diet (3 to 6 wk). For threonine, the starter threonine level of 6.5 g/kg resulted in the best responses (P<0.01). The study reported in Chapter 7 was to identify the extent of differences in the nutritional value of sorghum available within Australia, in particular the apparent digestibility of amino acids in sorghum samples based upon digesta samples taken from the lower ileum of the chicken. The results of this study suggest that it is possible to estimate digestible amino acid supply from sorghum from the protein content of the grain. Crude protein content (N x 6.25) of sorghum varied from 80.2 to 117.5 g/kg dry matter. In most Australian cereal based diet lysine is first limiting amino acids. In this experimental diet, methionine is the first limiting amino acid content ranged from 1.06 to 1.42%. It followed by lysine, histidine and glycine, respectively. The cereal-based diets fed to poultry contain substantial quantities of phytin,which is poorly digested by poultry. The poor digestive utilization of phytin-bound P by poultry and its consequences on digestibility of protein and amino acids lead to do some more extensive research in this aspect. In this regard, the effects of enzyme supplementation on apparent ileal amino acid digestibility of cereal were studied in Chapter 8. Supplementing wheat fed to 5-wk-old broilers with xylanase alone or a combination of xylanase and phytase improved the ileal digestibility of amino acids. Although there was improvement in sorghum based diet, phytase and xylanase supplementation had no effect on the avaergae of ileal amino acid digestibility. Overall, the results presented in this thesis demonstrate that formulation of poultry diets on a digestible amino acid basis is superior to formulation of diets on a total amino acid basis. This study suggested that genotype and sex differences in performance and body composition should be taken into account when formulating diets to maximize performance of broiler chickens. Moreover, the requirement of digestible lysine, methionine and threonine for broiler chicken during the starter and finisher periods were obtained in this study.

A MODEL FOR GRAVITY FLOW OF FRAGMENTED ROCK IN BLOCK CAVING MINES

Matthew Pierce — 2010-09-07T00:00:00Z

The work in this thesis is directed towards the development of a model for gravity flow prediction that can assist in the design of a drawpoint layout and draw schedule that maximizes recovery of ore from block and panel caving mines. Experience suggests that maximum recovery and minimum dilution are achieved most easily if one is able to achieve relatively uniform downward movement of all fragmented rock over the area under draw. A critical review of existing experimental and simulation data demonstrated that this is encouraged through overlap of the movement zones (IMZs) associated with each individual drawpoint and that the far-field shape, eccentricity and internal velocity profile of an IMZ are functions of the mean fragment size and friction angle of the caved rock. A series of DEM and continuum modelling studies were used to isolate shear banding as the mechanism controlling these behaviours. Incremental equations were developed to embody these mechanisms at the scale of a disk-shaped volume, representing a horizontal slice through an IMZ, and embedded within a cave-scale simulator (REBOP). It is shown that the resulting model provides predictions of far-field material movements (including free surface rilling) and extraction zone shapes that are consistent with observations from scaled physical models. It is also shown that the model is capable of providing reasonable predictions of drawpoint grade-tonnage trends when applied at the mine scale. This thesis also aimed to isolate the mechanisms controlling flow under interactive draw conditions, in which stress-driven yielding and flow of stagnant material between IMZs can result in uniform drawdown prior to overlap. A series of DEM and continuum modelling studies demonstrate that the stress distribution around a single IMZ is characterized by a plastic zone whose thickness is a function of IMZ radius, caved rock friction angle and overburden height. It was also demonstrated that when a group of IMZs are spaced such that their plastic zones overlap, vertical stresses above the yield limit of the rock in the overlapping region are capable of arching into surrounding stagnant material, thereby inhibiting interactive draw mechanisms. These findings suggest that the relation between stress and strength in the stagnant zone exerts more fundamental control over interactive draw than the ratio between IMZ diameter and drawpoint spacing, as has been suggested previously by other researchers. Logic was developed for the prediction of stresses and yielding inside the volume under draw that accounts for arching effects and can be used to infer where interactive draw conditions may exist. Comparison with the results of numerical and physical experiments suggests that the predictions are reasonable but would benefit from further testing and validation. A series of drawpoint-scale simulations were conducted using DEM to explore the mechanisms controlling fines migration in a caving environment. It was demonstrated that fines migration can occur inside the IMZ and that it is induced by the shearing that accompanies movement toward the drawpoint. It was also found that lateral movement of finer particles is restricted during percolation and that this can lead to stagnation and accumulation of fines near the base of an IMZ. A series of shear box tests were simulated via DEM to quantify percolation rates for caved rock materials. When embedded within REBOP, these were shown to reproduce the percolation rates observed in scaled physical models of draw. Secondary fragmentation within caving is commonly attributed to a combination of splitting (bulk fracture or crushing) and rounding (abrasion). A critical review of available data suggested that splitting occurs via compression in stagnant zones and via shearing inside the IMZ at high stress:strength ratios. Rounding is most likely to occur via shearing inside the IMZs at low stress:strength ratios. The factors controlling these mechanisms were isolated, including shear strain, stress, fragment shape, size distribution, intact strength and initial porosity. An existing empirical model for shearing-induced fragmentation of manufactured materials was adapted for embedment within REBOP and tested via comparison with changes in drawpoint fragmentation observed at an operating mine. The comparison suggests that the logic may overpredict the degree of secondary fragmentation due to the assumption of an initially uniform fragment size in the empirical model. New DEM techniques were developed for the study of secondary fragmentation and were shown to offer promise as a means to extend and improve existing empirical models for both shearing and compression-induced fragmentation. Ore grades and fragmentation measured in drawpoints of the 7700 Level panel cave at Henderson Mine were used to test the newly developed model on a full-scale problem. Good matches were obtained between predicted and measured drawpoint grades where accurate measures of initial fragment size were available. In other areas, poor matches between measured and expected grades could be accounted for in the new model via differences in fragmentation and by the tendency for materials to rill long distances horizontally beneath uncaved ground. Fines migration and secondary fragmentation mechanisms were predicted to have a measurable, but secondary influence on recovery and dilution.

A Multilevel Analysis of the Occupational Stressor-Strain Process: Contextual Variables as Additional Moderators in the Job Demand-Control Model

Michelle Tucker — 2010-11-19T00:00:00Z

Abstract Poor working conditions and other environmental stressors have been linked to detrimental effects on employee well-being (Ganster & Schaubroeck, 1991; Jex & Crossley, 2005; Siegrist, 2008; Segerstrom & Miller, 2004). A major objective of research in this area is to identify those factors that mitigate or lessen the negative impact of work stressors. Karasek's (1979) Job Demand-Control Model (JD-CM) endeavours to explain the stressor-strain process from a job design perspective, whereby job control is proposed to mitigate the negative effects of job demands on strain. However, the evidence in regards to the interactive effects of job demand and job control remain mixed, and it has been hypothesised that there may be additional moderating variables involved in the stressor-strain process that better explain how strain may be reduced. Although a number of additional individual-level moderators have been examined, such as self-efficacy, and social support, the role of broader contextual team and organisational factors, and the transaction between the individual and the environment have been largely overlooked. It is, therefore, important to investigate cross-level effects between individual-and group-level factors to gain a better understanding of the stressor-strain process. One such potential contextual factor is collective efficacy (Bandura, 1997) – the shared beliefs of a group that they have the resources and skills to manage a problem. It is hypothesised that group-level collective efficacy buffers the negative effects of stressors by providing the group with the confidence that they can cope in a productive manner, by using personal control to manage stressors. A second potential group-level moderator is group identification (Tafjel & Turner, 1979). Groups high in identification are characterised by shared values, goals, attitudes, and mutual respect. It has been argued that a strong sense of group identification buffers individuals and workgroups from the negative effects of stressors, by reducing uncertainty and providing a socially supportive environment that allows individuals to feel confident exercising personal control to deal with stressors. The objective of this thesis is to examine the role of these group-level factors as additional moderators of the JD-CM. The individual-, group-, and cross-level interactive effects of job design and contextual variables on strain will be investigated to develop a better understanding of how the broader social context in which one works impacts on individual factors and how strain is experienced at both the individual- and group-levels. The first study employed a cross-sectional survey design, whereas Study 2 was a longitudinal field study. A broad overview of each study is presented below. In Study 1, data was collected from 544 employees nested within 23 workgroups. Perceptions of job demands, job control, collective efficacy, workgroup identification, job satisfaction, and strain were measured. Variance components analyses found that significant amounts of variance in both anxiety and job satisfaction were shared collectively at the group-level. The major objective for this study was to evaluate whether collective efficacy and identification acted as group-level moderators of the individual-level JD-CM variables. Significant 3-way interactions were found among group-level collective efficacy, individual-level job control, and individual-level job demand on anxiety and job satisfaction, as well as among group-level identification, individual-level job control, and individual-level job demand on anxiety and job satisfaction. These interactions revealed that when collective efficacy was high, individuals perceiving high levels of job control were buffered from the negative effects of high job demands. Moreover, when group-level collective efficacy was low, high job control exacerbated the negative effects of job demands on both anxiety and job satisfaction. When group identification was high, the positive effects of high job control on job satisfaction were more marked. Conversely, when identification was low, high levels of perceived individual control were related to higher strain. These findings suggest that contextual factors may influence whether job control is perceived as a buffering or exacerbating factor. Study 2 examined the effects of these two contextual variables in the JD-CM over time. Using a sample of 120 participants nested within 8 workgroups, two surveys were conducted in a partial two-wave panel design. The results revealed significant 3-way interactions among group-level collective efficacy, individual-level job control, and individual-level job demands for depression, but not for anxiety, stress, or job satisfaction. The 3-way interaction among group-level workgroup identification, individual-level job control, and individual-level job demands was significant in the prediction of job satisfaction only. Both interactions followed similar patterns as those found in Study 1, providing additional support, albeit less consistently, for the notion that contextual factors need to be in place in order for job control to operate as a stress-buffer. Overall, the findings from both studies have several important implications for the JD-CM and for stress research in general. First, the findings suggest that aspects of strain are shared experiences among employees nested within workgroups, and this provides support for the notion that individuals are not independent of their contexts. Additionally, the findings from both studies suggest that the expansion of the JD-CM is warranted and that group-level contextual factors may act in concert with individual-level variables in buffering the effects of stressors in the work environment.

A Multi-method Investigation of the Relationship between Intra-team Values, Conflict and Trust

Ju-Li Ng — 2011-04-29T00:00:00Z

ABSTRACT Values serve as the guiding mechanism for behaviours and operate at different organisational levels. While there has been sustained interest in the study of organisational values over the years, the majority of these studies focused on how value congruity (or incongruity) affects organisational variables such as performance and productivity. Additionally, scholars continue to compartmentalise the study of values, focusing on individual, team and organisational levels as the units of analysis, while neglecting the cross-level effects of values. Thus, limited research has examined the process by which specific individual values impact team values and how these values drive behaviours to impact conflict. Along the same line, while conflict researchers identify trust as an important variable in the outcomes for workplace conflict, there is an emerging paradigm shift in conflict literature suggesting that conflict may be an antecedent and beneficial to trust. This thesis attempts to address these conceptual gaps. Anchored in Social Exchange Theory (SET) and drawing on values, conflict and trust literature over three studies, the present research develops and tests a cross-level model of the relationship between values, conflict and trust in organisational teams. Specifically, the thesis proposes that individual values (self-direction, achievement and benevolence) will influence the team values of team orientation and outcome orientation, while the values at the team level will influence the different dimensions of conflict (task, relationship and process). These, in turn, will impact different dimensions of trust (calculus, knowledge, and identification-based trust). A multi-method research design was employed in data collection to ascertain the hypothesised relationships in the proposed model for this research program. First, Study 1 explored the issues of workplace values, conflict and trust using in-depth interviews with 45 team members and leaders from two Australian organisations. The interviews revealed three forms of cross-level effects of values: top-down, bottom-up and an amalgamation of the two. Additionally, the interviewers indicated that the interplay between conflict and trust is multi-faceted, while communication was identified as an important tool in building trust when there is conflict. Study 2 employed observations, longitudinal open-ended surveys and post-observation interviews to further extricate the effects of conflict on the perception of trust in teams. Team processes of five postgraduate student work teams in a large public university were observed while these students were working on their assignment over a period of ten weeks. Data for Study 2 were analysed using Bales Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) (1951). Study 2 demonstrated that the influence of conflict on trust has temporal properties implying a dynamic association between conflict and trust. Study 2 also revealed that task conflict was linked with Knowledge-based Trust (KBT), while the presence of relationship and process conflict triggered both Identification-based Trust (IBT) and Calculus-based trust (CBT). Similarly, Study 2 findings identified task-oriented communication, positive socio-emotional communication and control mechanisms as buffers to protect trust and to build trust in the face of conflict. Overall, findings from Study 1 and Study 2 assisted in refining the preliminary research model. Finally, Study 3 quantitatively tested the hypothesised relationships in the proposed model with a sample of 237 leaders and team members from five Australian organisations. Using STATA 11.0 and Bootstrapping to examine the predictive ability and generalisability of the hypothesised relationships between variables depicted on the conceptual model, findings show that although there was no significant path between individual values and team outcome orientation value, individual values (self-direction, achievement and benevolence) positively predicted team orientation values. Team orientation values were negatively associated with task, relationship and process conflict and these, in turn, successfully mediated the relationship between team orientation and the different dimensions of trust as hypothesized. Finally, conflict (task, relationship and process) were negatively related with KBT and IBT. Taken together, the present research has made six significant contributions. First, it has made a theoretical contribution to values literature, as this is the first time that a cross-level effect of individual values on team values has been investigated. Second, results of the current research explicate the process by which shared values and specific values trigger conflict. Third, this research is among the first to empirically document the effects of different forms of conflict on different dimensions of trust, and evidence from Study 1 and Study 2 suggests that conflict can impact trust positively. The current research, therefore, is one of the pioneers of research on the reverse proposition that conflict may be beneficial for trust. Fourth, and methodologically, this is the first time that an IPA framework has been extended to code the unique characteristics of disclosure and conflict. Fifth, the research highlights the usefulness of multi-method research to understand the complex relationship between values, conflict and trust. Finally, the research contributes to the management of values, conflict and trust by espousing that positive socio-emotional communication, task-oriented communication and setting control mechanisms can have a significant impact on trust in the face of conflict. Keywords values, conflict, trust, multilevel, team processes Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC) 150311 Organisational Behaviour (70%) 150305 Human Resources Management (20%) 150399 Business and Management not elsewhere classified (10%)

An absence of saints

Licari, Rosanna — 2012-07-27T00:00:00Z

Analysing the Evolution of International Trade: A Complex Networks Approach

Timothy Kastelle — 2008-07-22T00:00:00Z

Analysis and Architectures for Bang-bang Phase Locked Loops

Mr Michael Chan — 2008-11-06T00:00:00Z

Analysis and Design of Free-Space Optical Interconnects for Optically Augmented Computing

Mr Feng-chuan Tsai — 2009-03-06T00:00:00Z

Performance requirements of short-distance digital communication links have increased considerably with the escalating demand for high speed and high density data links. The high aggregate bandwidth and channel density achievable by free-space optical interconnects (FSOIs) make them ideal replacement for electrical interconnection schemes. Optical interconnects potentially have low power consumption, and can facilitate the development of radically novel designs for VLSI architectures including heterogeneous multiprocessor systems, and highly parallel computing systems. Recent developments in the integration of Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) arrays and photodetector arrays with CMOS electronic circuitry have increased the practical potential of optical interconnects. However, VCSELs tend to operate in several transverse modes simultaneously, which will degrade the performance of FSOIs. Experimental investigation was performed to evaluate the operation characteristics and the intensity noise in VCSELs. The measurement results were later combined with optical simulations to analyse the effect of optical crosstalk in free-space optical interconnects. The VCSEL characterization included light-current-voltage relationships, relative intensity noise, modal spectral composition and modal beam profiles. The optical system simulation software (Code V) was used to simulate optical crosstalks in the FSOI system. Experimentally measured spectrally-resolved near-field images of VCSEL higher order modes were used as extended sources in the proposed simulation model. The simulation was performed using a combination of exact ray-tracing and the beam propagation method. A new type of crosstalk referred to as the stray-light crosstalk (SLC) was introduced. This type of crosstalk is caused by the overfill of the transmitter microlens by the VCSEL beam. It was discovered that part of the signal was imaged by the adjacent microlens to another channel, possibly far from the intended one. The simulation showed that the SLC is strongly dependent on the fill factor of the microlens, array pitch, and the channel density of the system. When comparing the diffraction-caused crosstalk (DCC) to SLC, an increase in the interconnection distance has little influence on the SLC. A simple behavioural model was developed which accurately approximates the crosstalk noise for a range of optical sources and interconnect configurations. The effect of transmitter and receiver array configurations on the performance of FSOIs was investigated. Our results demonstrate the importance of SLC in both square and hexagonal configuration. By changing the array lattice geometry from square to a hexagonal, we obtained an overall optical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement of 3 dB. The optical SNR is optimal for the hexagonal channel arrangement regardless of the transverse mode structure of the VCSEL beam was shown. Furthermore, the VCSEL drive current required for the best performance of the FSOI system was determined. The optimal focal length of the transmitter microlens array which maximises the SNR by minimising the combined effects of DCC and SLC was determined. Our results show that shorter focal length needs to be used for higher order modes to obtain optimal SNR in an FSOI system.

Analysis of Australian elapid snake venoms for the discovery and development of new human therapeutics

Earl, Stephen — 2011-03-15T00:00:00Z

Analysis of cadherin and receptor tyrosine kinase interactions: trafficking and function.

Bryant, David Michael — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

In multicellular organisms, sheets of polarized epithelial cells provide a functional barrier between the external world, and the internal milieu. One protein critical for epithelial polarization and cell-cell adhesion is the epithelial cadherin, or E-cadherin protein. Although the adhesive function of E-cadherin is mediated primarily at the cell surface, E-cadherin undergoes complex internalisation and intracellular trafficking in response various different physiological circumstances. The mechanisms that regulate these pathways remain poorly defined. A central aim of this thesis has been to characterise the pathways and machinery that regulate internalisation of E-cadherin. To this end, mammary adenocarcinoma (MCF-7) cells were examined for E-cadherin trafficking, cell-cell adhesion and morphogenetic status in response to stimulation with various growth factors, primarily fibroblast growth factors (FGFs), which play a key role in mammary development and tumourigenesis. FGF stimulation induced the cointernalisation of E-cadherin and the FGF receptor 1 (FGFR1) into early endosomes, resulting in disrupted cell-cell adhesion. FGFR1 translocated to the nucleus in response to a number of stimuli. These studies reveal endocytosis as an initial, requisite step for the subsequent nuclear translocation of FGFR1 by a still uncharacterised pathway. In a novel finding, the E-cadherin-catenin complex was found to conversely regulate signalling and nuclear translocation of FGFR1 in response to ligand. The internalisation pathway for E-cadherin was found to be independent of caveolin-1, yet only displayed partial dependence on classical clathrin-based endocytic pathways, suggesting the potential of either an unusual endocytic pathway or of multiple internalisation pathways. Interestingly, stimulation of the same cell type with an alternate growth factor, epidermal growth factor (EGF) resulted in internalisation of free E-cadherin through macropinocytosis, without disruption to polarized adhesion. Surprisingly, neither of these pathways resulted in a significant reduction in E-cadherin protein levels. Additional analyses of cellular machinery revealed recruitment of members of the sorting nexin (SNX) protein family to E-cadherin-containing vesicles, whereby SNX1 was noted to regulate intracellular sorting of E-cadherin away from the degradative pathway. Analysis of the morphogenetic effect of cadherin internalisation revealed that whilst a number of stimuli were able to induce internalisation of E-cadherin, stimulation with FGF alone was able to induce scattering and migratory activity in MCF-7 cells. Curiously, this behaviour was independent of E-cadherin expression, revealing a novel partial epithelial-mesenchymal transition (pEMT) in response to FGF. These findings underscore the notion that E-cadherin is able to utilise multiple pathways for internalisation, depending on growth factors, and on cellular context. Finally, studies using epithelial cell lines embedded in extracellular matrix to form glandular like structures suggest the potential for intracellular trafficking of E-cadherin to be studied in 3-D using epithelial cell culture models. These studies reveal the existence of alternate pathways for E-cadherin internalisation and provide an important insight in the differential regulation of E-cadherin localization and function under different physiological circumstances.

Analysis of Competitive Interactions in a Tropical Marine Epifaunal Community

Erin O'Leary — 2008-11-05T00:00:00Z

Analysis of Conservation and Chromatin Structure at Metazoan Splice Sites

Satu Nahkuri — 2010-11-22T00:00:00Z

The regulation of alternative splicing remains a mystery, as introns often harbour numerous decoy motifs similar to the consensus splice site sequence, and most auxiliary splicing enhancing and inhibiting sequences targeted by splicing factors are poorly conserved. Conversely, the conservation level of exonic and intronic sequences flanking alternative splice sites is significantly higher than that around constitutive splice sites. One such highly conserved sequence located in the mammalian serotonin receptor gene is likely targeted by the HBII-52 small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA) and implicated in the regulation of alternative splicing. Given the enormous size of the non-coding transcriptome, the possibility that many non-spliceosomal non-coding RNAs contribute to the outcome of alternative splicing by hybridizing the precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) was considered in this thesis. Splicing, transcription and chromatin are intricately coupled, as demonstrated by the observations that various histone modifications exert a profound effect on transcription and alternative splicing, that dozens of crucial chromatin associated factors double as splicing or transcription factors, and that nucleosomes associated with genomic DNA at transcription start and termination sites can occlude target motifs from regulatory proteins. For example, the precise positioning of the +1 nucleosome at the transcription start site is implicated in the modulation of transcription initiation, while the backtracking of elongating RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) upon encountering this nucleosome is suggested to prompt the creation of transcription initiation RNAs (tiRNAs) via 5’ cleavage of the newly transcribed pre-mRNA. In this thesis, two parallel lines of research were pursued to investigate how alternative splicing and splicing in general are regulated in animals. Firstly, sequences flanking mammalian and insect splice sites were analysed in search for highly conserved blocks that could serve as potential landing pads for cis- or trans-acting regulatory non-coding RNAs. The analysis revealed two putative mutually exclusive cis-acting RNA structures in the homothorax pre-mRNA of Drosophila melanogaster, and thousands of conserved intronic blocks near splice sites (CIBSs) in mammals. Intriguingly, the human genes harbouring CIBSs were associated with chromatin modification and maintenance. The mammalian conservation study also led to the discovery of an unannotated snoRNA gene, SNORD119, which resides in the intron of a core splicing factor (SNRPB, SmB) and likely guides the methylation of ribosomal RNA. Evolutionary analysis revealed a link between SNORD119 and the HBII-52 snoRNA, suggesting that the duplication of the protein-coding host gene had given rise to an independently evolving copy of SNORD119, which gained a new function as a splicing regulator after the divergence of marsupials from the mammalian lineage and is currently known as HBII-52. The second line of study was an analysis of nucleosome positioning with respect to splice sites. For this purpose, whole genome nucleosome density libraries derived from human and medaka ChIP-Seq studies were bioinformatically reassessed. Contrary to the prevailing assumption that the location of nucleosomes with respect to the underlying gene structure elsewhere than at transcription start and termination sites is random, this analysis showed that nucleosomes in the body of genes are preferentially positioned at vertebrate exons in somatic and sperm cells. The observed elevated average nucleosome occupancy at internal exons is independent of the modification status of the nucleosome, the GC content of the exon, and the expression level of the gene. Importantly, the finding indicates that the location of exons is recorded in the epigenetic structure of the genome and can be inherited, while the nucleotide bias observed at synonymous substitutions and codon usage may be driven by factors affecting DNA curvature and potential for nucleosomal association. It also creates a putative link between regulatory RNAs and the epigenetic control of splicing patterns, since there is increasing evidence that regulatory RNAs guide chromatin-modifying enzymes to their sites of action. This thesis also discusses a novel class of small nuclear non-coding RNAs, termed spliRNAs, that terminate exactly at the 3’ ends of spliced exons in sense with the pre-mRNA in a wide variety of animals, tissues and cell lines, and presents evidence that suggests that spliRNAs are derived from many, if not most, splice sites. As spliRNAs and tiRNAs feature similar length distribution, cellular location and expression profile, it is proposed that they have a common biogenesis. In this model, RNAPII elongation is retarded by a strictly positioned exonic nucleosome, possibly containing histone H3 trimethylated at lysine 36 (H3K36me3), to generate spliRNAs, and by the +1 nucleosome to generate tiRNAs. Taken together, these findings support the notion that epigenetic regulation operates at an exonic level rather than only at a genic level. Future studies will show whether spliRNAs serve as vectors for epigenetic information.

Analysis of early life history stages of the saucer scallop Amusium balloti (Bernardi, 1861) : impacts on the development of hatchery practices

Wang, Sizhong — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

Analysis of Gas and Water Production Pathways in Coal Seams

Emma Kinnon — 2010-11-15T00:00:00Z

Understanding gas flow pathways in coal seams will assist in optimising well placement and design for gas drainage in underground coal mines, coal bed methane (CBM) production in commercial fields and, in the future, enhanced CBM recovery with CO2 geosequestration. In this study, drilling, production and geological data from a CBM field in the Bowen Basin, Queensland, were analysed to determine how geology affected production rates over time. The study field produced from medium radius surface to in-seam wells, consisting of a vertical production well intersected most commonly by two lateral wells. Basic geological and gas data were provided by the company and analysed in this thesis, along with the development of well performance indicators, well path analysis, and an investigation into the origins of the gas and water determined using stable isotopes. Daily gas production data were averaged over yearly intervals and contoured for two coal seams across the field to illustrate the variability in gas production rates over a four year period relative to the geological setting. Gas production is variable with distinct domains of high and moderate production rates for the examined period, which reflects geological features across the field, in particular faults, folds and seam splits. The seams dip basinward, and are gently folded along strike into a syncline and anticline, which is separated by a large normal fault that marks a boundary between production domains. For one of the target seams, a master seam split occurs, resulting in elevated mineral matter content and separation of the seam reservoir. A number of smaller normal faults also occur across the anticline. The high production domain occurs north of the fault where gas reservoir size is greater due to higher gas contents in the syncline combined with greater net coal for both seams; the moderate gas production domain occurs south of the fault where gas contents are slightly lower across the crest of the anticline. Little communication occurs between these two distinct areas, and this compartmentalization was established by examining the geochemistry of the water and gas. Stable isotope analysis and water quality tests, including anions, cations and trace elements, were conducted on water samples from the two producing coal seams across the study field to assess zones of recharge, water mixing and pathways. The stable isotope analysis showed that production waters with higher δD and δ18O compositions were associated with areas of higher water production and shallower depths. Lower δD and δ18O compositions, and in particular those that lie above the GWL on the δD vs δ18O graph are generally associated with low water production and high gas production. The water quality analysis showed that waters with lower sodicity and bicarbonate concentrations were associated with high water production and waters with higher sodicity and bicarbonate concentrations were associated with high gas production. The presence of higher bicarbonate concentrations and lower δD and δ18O compositions in the high gas production domain suggests that biogenic gas could have been generated in this area, and is confirmed by the isotopic analysis of the methane. Stable isotope and composition analyses were undertaken on gas samples collected from selected wells in the study field. Gas compositions were consistent across the field with all CH4 composition measurements over 95% and CO2 compositions 1.6% or less. The results from the stable isotope analysis showed that biogenic gas was produced at shallow depths, and the ratio of thermogenic to biogenic CH4 increased with depth. Wells with the highest gas production have a well depth of between 200m and 300m, produce gas that is a mixture of biogenic and thermogenic gas and have larger CO2-CH4 carbon isotopic fractionations from 60.8‰ to 62.9‰. Areas of recharge had smaller isotopic fractionations ranging from 48.6‰ to 57.6‰.

Analysis of Information Flows within Small World Networks and the Effect on Financial Prices

Bowden, Mark P. — 2008-04-10T00:00:00Z

Analysis of Interacting Partners of GmNARK (Glycine max Nodule Autoregulation Receptor Kinase)

Akira Miyahara — 2008-11-18T00:00:00Z

Analysis of interactional strategies and reciprocal positions leading to a successful discussion in French

Julien Chartier — 2011-12-16T00:00:00Z

What constitutes successful participation in discussion in French? The project combines qualitative and quantitative methods to determine what behaviours constitute successful participation in French debate among learners of French. After group discussions on polemical topics among advanced learners of the language were recorded in Australia, a group of French age-peers judged the exchanges on their relative success and on aspects of interactional behaviour including the extent to which participants advanced debate, dominated and/or supported each other. These aspects were identified prior to the evaluation through a comparative analysis of definitions of a successful and a failed discussion as provided by the participants. The Francophone assessments of the recordings were then analysed to determine which of these aspects correlated with the overall success of the exchange. Building on these results, and drawing on the principles of cross-cultural pragmatics, a multidimensional interactionist analysis of the most and least successful exchanges was undertaken to identify interactional strategies contributing to the success or failure of the exchanges. This involved focussing on the various phenomena and behaviour observable in the discussions judged most successful but absent in the least successful discussions, analysing the waveform representations of the audio-recordings to determine the sound atmosphere, analysing non-verbal behaviour, and undertaking a detailed micro-analysis of the transcription of these exchanges. Results showed that advancing debate through advancing and challenging opinions was most likely to lead to the Francophones judging the discussions as successful. The most successful discussions showed participants adopting a wide range of interchangeable interactional positions in which all could successively take the lead in discussion, and consistently questioning and elaborating opinions, thus placing a clear emphasis on the co-construction of ideas. Least successful discussions as seen by the Francophones showed greater concern for facework strategies and followed a stable pattern of opinions being offered in turn but not negotiated, leading to agreement rather than debate. The sound and visual atmosphere of the discussion was also directly connected to the success of the discussion: the non-verbal behaviour analysis showed that participants in successful discussions displayed an increased use of hand gestures and maintained visual contact between the participants while the waveform analysis underlined situations of brouhaha as a recurring component of the most successful discussions. The project departs from previous studies by focusing on discussion in French as a multilayered cultural practice and therefore undertaking a multidimensional analysis to ascertain the elements that correlate with its success or failure. The findings of the project will provide a better understanding of the cultural specificity of different interactional styles, and of the cultural anchoring of interactional strategies contributing to the success or failure of a discussion. It will serve as a potential basis for teaching interactional skills and pragmatic competence in French as a second language.

Analysis of Optical Flow for Indoor Mobile Robot Obstacle Avoidance.

Tobias Low — 2010-07-05T00:00:00Z

This thesis investigates the use of visual-motion information sampled through optical flow for the task of indoor obstacle avoidance on autonomous mobile robots. The methods focus on the practical use of optical flow and visual motion information in performing the obstacle avoidance task in real indoor environments. The methods serve to identify visual-motion properties that must be used in synergy with visual-spatial properties toward the goal of a complete robust visual-only obstacle avoidance system, as is evidently seen within nature. A review of vision-based obstacle avoidance techniques shows that early research mainly focused on visual-spatial techniques, which heavily rely on various assumptions of their environments to function successfully. On the other hand, more current research that looks toward the use of visual-motion information (sampled through optical flow) tends to focus on using optical flow in a subsidiary manner, and does not completely take advantage of the information encoded within an optical flow field. In the light of the current research limitations, this thesis describes two different approaches and evaluates their use of optical flow to perform the obstacle avoidance task. The first approach begins with the construction of a conventional range map using optical flow that stems from the structure-from-motion domain and the theory that optical flow encodes 3D environmental information under certain conditions. The second approach investigates optical flow in a causal mechanistic manner using machine learning of motor responses directly from optical flow - motivated from physical and behavioural evidence observed in biological creatures. Specifically, the second approach is designed with three main objectives in mind: 1) to investigate whether optical flow can be learnt for obstacle avoidance; 2) to create a system capable of repeatable obstacle avoidance performance in real-life environments; and 3) to analyse the system to determine what optical flow properties are actually being used for the motor control task. The range-map reconstruction results have demonstrated some good distance estimations through the use of a feature-based optical flow algorithm. However, the number of flow points were too sparse to provide adequate obstacle detection. Results froma differential-based optical flow algorithm helped to increase the density of flow points, but highlighted the high sensitivity of the optical flow field to the rotational errors and outliers that plague the majority of frames under real-life robot situations. Final results demonstrated that current optical flow algorithms are ill-suited to estimate obstacle distances consistently, as range-estimation techniques require an extremely accurate optical flow field with adequate density and coverage for success. This is a difficult problem within the optical flow estimation domain itself. In the machine learning approach, an initial study to examine whether optical flow can be machine learnt for obstacle avoidance and control in a simple environment was successful. However,there were certain problems. Several critical issues which arise with the use of a machine learning approach were highlighted. These included sample set completeness, sample set biases, and control system instability. Consequently, an extended neural network was proposed that had several improvements made to overcome the initial problems. Designing an automated system for gathering training data helped to eliminate most of the sample set problems. Key changes in the neural network architecture, optical flow filters, and navigation technique vastly improved the control system stability. As a result, the extended neural network system was able to successfully perform multiple obstacle avoidance loops in both familiar and unfamiliar real-life environments without collisions. The lap times of the machine learning approach were comparable to those of the laser-based navigation technique. The the machine learning approach was 13% slower in the familiar and 25% slower in the unfamiliar environment. Furthermore, through analysis of the neural network approach, flow magnitudes were revealed to be learnt for range information in an absolute manner, while flow directions were used to detect the focus of expansion (FOE) in order to predict critical collision situations and improve control stability. In addition, the precision of the flow fields was highlighted as an important requirement, as opposed to the high accuracy of flow vectors. For robot control purposes, image-processing techniques such as region finding and object boundary detection were employed to detect changes between optical flow vectors in the image space.

Analysis of post-translational modification sites in the aryl hydrocarbon receptor

Keyur Dave — 2009-08-11T00:00:00Z

The dioxin receptor (DR), a transcription factor with basic-helix-loop-helix/PERARNTSIM (bHLH/PAS) homology domains, is activated by toxic xenobiotic ligands leading to severe physiological disturbances most of which are due to deregulation of receptor’s central role in normal development. Activation mechanisms of DR in the presence of exogenous or endogenous ligands are poorly understood. Elucidation of factors involved in the activation of the receptor would assist not only in development of an optimal measure for risk assessment of levels of common environmental pollutants but also in providing novel targets for therapeutic interventions. Posttranslational modifications (PTMs) play an indispensable role in all major signal transduction pathways by increasing the inventory of chemical modifications beyond those already present in the side-chains of common amino acids. Thus, by simple on/off or complex patterns generated by these PTMs, they control a myriad of different biological outcomes. Numerous studies that have suggested an important role of posttranslational modifications in DR activation has prompted a search in this direction, however, apart from phosphorylations at Ser36 and Ser68 no other PTM sites are known. Advanced mass spectrometry (MS)-based characterisation of PTMs is an established technique that can comprehensively provide an accurate cast of all PTM variants and their locations on a protein. This thesis reports the first MS-based comprehensive characterisation of all PTM sites of the purified latent DR and preliminary analysis of identified PTM sites of the activated DR in response to developmental signals (suspension-activated DR) and signals leading to toxic outcomes (ligand-activated DR). The PTM map of the latent DR revealed from this study comprises of 25 phosphorylations, 4 monomethyl-lysines, 2 dimethyl-lysines, 1 O-acetyl-serine and 2 O-sulfono-serines. Most of the phosphorylations and other PTMs were present in the conserved regions of the protein. Investigation of the activated samples of the receptor revealed loss of the above repertoire of modifications and possible presence of some rarer modifications such as O-acetyl-serines in suspension-activated instead of O-sulfonations and pyrophosphorylation at Ser716 in both suspension- as well as ligand-activated DR. A comprehensive mutagenesis study is in progress to understand the functional consequence of each of these modification sites and unravel the functional posttranslational system in DR signalling.

Analysis of protected area management effectiveness evaluation data and its application for increasing understanding of management

Josephine Kelman — 2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

The number of protected area management effectiveness evaluations has been growing in response to calls for increased accountability and transparency in management. Thousands of site assessments have been conducted globally to build understanding of the protected area estate. It is imperative for biological conservation to have an understanding of the relative success of protected areas given that they are recognised as the cornerstone of conservation efforts globally. This dissertation uses the New South Wales, Australia, State of the Parks, which is one of the most comprehensive network-wide assessments ever conducted. The State of the Parks management effectiveness evaluation collected data on a full suite of park attributes, resource inputs and management practices, with the aim of better understanding management across the park network. This evaluation was also stimulated by the need to be accountable to stakeholders and by a desire for continuous improvement in management. The dataset that resulted from the State of the Parks management effectiveness evaluation was large. It collected information on 774 parks in the reserve network. The main objectives of this research were to develop a suitable method of analysis that provided an appropriate means of analysing and presenting the State of the Parks data to explain and interpret the factors most strongly influencing (driving) management effectiveness in the NSW protected area network. A review of existing management effectiveness evaluations revealed that little documented information on analysis methods was available. Broader review of the literature found that this was also a common problem in program evaluation. In protected area evaluation where information was available, the most common forms of analyses were summative statistics used to describe the data, and bivariate correlations used to understand the relationships between variables of interest. In-depth multivariate analysis of relationships between multiple variables was lacking. This also translated to a lack of understanding of the factors that most strongly influence management effectiveness. To fulfill the objective of understanding the driving influences of management effectiveness a series of analyses were conducted. The initial analysis was exploratory and had the benefit of using the majority of the State of the Parks data which could potentially have remained underutilized. A base analysis using the techniques applied in previous management effectiveness evaluations was also conducted to describe the data and to explain whether NSW PWS was achieving its management mandate and which management actions were important in achieving outcomes. A problem arose after the base and exploratory analysis in presentation of the data. The complexity and sheer extent of the data meant that some type of simplification was required so that it could be sufficiently understood by a range of audiences. A mathematical metric was used to simplify the data combining the results of the key management areas (i.e. General Administration, Natural Heritage, Cultural Heritage and Visitor Management) into single scores, which provided a relative measure of performance. These data were also presented spatially to enhance communication potential. It was found that NSW PWS was meeting its management mandate for the majority of protected areas. The main factors influencing management effectiveness were the landscape context of parks and the relative planning and staff time allocations. The NSW PWS resource allocations were found to correlate to high levels of contextual pressures, namely high visitation, high numbers of neighboring properties, the size and age of the park. This demonstrates, with the use of park typologies, that it is possible to define characteristics of parks and the associated expectations of performance using a set of key criteria. In current conservation and natural resource management the focus has shifted to a landscape scale. The finding of this thesis that landscape context is a driving influence on the ability to manage protected areas effectively in New South Wales adds weight to the argument for conservation that stretches beyond the boundaries of protected areas. Perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates that with management input and actions that directly address landscape pressures conservation can be successful in less than optimal situations.

Analysis of Snore Sound Pitch and Total Airway Response in Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Hypopnoea Detection

Asela S Karunajeewa — 2010-03-25T00:00:00Z

Obstructive sleep apnoea hypopnoea syndrome (OSAHS) is a highly prevalent disease in which upper airways are collapsed during sleep, leading to serious consequences. The reference standard of clinical diagnosis, called Polysomnography (PSG), requires a full-night hospital stay connected to over 15 measuring channels requiring physical contact with sensors. The vast quantity of physiological data acquired during the PSG has to be manually scored by a qualified technologist to assess the presence or absence of the decease. The PSG is inconvenient, time consuming, expensive and unsuited for community screening. The limited PSG facilities around the world have resulted in long waiting lists and a large fraction of patients remain undiagnosed at present. There has been a flurry of recent activities in developing a portable technology to resolve this need. All the devices have at least one sensor that requires physical contact with the subject. Unattended systems have not led to sufficiently high sensitivity/specificity levels to be used in a routine home monitoring or a community screening exercise. OSAHS is a sleep respiratory disorder principally caused by functional deficiencies occurring in the upper airways during sleep. These conditions and the reduced muscle tone during sleep, cause the muscles in the upper airways to collapse partially or completely thus resulting in episodes of hypopnoea and apnoea respectively. During the process leading to collapse of upper airways, upper airways act as an acoustic filter frequently producing snoring sounds. The process of snore sound production leads us to hypothesise that snore sounds should contain information on changes occurring in the upper airways during the OSAHS. Snoring almost always accompanies the OSAHS and is universally recognised as its earliest symptom. At present, however, the quantitative analysis of snore sounds is not a practice in clinical OSAHS detection. The vast potential of snoring in the diagnosis/screening of the OSAHS remains unused. Snoring-based technology opens up opportunities for building community-screening devices that do not depend on contact instrumentation. In this thesis, we present our work towards developing a snore–based non-contact instrumentation for the diagnosis/screening of the OSAHS. The primary task in the analysis of Snore Related Sounds (SRS) would be to segment the SRS data as accurately as possible into three main classes, snoring (voiced non-silence), breathing (unvoiced non-silence) and silence. A new algorithm was developed, based on pattern recognition for the SRS segmentation. Four features derived from the SRS were considered to classify samples of the SRS into three classes. We also investigated the performance of the algorithm with three commonly-used noise reduction (NR) techniques in speech processing, Amplitude Spectral Subtraction (ASS), Power Spectral Subtraction (PSS) and Short Time Spectral Amplitude (STSA) Estimation. It was found that the noise reduction, together with a proper choice of features, could improve the classification accuracy to 96.78%. A novel model for the SRS was proposed for the response of a mixed-phase system (total airways response, TAR) to a source excitation at the input. The TAR/source model is similar to the vocal tract/source model in speech synthesis and is capable of capturing the acoustical changes brought about by the collapsing upper airways in the OSAHS. An algorithm was developed, based on the higher-order-spectra (HOS) to jointly estimate the source and the TAR, preserving the true phase characteristics of the latter. Working on a clinical database of signals, we show that the TAR is indeed a mixed phased signal and second-order statistics cannot fully characterise it. Nocturnal speech sounds can corrupt snore recordings and pose a challenge to the snore-based OSAHS diagnosis. The TAR could be shown to detect speech segments embedded in snores and derive features to diagnose the OSAHS. Finally presented is a novel technique for diagnosing the OSAHS, based solely on multi-parametric snore sound analysis. The method comprises a logistic regression model fed with a range of snore parameters derived from its features — the pitch and Total Airways Response (TAR) estimated using a Higher Order Statistics (HOS) based algorithm. The model was developed and its performance validated on a clinical database consisting of overnight snoring sounds simultaneously recorded during a hospital PSG using a high fidelity sound recording setup. The K-fold cross validation technique was used for validating the model. The validation process achieved an 89.3% sensitivity with 92.3% specificity (the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.96) in classifying the data sets into the two groups, the OSAHS (AHI >10) and the non-OSAHS. These results are superior to the existing results and unequivocally illustrate the feasibility of developing a snore-based non-contact OSAHS screening device.

Analysis of SRY and SOX Gene Activities in the Regulation of Testis Formation in the Mouse.

Mr Juan Carlos Polanco-Barrero — 2008-09-16T00:00:00Z

Analysis of the binding properties and functions of scabies mite serine proteases

Reynolds, Simone Louise — 2012-12-14T09:38:22Z

Analysis of transcription factor gene expression in the developing and adult nervous system of the gastropod haliotis asinina

O'Brien, Elizabeth Katherine — 2008-09-18T00:00:00Z

Analytical Methods for Improving Earthmover Tyre Performance

Tilman Rasche — 2012-05-18T00:00:00Z

The mining industry commonly uses qualitative risk analysis methods to analyse hazards and business risks. These methods suffer from a number of limitations. The use of language required to describe risk events creates inherent subjectiveness. Assumptions, resultant model uncertainty and natural or statistical variability make scenario comparisons difficult. This thesis demonstrates how quantitative risk analysis, as an alternative can be successfully used to overcome these shortfalls. An industry survey confirmed the infrequent application of quantitative methods across the mining industry. Given the high risk/cost nature of the industry, adopting a more data focussed management approach would benefit many mine management functions. The value of quantitative risk analysis was successfully illustrated by an earthmover tyre management case study. A holistic summary of issues, considerations and variables around optimal tyre asset, technical and operational tyre management was developed. Tyre performance data was analysed using ‘grouped failure analysis’. Grouped failure analysis was found to provide more representative tyre data statistics as it does not assume that tyres enter service in ‘as good as new’ or equal condition when rotated across different vehicle positions throughout their lifecycle. This is a significant improvement as wear characteristics are now reflected more accurately for subsequent tyre life cycle modelling and decision making. Three decision making models simulating tyre rotation using Weibull analysis were developed. Rotation intervals optimising tyre operating cost, tyre demand and tyre wear were calculated. These are fundamental drivers of successful tyre management and the methods developed in this thesis have direct application to tyre management. There are no qualitative methods currently available capable of delivering such decision-making ability. Given the ongoing mining boom, quantitative risk analysis approaches to better manage the scarce and expensive earthmover tyre supply, or any other engineering asset will become increasingly important.