Sydney eScholarship
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Endogenous opioid modulation of fear learning circuits in the amygdala
No full textThe amygdala plays a central role in emotional learning, particularly fear
conditioning, where neutral stimuli are associated with threatening events.
Endogenous opioids have been implicated as fear-inhibiting neuromodulators,
but their specific mechanisms of action within amygdala circuits remain poorly
characterised. This thesis investigates the role of endogenous opioid
signalling in fear related circuits of the amygdala, examining how sensory
inputs can trigger endogenous opioid release and how these opioids
potentially regulate fear learning through multiple mechanisms.
Using a combination of electrophysiology, fibre photometry, and fluorescent
biosensors, I demonstrated that auditory thalamic inputs form strong,
functional glutamatergic synapses onto neurons in the amygdalo-striatal
transition zone, triggering enkephalin release. This enkephalin acts at multiple
sites within the fear circuit, including inhibiting glutamate transmission,
suppressing dopamine release and modulating synaptic plasticity under
specific conditions. Furthermore, in vivo recordings during fear conditioning
revealed dynamic endogenous opioid release patterns, initially occurring in
response to shock before gradually shifting to the conditioned stimulus as
learning progressed.
These findings establish a circuit mechanism by which sensory inputs trigger
opioid release that regulates fear learning through multiple pathways. This
work provides a deeper understanding of how neuromodulator systems can
potentially fine-tune emotional learning, which may inform future approaches
for treating disorders characterised by dysregulated fear response
Melanocytic Histopathology Reading Study: Exploring the impact of clinical information and MPATH-Dx V2.0 on pathologists’ diagnoses of melanocytic skin lesions
No full textThe clinical reference standard for diagnosis of primary cutaneous melanoma is the histopathology examination of a tissue biopsy specimen. However, there is evidence of poor accuracy and reproducibility for histopathology diagnosis of these lesions. Additionally, the “Melanocytic Histopathology Assessment Tool and Hierarchy for Diagnosis (MPATH-Dx V1.0)” classification schema was recently revised to also address the poor agreement amongst pathologists across the spectrum of atypical naevi and early melanoma, with MPATH-Dx V2.0 now in use. Thus, there are three objectives for this thesis: 1. To synthesise all available evidence on the impact of providing clinical information to pathologists assessing melanocytic skin lesions; 2. To determine the effects of providing clinical and dermoscopy images with a dermoscopy report on pathologists’ diagnoses of melanocytic skin lesions; and 3. To explore the impact of MPATH-Dx V2.0 compared to V1.0 on diagnostic agreement in the histopathologic assessment of melanocytic skin lesions.
To address the first objective, a scoping review was performed to examine the impact of clinical information on the histopathology diagnosis of melanocytic skin lesions. To address the second and third objectives, a prospective pathology reading study assessed the effects of providing clinical images and dermoscopy reports to dermatopathologists.
This thesis found that although clinical information can help with improving the diagnostic confidence and interobserver agreement and may reduce the odds of missing a progressive melanoma, dermoscopy reports and dermoscopy images may have limited impact on improving histopathology diagnosis. Further, the appropriateness of a tendency for histopathology upgrading with dermoscopy images and report is unknown. The MPATH-Dx V2.0 classification schema may beneficially improve pathologists’ agreement on lesions and direct management intensity to the risk of future adverse outcomes
"Where in the world is 'Western Sydney'?" How identities and boundaries can shape urban inequality and segregation: an empirical experiment
No full textIn Greater Sydney, Australia’s largest urban region, ‘Western Sydney’ as a spatial imaginary is
shorthand for the ‘other’ part of the city – its working class, multicultural and multilingual populations,
industrial-based economies, and high levels of socio-economic disadvantage - but where exactly is it?
This project investigates relationships between boundaries, urban inequality and segregation in the spatial
imaginary of’ Western Sydney’ and its various boundaries to examine the extent they shape or reflect spatial
inequalities in cities, what differences between boundaries formed by institutions and residents mean, and how conflicts between boundaries are reflected in questions of regional identity
Global Modernism Reconsidered: W. Somerset Maugham's Journey to the East
No full textThis study recovers modernist themes and literary techniques of W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), a ‘popular’ British writer, from existing postcolonial (mis)reading of his Eastern fiction. It argues that Maugham’s intellectual and aesthetic connections with the East formulate his subtle but powerful critique of Western imperialism, providing a transcultural perspective of conceptualising the world and human life. Eastern philosophy plays a definitive role in Maugham’s literary experimentation with form and narrative.
The thesis begins by locating Maugham in the emerging scholarship of global modernism, mapping out his transnational life and non-conventional narrative strategies. It then conducts a strategic historical survey of East–West interconnectedness to build up a tripartite methodology: ‘East as Other’, ‘East as Reference’, and ‘East as Method’, proposing three models of how modern Western writers tend to view the East. Comparing Maugham’s fiction with that of James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad, and George Orwell, this thesis uncovers Maugham’s acute sense of global modernity from a European context to Eastern sites of Oceania and Asia. Specifically, this study examines Maugham’s philosophical connection with China and India, observing how Daoism assimilates into Maugham’s modernist aesthetics that undo binaries and overcome the limits of language, and how Indian schools of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta have informed Maugham’s realisation of spiritual liberation in his three philosophical novels. Each chapter takes a cross-cultural approach with attention to both Western and Eastern cultural traditions.
This study covers a wide range of genres: novel, short story, play, memoir, essay, travel notes, literary criticism, and archival materials including unpublished manuscripts, letters, speeches, and Maugham’s annotated personal books, aiming to present a comprehensive survey of Maugham’s life and works in relation to global modernism
Disability Wellbeing Index (DWI): Analysis of Qualitative Components with Adult and Young People with Disability
No full textThe Centre for Disability Research and Policy (CDRP), University of Sydney, was contracted to contribute to a three-year research project, 2022-2024, funded by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and lead by Associate Professor Gang Chen, Monash University. The overarching aim of this research project was to design and test a preference-based wellbeing instrument that captures factors impacting on the wellbeing of people with disability in Australia, now known as the Disability Wellbeing Index (DWI). The role of the team based at the CDRP was to facilitate people with disabilities being involved in each stage of the research, including accessibility, safe environment, and self-reporting considerations for survey respondents.
This is the first of four reports documenting the contribution of the team at the Centre for Disability Research and Policy. This report describes the results of a qualitative analysis of focus groups and interviews conducted in 2022 with adults and young people with disability to explore their perspectives on initial versions of the DWI and issues of concern to be addressed in the implementation of the DWI. The findings from this study informed the refinement of DWI domains, items, and descriptors, and helped to identify wider issues that needed to be further explored, including safety considerations such as the context within which people complete the DWI and the accessibility of the DWI
Vision Neural Architecture Designs for Improved Robustness and Accuracy
No full textDeep neural networks (DNNs), such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Vision Transformers (ViTs), have achieved impressive results in computer vision but remain vulnerable to input shifts from adversarial attacks or natural distribution changes. This undermines their reliability and limits real-world deployment. Current defences like adversarial training and distributionally robust optimization (DRO) aim to improve robustness but often sacrifice accuracy. Adversarial training reduces standard accuracy, while DRO struggles to balance in-distribution (ID) and out-of-distribution (OOD) performance. Overcoming this robustness-accuracy trade-off remains a key challenge in deep learning.
Firstly, we propose Neural Architecture Dilation (NAD), a framework that improves robustness by integrating searched dilation architectures into pre-trained neural backbones. Building on this, we introduce Neural Architecture Dilation for Adversarial Robustness (NADAR), which formulates the dilation process as a constrained optimization problem. Secondly, we introduce TORA-ViTs, a transformer-based architecture that explicitly disentangles robust and predictive features through lightweight adapters, while an attention-based gated fusion mechanism dynamically balances their contributions based on input conditions. To optimize this fusion, we implement a two-phase training strategy. Thirdly, we propose EdgeNet, a plug-and-play module designed to enhance robustness by incorporating shape-based edge features into vision transformers. Utilizing a "sandwich" architecture with zero convolutions, EdgeNet introduces robust structural representations while preserving the predictive power of pretrained backbones. Lastly, we introduce AdaptNAS, a Neural Architecture Search (NAS) framework that explicitly optimizes architectures for both ID accuracy and OOD robustness. AdaptNAS leverages domain adaptation principles and adversarial learning to reduce the OOD generalization gap
Exploring the Intersection of Public Health and Project Management: Insights, Trends, Gaps, and Future Directions—A Narrative Review of Leading Project Management Journals
No full textAs public health initiatives increasingly adopt project-based structures to address complex societal challenges, there remains limited understanding of how project management practices are applied within this domain. This narrative literature review explores how public health has been represented and managed in the project management research field by analyzing 11 peer-reviewed studies from three leading project management journals: International Journal of Project Management, Project Management Journal, and International Journal of Managing Projects in Business. Drawing on SANRA guidelines to ensure methodological rigor, the review identifies key themes across selected studies, including stakeholder engagement, systems integration, and context-specific adaptation. Findings reveal that while project management approaches—such as change management, iterative planning, and action research—are increasingly used in health-related contexts, they often lack alignment with public health theory, long-term sustainability strategies, and sociopolitical considerations. The review highlights substantial gaps, including the minimal involvement of public health professionals, limited use of interdisciplinary frameworks, and insufficient evaluation of scalability and sustainability outcomes. By mapping current trends, exposing conceptual and methodological shortcomings, and outlining directions for future research, this review provides a foundation for strengthening the integration of project management practices in advancing sustainable and scalable public health interventions
Three Essays on Technology and Competition in Bank Lending and Corporate Finance
No full textThis thesis consists of three empirical studies on bank lending and corporate finance, addressing two
central policy-relevant issues for financial market dynamism and technology development. The first
study explores whether and how banks develop specialized knowledge about corporate technology
through their lending activities. We find that loans to firms sharing similar technologies with banks'
prior borrowers obtain lower loan spreads. In the second study, we develop a novel AI-driven Co-
Lending Graph Neural Network (CoLGNN) model to capture risk spillovers in syndicated lending
markets. Our approach integrates bank characteristics, loan attributes, and network topology to
generate a robust and novel spillover risk measure (CLN score) that predicts bank distress and
profitability up to two years ahead. Leveraging natural experiments involving credit rating
downgrades and the unexpected collapse of Lehman Brothers, we provide causal evidence of risk
transmission across financial institutions. In the third study, we swift to a corporate finance to
investigate how antitrust lawsuits affect corporations. We focus on government procurement cases,
which we identify using large language models. Using a difference-in-differences design, we
document that non-defendant firms gain federal contracts, expand employment and sales, and
experience positive abnormal stock returns following antitrust filings. We provide evidence that these
effects arise from the effective exclusion of defendant firms from the market. While antitrust lawsuits
enhance market competition and reduce concentration, we document that the benefits are not evenly
distributed: larger, well-established firms benefit more than smaller, financially constrained
businesses. We also find no significant impact on government acquisition costs
Seasonality & Sensitivity Of Microbial Decomposition in Semi-Arid Grasslands
No full textThis dataset captures seasonal soil microbial decomposition dynamics in semi-arid grasslands of northern NSW, Australia, under regenerative grazing and landscape rehydration practices. It includes Tea Bag Index metrics (TBI_k, TBI_S), soil moisture and temperature readings, and remote sensing indicators (ET, LST, EVI), highlighting the influence of hydrological conditions on decomposition and carbon stability
Housing experiments: evaluating the potential of new methods to generate housing system change
No full textFrustration at the stagnation of an already ‘broken’ housing system has created an environment where experimentation and ‘innovation’ are seen as pathways to solving entrenched policy problems. In this context, experimental governance has gained popularity across government agencies as a method for developing new solutions to longstanding difficulties by encouraging or enabling ‘innovation’. The thesis asks if policy experiments are a productive method for generating housing system change.
This research conducted a policy review of current state housing strategies, released between 2017 and 2021, revealing increasing references and instances of experimentation in Australia. A comparative case study approach was then used to examine three policy experiments, Australian Capital Territory’s Demonstration Housing Project, the Future Homes Project from Victoria and City of Sydney Council’s Alternative Housing Ideas Challenge to assess the impacts each program was having on the housing system. Unexpected barriers to moving from experimental approaches to genuine policy reform were a lack of clarity around experiment lifecycles, scaling and evaluation, and issues around remuneration and participant protection. Benefits outside the formal scope of the projects were identified, providing evidence of the positive impact experimental governance programs can have on the housing system. The research finds that at this early stage, policy experiments are experiments in themselves, with government struggling to rectify how experimental governance programs can exist alongside traditional policy production methods. The thesis will contribute to theoretical conceptions of experimental governance programs by developing a definition of experimental governance programs in the housing space in Australia, as well as providing empirical knowledge to support the existence and operation of the urban hack, as proposed by Maalsen (2021)