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Yakuwarigo knowledge among learners of Japanese in a JSL context
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 91-96.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Literature review -- Chapter 3. Methodology -- Chapter 4. Findings -- Chapter 5. Discussion -- Chapter 6. Conclusion -- References -- Appendices.Yakuwarigo (role language) is a form of Japanese language use which embodies particular characteristics of certain types of speakers. Consequently, most Japanese speakers who have grown up in Japan are able to identify particular character types simply by hearing or reading their Japanese, with or without visual images. Yakuwarigo is in fact essential knowledge for people who belong to a Japanese community since its members apply such knowledge when communicating with each other. Despite this, only a few yakuwarigo studies have been conducted from a Japanese language education perspective, and little is therefore known regarding yakuwarigo knowledge among learners of Japanese. This qualitative study investigates the depth of yakuwarigo knowledge and possible acquisition processes among a small cohort of learners living in Japan and studying Japanese as a second language. Data analysis reveals that participants possess a certain level of yakuwarigo knowledge, much of which has been acquired with the aid of resources that the participants access for enjoyment, rather than through formal classroom language learning. For these participants, Japanese manga and anime often play an initial role as a source of yakuwarigo input. This yakuwarigo knowledge is then reinforced by applying it in different contexts. Additionally, the findings highlight that noticing the existence of yakuwarigo is essential for its acquisition. This study provides another perspective in the field of yakuwarigo and opportunities to open Japanese educationalists to the importance of yakuwarigo for second language learners of Japanese.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (108 pages) table
The Self-reference effect in dementia : differential involvement of cortical midline structures in Alzheimer's disease and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia
No full textEncoding information in reference to the self enhances subsequent memory for the source of this information. In healthy adults, self-referential processing has been proposed to be mediated by the cortical midline structures (CMS), with functional differentiation between anterior-ventral, anterior-dorsal and posterior regions. While both Alzheimer's disease (AD) and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) patients show source memory impairment, it remains unclear whether they show a typical memory advantage for self-referenced materials. We also sought to identify the neural correlates of this so-called 'self-reference effect' (SRE) in these patient groups. The SRE paradigm was tested in AD (n = 16) and bvFTD (n = 22) patients and age-matched healthy controls (n = 17). In this task, participants studied pictures of common objects paired with one of two background scenes (sources) under self-reference or other-reference encoding instructions, followed by an item and source recognition memory test. Voxel-based morphometry was used to investigate correlations between SRE measures and regions of grey matter atrophy in the CMS. The behavioural results indicated that self-referential encoding did not ameliorate the significant source memory impairments in AD and bvFTD patients. Furthermore, the reduced benefit of self-referential relative to other-referential encoding was not related to general episodic memory deficits. Our imaging findings revealed that reductions in the SRE were associated with atrophy in the anterior-dorsal CMS across both patient groups, with additional involvement of the posterior CMS in AD and anterior-ventral CMS in bvFTD. These findings suggest that although the SRE is comparably reduced in AD and bvFTD, this arises due to impairments in different subcomponents of self-referential processing.17 page(s
The old female power: how women shaped the history of Rome
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 203-217.Introduction -- 1. The regal period -- 2. The early and middle Republic -- 3. The late Republic -- 4. Augustus and the Julio-Claudians -- Conclusion.My thesis aims to investigate the role and portrayal of women at critical points in Roman history, where they appear again and again in moments that shape its history. My thesis will explore portrayal of the use of power by these women in our ancient sources. This 'power' will be examined through the concept of 'power feminism' as articulated by N. Wolf. The scope of this investigation extends from the founding of Rome until the end of the Nero's reign in 68AD and aims to investigate importance of women in shaping the course of history of ancient Rome. The study is divided into four chronological periods, which are in turn divided into case studies of women who are depicted in Roman history as using power to influence public events. This author will consider how our ancient sources viewed female use of power, how women achieved power, what it was employed for, how its use changed Roman history and whether these women followed or set precedents. The research will attempt to ascertain whether the use of power by women at critical points in history changed the course of Roman history, and whether that use of power emerged and changed over time.1 online resource (217 pages
The features of translated language in children’s literature translated from English to Chinese
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 75-84.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. The recurrent features of translated language and children’s literature in Chinese -- Chapter 3. Methodology -- Chapter 4. Findings and discussion -- Chapter 5. Conclusion -- References -- Appendices.Much research in Descriptive Translation Studies has focused on the proposal that translated language demonstrates unique linguistic features, compared to non-translated language. Most studies of these recurrent features of translated language depart from Baker’s (1993) formulation of four translation universals: simplification, explicitation, normalisation and levelling out. The claim that these features are “linked to the nature of the translation process rather than the confrontation of specific linguistic systems” (Baker, 1993, p. 243) points to the idea that the features of translated language are supposed to be the result of the translation process in itself, existing regardless of text type, language pair or context involved. In addition to these four features, interference, transfer or “shining through” effects are also often identified as a recurrent feature of translated language.Against this background, this study investigates the features of Chinese translated from English in a specialised corpus of children’s literature. It may be proposed that the features of translated language would be particularly salient in translated children’s books, as a consequence of the importance assigned to the needs of the child reader. The study investigates simplification, explicitation and normalisation in a self-built comparable corpus of translated and non-translated Chinese children’s books. In addition to these features, it also considers “shining through” of the source language as a possible feature. The objective of this study is to determine whether translated children’s literature demonstrates the features mentioned above.To answer this research question, a set of linguistic operationalisations of explicitness, complexity and conventionality were investigated. The independent samples t-test or Mann-Whitney U-test was used to determine whether these linguistic operationalisations demonstrate significant differences in the translated Chinese children’s books compared to the non-translated Chinese children’s books. In addition to the quantitative analysis, the study includes qualitative analysis of particularly conjunction use, optional subject pronouns and modal particles in order better to understand the quantitative findings.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (viii, 89 pages) graphs, table
Pantomime dancing and metamorphosis literature in Late Antiquity
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 297-318.Introduction -- 1. "And astonishment took hold of all who were looking"; metamorphosis in the Ancient World -- 2. "Entered upon by all"; Greece and the dance -- 3. "The property of wax"; pantomime takes the stage -- 4. "New forms"; Ovid's metamorphoses and pantomime -- 5."A delightful glimpse of the show"; Apuleius and pantomime -- 6. "Visited by a demon";Procopius and the secret history -- 7. "An over-crowded tapestry"; Nonnus and the Dionysiaca -- 8. "Everything is Greece to a wise man"; pantomime's role in the struggle to maintain Greek cultural identity in the Roman Empire -- 9. "Vicisti Galilaee"; pantomime's fall from grace -- Conclusion.Almost coincident with the end of the Roman Republic and Augustus' assumption of imperial power, Tragedy, a genre Rome had inherited from Greece and never been entirely successful in adapting to its own ends, disappeared almost entirely from the literary record as a performance genre. Tragedy on stage would henceforth be restricted to the performances of the pantomimes wherein a single dancer would enact all the roles in a given tragedy. Pantomime along with its more low-brow travelling companion mime, which similarly replaced comedy as a genre, would remain the dominant theatrical performance styles in the Roman and subsequent Byzantine Empires until their banning under Canons 51 and 62 of the Council in Trullo seven hundred years later. Approximately twenty-five years after the generally accepted date for the introduction of pantomime to the Roman world by the dancers Bathyllus of Alexandria and Pylades of Cilicia, 23/22 BCE, Ovid, drawing upon a long-established Greek tradition would assay the first major account in Latin of the metamorphosis tales that were such a feature of the mythology Rome had inherited from its eastern neighbours. Tales which either involved incidences of metamorphosis or which were, like Ovid's 15 book opus, a compendium of such tales would appear again and again in both languages (but most frequently in Greek) over the next five hundred years - the last major example being the Dionysiaca of Nonnus written approximately 520CE, coincidentally very close to the point at which Justinian would deliver the first of a series of body-blows to pantomime by withdrawing support for theatre in order to finance his wars of reconquest in Italy. It is the contention of this thesis that there was what amounts to a symbiotic relationship between pantomime and metamorphosis tales that accounts both for the longevity of each and the temporal parallels between them. Simply put, a great deal of the popularity of the pantomime lay in the extraordinary plasticity of the dancers and their ability to embody thereby the transformations of the famous tales, and by doing so raise the tantalising possibility that the tales could be true. Despite long-held claims of the Roman 'invention' of the genre, modern scholars are in general agreement that what appeared at the court of Augustus at the beginning of the generation prior to the commencement of the Common Era, was simply a modification of a long pre-existing Greek practice. With this in mind it is the further contention of this work that pantomime and its retelling of the traditional Greek stories operated in parallel with the display orators of the Second Sophistic as a means by which those who identified themselves as Greek kept their culture and traditions alive during the long centuries of Roman rule.1 online resource (320 pages
How do business models evolve in practice?: a complex-adaptive perspective
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 243-267.1. Introduction -- 2. Literature review -- 3. Complex adaptive business models -- 4. Method -- 5. Results -- 6. Discussion -- 7.Conclusion -- References -- Appendices.Firms in the high-technology sector must navigate an environment that is dynamic and fast-moving. It is an environment that displays continual disequilibrium and witnesses regular shocks. In such a discordant environment, traditional top-down modes of strategic planning struggle to generate sufficient flexibility and speed of change necessary for a firm to maintain environmental fit over time. Instead, to coevolve with its environment a firm, and in particular, its business model(s) must adapt constantly. To achieve this, significant decision-making must necessarily be located in the operational layers of the firm. To understand how the resulting multitude of small decisions result in change(s) to the firm’s business model, I conduct a multiple method case study on Cisco as a kind of phenotype in the high-technology sector. Cisco is a firm whose business models have the capacity to change themselves in response to external stimuli. Through a strategy-as-practice lens, I establish that Cisco’s business models exhibit characteristics of complex adaptive systems and function analogously to them. I suggest the notion of a complex adaptive business model is theoretically located in evolutionary economics and emergent strategy instead of neoclassical economics and mainstream strategy. Consequently, I recommend the firm perceive itself as the facilitator and orchestrator of the business model rather than the controller of it. To guide the business model, I recommend the firm embrace an overall strategic framework that provides high-level rules and boundaries but otherwise allows the business model to develop freely. Such freedom has both positive and negative implications. For firms housing or seeking to establish a complex adaptive business model, I highlight the firm’s own high-level purpose must be clearly resolved and cultural and structural adjustments inside the firm be made.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (viii, 304 pages) diagrams, table
Investigating the impact of emerging human pollutants on marine Synechococcus
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages i-viii.1. Introduction -- 2. Materials and methods -- 3. Results -- 4. Discussion -- 5. Conclusion and future directions -- 6. References.Pollution of the marine environment as a result of human activity is an issue of growing concern. Detection of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in marine ecosystems is increasingly being reported and may adversely impact marine organisms. Toxicity testing of PPCP-related substances has focussed largely on model organisms with limited ecological relevance. I examined the impact of emerging pollutants on representative strains of Synechococcus, a highly abundant key marine primary producer. Synechococcus growth was tracked over 72 hrs using three independent techniques: optical density at 750nm, in vivo chlorophyll a fluorescence and autofluorescent cell counts by flow cytometry, to compare common cyanobacterial growth monitoring methods. Silver and zinc oxide nanoparticles significantly inhibited growth of all tested strains at concentrations above 5 mg/L and 0.01 mg/L respectively. For triclosan, concentrations above 0.1 mg/L were inhibitory to growth. Oxybenzone and ibuprofen had no significant impact on growth at concentrations up to 10 mg/L and 5 mg/L respectively. Oxygen production was significantly reduced in Synechococcus CC9311 on exposure to triclosan and silver nanoparticles,indicating these substances can impact photosynthesis. Synechococcus species showed higher sensitivity to zinc nanoparticles and lower sensitivity to the other tested compounds than reported fo rmost previously tested marine organisms, indicating the need to extend ecotoxicological testing of non-model organisms, particularly photosynthetic prokaryotes.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (ix, 48, viii pages) graph
Freedom of the Press in China: a conceptual history, 1831-1949
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 209-214.Chapter One. Literature review -- Chapter Two. Toward a research of conceptual history -- Chapter Three. The introduction of press freedom into modern China -- Chapter Four. The liminal landscape -- Chapter Five. Free or not free? Controversial debates -- Chapter Six. Conclusion -- Selected bibliography.Today's conception of press freedom is fundamentally related to its past. While scholars criticise that individual speech is still suffering from arbitrary restrictions and that mass media in China remains within an authoritarian mode as defined in the classic Four Theories of the Press, the history of press freedom in the Chinese context has so far received little examination. Unlike the conventional historical account of press freedom dedicated to narrating the institutional development of censorship and people's resistance against arbitrary repression, this dissertation aims to present a conceptual history of press freedom, which sheds light on the transcultural transference and localisation of the concept in modern Chinese history spanning from its initial transplantation in 1831 to 1949. Inspired by Reinhart Koselleck's theoretical legacy of conceptual history and James Carey's critical thoughts on the cultural approach to journalism history, this dissertation focuses on the changing meaning of press freedom by examining three genres of discourse (intellectual elite's thoughts, common people's attitudes, and official opinions) along with the social-cultural factors that were involved in negotiating Chinese interpretations and practices.The central argument is that socio-cultural factors, originating both from the domestic situation (including traditional intellectual resources) and international engagements, exerted an enormous influence on the emergent and ongoing Chinese discourse of press freedom and thereby defined the changing meanings of the concept in China. As a result, despite there being moments in time when there was the potential for an institutionalised press freedom to develop which may have satisfied Western expectations, in the end this became impossible in modern China. This dissertation is underpinned by John Dewey's thesis that freedom is a product of special circumstances and is tied up with the culture in which it arises. Even though freedom of speech and the press was impossible in late imperial and early republican China, the one-hundred-year history of China grappling with the concept of press freedom still provides insights for understanding the issue of press freedom in China today.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (214 pages
Role of blue on yellow and low luminance achromatic mfVEP in preperimetric glaucoma, and their structural and functional correlates
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 144-171Chapter 1: Introduction and review of literature -- Chapter 2: Materials and methods -- Chapter 3: Identification of functional visual loss in glaucoma - comparing the performance of objective and subjective perimetry tests based on Magnocellular and Koniocellular Pathways -- Chapter 4: Blue-on-Yellow and Low Luminance Achromatic Multifocal VEP Latencies: are they early indicators for future glaucoma progression? -- Chapter 5. Structural and Functional Correlates in Preperimetric Glaucoma: Application to early detection -- Chapter 6: Conclusions and future directions.Glaucoma is a progressive optic neuropathy characterized by a specific pattern of optic disc damage and ganglion cell loss. It is one of the leading causes of blindness in the world. The gold standard for the diagnosis of glaucoma is the detection of characteristic optic disc changes and identification of visual field loss on Standard Automated Perimetry (SAP), which is subjective and often unreliable. It is also evident that due to the redundancy of the visual system, there exists a time gap in the detection of structural versus functional glaucomatous changes. The use of multifocal visual evoked potential (mfVEP) to objectively detect glaucomatous visual field defects has been well demonstrated. Building on this, a Blue on Yellow mfVEP (BonY mfVEP) that targets the Koniocellular pathway and Low Luminance Achromatic mfVEP (LLA mfVEP) that targets the Magnocellular pathway of the visual system have been developed. The sensitivities of these specialized multifocal techniques have also been recently studied. This project seeks to establish the long-term changes associated with these objective perimetry tests and identify the role of both BonY and LLA mfVEP as potential markers in the detection of pre-perimetric glaucoma to establish alternative methods to standard perimetry techniques that offer early detection of functional visual loss. Furthermore, establishing a relationship between these mfVEP techniques to other subjective perimetry techniques and high resolution retinal imaging techniques will help decide on a combination of structural and functional tests that will optimally detect change early as no single test appears to be definitely superior to others.1 online resource (171 pages
Parental choice to home educate children who are gifted In Australia
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 67-83.Introduction --Literature review -- Methodology -- Results -- Discussion -- Reference list -- Appendix.Families who home educate their gifted children have received scant research attention. Participants (N = 42) were Australian parents of children identified as gifted or high ability who had experienced both school and home education environments. An online survey assessed factors contributing to the decision to home educate and measured parent perceptions of their child's engagement and access to gifted education practices in school and in home education. The most common factor in the decision to home educate was parents' dissatisfaction with school, which included their child's affective responses, school or teacher failure to meet gifted learning needs, and absence of challenge. Paired-samples t-tests indicated significantly greater parent-perceived emotional engagement (p < .001) and cognitive engagement (p < .001) in home education compared to school. In home education settings parents reported children were supported, engaged and motivated, and curriculum was delivered at the required pace and challenge level. Parent perceptions were useful indicators of engagement and access to gifted practices, which suggests a need to address the cognitive and emotional needs of children who are gifted in school.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (ix, 123 pages) table