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An investigation of the treatment journey of paediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in hospital
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 66-73.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Methods -- Chapter 3. Results -- Chapter 4. Discussion.Background and aims: Leukaemia is the most prevalent childhood cancer, with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) the most common sub-type. ALL cure rate is high, however, the treatment journey is long and complex. There has been limited research quantifying or describing the types and causes of delays experienced by ALL patients. This study aimed to summarise the characteristics of ALL patients; identify key milestones of the ALL treatment journey; and identify when and why delays occurred.Methods: Site: The Oncology Department of a paediatric tertiary hospital in Sydney.Sample: All patients diagnosed with ALL during a one-year period (January 10th 2013 to January 10th 2014) and treated using the Study 9 Protocol.Procedure: Data on: demographics; treatment delays and causes; and supportive care for patients were extracted via an in-depth retrospective audit of clinical information systems as well as review of the treatment protocol and discussions with key oncology clinicians at the hospital.Results: The average delays experienced during the two-year treatment journey were 33 days and 94 days for standard risk/medium risk and high risk patients respectively. Nearly 90% of treatment delays were due to low counts, other toxicities or a combination of these factors. Nine percent and 1% of the delays were attributed to organisational factors and patient factors respectively. Despite these delays, most patients completed all milestones of ALL treatment.Conclusions: The ALL patient journey is often interrupted by treatment delays, mostly due to treatment-related toxicity, but also due to patient factors and organisational issues. The use of electronic health records systems may potentially reduce delays due to organisational issues by improving care coordination.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (78 pages
Translation and ideology: a study of Lin Zexu's translation activities
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 215-229.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Literature review -- Chapter 3. Theoretical basis -- Chapter 4. An introduction to Lin Zexu's translation activities -- Chapter 5. Lin Zexu's direct participation in translation -- Chapter 6. Lin Zexu's intervention in translation strategies -- Chapter 7. Viewing Lin Zexu's translation activities from an ideological perspective -- Chapter 8. Implications of Lin Zexu's translation activities -- Chapter 9. Conclusion.Lin Zexu (1785 -1850) was an outstanding statesman, thinker and poet in China during the Qing Dynasty. He was known as a 'national hero' during the Opium War period (1838 -1841) 1841) 1841) for his anti -opium campaign and anti -invasion endeavours in China. He was referred to as the first person in modern China to 'open his eyes observe the world' as he advocated Western learning and organised Western translation. As a patron of translation, Lin organised a series of translation activities from 1838 to 1840 in his role as High Imperial Commissioner of the Qing Court under Emperor Daoguang. This included newspaper translation, book translation, and diplomatic correspondence covering the opium trade, Western geography and laws, etc. These activities had a fargeography and laws, etc. These activities had a fargeography and laws, etc. These activities had a far geography and laws, etc. These activities had a farreaching impact on the late Qing society.This research aims to study Lin Zexu's translation activities from the perspective of ideology, in particular, patron's ideology. It addresses the holistic issue of how Lin exerted his ideological influence upon various links in the translational chain: selection of source texts, translation quality control, translation strategies, and target text examination. It attempts to conduct a parallel comparative study on both available source texts and target pertinent to Lin's translation activities with a view to uncovering the ideological issues reflected in the translation texts.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (x, 248 pages) illustration
Homophone representation in monolingual and bilingual impaired and unimpaired speakers
No full textTheoretical thesis.Includes bibliographic referencesChapter 1: Introduction: Sewing the storey --Chapter 2: Two bee or not to be: The effects of orthography and bilingualism on spoken homophone production -- Chapter 3: Too harts won sole: Dysgraphia treatment outcome as evidence for homophone representation -- Chapter 4: Homophone priming of written picture naming: Witch weigh of righting? -- Chapter 5: General Discussion: Thyme for a knew perspectivePrevious research has suggested three possible architectures for homophone production. Homophones may be stored either with shared representations, producing a processing advantage relative to non-homophones, or with independent representations and feedforward activation, producing no benefit for homophones, or with independent representations and interactive activation flow, where homophones may or may not have a production advantage depending on the relative balance between the influence of processing stages in retrieval. The purpose of this thesis was to attempt to reconcile the previously diverse findings in the literature and investigate which account was the most plausible theory regarding homophone production in the phonological and orthographic output lexicons.The first experimental chapter investigated whether previous conflicting evidence was due to differences in participants (monolingual vs bilingual), tasks (picture naming vs translation) or spelling (heterographs vs homographs). It did this by examining picture naming and translation of homophones and controls matched to their individual or summed frequency with monolingual and bilingual speakers.The second experimental chapter aimed to replicate phonological homophone treatment generalisation in the treatment of spelling with a participant with acquired dysgraphia. This treatment methodology examined whether improved lexical retrieval following treatment of one homophone resulted in generalisation to written naming of its untreated partner. Another aim of this experiment was to investigate if generalisation (if any) was due to homophones (homographs) sharing an orthographic word form or due to feedback from treated graphemes to independent representations. Therefore generalisation to items with varying degrees of orthographic overlap was also investigated (heterographs and direct neighbours).The final experimental chapter examined the effect of homograph priming compared to repetition, heterograph and direct neighbour priming in written picture naming.The results across these experiments provided no support for shared representations. Instead, the pattern of results favoured an account with independent representations and interactive activation including feedback from segments to the lexicon, however further research and computational modelling is needed to fully support this hypothesis.1 online resource (6, 204 pages) illustration
An examination of olfactory ability and adult attachment styles
No full textTheoretical thesis.At head of title: Running head: Olfactory ability and adult attachment.Bibliography: pages 66-76Literature review: the importance of olfaction in social communication, emotions and relationships -- An empirical investigation: an examination of attachment styles and olfactory ability.Olfaction is the oldest sense in humans yet remains the least researched and least understood of the five senses. The olfactory system is most typically thought to be important only for its practical functions in smell and taste. However, olfaction researchers overwhelmingly agree that this chemosensory sense is much more sophisticated than these basic functions. Recent research has begun to explore the role of olfaction in social functions such as emotions and relationships. The thesis aimed to investigate the previous research on olfactory functioning with respect to its role and influence in social contexts, and highlight the key social areas where olfaction has been implicated. The literature review examined previous olfaction research in order to highlight the importance of this sensory system, then present research that points to the role of olfaction in facilitating relationships. The empirical study focused on olfactory ability and, in particular, its relationship with adult attachment styles. Participants (N= 80) completed a series of questionnaires measuring attachment and relationship styles, empathy, and psychological well being (DASS-21). In addition, participant evaluated the significance of their sense of smell, and completed three olfactory tasks (Sniffin Sticks) that test odor threshold, discrimination and identification ability. Empirical findings are presented and discussed with respect to existing research. This is the first study to specifically study olfactory ability and attachment. Given the robust links between olfaction, emotions and relationship factors, more research is needed in this area in order to gain a better understanding of the influence of olfaction in social relations.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (87 pages
MATLAB simulation of the throughput rate of a cognitive radio communications system
No full textEmpirical thesis.Supervisor: Sam Reisenfeld.Bibliography: pages 54-56.1. Introduction -- 2. Fundamentals of cognitive radio -- 3. Cognitive radio spectrum sensing -- 4. System model -- 5. Simulation -- 6. Results, discussions and conclusion -- Bibliography -- Appendices.The latest research has shown that around two thirds of the basic spectrum has not been efficiently utilised. This inefficiency has led to a shortage in frequency which has increased the price of occupying the bandwidth.Wireless applications have become more popular and the available spectrum of radio frequencies has become a precious asset. Research also shows that the frequency spectrum is not used completely at any given time. Some frequency bands are not used; some bands are overutilised, whereas other bands are underutilised.Taking all of the above into consideration, cognitive radio is considered the best solution to overcome the problem of underutilisation of frequency bands. In cognitive radio systems the idea of a secondary user, who is not the main user of the spectrum is introduced. The secondary user can only use the spectrum when the primary user, the main user of the spectrum, is not using the spectrum.This requires sensing the spectrum to check for the available spectrum bands and then using them accordingly.In this project different spectrum sensing techniques will be discussed. Furthermore, a MATLAB simulation for the throughput will be illustrated.Mode of access: World wide web.1 online resource (70 pages diagrams, graphs, tables
A multimodal interface for controlled natural language processing
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 81-83.1. Introduction -- 2. Background and related work -- 3. Requirements -- 4. System architecture and implementation -- 5. PENG-ASP at work -- 6. Experimental setup -- 7. Results -- 8. Discussion -- 9. Conclusion -- 10. Future work -- 11. Abbreviations -- Appendices -- Bibliography.Over the last fifteen years, speech recognition has improved dramatically and sophisticated technology has become more available. It has encouraged a project that explores the integration of a speech interface in a controlled natural language (CNL) system, which prior to this, had yet to be explored. A CNL is a subset of a particular written natural language (base language) which has been engineered to restrict language components such as syntax, lexicon and/or semantics. By using a speech interface, API, this paper presents an implementation of a predictive editor that integrates text and speech as inputs in a CNL processing system, namely PENG-ASP Multimodal. In addition to building the system, a study was conducted to determine the practicality of a speech interface in a CNL system. In our findings, using speech input demonstrated significant benefits when looking at the speed during user input; however, the speed significantly declined as the number of errors during speech recognition grew.Mode of access: World wide web.1 online resource (xvii, 83 pages diagrams, tables
Investigation in the changes in metallic materials as a result of heating
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 77-79.1. Introduction -- 2. Background -- 3. Method -- 4. Results -- 5. Discussion -- 6. Summary -- 7. Future work -- References -- Appendices.Steel and aluminium are two of the most commonly used metals, ans are used in many industries. As the manufacturing processes involved with these metals often involve high temperatures, it is important to understand the consequences of exposing the metals to these temperatures. Steel welding and aluminium extruding are manufacturing processes which involve the heating of the metal. Steel welding involves high temperatures in order to fuse two pieces of metal together, however these high temperatures cause the properties and microstructure of the metal in a localised area to change. On the other hand, aluminium extrusion requires the metal to be preheated before the process to reduce the forces required to shape the metal.As undesirable properties occur as a result of the elevated temperatures during steel welding, heat treatments may be applied to optimise the final properties and microstructure. During the aluminium extrusion process imperfections may occur, causing the final product to be flawed, this was the case at Capral with an extrusion of cladding causing the part to be rejected by the architect. AS a result an investigation on the cause of the imperfection was launched. In order to investigate the properties of both the welded steel joints and aluminium extrusion, specimens were created, cut, hot mounted, polished and chemical etched, so that the Vickers hardness test and microscopy analysis could be performed.The findings of this report suggest that annealing is the most appropriate heat treatment to optimise the properties of the welded steel joints. Further research should be conducted into the annealing conditions in order to optimise the properties and microstructure of the welded steel. Through testing it was found that the properties and microstructure of the aluminium extrusion were not the cause of the imperfection, however through further testing of the profile of the extrusion, it was found that the flow rate in the extrusion die caused the imperfections. As a result it is suggested that modifications be made on the design of the extrusion die to remove the imperfection.Mode of access: World wide web.1 online resource (xvi, 83 pages colour illustrations
Heat transfer modelling of a supercapacitor stack
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 35-37.1. Introduction -- 2. Background and related work -- 3. Methodology -- 4. Verification -- 5. Comparison of different configurations -- 6. Conclusions and future work -- Appendices -- Bibliography.Supercapacitors, also known as ultracapacitors, electrochemical capacitors or electrical double-layer capacitors (DEC), are novel energy storage devices which operate between capacitors and batteries with respect to power performance and energy storage. Supercapacitor stacks have a wide range of industrial applications., such as temporary power storage devices in electric vehicles or energy sources to reduce strains on batteries. Since a single supercapacitor cell can only produce a relatively low maximal operating voltage, it is common to connect a large number of individual supercapacitors in series to achieve the power requirement which has been called a supercapacitor stack. Since the supercapacitor stack may operate under critical condition in industrial and commercial environments, the cooling strategy and cell arrangement has a significant impact on the operation temperature of individual capacitors within the stack. THis thesis simulates the thermal model supercapacitor stacks with different air flow rates and cell arrangements by applying the lumped element model method. It is hoped this project will provide a better cell arrangement which has better cooling effects for the supercapacitor stack.Mode of access: World wide web.1 online resource (xiii, 37 pages colour illustrations
Adaptable robotic grasping
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 103-104.1. Project introduction -- 2. Background -- 3. Design of the system -- 4. Experiments -- 5. Conclusions and future work -- 6. Abbreviations -- Appendices -- Bibliography.Automation is being integrated into a wider range of tasks every year as technology increases to allow its development and growth. A machine that is able to capably perform more than one task or be able to adapt to unknown circumstances is more beneficial than a machine that cannot. This project investigates the capabilities of low cost tactile sensors being used to determine different properties of gripped objects to allow for an adaptable grasping system. These properties include shape, material type and contact area. A circuit was developed to excite the sensors and condition the sensor signal so that the information can be ready by an Arduino Uno microcontroller. Alongside the sensor research, a program was made using Matlab to control a five degrees of freedom robotic arm, with a user interface. The program was also used to control the gripper based on the sensor data. The tests performed on the sensors investigated the sensor characteristics, variable force tests, force response test, phase shift tests and object shape identification tests. With the system developed and tested, there was no strong indication that any of the force-sensing resistors or interdigitated capacitive sensors could determine object properties. With some modifications, this system could be used to investigate other types of sensors to determine their capabilities in object determination.Mode of access: World wide web.1 online resource (xvii, 104 pages colour illustrations
Miniaturised theragnostic irradiator with motion feedback
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: page 69.1. Introduction -- 2. Literature review -- 3. Experimental procedures -- 4. Construction -- 5. Results -- 6. Discussion -- 7. Conclusions -- 8. Future work -- 9. Abbreviations -- Appendices -- Bibliography.Radiotherapy can help treat cancer in patients but it can also cause damage to healthy surrounding tissue. Tracking tumours within the body and accurately targeting them can result in less damage to patients. THis project examines how a Multileaf Collimator system could be built to accurately track and target tumours whilst minimising damage to surrounding tissue, and to construct a functioning system. In this project, we developed a low cost novel solution to minimising Multileaf Collimator systems for radiotherapy. Whilst the system was not wholly constructed, the progress does demonstrate how a miniaturised system can be built at low cost from retail components. Tracking and object recognition, motor positioning, physical construction of the system, and system communications were all demonstrated effectively. Calculations have been provided for determining an adequate motor and lead screw to drive the system, as well as future work for the project.Mode of access: World wide web.1 online resource (xiii, 69 pages colour illustrations