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Optimising marker placement for gait analysis
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: page 69.1. Introduction -- 2. Background and related works -- 3. System requirements -- 4. System design -- 5. Algorithm correctness -- 6. Algorithm complexity -- 7. Testing method -- 8. Results and analysis -- 9. Conclusions and future work --10. Abbreviations -- Appendices -- Bibliography.Gait analysis is a well defined area in mechanical engineering. However, in biomedical and mechatronic engineering, Gait analysis of the human body is a lot newer, with many issues to overcome. One of the main problems faced by researchers is the scaling of models for comparison.This project will investigate gait analysis scaling for the human body, and produce a program to speed up the scaling process.This completed project will help assist in defining a more accurate process for scaling gait models and aid research in future to make further discoveries and advancements.Mode of access: World wide web.1 online resource (xv, 69 pages illustrations (some colour)
Biomechanical characteristics of the osteoarthritis knee
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 145-147.1. Abbreviations -- 2. Introduction -- 3. Literature review -- 4. Methodology -- 5. Results -- 6. Discussion -- 7. Conclusion -- 8. Future work -- Appendices -- Bibliography.Biomechanical characteristics of the osteoarthritis knee joint is an area of increasing interest in clinical studies. Prevalence of knee osteoarthritis is on the rise across the globe, a ststistic particularly shared in Australia. The biomechanical characteristics include the joint angles and joint moments of the knee that be measured from a subject by the process of gait analysis. Gait analysis requires a motion capture system and a force plate system where the inverse kinematics and the inverse dynamics of the gait data obtained can be calculated. Data processing is a key element of theis report which requires the relevant information to be accurately and efficiently processed. Filtering techniques are implemented within this study to reduce the noise and increase the accuracy of the results.Mode of access: World wide web.1 online resource (xvii, 147 pages colour illustrations
Turning the spotlight on the "wizard behind the curtain": How do transgender women experience and navigate male privilege and entitlement, pre- and post-transition?
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 67-79.Chapter One: . I Introduction -- 1.2 Background -- 1.3 Literature Review -- 1.4 Methodology -- 1.5 Thesis Structure -- Chapter Two: 2.1 Gender Hierarchy -- 2.2 Gender Order -- Chapter Three -- 3.1 Privilege -- 3.2 Discrimination -- Chapter Four: 4.1 Violence -- Chapter Five: 5.1 Conclusion -- References -- Appendices.The aim of this project is to explore how transgender women experience and navigate male privilege when they lived as men and now as they live as women. The project conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with twelve transgender women from diverse backgrounds and the data was analysed through the lens of Raewyn Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity, and masculinity's ideology of supremacy and claim to authority. Transgender women participants' responses echoed the main elements of Connell' s concept and evidenced that privilege is unevenly distributed among multiple masculinities. This unevenness is reflected in participants' experiences of and attitudes to male privilege and hegemonic masculinity, pre-and post-transition. Furthermore, participants described how the defense of masculinity's uneven allocation of authority and privilege and the subordination of women is normalised and institutionalised. Participants' responses reflect Connell' s concept of hegemonic masculinity and tum a spotlight on a complex social structure difficult to identify, define and, therefore, to challenge. This project argues that it is the very complexity and elusiveness of the structure and the invisibility of the advantages it bestows on some men that is one of its strengths. And it is transgender women's reflections on their pre-and posttransition experiences of privilege that illuminate these often hidden and takenfor-granted gender norms and social structures and the gender inequality they perpetuate.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (85 pages
Orthographic facilitation of vocabulary learning in children with hearing loss
No full textThesis by publication."Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia" -- title pageBibliography: pages 54-69.Chapter 1. Vocabulary acquisition, orthographic facilitation and its implications for children with hearing loss : a literature review -- Chapter 2. Orthographic facilitation of vocabulary learning in children with hearing loss -- Chapter 3. References -- Appendices.Oral vocabulary acquisition involves the formation of a link between the phonology and semantics of a newly encountered word. There exists a large body of literature that describes the processes involved in vocabulary acquisition and the factors that influence acquisition in children with typical and atypical development (e.g., Chapman, 2000; de Jong,Seveke, & Veen, 2002; Dillon, 2011; He & Arunacham, 2017; Hollich et al., 2000; Kucker, McMurray, & Samuelson, 2015; Nazzi & Bertoncini, 2003; Waxman & Lidz, 2007; Yu &Ballard, 2007). It is widely acknowledged that vocabulary is crucial for the development of language, communication, reading, and literacy (Biemiller, 2009; Lee, 2011; Ouellette, 2006).Therefore, it follows that if children are not able to acquire vocabulary appropriately, it would impact their overall development and academic success. Vocabulary acquisition is a challenge for children with hearing loss, including those who use appropriate hearing devices such as hearing aids and cochlear implants (Sarchet, Marschark, Borgna, Convertino, Sapere, & Dirmyer, 2014). Surprisingly, there is very little research that directly examines the instruction techniques of factors that can support vocabulary learning in children with hearing loss (Luckner & Cooke, 2010).One factor that is being increasingly researched as a mechanism to support oral vocabulary learning is orthography. There exists evidence for the orthographic facilitation of vocabulary learning in children with typical development (e.g., Ricketts, Bishop, & Nation,2009), and in special populations (Lucas & Norbury, 2014; Mengoni, Nash, & Hulme, 2013; Ricketts, Dockrell, Patel, Charman & Lindsay, 2015). This thesis aimed to review the literature on vocabulary acquisition in children with hearing loss and to examine whether they may benefit from the presence of orthography during oral word learning. This thesis is organised in a 'thesis by publication' format, with two parts, that each represent a journal article.Part One: Vocabulary acquisition, orthographic facilitation, and its implications for children with hearing loss : a literature review. This section reviews literature vocabulary acquisition in children with typical hearing and children with hearing loss, the rationale and existing evidence for orthographic facilitation in different groups of children.Part Two: Orthographic facilitation of vocabulary learning in children with hearing loss. This section presents an empirical study to examine the possible facilitatory role of orthography for acquisition of novel picture-word mappings in school-aged children with hearing loss who use spoken language as their main mode of communication. The outcomes of the study are discussed in light of the available literature and possible directions for future research in this area are suggested.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (ix, 74 pages) colour illustration
Feeling together: can there be group emotion?
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 255-269.Introduction -- Chapter 1. Emotion -- Chapter 2. Group-based emotion -- Chapter 3. Plural-subject emotion -- Chapter 4. Phenomenologically fused emotion -- Chapter 5. Shared emotion -- Chapter 6. Group emotion -- Conclusion -- Bibliography.We commonly attribute emotions to groups: we speak of the anger of minority groups, the fear felt by cities after a terror attack, and the joy of sport fans when their team is victorious. Yet at the same time, we think of emotions as subjective, personal experiences that only individuals can feel. Emotions are feelings, and we do not think of groups as entities that can feel. The tension between these two positions gives rise to the central questions investigated in this thesis: What is a group emotion? And who is the subject that experiences a group emotion?Philosophers of emotion are sceptical about group emotion, and pose what I term the Sceptical Challenge. Traditional philosophical accounts of emotion, whether cognitive or non-cognitive, hold that emotions are individual experiences. Sceptics assert that a group emotion refers to the individual emotions felt by group members. The challenge is to establish that a group emotion is a phenomenon that is distinct from individual emotion, and is not reducible to individual emotion.In developing a response to this challenge, I draw on empirical findings in social psychology, which establish that individuals feel different emotions when thinking of themselves as members of different groups. I also discuss and draw on the significant contributions from several existing philosophical accounts of collective emotion. Margaret Gilbert develops her account of collective intentionality to argue that groups place normative constraints on their members, thereby committing them to a collective emotion. Hans Bernhard Schmid focuses on the phenomenology of emotion, arguing that group members experience themselves and their emotions as fused with other group members. Edith Stein, Dan Zahavi, and Thomas Szanto argue that the empathic intersubjective relations between individuals allow them to adopt a shared perspective and share an emotion. I bring these accounts together, to argue that groups can adopt a shared perspective on the world. When their members are in proximity with one another, they mutually influence one another through the process of emotional contagion and with normative pressure to respond in the same way to a particular situation. When group members gather together, they can co-constitute a shared perspective and share an emotion as a unified body. This is a group emotion that is not reducible to individual emotion, and which meets the Sceptical Challenge.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (v, 269 pages
Young Australian accountants as ‘gold collar' migrants: class, professional socialisation and the life course
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 81-88.Introduction and literature review --Methods -- From university education to employment at the B4 : impact of classed socialisation on career choices -- Early career professional socialisation and the decision to migrate -- International mobility in London -- Conclusiomn -- Appendices -- References.In the developing field focusing on young, highly-skilled migrants, much research continues to focus on individuals whose migration is facilitated though intra-corporate transfers (ICT) rather than those who self-initiate. This study asks, how do young elite professionals engage with international labour mobility as self-initiated migrants, and how is this labour migration intertwined with their life course plans and practice? Drawing on semi-structured interviews with young Australian accountants who have recently worked for a year or more in London, this thesis investigates how the socialisation of young accountants throughout university and graduate employment at top global firms influences the role that migration plays in individual’s life plans. I argue that migration timing, attitudes and experiences of these professionals are significantly informed by their class backgrounds and socialisation at elite firms. Interviewees conceptualised their migration as a two-year holiday whilst simultaneously emphasising personal and career ambitions, using cost-benefit language to justify past and future life decisions. These findings highlight the ways in which formal and informal corporate training provides graduates with future advantages such as accelerated careers and access to overseas job markets, whilst informing their professional identities, attitudes to work and approach to life course planning long after leaving graduate employment.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (vii, 88 pages
It's plebiscite or nothing: cultural and symbolic strategies of the religious right in Australia’s same-sex marriage debate
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 73-90.1. Introduction -- 2. Methodology and methods -- 3. Literature review -- 4. Opponents in the agenda conflict : the Christian right -- 5. Low cost strategies -- 6. Medium cost strategies -- 7. Discussion -- 8. Conclusion -- References.In 2004, the Howard Government amended the Marriage Act 1961 to explicitly state that “marriage was the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others…” in order to ban same-sex marriages being performed in Australia and overseas same-sex marriages being officially recognised under Australian law. With reputable polls consistently showing a majority of voters supporting same-sex marriage since 2007, the issue has come to dominate much of Australian public and political discourse in recent years. Despite this, same-sex marriage is still illegal in Australia with a number of failed attempts to legislate it at the federal level. However, capitalising on renewed momentum following the successful Irish constitutional referendum on 22 May 2015 and the US Supreme Court’s historic ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges on 26 June 2015, a cross party bill to legalise same-sex marriage was introduced to the federal Parliament in early August 2015. In response, the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott called for a special joint party room meeting of the Liberal and National parties, with 66 MPs voting against a conscience vote being held on same-sex marriage legislation and 33 voting for a conscience vote. Following the meeting, Mr Abbott announced his strong disposition to hold a national vote on the issue after the 2016 federal election, in the form of a compulsory plebiscite. Considering the unprecedented nature o holding national plebiscites in Australia, and the Coalition historically affording its members a conscience vote on issues surrounding marriage and family relationships, an examination of the religious right’s social and political lobbying power in shaping the policy agenda on this issue is warranted. Thus, through utilising the theoretical framework of agenda denial, it is the purpose of this thesis to critically analyse the religious right’s cultural and symbolic strategies of choice and their overall effectiveness in denying proponents of same-sex marriage access to the overall policy agenda. A detailed thematic and framing analysis of content including speeches, interviews, press releases, social media posts and parliamentary submissions was conducted from when a plebiscite was first postulated by the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott on 12 August 2015 up until the defeat of the Plebiscite (Same-Sex Marriage) Bill 2016 in the Senate on 7 November 2016. Whilst considering Australia’s increasing political engagement marked by secular traditions, falling church attendance and overall religious affiliation, it will be argued that the Christian right enjoyed disproportionate power and influence in successfully delaying and preventing the implementation of same-sex marriage in Australia. This research is critical in contributing to the limited scholarly research regarding the religious right’s influence on LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) policy outcomes.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (90 pages
Enactive social cognition: the interplay of mind, language, and culture
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 68-72.Introduction -- Chapter 1. Enactivism -- Chapter 2. Participatory sense-making, language and culture -- Chapter 3. Language and culture on enactive social cognition -- Chapter 4. Back to enactive social cognition and its implication -- Concluding remarks -- References.The goal of the enactivists is to present a paradigm showing the development of our cognitive structures from the embodied processes with a history of recurrent interactions between organisms and their environment. In enactivism, interaction plays an important role in cognitive development since causes change for both organism and its environment. Autonomy, adaptivity, and sense-making are essential core ideas in enactivism, and without them, the whole cognitive process will break down. It is from this idea where Ezequiel Di Paolo and Hanne de Jaegher developed their concept of participatory sense-making, an enactive account of social cognition.My thesis will focus on the effect of linguistic and cultural differences in participatory sense-making. I will study how differences affect cognitive beings’ regulation of interaction with others in forming coupled system to generate meaning. In understanding participatory sense-making, it is always important to go back to this paradigm and see how we can apply the dynamics of an organism and its environment to enactive social cognition.In this thesis, I will illustrate the development of enactive social cognition or participatory sense-making. I will pay particular attention to autonomy, adaptivity, and sense-making since these elements play the vital role for the success of the process. Lastly, I will discuss the implication of this research and suggest possible solution to bridge the gap in multilingual and multicultural interaction.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (72 pages
Evaluating the use of remote-sensing to locate weeds in Kosciuszko National Park
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 53-67.1. Introduction -- 2. Literature review -- 3. Journal paper -- 4. Synthesis -- 5. References -- 6. Appendices.The spread of invasive species in sensitive ecosystems is a major environmental problem, resulting in significant hazards to local and regional environmental and socioeconomic facets. Traditional field-survey based management, particularly in adverse terrain, is difficult – inhibited by climactic conditions, worker safety, and time. There is a strong demand for remote-sensing to mitigate these issues, improving efficiency and effectiveness, and increasing coverage ability.The aims of this thesis are to investigate the potential use of remote-sensing in weed management and specifically evaluate the use of it to two locate weed species in Kosciuszko National Park (KNP). The evaluation was performed through the collection and processing of floral spectra to formulate a spectral library, which was then analysed for statistical uniqueness, utilising machine-learning classification algorithms.Results of the Random Forest (RF) discriminability analysis presented an overall separability accuracy of 70%. This was then resampled to simulate the discriminability for commercial drone and multi-spectral satellite sensors, giving accuracies of 59% and 63%, respectively.This preliminary analysis is promising, and builds the foundation for future multispectral research for weed management in KNP, and provides a foundational methodology for spectral pre-assessment in general.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (82 pages) colour illustrations, colour map
Differential investment in brain regions of polymorphic diurnal and nocturnal Myrmecia ants
No full textEmpirical thesis.Includes bibliographical references.Introduction -- Materials and methods -- Results -- Discussion -- Conclusion -- References.Many nocturnal insects have evolved optical adaptations to capture more light at night but these adaptations are not sufficient to explain visually guided behaviour seen at night. Hence, there must be additional neural adaptations to explain this behaviour. At the same time, the size of brain neuropil can be significantly constrained by the size of the animal. Here, I asked if the size of functionally distinct brain regions change in two congeneric polymorphic bull ants, the diurnal M. gulosa and the nocturnal M. midas. I took advantage of the extreme intraspecific size range in both species to also ask how body size affects brain region scaling. I found that the diurnal species invests more into the optic lobes, while the night-active species invests more into the antennal lobes and mushroom bodies, in complete contrast with predictions. The higher order processing neuropils of the central complex did not differ significantly between species, except in the central body lower. I also found neuropil volume changes as body size changes, with larger individuals having larger neuropils and smaller individuals having smaller neuropils. These results show that there are adaptations in the brains of diurnal and nocturnal bull ants that may help with activity in different temporal niches and that the volume of these regions does not exist independently from size.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (1 volume (unpaged)