UQ Theses (RHD) - Official collection - UQ eSpace

Balearic Visions: The Shifting Image of the Balearic Islands in the Travel Accounts of British Visitors (1903-1939)

Eduardo Moya Anton — 2012-03-31T00:00:00Z

This project is a comparative literary and cultural study of the textual and visual images of the Balearic Islands provided by British travellers from 1903 to 1939. Nowadays the Balearic Islands represent an important reference in the imagination of leisure and tourism in contemporary Europe. Critics have established the first decades of the twentieth century as being the beginning of the tourist industry on the islands. Since those days, however, the image of the islands has shifted, and has developed considerably from a quiet and pastoral winter resort to a popular destination for pleasure-seeking tourists and “sea ’n’ sun” tourism. Taking these last representations as a starting point, the thesis travels back in time to explain how, why and by whom these images were created/shifted/developed and the discourses that sustained them. In order to analyse the evolution and shifts in the representation of the Balearics, the method of analysis followed has been that of imagology, within the field of comparative literature. This analytical approach studies the images, stereotypes, clichés and prejudices that a nation expresses about other nations in literature, art or other forms of expression. Imagology is particularly useful in studying travel accounts, since it not only considers the tools of literary analysis, but also those of historical and cultural studies, with regard to topics like identity, tradition and national stereotypes. After an analysis of contextual factors and sensibilities in Great Britain and in the Balearics, this thesis looks at how the travel narratives adopted already existing images and recreated them or proposed new ones. The depiction and the evolution of topics like ‘travel’, ‘tourism’, ‘authenticity’, ‘landscape’, ‘South’, ‘North’, ‘margin’, ‘centre’, ‘locality’, ‘people’, ‘costumes’ and ‘customs’ have been scrutinized in order to establish their contribution to the formulation of a Balearic identity in the first third of the twentieth century. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the images recreate Romantic travel accounts in which the South/Mediterranean represents an indolent yet passionate marginal world. British travellers to the islands depict an Oriental paradise undiscovered by the tourist. Edwardian travellers, in the first decade of the twentieth century, construct a utopian Southern space that represents the ancient values lost in an industrialized home. After the First World War, travellers to the islands seek individualistic experiences to fulfil the exotic fantasies and dreams of which they were deprived during the war. These discourses of leisure lead to the construction of an ultra-exotic place consecrated to pleasure. The islands, however, did not all suffer the same pattern of representation. This thesis explains why discourses sustain some places as exotically marginal while others are rejected as commonplace. The outcome of this study is significant since here has been very little previous research on tourism to the Balearics in the early twentieth century. This thesis explains the discursive elements that have sustained the Balearics as a consistent and continuous textual recreation as a place of leisure and pleasure. This helps the cultural analyst to understand certain contemporary social practices and imagery that are nowadays associated with the islands. The results of this study are relevant for the academic fields of travel literature, history of tourism, cultural history, comparative studies, sociology, cultural anthropology and, more broadly, the history of ideas.

Bali in the new Indonesia: constructing compatible nationalisms

Prideaux, Jillian Heather — 2012-10-12T15:28:55Z

Bamaga diptych, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Seaside Dancers after couplets by E.E. Cummings

Mills, Richard — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

This thesis is three compositions.

Banning Ethnicity, Rewriting History: Rwanda’s Prevention of Violent Ethnic Conflict after Genocide

Angelique Burguez — 2011-02-10T00:00:00Z

Following the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, the new Rwandan government made the prevention of further violent conflict between Hutu and Tutsi groups one of its primary priorities. To date, it would appear that the government has largely succeeded in this undertaking. Since soon after the genocide, large-scale violent ethnic conflict has been absent from within Rwanda. This thesis is about how the Rwandan government has prevented the return of ethnic conflict in Rwanda, and whether its prevention measures are likely to be sustainable in the long term. The thesis finds that the Rwandan government has employed measures that attempt to target both surface level and root causes of violence. In conflict prevention terms, it has conducted operational conflict prevention and structural conflict prevention respectively. The government’s operational prevention involved removing immediate causes of instability and violence using military and police-like measures. The army arrested individuals suspected of involvement in the genocide, quashed uprisings, staged excursions into neighbouring Zaire to target militia who had participated in the genocide, and forcefully closed refugee and internally displaced persons camps. While these measures did remove these sources of instability, they did so at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Rwanda’s structural prevention has targeted what the government sees as the primary underlying cause of violence in Rwanda – the very existence of ethnic groups themselves and a national history narrative which focuses on ethnic difference, division and antagonism. The government has instituted a ban on ethnicity – it has outlawed the use of ethnic labels and groupings in all forms of political, economic, social and cultural life. It has paralleled its ban with a project to rewrite Rwanda’s history narrative in a way that highlights the potential for unity and a pan-Rwandan identity. However, these structural prevention measures have not yet succeeded in ridding Rwanda of ethnicity, and in inculcating a new understanding of Rwanda’s history. Rwandans know who is Hutu and who is Tutsi, fear and mistrust remain for many, and Rwandans remember a violent and fractured past. Further, the heavy handed way in which the government has implemented its operational and structural prevention measures has fuelled new grievances, particularly surrounding the deaths of so many Rwandans during the forceful closures of refugee camps and excursions into Zaire. While these old and new underlying sources of potential conflict in Rwanda go unaddressed, the stability that the government has created will remain vulnerable to triggers of violence, many of which could prove beyond the government’s control.

BARRA BAWUJI MARRIRRU, LHABA ANYMAYA, ANYNGKARRIYA KI-AWARAWU! STOP! BE QUIET! LISTEN TO COUNTRY! A Yanyuwa Informed and Critical Reflection on Place, Belonging, Culture and Sustainable Futures

Steve Johnson — 2012-02-28T00:00:00Z

This thesis draws on a lifetime of experiences living and working with Aboriginal Australians. The questions posed are framed against this background, with research focusing primarily on the Northern Territory, in the context of relationships forged there over years, with the Yanyuwa people living in and around Borroloola in the south west Gulf of Carpentaria. Arguments presented throughout, suggest that in the troubled history between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians, many things have changed over time while many more have not. Some constants remain: for one, the sense of deep attachment to and affinity for country that many Yanyuwa (and other Indigenous) people still express through rich kinship narratives, song, ceremony and ritual; for another, an overriding tendency amongst many external experts and commentators – in current settings both Indigenous and non Indigenous – to dismiss or sweep aside these rich narratives in the quest for hard and fast material truths. Throughout this document, I will argue from a Yanyuwa informed perspective that this contest originates in disparate perceptions of the relationship between people and place. These initial observations lead to a wide ranging critique of Western philosophy, science and ultimately modernity at large. In developing this critique, Yanyuwa perceptions of landscape are key enablers, but so too are some of the concepts found within those traditions subject to critical scrutiny. Many physical scientists speak of a conscious modesty within Western philosophy and science. This modesty also finds expression in the social sciences; notably in the long standing anthropological axiom “through the study of others we may learn more about ourselves” and more recently in a growing trend towards reflexive cross-cultural studies. Out of this blend emerge areas of complementarity as well as contest – Indigenous and non Indigenous – and examples of both are presented throughout the text. In the final analysis though, evidence presented from either side of the “cultural divide”, suggests that this „conscious modesty‟ may be dissipating in the face of a materially based, market driven “species of reason” that acknowledges no human potential other than its own and in terms of environmental sustainability appears eminently unreasonable. This contention underpins the entire thesis. For many Yanyuwa people evidence of this flawed reasoning is littered across the landscape and clearly evident in the human alienation pervading both Indigenous and non Indigenous social realms. These critical commentaries challenge the taken for granted assumptions and ensuing “blind spots” that perpetuate such reasoning, and cast them as akin to a loss of the capacity to listen, hear, sing for and join in with country; in translation, to lose sight of the interdependence that binds human and environmental futures, hard and fast.

Basal ganglia control of anticipatory postural adjustments: effects of Parkinson's disease and its treatments

Hall, Leanne Marie — 2012-08-10T00:00:00Z

Baseflow in Lockyer Creek

Galletly, James Craig — 2008-07-17T00:00:00Z

Bathymetric patterns of genetic variation in the coral-algal symbiosis

Pim Bongaerts — 2011-04-29T00:00:00Z

Local and global anthropogenic stressors on coral reefs are projected to increase over the next few decades. The extent to which reefs are affected by these stressors, however, is not uniform and may vary across reef environments. Deep reef areas, for example, have been hypothesized to be less susceptible to certain major disturbances (e.g., thermal bleaching events), which led to the proposition of the ‘deep reef refugia’ hypothesis (DRRH). The premise of the DRRH is that deep reef areas: (1) are protected (to some extent) from disturbances that affect shallow reef areas and (2) can provide a viable reproductive source for shallow reef areas following disturbance. This thesis critically evaluated these assumptions through careful examination of published literature and three molecular case studies that assessed the genetic diversity and structuring of corals and their associated algal endosymbionts (Symbiodinium) between distinct reef habitats on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The assumptions underlying the DRRH were first critically evaluated by reviewing the available data from Caribbean reefs due to the fact that there is considerably more information from this region compared to the Indo-Pacific. Although there is evidence that deep reefs (>30 m) can escape the direct effects of storm-induced waves and thermal bleaching events, deep reefs are not immune from disturbance and the notion that deep reef areas are generally protected from disturbances is not supported. Furthermore, the potential of deep reefs to provide a viable reproductive source for shallow reef areas following disturbance is only partly supported in that it is necessarily limited to ‘depth-generalist’ coral species (~25% of the total coral biodiversity), and larval connectivity may be limited by genetic structuring of host and symbiont populations over large depth ranges. Although Symbiodinium communities associated with shallow reef environments have been relatively well studied, little is known about symbiont diversity in deep reef areas of the Indo- Pacific. Symbiodinium diversity was therefore assessed in 10 coral genera from 45 to 70 m depth on the GBR using ITS2-DGGE. The deep-water Symbiodinium community consisted largely of pandemic host generalists, such as C1 and C3, which are also commonly found in shallow water corals across the Pacific and Caribbean. Several coral genera (e.g., Seriatopora, Montipora and Porites) harbored the same symbiont types (respectively C3n, C17 and C15) that were reported previously for these genera in shallow areas of the GBR, however most of the symbiont types identified here were previously found in association with other coral species or genera than those assessed in this study. This preliminary survey indicates that the bathymetric and physiological ranges of known Symbiodinium types may extend further than presently known, and that association with ‘depth-specialist’ Symbiodinium types is not necessarily an obligate strategy of corals with broad depth distributions. A mitochondrial (putative control region) and nuclear (three microsatellites) genetic assessment of the ubiquitous brooding coral (Seriatopora hystrix) coupled with an ITS2 assessment of its associated Symbiodinium across three adjacent reef habitats (spanning ~30 m depth) at three locations on the GBR revealed strong genetic structuring between host populations from adjacent habitats/depths (microsatellites: FST = 0.201-0.275; mtDNA: !HAB- TOT = 0.832). However, high levels of genetic similarity (e.g., FST = 0.012) were evident between similar habitats/depths from different locations. A concordant habitat partitioning of both the coral host and its symbionts was observed, with four mitochondrial haplotypes (corresponding to four genetic clusters based on microsatellite analyses) and three Symbiodinium types occurring predominantly in particular habitats. The observed association of host and symbiont lineages with specific habitats, replicated across all loci and at two different locations, is consistent distinct sympatric gene pools that are maintained through ecologically-based selection. Furthermore, the strong genetic structuring of S. hystrix host and its symbiont populations across a depth gradient suggest that vertical connectivity (along the reef slope) may be limited in this species and opposes the assumption that deep reef populations can act as a viable reproductive source for shallow reef areas following disturbance. The role of functional differences and divergent selection in the zonation of S. hystrix host- symbiont associations (i.e., ecotypes) was explored through a 14-month reciprocal transplantation across habitats. Survival was generally higher for fragments transplanted back to their habitat of origin (~ 60%) compared to fragments transplanted to a different habitat (~ 20%), suggesting that partitioning may be due to differential selective pressures across habitats. There was only limited evidence for Symbiodinium 'shuffling' (<10% of fragments) during the experiment, and there were no observations of host-symbiont recombination between shallow and deep genotypes. Respirometry and pigment quantification assays revealed photo-physiological differences between shallow and deep ecotypes (after 14 months in the same habitat), with an increased heterotrophic capacity in deep ecotypes. Similar photo- acclimatisation potential was observed between the two shallow ecotypes, highlighting the importance of other potential (non-photo-physiological) traits under selection. These data further corroborate the notion that the observed divergence in S. hystrix is the result of divergent selection and adaptation of ecotypes to distinct reef habitats, and highlight the potential role of ecological speciation processes in the diversification of S. hystrix. In undertaking this thesis, it became clear that the assumptions of the DRRH are not rigorously defensible and that coral connectivity over large depth ranges may be more limited than previously thought due to processes of local adaptation. Nonetheless, the unique cryptic diversity in deep reef habitats and the potential to provide a refuge for local biodiversity (rather than a source of reproductive output) remains a promising aspect of coral reef biology as reefs enter a century of human and climate driven change.

Bayesian model of axon guidance

Duncan Mortimer — 2009-09-25T00:00:00Z

An important mechanism during nervous system development is the guidance of axons by chemical gradients. The structure responsible for responding to chemical cues in the embryonic environment is the axonal growth cone -- a structure combining sensory and motor functions to direct axon growth. In this thesis, we develop a series of mathematical models for the gradient-based guidance of axonal growth cones, based on the idea that growth cones might be optimised for such a task. In particular, we study axon guidance from the framework of Bayesian decision theory, an approach that has recently proved to be very successful in understanding higher level sensory processing problems. We build our models in complexity, beginning with a one-dimensional array of chemoreceptors simply trying to decide whether an external gradient points to the right or the left. Even with this highly simplified model, we can obtain a good fit of theory to experiment. Furthermore, we find that the information a growth cone can obtain about the locations of its receptors has a strong influence on the functional dependence of gradient sensing performance on average concentration. We find that the shape of the sensitivity curve is robust to changes in the precise inference strategy used to determine gradient detection, and depends only on the information the growth cone can obtain about the locations of its receptors. We then consider the optimal distribution of guidance cues for guidance over long range, and find that the same upper limit on guidance distance is reached regardless of whether only bound, or only unbound receptors signal. We also discuss how information from multiple cues ought to be combined for optimal guidance. In chapters 5 and 6, we extend our model to two-dimensions, and to explicitly include temporal dynamics. The two-dimensional case yields results which are essentially equivalent to the one dimensional model. In contrast, explicitly including temporal dynamics in our leads to some significant departures from the one-dimensional and two-dimensional models, depending on the timescales over which various processes operate. Overall, we suggest that decision theory, in addition to providing a useful normative approach to studying growth cone chemotaxis, might provide a framework for understanding some of the biochemical pathways involved in growth cone chemotaxis, and in the chemotaxis of other eukaryotic cells.

Beachcomber's Bed

Ms Jillian Watkinson — 2008-11-26T00:00:00Z

'‘Because You Demanded It!': Participatory Culture and Superhero Comic Books

Taina Lloyd — 2010-03-14T00:00:00Z

Comic books are one of the many popular cultural forms that attract, as part of their audience, a committed readership that engages in a participatory relationship as part of a shared interest in the text. In common with other media forms, this engagement expresses itself in a variety of ways, including interaction with other readers online and face-to-face at conventions, correspondence with producers, and the creation of textual products. Other features of the discourses and practices of this community may be more specific to the comic book readership. One of the most interesting of these is a participatory belief, widely expressed by readers, that they can influence the story content of the published comic book and that comic books are unique among other media forms in this. In this thesis, I investigate several aspects of this belief, in order to offer a more nuanced understanding of the participatory involvement that readers have in comic books, particularly the superhero comic books that dominate American comic book culture. First, I examine whether this participatory belief is supported by evidence from published comic books by undertaking a content analysis of the letter columns and story pages of comic books. Next, I explore the discourses of online comic book culture that relate to authorship and the boundaries of participation and show how the rules of textual engagement that are held by readers shape the interactions between readers and producers. Finally, I look for alternative participatory spaces that are available to comic book readers, finding these in a contested form of engagement with comic books, that of exploring the fictional universes of the text. This approach imagines the text as the representation of a non-actual world, to which the comic book is an incomplete window. Theorising this mode of engagement leads to a conceptualisation of participation that makes visible a participatory space that has been previously overlooked by academic fan studies, and that complicates the existing models of participatory culture.

BECOMING SCHOOL-LITERATE IN CHINA: HISTORICAL, SEMIOTIC AND INTERACTIONAL ANALYSES OF YUWEN TEXTS

Zhang, Bette Ray Bin — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

The research reported in this thesis began with a curiosity about the contents of the reading materials that Chinese students are given in their first year of formal schooling, and with the notion that reading, literacy and yuwen (literally meaning language-and-literature) are not equivalent. It examines the constructions of the literate person in various social and cultural milieux. In the West, reading has traditionally been treated as an essential and objective phenomenon, a set of individualised cognitive abilities, technical skills, with cultural variations. To counter this view, literacy oriented theories, approaches, and pedagogies have argued for and documented the fact that literacy activities are cultural phenomena, pertinent to institutional practice and social order (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Luke & Freebody, 1997; Street, 1984). This embedded-ness of literacy activities has often been observed in anthropology-oriented studies. In this thesis, the embedded-ness of literacy activities (events) in social macrostructures is observed from the construction of Chinese subject yuwen, and documented from the first year school reading textbooks, yuwen texts. This research first demonstrates that constructions of the school subject of reading in China involve a discursive practice resulting in a change away from the centuries-long Confucian texts, toward literary texts in the invented vernacular, putonghua. Reading as a situated social practice in current social context is then examined in the site of the two first year Chinese yuwen textbooks in use nationally. Beginning school reading materials are seen as venues for and documentations of the processes of literacy activities, through which versions of social reality and the school-literate are constructed (Baker & Freebody, 1989a; Luke, 1988). By applying detailed semiotic and semantic analysis of social reality, and by applying membership categorisation analysis to the social interactions displayed in the text corpus, this research shows that the Chinese first year yuwen texts display characteristics of constructions of explicit thematic topics - thought, science and humanity; hybridity - mixing themes of modern, tradition and revolutions, modes of multiplicity, and hybrid genre all within a pedagogical universe. The argument is developed that these characteristics present Chinese school children with a distinctive textually mediated literate world.

"Before everything, remain Italian": Fascism and the Italian population of Queensland 1910-1945

Brown, David — 2009-05-13T00:00:00Z

Behavior of Helical Steel Culverts

Pritchard, Ross William — 2008-02-28T00:00:00Z

This thesis has undertaken extensive field investigation into the response of helical culverts during incremental backfilling and under legal live loads on sinusoidal profile and ribbed profile helical culverts. Deformation, earth pressure and steel strains were measured. The strains were decomposed into hoop force and bending moment. Force-deflection tests were undertaken to determine the effective section properties that took into account the cold-formed section properties and irregularities from rolling during manufacture. High lateral earth pressures were measured during backfilling. A model was developed to demonstrate the formation of those pressures that approach the passive state. This has important implications for the design of buried structures and retaining walls. The response of helical culverts to legal live loads was examined. The effect of vehicle offset and time-dependent effects were considered. Dynamic load allowance was determined. The thesis also examined collapse mechanisms of helical culverts. It is essential that installers fully understand the response during backfilling A simplified design method has been developed which incorporates the maximum crown moment during backfilling. This is the critical load case. The results of the field measurements and numerical modelling have been compared with published literature.

Behavioural and neural correlates of object-location representation in human spatial navigation

Chan, Edgar — 2012-05-21T00:00:00Z

Spatial navigation is a complex and dynamic process that is crucial for survival. An important aspect of successful navigation is the ability to form an accurate representation of the surrounding spatial environment and retrieve that information when necessary. The experiments described in this thesis used behavioural and neuroimaging techniques in human participants to investigate some of the factors that influence object location representations during spatial navigation. During navigation, relevant objects in the environment act as landmarks to aid orientation and way-finding behaviour, and provide a framework for internal spatial representations of the external world. The thesis begins with a review of the relevant literature in Chapter 2 in which I explore the different ways in which environmental objects can be used as landmarks for spatial navigation. A novel taxonomy for categorizing landmarks is proposed focussing on the navigational functions of objects and their related neural substrates. Chapter 3 sought to identify the neural circuits involved in the distinct processes of encoding and retrieval of object locations during landmark-based navigation. Previous studies have highlighted possible cortical and subcortical circuits involved in navigation, but none has explicitly determined whether encoding and retrieval processes are subserved by distinct neural networks. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure neural responses while participants undertook an object-location encoding and retrieval task within a sparse virtual environment. Results revealed that during encoding, greater activity within the right hippocampus and bilateral parahippocampal gyri predicted more accurate navigation performance. In contrast, during the retrieval phase, greater activity in left hippocampus and bilateral striatum predicted better performance. Differences in neural activity were further modulated by individual differences in navigational ability. Chapters 4 and 5 investigated the influence of reference systems on the organization of allocentric spatial representations. The reference systems account of spatial memory proposes that relationships between objects in the environment are encoded with respect to salient axes provided by surrounding environmental landmarks. Behavioural evidence for this account is derived in part from alignment effects. Judgements of relative direction are faster and more accurate when an imagined orientation is aligned, as opposed to misaligned, with the axes defined by salient landmarks. Chapter 4 reports the results of a series of behavioural experiments, in which I used a novel virtual environment to examine the reference systems account of spatial memory. Findings demonstrated that reference systems are a stable property of allocentric representations and are invariant across time and encoding viewpoint. Chapter 5 presents fMRI data showing that retrieval of spatial information from aligned orientations resulted in greater activity in inferior occipital and temporal cortical areas, whereas retrieval from misaligned orientations resulted in greater activity in the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate. These findings are consistent with the notion that object location representations are organized and stored with respect to salient axes. Not all landmarks have equal salience. For example, priority may be given to locations at which negative events are encountered during exploration, thus helping the individual avoid potential threats in the future. In Chapter 6 I examined whether affective stimuli encountered during navigation influence object-location memory and associated neural responses. In an active object-location memory task, positive, negative or neutral stimuli were paired with different locations within a virtual indoor environment. Post-learning performance and neural responses measured using fMRI revealed that place representations in the parahippocampal gyrus were enhanced for locations at which negative emotional events had previously been encountered. Furthermore, emotional arousal during learning significantly improved object-location memory. The research presented in the thesis highlights the complexity of navigation-related spatial memory processes. Individual differences, the spatial positioning of environmental objects, and the valence of emotional experiences were all found to significantly affect behavioural performance and the neural substrates involved in object-location representations. Some of these new findings may help to better understand and diagnose navigation-related disorders arising from brain injury or disease.

Behavioural Inhibition in Children with ADHD: Does Stimulant Medication Eliminate Potential Deficits?

Caroline Johnson — 2009-06-02T00:00:00Z

Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is characterized by higher than normal levels of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Behavioural inhibition is proposed to be a primary deficit in children with ADHD, and is included as a component of a number of models accounting for the core behavioural symptoms of ADHD. Children with ADHD often show deficits in their performance on behavioural inhibition tasks relative to typically developing children of the same age, although inconsistent findings have been observed. Stimulant medication is associated with reduction in the core symptoms of ADHD in the majority of children. The primary goal of this thesis was to examine the effects of stimulant medication on behavioural inhibition in children with ADHD. Furthermore, this thesis sought to determine whether children with ADHD who have, and have not taken stimulant medication differ from normally developing children in terms of behavioural inhibition. In order to achieve these aims, it was necessary to firstly determine which tasks provide the best measures of behavioural inhibition. While many tasks have been used to measure inhibitory control amongst children with ADHD, it was unclear from previous research which tasks measure the same constructs. Study 1 investigated relationships in task performance among seven measures of inhibitory control, including the Stop-Signal task, Go / No-go task, Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; analogous the not-X Continuous Performance Task), Eriksen Flanker task, Stroop, Opposite Worlds task and Task-Switching task. Significant developmental changes in a variety of cognitive abilities occur across childhood and adolescence. To limit the possibility that developmental changes in task performance would be observed, the age range for children included in the study was restricted to seven to 10 years. Nevertheless, to interpret correlations among inhibition measures from the tasks, it was necessary to determine whether children showed comparable developmental trends in their performance across tasks. Study 1A investigated developmental changes in the performances of the seven tasks purported to measure inhibitory control in normally developing children aged seven to 10 years. The results of this study suggested that the tasks chosen were appropriate for use among this age group, and that there is little change in behavioural inhibition across the seven to 10 years age range. In Study 1B, inhibition measures from each of the tasks were included in an exploratory factor analysis to determine those tasks measuring the same constructs. The results of Study 1B suggested that the Stop-Signal, Go / No-go and SART tasks provided the best measures of the behavioural inhibition construct. Performance on the Eriksen Flanker task was also related to the performance on these tasks, but in a direction contrary to that predicted. The Stroop and Opposite Worlds tasks measured the same construct, which appeared to be interference control. Performance on the Task-Switching task was not related to the performance on any other task, suggesting that this task did not measure behavioural inhibition or interference control. Study 2 investigated the performance of children with ADHD on the three tasks shown to be the best measures of behavioural inhibition in Study 1B (i.e., the Stop-Signal task, Go / No-go task and Sustained Attention to Response task). Children with ADHD were aged from seven to 11 years, and were tested both when they had, and had not taken their regularly prescribed stimulant medication. The performance of children with ADHD on these tasks was compared to that of normally developing children matched in age. The results of Study 2 suggested that stimulant medication leads to significant improvement in behavioral inhibition amongst children with ADHD, such that children with ADHD do not differ from matched controls. However, this effect was not observed across all three tasks. Reasons for this, along with study limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

Behaviour-Based Methodology for Fault Tree Generation

Rae, Andrew — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

This thesis presents a new theory of fault trees for complex systems, and a method for their generation. The theory treats faults as behaviours, and fault-tree gates as operations on those behaviours. Fault tree analysis is an important and widely used technique for understanding the behaviour of safety-critical systems. The development of new technologies with more sophisticated interactions between components, and hence more complicated causal relationships between failure modes, has made traditional methods of fault tree synthesis difficult if not obsolete. Consequently, this thesis addresses a matter of ongoing concern in the safety analysis community. The thesis argues that it is feasible and effective to automate the generation of fault trees by describing systems using hierarchically structured models, with component interactions described in terms of behaviours. A detailed methodology for generating fault trees is presented. The methodology includes consideration of design faults, hardware failures, and operator errors. A prototype tool called Eucalypt is used to demonstrate the methodology on four realistic case studies. Eucalypt provides semi-automated support for system modelling and fault generation, and fully automatic fault tree synthesis.

BEHAVIOUR MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN IN LONG DAY CARE CENTRES: THE EFFECTS OF TRAINING ON CARERS PRACTICES

Abbey, Brenda Joyce — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

This study investigated the effects on carers practices, and the knowledge, understandings, and stated beliefs that underpinned those practices, of training them to manage childrens behaviour democratically. Specifically, it aimed to identify the effects of training on carers (a) behaviour management practices, (b) knowledge of approaches to behaviour management, (c) understandings of theories of child development and learning, (d) knowledge of the governance that sets the parameters for their behaviour management practices, (e) goals for their behaviour management practices, and (f) perceptions of their role in managing childrens behaviour. The researcher addressed these research questions by conducting concurrent case studies of the behaviour management practices of 17 carers in four long day care centres in South-East Queensland. The researcher assumed the role of privileged observer during the data-gathering phases. The data were collected at all four centres at regular intervals, both pre-training (baseline), and post-training for 20 weeks. During this time, each centre was visited fortnightly with each visit lasting approximately five hours. The data were gathered from direct observations of carers working with the children pre-training and post-training; semi-structured interviews with carers pretraining and post-training; informal discussions with directors and carers throughout the study; analysis of carers reflective diaries maintained after the training; carers written responses to training activities; analyses of centre documents (such as behaviour management policy); and communications displayed in centre entrances, corridors, and rooms. Pre-training data reflected carers established behaviour management practices. Post-training data reflected carers practices after the training. Both pre-training and post-training data were categorised and the two sets of data compared. The changes to carers baseline practices after the training were attributed to that training. The training program was developed by the researcher from the literature on democratic approaches to behaviour management, on constructivist theories of child development and learning, and on the legislative and ethical parameters of the child care field. Embedded in the training was a respect for carers individual and collective knowledge pre-training. The program was drafted prior to the data collection phase, and fine-tuned once the pre-training data were collated. Carers knew that the training session was only one aspect of the training, and that they had each others ongoing support, and that the researcher would be their mentor for the duration of the study. The program was delivered over a full day, was interactive and experiential. Each participant received a folder that included selected pertinent readings. After the training, the carers maintained practices consistent with the training (e.g., indirect guidance and prevention); adopted new practices consistent with the training (e.g., educative methods and scaffolding childrens relationships with others); and reduced their use of practices inconsistent with the training (e.g., reward, punishment, and imposed control). They attributed these changes to their intent to align their practices with their new understandings about the way children learn to behave, and the carers role in that process. These changes demonstrate the effectiveness of the training. In summary, the results provide support for training carers to manage childrens behaviour in democratic ways. In a more general sense, the results add to the current limited pool of knowledge on carers behaviour management practices and to what constitutes an effective training program for carers. Future studies on effective training programs should ascertain the length of time carers uphold changes, and for examining the conditions necessary for the changes to be enduring. Another topic to be addressed more closely would be how to effect change in those practices where carers resist change (e.g., in this study, carers rigid adherence to routines, their level of involvement with children).

Behind the masks: a study of social work, trauma and the complex hospital organisation

Janis Hinson — 2012-04-12T00:00:00Z

The overarching purpose of this study is to explore the way in which hospital social workers, working with trauma, experience their work. Accordingly, the study aimed to explore the emotional experiences of social workers in trauma practice; to consider the interplay of this work with organisational factors; and to offer new ways of understanding the impact on social workers of emotional labour and emotion management in the hospital context. In approaching these issues, this thesis is predicated on two understandings: that considering the hospital as an organisation separate from the emotions of its members results in an inadequate analysis; and that if hospital organisations are to function as healthy places in which to work, the emotional life of employees must be understood from the viewpoint of its social relationships and the way in which the players interpret and understand them. There has long been recognition of the role emotion plays in our psychosocial and physical well-being, but it is only in the last decade that it has been understood in a broader framework of organisational behaviour. Hospitals are complex, turbulent environments encompassing the co-existence of emotion and rationality as well as public and private feelings, and where emotion spans the boundaries between the work, the worker and the organisation. This is a particularly pertinent issue for those who work in hospital organisations where social workers can struggle with the rationality of the dominant scientific medical discourse. Just as emotional distress in patients is seen as clinical malfunction, so too can the distressing emotional reactions of hospital social workers to the trauma of their work be seen pejoratively as an expression of personal inability to cope. The methodology of this exploratory study used taped semi-structured qualitative interviews of fifteen social workers from two major Australian tertiary hospitals, with fourteen tapes ultimately available for transcription. The study’s participants were recruited from social workers who volunteered for interview, following presentations to their departments and the distribution of an Information Form about the study. The social workers interviewed represented both clinical and management practice areas. The data was then thematically analysed. Findings from participants’ narratives identified a hitherto unrecognised reality that they found working organisationally more difficult than working clinically. These stories also revealed a previously unrecognised reality for social work managers of the impact on them of upwards bullying by more junior staff. The study highlights the significance of understanding both practice and the organisation in terms of workers’ emotions, using the concept of emotional labour as the lens to do so. Rather than privileging one lens in particular however, this study concludes that the construct of emotional labour alone offers an insufficient framework to understand the complexity of emotional demands on social workers in hospitals. A case is made that a new model of understanding is required, offering social workers a framework to understand workplace distress in terms of impact of their clinical work and their management of organisational stressors. The study ends with recommendations for further research, building on the complex conceptual potentials offered in this study.

Bellum piraticum: pompey, piracy, and the lex gabinia of 67 BC

Press, Daniel Patrick — 2012-09-12T00:00:00Z

Belonging and becoming in multicultural Australia: Young people from refugee backgrounds negotiating identification

Moran, Laura Kathryn — 2013-04-10T00:28:02Z

Belonging: an hermeneutic phenomenological exploration of public and private sector nursing

Borrott, Narelle Louise Anne — 2013-03-22T09:19:52Z

Belonging in the mining museum: an examination of Chinese Australian identity and belonging in discourses of the Gold Rush

Han, Alan — 2013-03-09T03:02:15Z

Benthic foraminifera as Holocene to Recent indicators in marginal marine environments: modern distribution and the palaeoecological response to environmental changes in Moreton Bay, southeastern Queensland, Australia

Yogeeta Roshni Narayan — 2011-09-17T00:00:00Z

Estuarine embayments and coastal areas occurring adjacent to large, populated river catchments are presently threatened by multiple anthropogenic and natural environmental stressors, including: intense human activities, overharvesting, coastal land modification, sediment/nutrient and pollutant input, storms, flooding and freshwater plumes. This is further exacerbated by predicted relative sea level rise and global climatic changes. Effective marine resource management of environmental threats requires an understanding of the: (i) present conditions and the ecological response by organisms (ii) future forecasted scenarios; and (iii) long-term historical range in natural variability (HRNV), which conveys the magnitude of modern environmental degradation. To carry this out, a useful ecological indicator(s) is needed. Here, I focus on the (palaeo)ecology of benthic foraminiferal assemblages (Protista) to understand modern, decadal and millennial-scale changes, specifically the: (1) modern relationship between ecology and environment; (2) decadal changes in community structure over the last ~40 years in the lower river estuary and reef environment; and (3) response by benthic foraminifers to long-term, historical (millennial) changes in the subtropical, marginal reef environments of Moreton Bay, southeast Queensland, Australia. From the analysis of 47 surface sediment samples taken from habitats across the Bay, I identified 69 species, three distinct foraminiferal assemblages and six sub-assemblages. I found a positive relationship between foraminiferal assemblages and substrate conditions that resulted in a geographic gradient from: an urban-impacted assemblage in the westernmost part of the Bay, to a hyposaline, estuarine-influenced assemblage in the western Bay to a nearly normal marine to hypersaline assemblage in the eastern Bay. The Foraminifera in Reef Assessment and Monitoring (FORAM) Index of Hallock et al. (2003), which provides a quantitative measurement of reef “health”, was applied and demonstrated marginal conditions. The western Bay foraminiferal assemblages from the estuarine and marginal reef flats reflect high turbidity and variable nutrient conditions, whereas the assemblages from the eastern Bay, near-oceanic, tidal (seagrass-dominated) flats, reflect optimal conditions for zooxanthellate organisms (i.e. corals and large symbiont-bearing foraminifera). Currently, the Brisbane River catchment is experiencing rapid population growth, urbanisation, industrialisation and climate-induced impacts such as the recent major flooding events (i.e. 1974 and 2011). The availability of existing foraminifera samples collected during the 1970s by the Geological Survey of Queensland provide an excellent and rare opportunity to carry out quantitative comparisons between new (2007-08) and existing (1972) data, to assess changes between today and ~40 years ago. I compared community structure between the two time periods and across two different environments: the lower Brisbane River estuary and the adjacent lagoonal-reef flats of Waterloo Bay, in western Moreton Bay. Species diversity and bio-environmental indicators reflect a predominantly human-dominated influence in the lower Brisbane River estuary and reef environments. However, in comparison to the 1970s, recent temporal trends in the foraminiferal assemblages reveal incipient recovery, suggesting potential for remediation of an environment that has previously been influenced by severe anthropogenic modification. This study demonstrates the potential of benthic communities to at least partially recover from severe degradation in nearshore ecosystems. I also examined the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of foraminifera from Holocene sediment cores from three extant Moreton Bay marginal reef sites: Wellington Point, southwest Peel Island and Myora Reef. The foraminiferal assemblages from the three reefs are significantly different from one another, reflecting a W to E spatial gradation (improving eastwards) and a younger to older temporal gradation in water quality and palaeo-water depths. The approximate timing of assemblage shifts with decreasing palaeo-depths over time, generally corresponds with the timing of known faunal and sedimentary patterns associated with the following: regional sea level highstand and progradation of subtidal reefal facies; sea level fall and progradation of shallow-reefal facies; and lastly episodic reefal “turn-off” and progradation of land-derived facies. However, we find that the magnitude of sea level change exceeds known relative sea level change in the region (by a factor of ~1.5-2). The physiographic nature of Moreton Bay, which tends to amplify ecological changes, would have contributed to the higher magnitude of change seen in reefs, throughout the Holocene. Holocene studies also highlight the historical importance of larger benthic symbiont-bearing foraminiferal assemblages (Peneroplis spp. and Alveolinella quoyi/Heterostegina depressa spp.) as indicators of environmental change in Moreton Bay’s reefs. They can be used as a measure of improvement in water quality or as a signal for recovery of environments, particularly in the western Bay reefs. Lastly, this study demonstrates a clear response by benthic foraminiferal assemblages to changes in sea level throughout the Holocene. It suggests that Moreton Bay’s reefs have endured natural instability and gradual, progressive change over a time frame of ~7000 years. In contrast, more recent anthropogenically-driven changes affecting water quality, have resulted in dramatic shifts in the benthic ecological assemblages of Moreton Bay in a shorter time-frame of ~200 years.

Beta-Arrestin Expression and Function in Macrophages

Jane Lattin — 2009-04-06T00:00:00Z

Monocytes and macrophages are critical cellular mediators of inflammation. However, aberrant activation of these cells contributes to the pathology of acute (for example septic shock) and chronic (for example rheumatoid arthritis) inflammatory diseases. These cell types express an extensive repertoire of G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs), which are widely targeted in drug discovery. Novel macrophage-expressed GPCRs are likely to impact on inflammatory and immune responses and hence represent targets for development of novel therapeutics. This thesis focused on identifying GPCRs and GPCR signalling molecules expressed by macrophages and investigating their function in this lineage. In Chapter 3 of this thesis, a systematic micro-array analysis of primary mouse macrophages compared to other cell populations was performed to identify GPCRs that are enriched in macrophages. The P2Y family of GPCRs were identified as being highly expressed and/or regulated in macrophages, and the regulated expression of two P2Y family members (P2RY5 and P2RY6) was further investigated in this chapter. Expression profiling was also used to identify macrophageexpressed GPCR signalling molecules, and Chapter 4 focused on the expression and function of one of these, beta-arrestin (ARRB) 2. The macrophage-enriched expression of ARRB2 was confirmed at the mRNA and protein level, and its regulation by inflammatory stimuli in macrophages was also investigated. Given that ARRB2 is a key regulator of GPCR signalling and has also recently emerged as regulator of Toll-like Receptor (TLR) signalling, further research focused on this signalling molecule in an attempt to identify novel functions in macrophages. By expression profiling of ARRB2 deficient BMM, and through the use of a novel cell permeable peptide antagonist of ARRB2, this signalling molecule was identified as a critical regulator of basal and LPS-inducible complement C1q expression. Furthermore, ARRB2 limited factor-independent survival and regulated activation of ERK-1/2 and JNK MAPK in macrophages. Chapter 5 documented a defect in LPS-inducible expression of the histone deacetylase, Hdac1 in ARRB2-/- macrophages, and explored the consequences of this on macrophage inflammatory pathways. Thus Chapters 4 and 5 identified novel pathways by which ARRB2 positively regulates LPS-inducible gene expression in macrophages. Given that loss of C1q expression is associated with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and that HDAC1 is a feedback regulator of macrophage activation, understanding the mechanisms by which ARRB2 regulates the expression of these genes will provide further insight into inflammatory disease processes.

Betaine as a Dietary Additive for Heat Exposed Beef Cattle

Stephen Bonner — 2011-10-02T00:00:00Z

The heat stress response in cattle functions to minimise accumulation of excessive body heat, and to facilitate its removal. Prolonged and continuous exposure to high heat load can cause physiological imbalances. Nutritional strategies may be used to ameliorate the disturbance of homeostasis resulting from heat stress. The research presented in this thesis was designed to assess the potential of betaine as a dietary additive to ameliorate the negative aspects of the heat stress response in beef cattle. This was accomplished by; i) testing the effects of betaine on the heat stress response of steers exposed to hot conditions, ii) evaluating the influence of betaine within the rumen, iii) assessing betaine effects on rumen bacterial species, iv) the effect of betaine on the physiology and blood parameters of steers under hot conditions, and v) assessing the response of steers to dietary betaine on blood parameters over 120 days in a feedlot. A 5 day heating protocol was imposed on steers under controlled climatic conditions within 2 studies (Chapters 3 and 6). Steers were fed a grain ration containing 20 g of betaine (BET) or no betaine (CON) in Chapter 3. Three dietary treatments were used in Chapter 6; identical to Chapter 3, plus betaine (20 g) with buffer (BET+). DMI fell for all steers during the 5 day hot phases. The change in DMI (relative to DMI pre-heat) was larger (P<0.001, P<0.001) for betaine treatments in both studies. The rate of increase of rectal temperature (RT_slope) and respiration rate (RR_slope) for CON steers was greatest on day 3 of heat, in contrast to peaks for RT_slope and RR_slope occurring for BET steers on day 4 of heat. This may indicate that the response of CON steers to heat was more acute, particularly in day 3. During the hot days (Chapter 6), CON steers had the smallest (P<0.05) change in rectal temperature (ΔRT) compared with BET and BET+, and yet had the highest (P<0.05) increase in respiration rate (ΔRR). Conversely, both BET and BET+ steers had the highest core temperature throughout 5 hot days, while simultaneously having lower ΔRR compared with CON. Serum urea was higher (P<0.01) for BET and BET+, however, this may be influenced by dietary protein. Across all treatments, serum creatinine appeared sensitive to elevated temperatures. Creatinine was higher for hot days compared with thermoneutral days, and increased as ambient temperatures became more severe. This may indicate that creatinine expression is sensitive to hot conditions, and therefore having potential as a marker of heat stress in beef cattle. An in vivo study was conducted using sheep to evaluate the effect of betaine within the rumen. Two treatments were fed the same diet, while betaine was added directly to the rumen of the betaine treatment. Similar to other studies (Mitchell et al. 1979), betaine clearance from the rumen was rapid. The half-life of betaine within the rumen was within 0.9 - 2.1 h. Rumen ammonia concentration was lower (P<0.05) for betaine treatment at 6, 7 and 9 hours following betaine addition to the rumen. Betaine did not affect rumen VFA concentration, digestibility or protozoal counts. To evaluate betaine upon rumen bacterial species, an in vitro rumen culturing experiment was conducted using rumen fluid from sheep fed the same concentrate diet with and without betaine. All in vitro cultures contained betaine, while 2 rumen fluid inocula were taken from sheep previously receiving betaine (B), and 2 without betaine (C). Profiling rumen bacterial populations with DGGE demonstrated changes at 24 and 48 h. In particular, the intensity of band D increased at 24 and 48 h for C treatment, but was present for B treatment. This band was identified to the family level as Streptococcacae. Ammonia accumulation was lower (P<0.05) for C treatment in the 0 - 24 h culture. These data indicate that initial exposure of rumen bacteria to betaine in the in vitro cultures may increase the relative proportion of certain bacterial species. As a component of a larger study, steers fed for 120 days over summer in a sub-tropical environment and fed 0, 10, 20 or 40 g of betaine, or glycerol, with a shaded and unshaded treatment for all diets. Blood samples were collected on days 0, 30, 60, 90 and 110. Production data from this study is published elsewhere (Gaughan et al. 2010). Correlations between blood parameters and physiological measures (body temperature, panting score, DMI and liveweight) were observed for sodium, urea, glucose, haematocrit and red blood cells. These studies have highlighted the complexity of the heat stress response in cattle, and the indirect nature of employing nutritional strategies to attend to resulting imbalances. Successful nutritional strategies for heat stress may not always result in direct production benefits. These studies emphasise the impact of dietary nitrogen on the heat stress response and a likely interaction with betaine supplementation.

Beta-lactam antibiotic dosing in critical care units: bolus vs continuous dosing

Jason Roberts — 2009-04-07T00:00:00Z

In critically ill patients, the pathophysiology of sepsis can affect the interactions between the antibiotic, the bacteria and the patient, leading to potential therapeutic failure and the development of antibiotic resistance. It is well acknowledged that research that optimises antibiotic exposure will assist improvement of outcomes in this patient group. Although beta-lactam antibiotics, such as piperacillin and meropenem, are commonly selected for empiric therapy of sepsis, dosing is unlikely to be optimal. In patients without renal dysfunction, data suggests that disease-induced alterations to pharmacokinetic parameters result in low trough concentrations for significant periods within a dosing interval. Administration of these time-dependent antibiotics by continuous infusion has been suggested to improve the pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic profile. Knowledge of concentrations in the extracellular fluid of human tissue, which is the target site of most pathogens, is particularly instructive. Extracellular fluid concentrations can be determined using techniques such as microdialysis. Therefore, the principal aims of this Thesis were to determine the plasma and subcutaneous tissue pharmacokinetics of piperacillin and meropenem administered by bolus dosing and continuous infusion in critically ill patients with sepsis; and to use Monte Carlo simulations to compare the ability of different dosing strategies to achieve pharmacodynamic endpoints. This Thesis also sought to compare the clinical outcomes of bolus dosing and continuous infusion of a beta-lactam antibiotic, ceftriaxone, in a prospective randomised controlled trial and to perform a meta-analysis on clinical outcomes from other similar published studies. Finally, this Thesis aimed to systematically review the published literature to determine any correlation between antibiotic dosing and the development of antibiotic resistance. The results of the pharmacokinetic studies, using piperacillin and meropenem, indicate that beta-lactam distribution into subcutaneous tissue, in critically ill patients with sepsis, is less than that observed in previous studies in healthy volunteers yet superior to studies in patients with septic shock. This supports the notion that the peripheral concentration of drugs may be inversely related to the level of sickness severity. Administration by continuous infusion was found to maintain statistically significantly higher trough beta-lactam concentrations in both plasma and subcutaneous tissue. Further analysis of the plasma data using population pharmacokinetic modeling and Monte Carlo simulations described significant pharmacodynamic advantages for administering meropenem or piperacillin by continuous infusion to organisms with high minimum inhibitory concentrations. Given the documented pharmacodynamic advantages for administering beta-lactams by continuous infusion, a prospective randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted using the beta-lactam antibiotic ceftriaxone. In 57 critically ill patients, we found equivalence between continuous infusion and bolus dosing in the intention-to-treat analysis. However, our a priori analysis criteria, requiring patients receive at least 4-days antibiotic treatment, found significant clinical and bacteriological advantages for administration by continuous infusion. To further investigate any clinical differences between bolus dosing and continuous infusion of beta-lactam antibiotics, we performed a meta-analysis of all published studies. Our analysis of the 13 published prospective randomized controlled trials (846 hospitalised patients) showed equivalence of continuous infusion and bolus dosing. Possible confounders observed within, and between the studies, make interpretation of these results challenging. However, two large retrospective cohorts not included in the meta-analysis, found definitive clinical and bacteriological advantages suggesting further research may be appropriate. The possible relationship between antibiotic dosing, or exposures, on the development of resistance was investigated using a structured review of the published literature. Our analysis of relevant papers found a wealth of data describing increasing levels of resistance with sub-optimal antibiotic dosing, particularly for fluoroquinolone antibiotics, but also for other classes including beta-lactams. These results demonstrate the importance of optimizing antibiotic dosing to decrease the development of antibiotic susceptibility from sub-optimal dosing, particularly for critically ill patients who are likely to have low drug concentrations. The results of this Thesis, suggest that a large, prospective, multi-centre randomised controlled trial in critically ill patients with sepsis, is required to definitively determine the clinical utility of administration of beta-lactam antibiotics by continuous infusion.

Between movements of crisis and movements of affluence : an analysis of the campaign against the Jabiluka uranium mine, 1997-2000

Paasonen, Karl-Erik — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Navigating Amendment Law in the Australian Patent System

McBratney, Amanda Jane — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

This thesis examines the historical development and current state of amendment law in the Australian patent system. Initial research on modern amendment cases immediately showed that the confused, inconsistent and complex state of the law is a significant problem. There is a plethora of different analytical tools and legal tests being applied to assess an amendment, yet they were developed in a different area of patent law, that of fair basing. Such tools and tests are ill equipped to provide any real assistance to decision-makers faced with assessing an amendment. In fact, they seem to lead decision-makers away from applying the correct investigation as set out in the amendment provisions of the legislation. The thesis examines the history of amendment law so as to place its discussion of the current problems in context and provide a better understanding of why the problems arose. Four major events are discussed in the thesis. Together, these events have shaped Australian amendment law over the past century: (i) the development and introduction of the substantially larger than or substantially different from test into the British and Australian statutory amendment provisions; (ii) the development and introduction of the concept of fair basing into British and Australian patent law; (iii) the development and introduction of the modern British and Australian statutory test for amendments and the tiered amendment scheme; and (iv) the analogies drawn in modern British and Australian cases between fair basing and amendment that ultimately led to fair basing tests being cross-applied in Australia to assess the allowability of amendments. The thesis shows how the very harsh early British treatment of requests for amendment ultimately led to statutory change. It also locates, for the first time, the common law origins of the notion of fair basing. The 1949 British legislation implemented a new and different statutory test that was intended to liberalise the whole area of amendment law. It also added the requirement of fair basing into the legislation. However, the thesis shows that this last development occurred via well-intentioned legislators with a significant misunderstanding of patent law. The notion of fair basing injected a great deal of uncertainty into an area of law that was previously settled. Theoretically, and in practical application, it caused problems. Then, when decision-makers sought guidance on the new amendment provision, they applied the tests developed in fair basing cases to assess amendments, with the consequent deleterious effects. The Australian experience largely mirrored the British experience until 1977 when the British Act changed. The significance of the thesis is that it clearly demonstrates that the currently accepted dogma that fair basing is equivalent to the in substance disclosure statutory test for amendments, so fair basing tests can be used to assess amendment is unsound. The thesis isolates the problems inherent in the dogma and the examination of relevant case law confirms the main hypothesis that the current approach should be rejected. It simply operates to the prejudice of inventors, their competitors, the public and the patent system itself. Most importantly, the thesis shows that reform is urgently needed. Some possibilities for reform are suggested.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: CLAUDIO POMPILI, ITALIAN-AUSTRALIAN COMPOSER

Claudio Pompili — 2009-04-08T00:00:00Z

Between Two Worlds, with its implied dualities, alludes both to my Italian and Australian backgrounds and to my popular and art music experiences. The dissertation comprises of analyses of and critical commentary on a selection of compositions from instrumental through electroacoustic to musico-dramatic works. Further, Part I presents a précis of relevant background in order to locate the compositions within both Australian contemporary classical music and international settings, and Part I includes sections on analytical methodology and compositional technique. Compositions examined in Part II illustrate the salient features of compositional technique, specific influences and aesthetic concerns. Both instrumental works, Fra l’urlo e il tacere and Ridendo vado sul fiume, were written during the earlier period of the doctoral candidature. The discussion presents not only the seminal influences including the use of interval-class (ic) construction and music technologies but is also intended to guide the reader from solo and chamber instrumental writing through sound design and electronic soundscape composition towards the larger-scale, musico-dramatic works. Part III discusses the major contribution. It is concerned with three mixed-media musictheatre compositions that were created in the period 2000–08 and which explore crossdisciplinary relationships. Whilst maintaining a continuous development of style, the works are on a larger scale in all respects: involve national (The Last Child and Touch Wood) and international (Lontano Blu) production teams and a greater number of performers; are interdisciplinary, conceptually more complex and multilayered, and longer in duration; include extensive use of music technologies, multimedia and multichannel surround sound in performance; and use graphic/text/prose scores. By their very nature, these compositions involved significant collaborative endeavour not only with the key members of the creative teams, such as artistic directors, writers and set designers, but also the performers in general and musicians in particular. The collaborations included development of the conceptual structures of the works with the creative teams and ‘hands on’ interaction with the musicians in shaping the sound in real time through group-devised processes where appropriate.

Beyond Alethia: A Critique of Heideggerian Einaiology

Colledge, Richard John David — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

The work of Martin Heidegger holds a pre-eminent place in contemporary ontological metaphysics, and this, it is argued, is a deeply two-edged sword. Proceeding on the basis of the unity of Heideggers life-long project, the thesis critically evaluates Heideggerian thought, with a particular emphasis on its early formative texts (1923-35), highlighting what are seen as both its radical insights and its important shortcomings. The essay essentially follows Heideggers own philosophical practice in two senses. First, it takes a strongly historical approach both to the etymology and semantics of the language of ontology, as well as to the context of Heideggerian thought in the tradition of western metaphysics. Second, beyond the method of immanent critique alone, it adopts a version of Heideggers own methodology of retrieval (Wiederholung) in its confrontation with his thought: on one hand affirming the radically insightful nature of key elements of his work, while on the other hand looking to bring out of Heideggers (and his precursors) own texts something of their drawing back from the deepest latent implications of his (and their) own insights. The essay begins with a historico-linguistic survey of the language of western ontology, from its origins in ancient Greek and Hellenistic metaphysics, through to its reception into medieval Latin, and onto its deployment in contemporary German and English, in this way establishing a key aspect of the pre-history of the ontological difference in terms of infinitival-participial renderings of the question. The interpretation offered here is then contrasted with key elements of Heideggers own reading of the ancient origins of the tradition, and thus the first major strand of the essays critique of Heideggerian thought is established along both linguistic and conceptual lines: i.e., that is amounts to an einaiolisation of the broad question of ontology. On the basis on this critique, the essay then sets out the understanding of be ειναι, esse, Sein) to be defended in what follows, a reading that situates itself between the Heideggerian and Thomistic positions, affirming and opposing key elements of each. On one hand, the vast wealth of Heideggers alethiological phenomenology of world is affirmed as a radical advance on traditional static notions of essence, while on the other hand the collapse of any genuine understanding of the depth dimension of to exist (υπαρχειν, ex(s)istere) is identified as a major point of contention with Heideggers einaiology. In this way, the second major strand of the essays critique of Heideggerian thought is established: i.e., that it amounts to a partialising alethiolisation of ontology. Within the context provided by the essay to this point, a more explicit retrieval of Heideggerian thought is then enacted first of all by situating his thought within the broad transcendental-phenomenological tradition in which it is so deeply embedded. In particular, this entails close readings of the methodological exclusion (εποχη) of exist(ence) seen in texts by Kant and Husserl, a strategy that in both cases is inadequately ameliorated by allusions to that which is surplus (Überschuß) to predication, meaning, sense, essence. Within the rich context provided by this analysis, the nature of Heideggers innovation within, and yet deep adherence to, the transcendental-phenomenological tradition is sketched. The essays fourth and final chapter involves a detailed confrontation with Heideggers delimitation of the Seinsfrage to alethiological and einaiological concerns alone. This involves a close reading of some major early texts on the question of the independent integrity of beings from world(ing) and thus the meaning of Heideggers category of Vorhandenheit, noting some substantial ambiguities on this question. It also involves a more systematic assessment of the consequential deep inner-contradictions of Heideggers project as a whole, including some reflections on strands of early Heideggerian thought that appear to be attempts to address these deeply embedded tensions and problems. The essays conclusion very briefly links the enacted critique of Heideggerian ontology to the broader question of the understanding of contingency in contemporary continental philosophy, thereby indicating something of the place of these reflections within a larger project of thought concerning philosophy as a hermeneutics of awe for which it serves as an essential prolegomena.

Beyond root causes: understanding risk and resilience in the prevention of mass atrocities

McLoughlin, Stephen — 2012-08-10T00:00:00Z

Beyond the Cootharaba Mill: An archaeology of social interaction, practice and community in colonial Australia

Karen Murphy — 2011-04-20T00:00:00Z

This thesis explores a new approach for understanding communities in the historical past. It examines community as a fluid entity, constructed through the social interactions and practices of its members. This approach is used to investigate the community associated with the operation of the Cootharaba sawmill, in late 19th century southeast Queensland. Previous approaches to understanding community in the archaeological discipline have been founded on the paradigm of a ‘natural’ community; a naturally-occurring, spatially-bounded, static entity. More recent approaches have considered the issue by viewing the community as ‘imagined’; a unit with ties to external entities and comprising active internal agents. My research adopts the latter approach using concepts of agency and practice as a foundation to a model which aims to understand the community as both a physical and a mental phenomenon. This practice-oriented approach recognises that the community is a social institution that structures and is structured by internal agents and external forces. As Canuto (2002) proposes, a community can be seen as comprising four elements — locale, habitus, agency and pacing — which enables spatial, ideational, interactive and temporal interpretations to be made about a community. A study of a community must consider the multiple scales of interaction and the broader external contexts in which the community operates. My research provides a methodological contribution to studying historical period communities by providing a framework of indicators to address the physical nature of the archaeological remains of a community’s actions and practices in order to examine the mental and social aspects of the community. Archaeological data for this study were generated from extensive survey and excavation of the residential area of the site of the Cootharaba sawmill settlement. Historical research included the investigation of a range of primary documents and secondary sources concerning the lives and characters of the Cootharaba story. The archaeological and documentary evidence enabled each of the indicators to be examined in order to identify the actions and practices of the community at the domestic, local and regional scales, as follows: • The organisation of individual residences within the residential area of the mill settlement reflecting the daily, residential, doxic practice in the domestic locale. • The organisation of the mill settlement and associated operations resulting from periodic, discursive group action in the local locale. • The nature of the regions surrounding the mill settlement as evidence of irregular, external, orthodox practice in the regional locale. The social group of the community of Cootharaba was a complex, interacting social institution that operated in different ways at different scales. The company operating the sawmill, McGhie, Luya and Co., was the key to the establishment and ongoing existence of this community and as such the company and the organisation of its operations was the overarching structuring factor of the community. Examining the community solely through this lens, however, provides a biased view and marginalises the majority of the population — the women and the children. Using three scales of practice to examine the interaction and social constitution of the community of Cootharaba provides for the elucidation of the complexities and variances both between and within groups in the community. This research demonstrates that communities are not simply equable to a spatially bounded location; the relationship between community and locality is not necessarily a one-to-one relationship. For the Cootharaba community there were relationships between people in different localities but who still belonged to the same community group. The linkages and inter-relationships between the people of the Cootharaba community, the localities where they lived and interacted and the material culture they created and used all occurred within a broader social and historical context. This research examines the relationship between the people, localities, and material culture of the Cootharaba community within its context of 19th century Queensland. The community development, maintenance and dissolution was reliant on natural resources and their extraction and was tied to the economic highs and lows of the Queensland colony. The actions and practices of the community members were also tied into the social expectations and requirements of the society of 19th century Queensland and their mainly British and Irish cultural backgrounds. The study of the Cootharaba community demonstrates the importance of social interaction and individual practices in the formation of social groups, and in the maintenance of community at different scales and across different localities. The community was not just made up of the group of people living at the physical settlement at Cootharaba. The Cootharaba community was an active, interacting social institution that was structuring and being structured by the internal actions and practices of its members at the domestic, local and regional scales, as well as by external forces well beyond the mill.

Beyond the Visible: Disability and Performing Bodies

McHenry, Lalita — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

This thesis emerges from my work in the disability field and engagement in disability arts. After attending the first High Beam Festival in Adelaide in 1998, I became interested in the ways that disabled bodies were reclaiming identity and performing issues about disability as a challenge to those offered through dominant cultural representations. Work in the disability field over the past 50 years that has been dominated by medical and social frameworks, but disability studies and creative works by people with disabilities are shifting the focus and insisting on the centrality, rather than marginality, of the disabled bodyarguing for a new cultural space. These cultural practices are witness to the reconstruction, transformation and subversion of the discourses that historically circumscribe disability. Common to much disability arts practice is a desire to make visible a repressed and othered body, rewrite the scripts of disability by drawing on the real experience of people with disabilities and, perhaps most importantly, to provoke a rethinking of disability (primarily in the able-bodied majority) by reversing the gaze. Despite these efforts, disability continues to exist in an untenable binary with the able-bodied. In addition, questions of subjectivity and embodiment beyond the purview of physical and visible disability remain under-explored. This has led to a broader interest in a politics of the image and an analysis of the normative gaze, issues this thesis places under considerable scrutiny. As the title of this thesis indicates, I ask questions that go beyond the visible by exploring disability and performing bodies. At the forefront of this enquiry is a concern with the relations of looking, the nature of Otherness and questions of the gaze. The research is conducted through observation of live performance, in-depth interviews with disabled performers, theatre producers and artists, and a detailed analysis of the processes involved. Questions of the body are at the heart of numerous disciplines including feminism, disability studies, cultural studies, postcolonial and performance studies. The body can be said to be under a radical deconstructive agenda. The thought that theatre reflects an unproblematic reality no longer holds true because the performers self is not just a question of assuming a character or playing a role. What then of work that relies on these tropes as important markers of cultural resistance? I introduce the important developments in the field of disability and performance and address a series of research questions: In what ways can the cultural sphere of the arts work as a site of intervention able to respond to the problems of extant constructions of disability? How might disability be performed in ways that address issues of exclusion and abjection and at the same time avoid perpetuating the very oppressive spaces that are under challenge? What are the limitations of a pure visibility politics? What are the ideological interpellations and emotional and political effects of performing in a disability arts context? What might be gained from problematising the disabled body itself? In this thesis, I bring together a number of divergent cultural sites through which to challenge the concept of disability and the performing disabled body. These cultural sites include disability arts theory and practice, live performance, contemporary freak shows and the practices of self-demand amputation and extreme body modification. These sites provoke an examination of subjectivity and a rethinking of how disability and the disabled subject are presently understood. It is necessary to deconstruct the disabled subject and rethink notions of the Other in order to provoke any real challenge to the discourses of perfection and wholeness that dominate the cultural imaginary. The term Other is generally used in disability theory in ways that inevitably resort to a binary relationship and a problematic understanding of the operations of the gaze. In the work of both Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Lacan, the term Other dramatically shifts in meaning and offers a profound rethinking of the premises of much disability theory and arts practice. Levinass work offers the possibility for an alternative ethics of performance for an audience and a different way of thinking about the relations between self and other and disability. Lacans work on the Other and the gaze assists in unpacking the binary distinctions often constructed in the visual field between notions of the normal observer and the disabled subject. I endeavour to move beyond visibility, to highlight the limitations of a politics steeped in mobilising a disabled subject and identity without eclipsing the significance of the visual in the formation of subjectivity. By engaging with a few select performances and other cultural projects not currently read through the lens of disability, yet corporeally linked to questions about body image, the Other and desire my hope is that a more critical perspective on the concept of disability can be adopted. This provides the conditions to further the development of a critical disability studies.

Bifurcations, Phase Transitions and Teleportation in Entangled Quantum Systems

John Paul Barjaktarevic — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Bilingual Child-rearing in Linguistic Intermarriage: Negotiating Language, Power, and Identities between English-Speaking Fathers and Japanese-Speaking Mothers in Japan

Lachlan Jackson — 2010-03-15T00:00:00Z

This is a qualitative sociolinguistic study that investigates the parental experiences of bilingual child-rearing for linguistically intermarried couples in Japan. In particular, it focuses on the role of native English-speaking fathers. Through the incorporation of questionnaire, logbook, and in-depth interview data, the study presents eight unique and richly-nuanced cases of language contact in the family domain. The thesis builds on influential works that have both questioned the ease with which children acquire two languages (Yamamoto, 2001b) and highlighted bilingual child-rearing as an emotionally draining and labour-intensive pursuit (Okita, 2002). In accordance with recent suggestions to more readily acknowledge the socio-political dimensions of bilingualism (e.g. Heller, 2007, p. 1; Myers-Scotton, 2006; Li Wei, 2008, p. 17), this study shows bilingual child-rearing to be an innately political phenomenon. The study supports the supposition that the individual circumstances of linguistically intermarried couples rarely align neatly with the prescriptive advice found in much of the popular literature on how to raise children in two (or more) languages (Piller, 2001b). In particular, abstractions of power and discursively constructed identities are shown to structure both the specific language choices and the broader parental practices of the couples in this study. For linguistically intermarried couples, bilingual child-rearing is shown to be a fluid process of negotiation, whereby language choices and decisions about transmission strategies are tied to social positioning of both self and other. Drawing from a broader literature pertaining to the social psychology of parenting, this thesis also proposes a model to analyse the ecological context of bilingual child-rearing. The linguistic behaviours of the parents, as well as their decisions concerning family language planning are shown to emerge from each family’s unique and fluctuating set of social circumstances. These include, but are not limited to, the quality of the spousal relationship, the family’s economic resources, (shifting) cultural affiliations of all family members, future plans, minority language contact opportunities, the medium of instruction at the child’s school, the needs and wishes of extended family members, as well as the agency of the child.

Bilirubin metabolism during arsenic toxicity of the liver: involvement of murine cytochrome P450 2a5 and its human orthologue CYP2A6

Dionne Arthur — 2011-03-01T00:00:00Z

Arsenic exposure causes chronic disease and cancer in various organs in humans. The liver is a target organ for arsenic toxicity. The most accepted mechanism of arsenic toxicity involves oxidative stress. The initial response to oxidative stress is defensive, and involves numerous antioxidant defence systems. Two enzyme systems that have been reported to play an important role in cellular defence during metal-induced oxidative stress include haem oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and cytochrome P450 2a5 (Cyp2a5). It was found that both enzymes are involved in bilirubin (BR) homeostasis, where Cyp2a5-dependant BR oxidation is elevated when BR levels increase due to HO-1 induction. The oxidative metabolism of BR is an important pathway of detoxification in addition to glucuronidation however the oxidative products were not identified. In this thesis various bilirubin oxidative metabolites (BOMs) formed as a result of BR oxidation by cytochrome P450 are reported. Bilirubin was incubated with yeast microsomal fractions (wild type, recombinant yeast expressing the murine Cyp2a5 or its human orthologue, CYP2A6). The origin of the products from BR was confirmed by comparing oxidation products of mesobilirubin, an analogue of BR. The products of enzymic incubation were also compared to those of the chemical oxidation of BR. The major products found in both enzymic and chemical oxidation system were identical and were as followed: ion A m/z 301; ion B m/z 333; ion D m/z 315 and ion biliverdin m/z 583. Additionally, in a study using recombinant yeast expressing CYP2A6, BR inhibited coumarin 7-hydroxylation (a CYP2A6 catalysed reaction) in a concentration dependent manner with an IC50 of 4.98 μM BR. The inhibitory effects of BR on the rate of coumarin 7-hydroxylation is that of competitive inhibition as BR increased the Km but not the Vmax for CYP2A6-dependent coumarin 7-hydroxylation. The Ki value of BR was found to be 2.82 μM, which is in the same range as the Km for coumarin 7-hydroxylation (2.44 μM). Furthermore, a monoclonal antibody for Cyp2a5 (which cross-reacts with CYP2A6), caused a dose-dependent inhibition of BR degradation activity by about 70 %. These observations suggest the affinity of BR to CYP2A6 is similar to that of coumarin. In a study using DBA/2J mice, a strain with high Cyp2a5 basal activity, evidence was found that shows the induction of HO-1 and Cyp2a5 is an adaptive response to viii arsenite-mediated oxidative stress to protect the liver against lipid peroxidation. Mice treated with a subacute dose of arsenite showed an induction of HO-1 and Cyp2a5 at both mRNA and protein levels in the liver, which was associated with oxidative stress. This response correlated with a decline in total cytochrome P450; a modest elevation in total bilirubin followed by a decrease in lipid peroxidation; and an increase in microsomal BR degradation rate followed by an increase in urinary elimination of BOMs identified in the enzymic incubations with BR. Furthermore, exposure of human liver cells (HepG2) to arsenic resulted in a time dependant induction of CYP2A6 protein and activity levels. This implies a similar adaptive response towards arsenic may also occur in human liver cells. In sum, these observations suggest that (i) both murine Cyp2a5 and human CYP2A6 enzymes oxidise BR to form BOMs; (ii) concurrent induction of HO-1 and Cyp2a5 during arsenic-mediated oxidative stress may protect the liver against lipid peroxidation; and (iii) production of BOMs may be mediated by Cyp2a5 BR oxidation and subsequently eliminated in the urine.

Bioactivity Grafting of Cyclic Peptides: Structure Activity Studies of Grafted Cyclotides and SFTI-1

Sunithi Gunasekera — 2009-02-28T00:00:00Z

Peptides are considered as drugs of the future because of their advantageous features of high specificity and low toxicity. However, the complete therapeutic potential of peptides has not yet been realized because of the in vivo instability displayed by most potential peptides. In this thesis, two naturally derived cyclic peptides, cyclotides and sunflower trypsin inhibitor 1 (SFTI-1), were utilized to impart stability to linear bioactive epitopes and enhance their therapeutic potential in a biological environment. Cyclotides are plant derived mini-proteins with compact folded structures and exceptional stability. Their stability derives from a head-to-tail cyclised backbone coupled with a cystine knot arrangement of three-conserved disulfide bonds. Sunflower typsin inhibitor 1 (SFTI-1) is a stable cyclic peptide containing a single disulfide bond. Taking advantage of these stable cyclic peptide frameworks, novel drug leads to inhibit/stimulate angiogenesis were developed by using the approach of ‘epitope grafting’ in which linear epitopes were grafted onto the cyclic peptide frameworks. Angiogenesis is a physiological condition that is unregulated in the progression of many diseases, including cancers and cardiovascular diseases. Thus the drug leads designed in the current project have potential therapeutic applications to combat cancers and cardiovascular diseases. To fully exploit cyclotides as drug scaffolds, it is imperative to understand their folding. Two main subfamilies, referred to as the Möbius and bracelet cyclotides have been identified and interestingly, they require dramatically different in vitro folding conditions to achieve formation of the conserved cyclic cystine knot motif. To determine the underlying structural elements that influence cyclotide folding, the in vitro folding of a suite of hybrid cyclotides based on combination of the Möbius cyclotide kalata B1 and the bracelet cyclotide cycloviolacin O1 was examined in this thesis. The pathways of folding of the two cyclotide subfamilies were found to be different and primarily dictated by specific residues harboured within inter-cysteine loops 2 and 6. Two changes in these loops, an amino acid substitution in loop 2 and an amino acid addition in loop 6 enabled the folding of cycloviolacin O1 under conditions where folding does not occur in vitro for the native peptide. Thus, the study identified key residues that are not in close proximity in the primary sequence or three-dimensional structure which assist folding in cyclotides. A key intermediate species in the folding pathway was isolated and characterised, and found to contain a native-like hairpin structure that appears to be a nucleation locus early in the folding process. The intermediate does not have native disulfide connectivities, but disulfide shuffling processes ultimately lead to a rearrangement to the native form. Overall these mechanistic findings on the folding of cyclotides are potentially valuable for protein engineering applications that utilize cystine-rich peptides as scaffolds in the design of new drug leads. The current study has also enabled the extention of the grafting studies to the bracelet cyclotide subfamily, which was intractable to grafting prior to this work. Cyclotides are gene encoded macrocyclic proteins and another way to exploit their potential as drug scaffolds, would be to develop combinatorial cyclotide libraries. The most efficient way to generate engineered cyclotides would be via recombinant expression, which currently remains unsuccessful, partly due to lack of understanding of the mechanism of cyclotide backbone cyclization. Understanding how the cyclotide precursor folds may provide clues to how cyliclization occurs. A conserved region known as the N-terminal repeat (NTR) region in the cyclotide precursor has been speculated to play an important role in precursor folding. In this thesis, the function of the NTR in the folding of the cyclotide precursor in vitro was examined via the design of a series of constructs for the precursor protein for the prototypic kalata B1 cyclotide, with incremental additions of the NTR region. Analysis of the constructs by NMR spectroscopy for evidence of secondary structure revealed that the NTR does not assist folding of the cyclotide precursor in vitro. Using diffusion NMR, the unstructured nature of the constructs was localized to the NTR region. In a complementary study, structural analysis of the full length cyclotide precursor was carried out by expressing the precursor gene for kalata B1 in a bacterial expression system. The full-length precursor was found to be unstructured in solution despite approximately half of the precursor comprising the mature domain and NTR, both of which are structured in isolation. The unstructured nature of the cyclotide precursor suggested that a different environment, or indeed interaction of the NTR with a particular enzyme involved in processing, is necessary for it to adopt a well-defined conformation and allow processing to produce the mature circular protein. The information that NTR alone may not assist folding of the cyclotide precursors has provided new impetus to examine the role of other potential folding auxiliaries such as protein disulfide isomerase in cyclotide folding and has indirectly advanced the production of cyclotides via transgenic means. In summary, this thesis has provided a fundamental insight into the folding of cyclotides, both when expressed as part of a precursor protein and in isolation via solid phase chemical synthesis, and has exploited the potential of cyclic peptide scaffolds in drug design applications.

Bioassay-guided and computer-aided investigation of marine-derived kinase inhibitors: applications to control neurodegenerative disorders

Plisson, Fabien Gerard Christian — 2012-09-26T00:00:00Z

Bioavailability of carbon in microaggregates formed from clay minerals and metal oxyhydroxides

Jessie Horton — 2012-04-16T00:00:00Z

The sequestration of organic matter (OM) in soil is an important issue in relation to soil health and productivity and the cycling of carbon on a global scale. Commonly up to 80% of OM in soil is associated within the microstructure, defined here as the microaggregates within the soil fraction <100 ìm. Research of this fraction within a soil sample has generally focussed on the extraction of the OM under varying conditions and the nature of the fractions using microscopy. However, little is known about the soil processes that cause the OM to become sequestered in this fraction. A fundamental approach has been used in this research to study the factors that affect the processes of aggregation and the subsequent carbon sequestration in the microstructure of soils, by creating soil microaggregates under controlled laboratory conditions using well characterised minerals. The components used in the preparation of microaggregates included various types of OM (extracted from soil and leaf litter and commercial organic compounds), cations (iron, aluminium and calcium) and soil mineral particles (bentonite and kaolinite) under a range of conditions. A review of the literature suggests that the factors that affect the aggregation processes in these microaggregates might include typical soil conditions (wetting and drying cycles, salts, pH, temperature and time), nature of the soil components, and the sequence of interactions between these components. The impact of these factors on the extent of aggregation and the stability of the aggregates were determined by particle size analysis and sonication respectively. Microaggregates formed from kaolinite were not able to withstand more than one wetting and drying cycle before being dispersed. OM type, sequence of addition, pH, cation type and concentration had minimal impact on microaggregate size, but this may be mostly due to the unstable nature of the aggregates formed from kaolinite. Microaggregates formed from bentonite increased in size and in stability with an increase in the ratio of cation to clay and cation to organic matter. The solution pH did not impact on the size of the aggregates after sonication. Aluminium produced larger aggregates than iron, and iron produced larger aggregates than calcium. Whereas wetting and drying cycle had an impact on aggregate size, OM type did not. The second stage of this research was to quantify the bioavailability of the OM associated within these microaggregates, and hence the quantity of sequestered carbon. This involved the inoculation of the microaggregates with bacteria isolated from natural soil, and monitoring their subsequent respiration using gas chromatography. Carbon sequestration is the removal and long-term storage of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon that is sequestered in soil is not bioavailable and hence bioavailability was chosen here as an indirect measure of sequestration. It is also known that the majority of carbon lost from the natural soil environment is due to microbial action. The bentonite aggregates were used in the bioavailability studies because they were larger and more stable than the kaolinite aggregates. Increasing size and stability was assumed to be associated with decreasing bioavailability of the incorporated carbon. Lysine was chosen as the organic substrate because it had a low molecular weight and was readily degradable by soil bacteria. The rate and amount of lysine bioavailable to the bacteria was dependent on the ‘factors’ used to form the bentonite aggregates. For example, microaggregates formed in solution from iron oxyhydroxides (in the absence of bentonite) resulted in the least amount of bioavailable carbon. Microaggregates formed in solution from bentonite, and bentonite/aluminium, and bentonite/iron mixtures, were also found to have significantly less bioavailable carbon than the control. Microaggregates formed in solution from aluminium oxyhydroxides alone did not impact on the amount of bioavailable carbon within the aggregates. This research has improved our understanding of the interaction between clay minerals, metal oxyhydroxides, and organic matter in soil, and how this interaction influences aggregation and carbon sequestration in soil. The knowledge gained and the new methods developed in this research can be further developed and used to improve our fundamental knowledge aggregation and carbon sequestration in soil.

BIOBANKS: PROFESSIONAL, DONOR & PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF TISSUE BANKS &THE ETHICAL & LEGAL CHALLENGES OF CONSENT, LINKAGE &THE DISCLOSURE OF RESEARCH RESULTS.

Fleming, Jennifer M. — 2008-07-21T00:00:00Z

Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Alleviation: Factors Influencing their Integration in Cambodia

Kara Scally-irvine — 2011-06-02T00:00:00Z

Aligning conservation objectives with those of poverty alleviation in developing countries has been an elusive goal for the last two – three decades. An approach known as Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) became an extremely popular means to achieve this. Unfortunately, despite considerable enthusiasm, widespread implementation, and financial support the performance of these has been underwhelming. The laudable aspiration of achieving conservation and development together has been questioned. Reviews of ICDPs have identified flaws in previous applications of the concept. General advice on how practical elements of future ICDPs might be modified has been proffered, however there is an absence of substantive suggestions about how the approach should be modified to address the problems it has suffered from. An interdisciplinary divide between conservation and related disciplines also hinders the cross-fertilisation of ideas and insights. Using Cambodia as a case study, the conundrum of integrating conservation and development was re-examined using a research approach addressing deficiencies identified in the literature. A holistic perspective using a mixture of methods to maximise opportunities for new insights was adopted. The objective was to identify factors that influence conservation and development and their integration in Cambodia, to compare these with factors already identified in the literature, and draw conclusions that can be applied to integrated conservation and development (ICD) in general. A systems view, which acknowledges that real world problems are non-linear and complex, was adopted. Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) was used to structure the research, which followed two streams of inquiry. The first ‘cultural’ stream used grounded theory: a qualitative approach that identifies core issues via an emergent analytical process that avoids preconception and forcing of data. The second ‘logic’ stream used Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) to quantitatively model the situation in Cambodia to explore its dynamics and reveal leverage points where positive changes could be made. A pluralist paradigm permitted this combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The grounded theory analysis revealed a triad of central concepts; Engagement, Power and Control, with Engagement the most important. Engagement comprised four sub-categories; Capacity, Benefits, Time and Conceptual Buy-In, with Conceptual Buy-In emerging as the richest. The analysis confirmed many concepts such as building capacity and benefits that are typically discussed in relation to ICD. However a number of other critical issues, which receive much less attention, emerged during analysis, suggesting there are gaps in knowledge of ways to improve ICD. These primarily related to social and political processes (social capital), and highlighted the role trust and power dynamics play. Linkages were made to ‘resilience’ theory to suggest ways the socio-ecological systems that dictate ICD may be optimised to improve outcomes. BBN modelling suggested that in Cambodia, biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation are complementary and compatible goals. This contrasts more pessimistic conclusions sometimes found in the conservation literature. The presence or absence of non-governmental organisations was found to be an extremely influential factor determining the success of conservation and poverty alleviation initiatives, which has a number of practical implications. The model also suggested reducing dependence on natural resources by introducing medium and high value alternatives was one way in which conservation and development goals can be achieved simultaneously, as was reducing natural resource damage by minimising areas under concession. Building capacity, offering appropriate benefits and continuing to build awareness were reinforced as valuable objectives. Although the BBN model provided an adequate representation of the situation in Cambodia, the role political forces play and the social forces identified as critically important in the grounded theory analysis were conspicuously absent. Overall, BBNs are well suited to examining concrete and quantifiable factors but failed to capture other more abstract concepts that are not easily translated into quantifiable measures. This highlights the value of adopting a broad multimethodological approach in progressing ICD theory and practice. This research makes contributions to improving the integration of conservation and development in several ways. First, adopting a multimethodological approach in general, and including qualitative analysis in particular, to identify issues that influence the success of ICD is valuable. Second, the fundamental role social and political processes play were highlighted. If ICDPs are aware of, address, and support the effective functioning of these in their activities projects and programmes, sustainable and robust interventions are more likely. Third, practical recommendations can be derived from the analytical products of this work. This research suggests there is hope for achieving integrated conservation and development, but changes in perspective and approach are necessary. The disciplinary divide must be crossed if conservation is to effectively tackle the social and political forces that dictate the context in which it operates, and which play a central role in determining its success. Failure to do so will mean the conservation community may miss what is in front of them, due to artefacts of quantitative approaches that dominate its science-based tool box.

BIOELECTRICAL IMPEDANCE ANALYSIS OF MUSCLE FUNCTION AND ACTIVITY: (BIODYNAMIC ANALYSIS)

William Mccullagh — 2009-10-23T00:00:00Z

Abstract There is a need in medicine and research for noninvasive, painless, safe and simple bed-side techniques to measure physiological processes associated with muscle function and activity. Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) is a widely used, noninvasive, painless, safe and simple procedure for the measurement of body composition. However, although capable of producing accurate and reproducible data, it is known to be prone to movement artifacts. This poses the interesting question “Could impedance changes be used to monitor movement and, consequently, be related to muscle function or activity?” This project investigated the utility of impedance change as a monitoring technique for physiological processes that involve movement such as muscular contraction, the calf muscle pump, and swallowing. The impedance of leg muscle segments during locomotion, whilst riding a stationary exercise cycle, was measured at discrete frequencies and by bioimpedance spectroscopy to monitor muscle function or activity. Impedance traces were compared to information obtained by electromyography (EMG). Impedance, at a discrete frequency, was able to measure the cadence of cycling and its magnitude was related to the position of the pedal during the pedal cycle. When the cycling action was measured by bioimpedance spectroscopy, R0 and Zc showed a statistically significant difference, (p<0.05), between all angles of the pedal crank cycle while R∞ showed a statistically significant difference between angles in the lower hemisphere of the pedal crank cycle. The cyclical changes in impedance during cycling may be attributed to changes in shape and volume of the muscle during contraction as well as a volume change due to blood and lymph being pumped from the limb by the action of the calf muscle pump. Based on procedures used in the cycling studies, an impedance-based method for the measurement of calf muscle pump function during an exercise protocol, originally designed for use with air plethysmography, was developed. It was shown that impedance measured at 5 kHz provides a simple, non-invasive method for the measurement of the ejection fraction and ejection volume of the calf muscle pump as well as other haemodynamic variables. The impedance-based method was less technically challenging than accepted volumetric methods, such as air plethysmography and strain gauge plethysmography, and non-invasive c.f. ambulatory venous pressure, enabling it to be used repeatedly. Muscle function and activity is not confined to the legs so impedance changes in the arm and forearm during exercise were measured. Impedance measurements, at discrete frequencies and using bioimpedance spectroscopy, of the forearm during contractions of the hand were able to distinguish the difference between a ramp and a pulse contraction. When the impedance of the arm and forearm were plotted against the angle of the forearm to the horizontal during a bicep curl, there was an hysteresis effect. Impedance traces of a bicep curl were compared to an EMG trace of the same action. The larynx is a hollow muscular organ situated in the front of the neck above the trachea consisting of a framework of cartilages bound together by muscles and ligaments. The two major functions of the larynx are deglutition and phonation. Dysphagia, which is becoming more prevalent as the population ages, is defined as difficulty in swallowing thin liquids such as water or juices which splash into the trachea because the patient is unable to control the thin liquid bolus. Aspiration pneumonia and dehydration can be prevented by using thickened liquids which allow patients to achieve a safer swallowing response, but it is difficult to assess this response without interfering with the swallowing process. Impedance pharynography (IPG) is a technique using BIA to monitor an impedance waveform of the swallowing process that presents no radiation hazard to the patient, is non-invasive and does not require specialist trained personnel to operate it. Resistance changes across the neck were measured while subjects swallowed solutions of different viscosities. The resistance changes were distinctive and reproducible for each of the solutions of different viscosities which were swallowed. Measuring the function of the larynx by this method could be useful in the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia. In conclusion, the studies described in this thesis demonstrate the potential usefulness of the measurement of change in impedance as a measure of muscle activity. Impedance-based methods can measure volume changes associated with changes in cross-sectional area of the muscles involved in contraction as well as compartmental fluid changes caused by the force of the contraction on the surrounding tissues including the vasculature. In particular, measuring the ejection fraction and other haemodynamic variables of the calf muscle pump by impedance has the potential to become the method of choice in the future because it is easy to use, inexpensive, non-invasive, safe, and hygenic. Measuring resistance changes across the neck during swallowing yields distinctive waveforms with features corresponding to the physiological phases of the swallowing process as well as identifying distinctive swallowing patterns associated with the different viscosities of liquids swallowed. Function of the larynx and the associated diseases of the larynx will potentially be easier to diagnose and treat with a safe, non-invasive, inexpensive, portable bed-side method of assessment such as BIA.

Bioinformatic identification of functional noncoding elements and expressed noncoding RNAs

Chol Hee Jung — 2010-09-22T00:00:00Z

The majority of the genome in multicellular organisms is composed of non-protein-coding (noncoding) sequences, the amount of which increases with developmental complexity. This observation and other evidence support the contention that these noncoding regions house numerous functional sequence elements including cis-acting protein-binding sites and regulatory noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), many of which are conserved. Over recent years, the number of identified ncRNA genes has increased. Indeed, it is likely that higher eukaryotes produce a comparable if not greater number of ncRNAs than protein-coding mRNAs. All annotated conserved regions of the genome are associated with functional elements and transcripts, but most are unannotated, suggesting that many more of these elements remain to be identified. On this basis, I analyzed both conserved noncoding regions and sequenced fragments of expressed ncRNAs of the genomically and transcriptomically well-characterized model organism Drosophila melanogaster to identify potentially functional sequence elements and ncRNAs. The first approach was based upon a search for over-represented sequence motifs, on the hypothesis that different classes of regulatory RNAs or cis-acting regulatory sequences might possess core sequence motifs, such as those found in small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), which may be used to parse these sequences and identify new subclasses. The conserved noncoding regions of D. melanogaster were searched for over-represented tetranucleotide pairs (which best covers the possibilities while being computationally tractable) separated by certain distances up to 100 bp apart (termed 'pattern-cores'). Among over 17,000 over-represented pattern-cores, 473 showed the highest information content in their surrounding sequences and were extended using the program MEME into longer motifs defined by position-specific scoring matrices (PSSMs). These motifs were then classified into 23 groups based on their similarity. The whole genome was scanned for genomic sites of the motifs with certain threshold values that effectively separated true from false positives. The results identified five groups of known functional elements: a subset of tRNAs, motifs immediately downstream of Histone genes, and three types of protein-binding sites, including one recognized by the chromatin insulator protein Su(Hw). Two novel groups with large numbers of instances, DLM3 and DLM4, were investigated in more detail and showed strong evidence for functional potential including their abundance in the genome, conservation across other (and only within) Drosophilae, location in specific genomic regions (DLM3), strong predicted RNA folding energy (DLM4) and positive signals in Northern hybridization analysis (DLM4). Motifs in some other groups also showed functional potential such as enrichment in promoter regions of genes with specific categories of biological processes or genomic loci covered by short RNA sequence data. These findings suggest that there may be many more such motifs, especially lineage-specific motifs, to be discovered in other genomes by these strategies. The second approach employed an empirical analysis of short-read high density RNA sequencing data. Published datasets of short RNA sequences from D. melanogaster were combined and used to assemble tag-contigs. Tag-contigs identified most known small ncRNAs (such as tRNAs, snRNAs and snoRNAs), and showed distinctive characteristics associated with different classes of small ncRNAs. By using these characteristics in conjunction with the typical sequence motifs of snoRNAs, 7 novel box H/ACA and 26 box C/D snoRNAs were identified. In addition, one novel snRNA and hundreds of putative ncRNAs candidates of uncharacterized classes were predicted, 15 out of 21 of which showed corresponding signals in subsequent Northern hybridization analysis. The combined use of small RNA sequence data from various tissues also successfully inferred the expression profiles of the putative ncRNA candidates. This approach was then extended to the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to identify hundreds of putative ncRNAs with specific expression profiles. The pattern-core approach accurately identified over-represented sequence motifs and can be modified to accommodate different gap-sizes between two tetranucleotides or to alter the size of co-dependent two short sequence elements. The tag-contig approach is a simple yet effective way to gather preliminary candidates of novel noncoding RNAs, but it (as yet) only skims the surface of the great complexity of small RNA species. Moreover, excessive accumulation of sequence data can cause ambiguity in 5' / 3' cleavage sites of the candidates. Thus, additional computational and data-driven analyses need to be developed for better prediction, identification and understanding of ncRNAs. Additionally, since some species of small noncoding RNAs can be defined by distinctive sequence features within them, applying the pattern-core approach to the tag-contig data would be one way to better classify putative noncoding RNAs.

Biological Activities of Plant Extracts and Essential Oils against Helicoverpa armigera

Hidayat, Yusup — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

Hexane, benzene, chloroform and methanol extracts of Ajuga australis, Lantana camara and Tithonia diversifolia, and the essential oils of Backhousia citriodora, Melaleuca alternifolia and Melaleuca quinquenervia were investigated for their biological activities against the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera Hubner. Most noticeable was the antifeedant effect of most of the plant extracts tested on H armigera. Based on the results of the choice feeding assays, the most effective extracts of each plant were hexane for A. australis (AIso=13.5 ~g/cm2), benzene for T diversifolia (AIso=43.5 ~g/cm2) and benzene for L. camara (AIso=99.7 ~g/cm2). For the three essential oils tested, only the essential oil of B. citriodora showed an antifeedant effect (Also choice test = 282.4 ~g/cm2). Among all plant extracts and essential oils investigated in this study, the hexane extract ofA. australis was the most potent antifeedant. None of the plant extracts tested significantly affected the survival of H armigera in either feeding or contact assays. Generally, ingesting plant extracts for 12-15 hours in a no-choice feeding assay had no significant effects on the growth and development of H armigera. Exceptions were the hexane and chloroform extracts of A. australis and the chloroform extract of L. camara, which slightly lengthened the larval development time, and the hexane extract ofL. camara which slightly reduced the pupal weight. Unlike the plant extracts, or the essential oils of M alternifolia and M. quinquenervia, the essential oil of B. citriodora had an effect on the survival ofH armigera. In a contact assay at the highest dose (200 ~g/larvae), this essential oil killed 33.3 % of the larvae tested after 48 hours. In a no-choice feeding assay, also at the highest dose (500 ~g/cm2), the essential oil of B. citriodora had no significant effect on larval survival, but heavily influenced the later development stages of the insect where more abnormal pupae were formed, and not a single adult emerged. Although it is without toxic effect, the Australian native plant, A. australis is considered to have the most potential for insect control. Its strong antifeedant effect at a low dose on H armigera may have a significant potential role in the implementation of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program for this insect.

Biological filtration processes for the removal of the cyanobacterial toxin, cylindrospermopsin

Wijesundara, Shiromani Wasantha Kumari — 2008-07-10T00:00:00Z

Biologically-based insecticides for mosquito control and environmental conservation in south-east Queensland

Russell, Tanya Louise — 2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

Mosquitoes transmit a range of pathogens, such as malaria protozoans, dengue, Ross River and Barmah Forest viruses. Human infection with any of these pathogens may lead to the onset of debilitating disease, and due to limited vaccine availability, mosquito control is essential to interrupt the transmission of disease. During control operations, the larvae are targeted and there are two classes of biologically-based insecticides available: microbials (Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis de Barjac [Bti] and Bacillus sphaericus Neide [Bs]) and insect growth regulators (s-methoprene and pyriproxyfen). The aims of this thesis were to: 1) undertake specific research to enhance mosquito control operations; and 2) evaluate the ecological impacts of insecticide use in saltmarsh habitats. Initially, the efficacy of new formulations of biologically-based insecticides were investigated in the laboratory. Bioassays were conducted using third-instars of six common Australian mosquito species, Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus), Aedes vigilax (Skuse), Aedes notoscriptus (Skuse), Culex sitiens Wiedemann, Culex annulirostris Skuse and Culex quinquefasciatus Say. The normal model for log-linear mortality was used to determine LC50 and LC95 values. The newly developed VectoBac WG (3,000 Bti International Toxic Units [ITU]/mg) was highly effective against the range of larvae, contrasting with the unregistered insect growth regulator, pyriproxyfen, which was not effective against some species. Sequentially, the efficacy of Bti formulations was assessed in the field. Larvae were exposed to Bti as free-swimming larvae and in mesh cages, and mortality was calculated after 48 h to examine appropriate sampling techniques. The accuracy of sampling free-swimming larvae with 250-ml ‘dips’ was highly variable, where monitoring mortality of caged larvae was highly accurate; this information was used to design the sequential field trials. In freshwater pools, replicated cohorts of caged Cx. annulirostris were exposed to the water dispersible (VectoBac WG) and liquid (VectoBac 12AS: 1,200 Bti ITU/mg) formulations. Treatment concentrations of 0.008 ppm VectoBac WG and 0.04 ppm VectoBac 12AS and above produced significant larval control (>96% mortality) at 48 h, with no residual control after 1 week. In saltmarsh pools, cohorts of caged Ae. vigilax were exposed to the granular (VectoBac G: 200 Bti ITU/mg) formulation; which was effective (>99% mortality) at application rates of 4 kg/ha and above at 48 h. Next, the distribution of the granular (VectoBac G) formulation was assessed after an aerial treatment using catch-trays. The accuracy of the catch-trays was defined using mathematical models. Specifically, the analysis revealed that the size of catch-trays can affect the interpretation of results, especially if smaller than 2 m². The mass of product captured in 1 m² catch-trays, due to random sampling processes alone, would be expected to range between the equivalent of 2.9 to 7.8 kg/ha for 95% of replicates when targeting 5 kg/ha. During the field trial, 1 m² catch-trays were used, this catch-tray size was selected as it was the nominated size used by contractors for quality assurance of aerial granular applications. The average flight lane separation of the rotary-wing aircraft was 14.70 m (SD: ± 4.52 m) and the average treatment rate was 5.76 kg/ha (SD: ± 3.46 kg/ha; CV = 60%). This was close to the targeted lane separation of 14 m and treatment rate of 5 kg/ha. However, the product was not distributed evenly. Nonetheless, there was 100% mortality of third-instar Ae. vigilax that were exposed to the treatment in mesh cages. The most important factors that affected the observed spatial distribution of product were the uneven flight path of the helicopter and the low sensitivity of the small catch-trays. Despite the fact that Bti and s-methoprene are considered to be among the most target specific of insecticides, there are indications that non-target organisms may be impacted in different ecosystems. In response, changes in the density and diversity of non-target communities, after application of either Bti or s-methoprene, were examined. The main taxa collected from ephemeral pools were Copepoda; and from terrestrial plots were Collembola, Coleoptera, Heteroptera, Hymenoptera and Diptera. Applications of both products altered the community composition; however, differences were not consistent over the two localities. After applications of Bti to ephemeral pools, lower numbers of Copepoda were recorded at only one location. No differences were recorded after treatments of s-methoprene to ephemeral pools. After applications of s-methoprene to terrestrial plots, higher numbers of Acariformes were recorded at both localities, and this was also recorded after application of Bti to one of the locations. However, these differences were not spatially and temporally consistent or in agreement with predictions. The results of these trials suggest that applications of Bti and smethoprene will not impact on the long-term structure and composition of arthropod assemblages in saltmarshes. Authors of previous studies from the northern hemisphere had indicated that s-methoprene was more broadly toxic to non-target organisms than Bti; however, this is not true in Australia. The results of this thesis found that Bti can be used to effectively control mosquito immatures under different field conditions. Applications of Bti and s-methoprene did not decrease the diversity or abundance of non-target arthropods in south-east Queensland. As such, future applications of Bti and s-methoprene are supported in preference to organophosphate alternatives; this is based on a comparison with previously published literature that has demonstrated organophosphate insecticides to be directly toxic to non-target arthropods. Considering that the appropriate use of Bti and s-methoprene can reduce the incidence of arbovirus transmission among the local human population, the future application of these products is supported. The use of insecticides should be integrated with public education, biological control, physical habitat modification and early detection systems.

Biologically inspired vision for autonomous vehicle guidance

Fernandes, Joshua Leslie Noel — 2012-09-11T00:00:00Z

Biological Nutrient Removal for High Strength Wastewater Using Combined Anaerobic Ponds and Sequencing Batch Reactor: Feasibility Study

Mr Kanthavanam Subramaniam — 2008-10-10T00:00:00Z

Biological Processes for Dissolved Organic Carbon Removal

Christopher Pipe-martin — 2011-11-04T00:00:00Z

Biological water treatment has the potential to be a readily available, robust, effective and low energy intensity treatment technology. This report investigates the application of biological treatment processes for the removal of remaining organic compounds from a domestic wastewater treatment plant effluent. Biologically activated carbon (BAC) was found to be the preferred media for biological filtration, with removal of dissolved organic compounds by activated carbon being more than three times higher than in comparable sand filters. A two-stage sand-BAC filter was effective in achieving high DOC removal and had advantages during filter cleaning, as well as being compatible with the preferred configuration of the large slow rate filters required for high DOC removal. Methods for enhancing the filtration process were investigated. Pretreatment with alum coagulation and Dissolved Air Flotation/Filtration removed up to 40% of DOC and achieved excellent solids removal, leading to stable biological activity in BAC filters over long periods with surface skimming as the only maintenance and without the need for backwashing . Ozonation increased the DOC removal by BAC filtration. The DOC removal by BAC at low flow rates without ozonation exceeded that for ozone/BAC treatment at typical (higher) flow rates, meaning that the use of ozone may not be necessary to significantly reduce DOC in all cases. In the absence of ozonation, aeration was essential to achieve high DOC removal as the oxygen consumption in the filters was very high. It was found that longer contact times than are typically used for BAC filtration are required for high DOC removal, although the contact time is dependent on the level of pretreatment. Longer treatment time implies larger filter sizes, and a bigger footprint for the treatment plant. This increase in size and cost can be offset by the fact that equipment for ozone treatment may not be required. Coagulation/filtration removed 40% of DOC from secondary treated effluent, BAC filtration removed a further 22% with an EBCT of 140±30 minutes to give a total DOC reduction of 62%. Ozone/BAC treatment was able to achieve a 30% reduction (relative to influent) of the DOC remaining after coagulation/ filtration at an EBCT of 140±30 minutes to give a total DOC reduction of 70%. The effectiveness of biological treatment on the different components of the DOC was also explored. Very hydrophobic and slightly hydrophobic acids combined made up about 80% of the identified DOC fractions in the feed water, and also after alum pretreatment. BAC filters were able to remove 40% of this fraction, while ozone/BAC treatment removed over 50%. There was some variability in the effectiveness of BAC (with or without ozone) for removing hydrophilic compounds. It was also found that BAC, with or without ozone, was able to remove a wide range of pharmaceutical compounds and other micropollutants to below detection limits, with the two exceptions of caffeine and the pharmaceutical gabapentin, which were more than 90% removed in both treatment trains. The toxicity of the BAC treated water (again with or without ozone pretreatment) was significantly lower than that of the feedstock, and was comparable with that of pure water used as blank control. As measured by IC50, the toxicity was reduced to approximately 30% of that of the feed water. The estrogenic effect after treatment, with or without ozone, was below the detection limit. Slow flow BAC treatment appears to be an extremely effective means of removing micropollutants from water, even without the ozone pretreatment. The use of the UV Excitation Emission Matrix (EEM) technique as a rapid method for evaluating DOC removal was explored. It proved to be a useful analytical tool, able to distinguish the proportion of the different fractions such as neutral hydrophilic compounds, charged hydrophilic compounds and hydrophobic compounds (in combination with resin treatments) as well as the total residual DOC after treatment.