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Haemodynamic modelling of cerebrovascular aneurysm risk diagnosis using computer fluid dynamic (CFD)
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 67-83.1. Abstract -- 2. Introduction -- 3. Methods and materials -- 4. Results -- 5. Discussion -- 6. Future directions and other issues -- 7. Citations -- Appendices.A large number of different measures exist to determine the likelihood and risk of aneurysm rupture. In computational fluid dynamics (CFD) the likelihood of aneurysm rupture is predicted via physical forces enacted upon the blood vessel walls given by a set of known physiological parameters. The most common measures are wall shear stress (WSS) and energy loss (EL), though more exotic physical measurements exist and have been experimented upon (such as oscillary shear index) typically these are complex and unwieldy.Size measures are also used, including various ratios such as height to width (aspect ratios). In a clinical setting, typically decisions to treat are based on a simple measure of aneurysm size taken by a radiologist with computer simulations being too difficult and time consuming to be used, thus size measures for the foreseeable future will be the commonplace method of clinical radiological assessment.This study aims to perform a small number of case studies to correlate morphological characteristics with physical stresses known to predict aneurysm rupture in order to more accurately predict and quantify how these measures relate to each other and hopefully refine and improve the morphological parameters to improve clinical decision making.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (85 pages
Becoming worlds: place, subjectivity and assemblage in literature for young adults
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 202-217.Introduction -- Chapter 1. Reframing society and the subject : affect, desire and the assemblage in Un Lun Dun, Feed and The Hunger Games trilogy -- Chapter 2. Understanding place as assemblage : difference, repetition and the nomad in Un Lun Dun and Railsea -- Chapter 3. Minor assemblages in societies of control in Little Brother and The Highest Frontier -- Chapter 4. Thinking in folds : the virtual and the minor figure in Hexwood and Abyssinia -- Epilogue -- Bibliography.Child subjectivity is a key area within children’s literature research. This thesis explores the notion of embodied subjectivity by locating the formation of subject hood in the context of place. I discuss representations of place in a range of literature for young adults, drawing primarily from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s ontology of becoming to conceptualise place as a constantly shifting, unstable assemblage that not only physically enacts practices of power, but also reveals the instability of social organisation and discourse.I propose that the concepts within Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of becoming allow us to consider children’s texts beyond frameworks of ideology and power. Discussions that privilege ideology implicitly place the child in a powerless position, limiting our readings to how the child subject’s actions resist or comply with dominant social ideologies. I argue that such readings blind us to other models of agency and subjectivity, reifying ideology over the capacity of minor subjects to create new relations and changes within the social field.My analysis of place reveals that children’s literature is a genre that thrives when read for, and through, multiplicity. Deleuze and Guattari’s theories allow us to consider young adult literature as a genre characterised by becoming: becoming-place, becoming-subject and becoming-minor. I conclude that children’s literature does not only function to reflect ideological concerns or convey social agenda, but, through its representations of place and social order, also has the capacity to present its own emergent ontology of the becoming subject.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (217 pages
Problematisation of New South Wales government aboriginal employment policy
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 77-83.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Literature review -- Chapter 3. Methodological approach -- Chapter 4. Theoretical framework -- Chapter 5. Problematisations of public service aboriginal employment policy -- Chapter 6. Discussion -- Conclusion -- Bibliography.From the early 1980’s the NSW state government has taken ownership and responsibility for the creation of Aboriginal employment policies within the public service for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Ostensibly, these policies have been a pubic relations exercise to provide Equal Employment Opportunity for the unemployment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the NSW public sector. The NSW public sector established the moral basis to design, develop, and administer ‘racialised’ employment initiatives for Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people. These ‘racialised’ policies are ‘paternalistic’ top-down approaches based on the ‘moral responsibility’ of government to address and fix the perceofpetion of the ‘Aboriginal problem’ percieved as as being ‘racially inferior’ and ‘in deficit’ to the qualities possessed by non-Aboriginal people. Through the use of the Whats the problem represented to be? (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2009) and slected use of Fairclough’s (2002; 2003 cited in Walter, 2006) three tier approach, this research has undertaken a policy analysis of selected NSW government Aboriginal employment documents. The policy analysis has revealed ‘problematisations’ and ‘problem representations’ within each of the policies. These ‘problematisations’ within Aboriginal employment policy has emerged as a continuous pattern of institutional racism embedded in bureaucratic employment policies towards Aboriginal people since the mid-70s.This paper unmasks the deficit representations of Aboriginal people and the mechanisms of power used by the NSW government to take full responsibility for all Aboriginal employment policies and issues. One of these problem representations has been the ‘racialisation of Aboriginality’ through which the ‘racialised’ employment classification was established, that of Aboriginality’, which reinforces hierarchical power relationships in the bureaucracy between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal people. This act of exclusion precludes Aboriginal people from occupying positions across the full range of levels and classifications of government. The creation of these policies and construct of the ‘Aboriginal’ other within the public sector is reinforced through a ‘colonial mindset’, stereotyping and racial profiling the colonised for the purposes of creating a moral panic through policy, to control and manage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the NSW public sector.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (83 pages) table
Investigating carotenoid and α-tocopherol levels in preclinical Alzheimer's disease
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 55-63.1. Introduction -- 1.1 Pathology -- 1.1.1 Beta-Amyloid -- 1.1.2 Tau -- 1.1.3 Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy -- 1.2 Types of AD -- 1.3 Signs and symptoms -- 1.4 Risk factors -- 1.4.1 Genetic risk factors -- 1.4.2 Cardiovascular risk factors -- 1.4.3 Modifiable factors -- 1.5 Diagnosis -- 1.5.1 Cerebrospinal fluid -- 1.5.2 Positron emission tomography -- 1.5.3 Magnetic Resonance Imaging -- 1.5.4 Blood biomarkers -- 1.6 Treatments -- 1.7 Oxidative stress and inflammation -- 1.8 Carotenoids -- 1.9 Vitamin E -- 1.10 Bioactivities -- 1.10.1 Antioxidant potential 1.10.2 Anti-inflammatory potential -- 1.10.3 Anti-amyloidogenic potential -- 1.11 Antioxidants and cognition -- 1.12 Aims -- 2. Methods -- 2.1 Participants -- 2.3 Neuroimaging -- 2.4 C-reactive protein measurement and APOE genotyping -- 2.5 Food frequency questionnaire and plasma carotenoid measurement -- 2.6 Inflammatory Marker assays -- 2.7 Plasma Aβ analysis -- 2.8 Neuropsychological and clinical assessments -- 2.9 Statistical analyses -- 3. Results -- 3.1 Participant demographics -- 3.2 Association of carotenoids and α-tocopherol with NAL: Plasma α-carotene is significantly higher, whereas plasma α-tocopherol is significantly lower in the preclinical AD group after adjusting for the study covariates -- 3.2.1 Intercorrelation significance varies between carotenoids and α-tocopherol -- 3.3 Associations between plasma carotenoid and α-tocopherol levels and dietary carotenoid and α-tocopherol levels: individual plasma carotenoids, except lycopene, were significantly positively associated with their respective dietary intakes -- 3.3.1 Dietary carotenoids and α-tocopherol were not significantly different between NAL groups -- 3.4 Association of carotenoids and α-tocopherol with plasma Aβ: plasma lutein and β-carotene were significantly associated with plasma Aβ -- 3.5 Associations of carotenoids and α-tocopherol with cognitive performance: -- 3.5.1 Higher α-tocopherol levels were significantly associated with better verbal, visual and episodic memory -- 3.5.2 Carotenoids and α-tocopherol were not significantly associated with working memory and executive function -- 3.5.3 Higher levels of lutein, β-carotene and α-tocopherol were associated with better global cognitive performance -- 3.6 Cytokine measurement and the association of carotenoids and α-tocopherol with inflammatory factors: cytokines were not significantly associated with carotenoids or α-tocopherol -- 3.7 Association of carotenoids and α-tocopherol with hippocampal volume: carotenoids and α-tocopherol were not significantly associated with hippocampal volume -- 4. Discussion -- 5. Conclusion -- 6. References -- AppendixOxidative stress, a well-documented contributor to neurodegeneration, has been shown to be an early feature of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and may have preclinical significance. Carotenoids and vitamins have been proposed to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-amyloidogenic potentials, which interrupts the oxidative stress pathway, protecting against neurodegeneration. The protective effect of these biomolecules has been reported in cognitive decline and AD progression, however, it has not yet been investigated in cognitively normal individuals at higher risk for AD, in relation to amyloid-β. This study investigates whether there is an association between plasma carotenoids and α-tocopherol levels, and neocortical amyloid-β load (NAL) prior to the onset of clinical AD.1 online resource ( viii, 54 pages) colour illustrations, graphs, tables, chart
Is 'Sexual' a Sub-type of Disgust, or is it a Separate Basic Emotion?
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 174-176.Chapter 1: introduction and literature review -- chapter 2: priming the three domains of disgust affects lexical decisions in the sexual domain -- chapter 3: the emotional stroop reveals that 'sexual' is more 'taboo' than 'disgusting' -- chapter 4: the neural correlates of words related to pathogen, moral and sexual disgust -- chapter 5: disgust related words evoke different subjective feelings in the body -- chapter 6: general discussion -- appendix.Disgust is a crucial emotion that guides a variety of avoidance and rejection behaviours in humans. These avoidance behaviours function to keep us safe from potentially harmful stimuli. A current adaptationist theory proposes three distinct sub-types of disgust based on their unique adaptive function, called the 'Three Domains of Disgust,' (pathogen, moral and sexual) (Tybur et al, 2013). The function of pathogen disgust is to maintain physical health through the avoidance of infectious and disease-causing agents; the function of moral disgust is to maintain group cohesion by avoiding or punishing moral transgressors and the function of sexual disgust promotes reproductive success through the avoidance of unfit mating opportunities. The theory holds that moral and sexual disgust co-opted pathogen disgust mechanisms to solve new adaptive problems. According to discrete emotion theory, subtypes of a basic emotion share: neural profiles, physiological and behavioural signatures. Therefore, if moral and sexual disgust co-opted pathogen disgust mechanisms, then common behavioural and neural mechanisms should emerge in response to stimuli in the three domains. In this thesis, I undertake four experiments to explore the behavioural and neural correlates of the three domains of disgust. I use linguistic stimuli and manipulate the semantic properties of sentences and words such that each category induces disgust, although still resembling its distinct sub-type. Overall, the results from each experiment reveal that the sexual category differs from both pathogen and moral categories. I tentatively propose that the sexual response is not a form of disgust but could be considered a distinct discrete emotion.Available in electronic form188 pages illustrations 30 c
Enterprise social media: an investigation into the driving factors and the extent of use of the social media technology, Workplace by Facebook, in a large technology organisation
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 66-77.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Literature review -- Chapter 3. Methodology -- Chapter 4. Data analysis -- Chapter 5. Discussion, conclusion and implications -- References -- Appendices.The phenomenon of social media has taken hold in the 21st century, as people move their social networks online, expanding and enhancing them. Social media has also extended to the organisation and co-workers ‘connect’ using social media software. In recent years, social media technologies have also been used to support communications and collaboration between co-workers within organisations. This study examines the use of one such technology, Workplace by Facebook, which replicates the operation and function of Facebook for work-related rather than purely social, purposes. Using survey data from employees, the Workplace application data, and semi-structured interviews, this thesis explores the extent of its use among staff in a large technology organisation and analyses what has driven that use.This study argues that the organisation’s use of social media has the same factors of use and drivers as other organisational technologies. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003) is employed, and a survey was conducted based on that model. Further insights were gained from data collected in ten semi-structured interviews.The study finds that the predictors derived from the UTAUT relate closely to the use of social media by the individuals in the organisation. The study therefore suggests that social media use in the workplace has similar drivers to those of traditional enterprise technology. In addition, findings suggest additional factors influence the use of enterprise social media, particularly factors based on external rather than internal social influence. This is a new and different aspect of organisational social media use compared to traditional enterprise technologies.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (x, 87, 1 pages) : table
Human brain mapping of tinnitus
No full textThesis by publication.Includes bibliographical references.1. Introduction -- 2. Changes in behavioural reports of tinnitus during remediation -- 3. Alpha power as a predictor of tinnitus -- 4. Thalamocortical dysrhythmia and tinnitus remediation -- 5. Cortical reorganisation during a 30-week tinnitus treatment program -- 6. Discussion and conclusion.Tinnitus is a phantom auditory perception that occurs in the absence of any external stimulus. Despite a long history of its known existence, few objective methods exist to confirm its presence and better understand the cortical disruptions that are assumed to underpin its perception. However, recent research has demonstrated the existence of an objective measure of tinnitus perception using resting and sound-evoked brain activity measured with magnetoencephalography (MEG). Significant differences have been found in individuals with tinnitus compared to those without. We aim to use similar methods of tinnitus measurement before, during, and after two tinnitus remediation programs to: (i) verify the results of previous studies; and (ii) evaluate whether subjective changes in tinnitus perception during tinnitus remediation correlate with objective measurements. In the first study (Chapter 2) we have discussed the behavioural tests of tinnitus, participant selection criteria, and changes in behavioural reports of tinnitus during remediation. In the second study (Chapter 3) we have compared the spontaneous cortical activity of tinnitus subjects and non-tinnitus controls. The third study (Chapter 4) aimed to evaluate tinnitus treatment-related changes in spontaneous cortical activity and their correlations with changes in objective reports of tinnitus. The fourth study (Chapter 5) looked at the relationship between evoked and spontaneous cortical activity in tinnitus participants and evaluated the effect of treatment on both. There was a significant difference in the spontaneous cortical activity of tinnitus participants and controls, these changes did not completely return to normalcy during the treatment phase. Some indications of treatment-related changes, however, were observed in the evoked responses. From the present experiment, we hypothesise that while spontaneous cortical activity can be used to identify the presence of tinnitus, evoked results could provide a more accurate representation of the benefits of a treatment program.1 online resource (221 pages : illustrations
An assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of multidisciplinary models of care delivery in renal genetics clinics
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 79-85.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Scoping review of multidisciplinary renal genetics clinics -- Chapter 3. Methods : study one -- Chapter 4. Results : study one – RA1 -- Chapter 5. Results : study one – RA2 -- Chapter 6. Methods : study two -- Chapter 7. Methods : study two -- Chapter 8. Results : study two – RA1 -- Chapter 9. Discussion and conclusion -- References -- Appendices.The use of genetic testing in clinical practice has the potential to change the diagnostic landscape for patients with rare and inherited forms of kidney disease; multidisciplinary clinical models are proposed to support its adoption in clinical practice. However, there has been little investigation into the advantages and disadvantages of multidisciplinary models in renal genetics services. Additionally, the literature lacks information on the structures and workflows of renal multidisciplinary services which support the use of genetic medicine. Therefore, the aims of this thesis were: 1) to model the structure and workflows of multidisciplinary renal genetics clinics and 2) to investigate their advantages and disadvantages according to clinic team members. The research was conducted with clinical members of the renal genetics consortium, KidGen Collaborative. A literature review and an exploratory two-stage mixed methods design were employed, consisting of semi-structured interviews and an online survey. Process maps were used to define the clinical models and thematic coding and descriptive statistics were used to analyse the advantages and disadvantages. The most important advantages of the model to clinic team members were shared expertise, professional development and education and accurate communication across specialties. The perceived financial unsustainability of the model was the most prevalent concern to team members. The findings of this study are directly relevant to the KidGen Collaborative and other specialist clinical services seeking to implement genetic testing for the diagnosis of rare and inherited conditions.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (vi, 85, 12 pages) diagrams, table
Social influence and radicalization: a social data analytics study
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 53-64.1. Introduction -- 2. Background and state-of-the-art -- 3. Proposed model -- 4. Experiments and evaluation -- 5. Conclusion and future directions -- Appendix -- References.The confluence of technological and societal advances is changing the nature of global terrorism. For example, engagement with Web, social media, and smart devices has the potential to affect the mental behavior of the individuals and influence extremist and criminal behaviors such as Radicalization. In this context, social data analytics (i.e., the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in social data) and influence maximization (i.e., the problem of finding a small subset of nodes in a social network which can maximize the propagation of influence) has the potential to become a vital asset to explore the factors involved in influencing people to participate in extremist activities.To address this challenge, we study and analyze the recent work done in influence maximization and social data analytics from effectiveness, efficiency and scalability viewpoints. We introduce a social data analytics pipeline, namely iRadical, to enable analysts to engage with social data to explore the potential for online radicalization. In iRadical, we present algorithms to analyse the social data as well as the user activity patterns to learn how influence flows in social networks. We implement iRadical as an extensible architecture that is publicly available on GitHub and present the evaluation results.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xviii, 64 pages) graphs, table
Query data inconsistency for business processes
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 51-55.1. Introduction -- 2. Literature review -- 3. Methodology -- 4. Case study and results -- 5. Conclusion and future work -- Bibliography.Business processes are designed to achieve business goals under procedural rules by orchestrating tasks, information and documents. Managing data inconsistency in business processes is a challenging task. If not managed properly, business will face negative financial consequences. For instance, in a typical service business process, dispatching invoice depends on service being ready. When starting to dispatch invoice, if the service is not yet deployed, the invoice will be wrong and there may be financial damage to the business. From literatures, some work provides modelling for business process execution with notations of activities, events and flows and deals with inconsistency problem by patterns; some work analyses data generated in business process and investigates the reachability between data points. Although substantial works have been done, the data inconsistency problem has not been properly resolved. In particular, it is still lacking of modelling language and resolution for inconsistency caused by multiple starting points of business processes and dynamics of business processes execution.This thesis provides data consistency solution in three aspects: a business process modelling in enriched business workflow notation with data states and temporal properties, a classification of data consistency categories, and a workflow query algorithm to discovery data inconsistency issue.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (viii, 55 pages) diagrams, graph