Biology, Cell. Health Sciences, Immunology.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Francisco, 2006. , Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: B, page: 4195. Adviser: Ronald D. Vale.

Women’s legal rights are one of the most significant determinants of their status. In Bangladesh, a series of laws ensuring women’s rights have proven largely ineffective in promoting their positions. The prime reasons for this are: the shortcomings and ineffectiveness of laws, women’s inability to access legal proceedings, the traditional and cultural negative views about women’s rights, the absence of an accountable and transparent government, the expensive and time consuming judicial process,...

The mechanism of action of probiotics is based on competitive exclusion and immune modulation. However, the literature is scant on supporting data because of the failure to adopt a systems approach to probiotic functionality. This has been partially addressed in this thesis by taking into consideration the tripartite interaction between bacteria and bacteria in the enteric community; between bacteria and the host animal and finally, between the host immune response (innate or acquired) on the pl...

This thesis examines the behaviour known as deliberate self-harm in young women who are victims of parental incest. I am interested in identifying the impact and significance of incest in childhood on the development of young women’s agency and the significance of self-harming behaviour in that development. I argue that central to understanding the relationship between self-harm and incest is the notion of the self and the social and relational context in which it develops. The theoretical frame...

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder with no clear cause. Recent evidence suggests that N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor hypofunction may underlie the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) has been shown to be the most susceptible brain region to damage caused by NMDA hypofunction in rodents. This suggests that the PCC may play an important role in schizophrenia pathology. However, studies examining neurotransmitter balance in the PCC in schizophrenia ...

In the ongoing concern for the conservation of biodiversity around the globe, intensive, hands-on management of threatened species is becoming commonplace. The translocation of organisms to establish, re-establish or augment populations is one of the intensive strategies being used. This thesis explores the contemporary use of translocation in conservation, with a focus on the reintroduction of the Eastern Bristlebird (Dasyornis brachypterus) as a case study. Translocation can be defined as the ...

Non-functional requirements represent a critical and difficult problem in requirement engineering, but are often ignored. Usually, these are articulated as statements of objectives, as opposed to propositional assertions. A key challenge in dealing with objectives is that there is no obvious means of deciding when they are satisfied. In effect, these objectives are never fully satisfied, but satisficed to varying degrees. In evaluating alternative design decisions, we need to trade-off varying d...

There is a lack of understanding of the ecology of many Australian plant species. In fire prone habitat, natural fire regimes have shaped the evolution, and subsequently the demography and life history traits, of the associated flora. Critical life history stages, like germination and recruitment, are often linked to fire in species that occur in fireprone habitats. Knowledge of plant demography in relation to fire is important, particularly for threatened species. Management decisions are based...

This dissertation accompanies photographs taken in my role as a photojournalist in the region under study. The photographs on CD are a visual narrative in their own right while serving as part of the overall text and they are referred to regularly throughout the dissertation. The past decade has seen a significant rise in armed conflict throughout the established nations of Melanesia, as well as in those still fighting for their independence. Thus some are wars of independence, others are civil ...

Our lives are affected by the antecedent and the consequent as both a natural and mundane physical function and as a highly complex metaphysical construct. As the title suggests this thesis considers the motivation behind the placement of antecedent and consequent material in music. It illustrates how I use the antecedent and the consequent, a fundamental motivational process in my life, coupled with techniques and principles of automation and virtual instrument design, to achieve my desired com...

Many modelling techniques tend to address “late-phase” requirements while many critical modelling decisions (such as determining the main goals of the system, how the stakeholders depend on each other, and what alternatives exist) are taken during early-phase requirements engineering. The i* modelling framework is a semiformal agent-oriented conceptual modelling language that is well-suited for answering these questions. This dissertation addresses two key challenges faced in the practical deplo...

Due to the popularity of multimedia applications, many efforts have been directed towards presenting new services and functionalities such as interactivity, manipulation, content-based retrieval, scalability, etc. Object-based image/video representation and processing is one of the approaches considered to meet these desired functionalities. However, semantic image and video segmentation is one of the unresolved challenges of this approach. Although many works on segmentation have contributed to...

Network application has become a part of our everyday life. With the increasing of convenience and popularity of network, more and more malicious users utilize network to obtain their vicious intentions. In order to protect network users’ information security and privacy, various intrusion detection systems were proposed and developed in the last decade. Intrusion detection as an emerging technology has made great achievements in theory and practice, whose aim is to protect the confidentiality, ...

Problems associated with erodible soils have been reported in Australia and many parts of the world since the early 1970s. Significant soil loss from embankments, internal erosion and piping are some of the problems that practicing engineers face during the construction and maintenance phase of earth structures constructed with erodible soils. It is therefore necessary to identify appropriate stabilisation techniques to control erosion. This study considers chemical stabilisation as an erosion c...

Voltage fluctuations which cause lamp flicker tend to propagate from the point of origin to various parts of a power system exhibiting some level of attenuation depending on factors such as system impedances, composition of loads and frequency components of the fluctuating waveform. Maintaining the flicker levels at various busbars below the planning limits specified by the standards is crucial, and in this regard it is important to develop an insight into the manner in which the flicker propaga...

The productivity and efficiency of the financial sector is pivotal to the attainment of economic growth and development in developed and developing economies alike, and is of particular interest in the wake of financial sector reform and restructuring. The financial system in Botswana has undergone major structural and institutional changes in recent years. Throughout the 1980s a series of financial reforms were introduced to boost the efficiency and productivity of financial institutions by enh...

Lithium-ion batteries (or rechargeable lithium batteries) are most advanced battery technology for modern portable electronics such as mobile phones, notebook computers and cameracorders. There are also big potentials for lithium-ion batteries to be used for electric vehicles (EVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and stationary power storage. In particular, the later will bring a significant contribution to reduce green-house gas emissions and address global warming and climate change. Material...

Objective: The aim of this study was to advance current research on the functions and expressions of self-injury and in particular to examine two motives of self-harm: (a) self-harm in response to threats to self (termed: search for self) and (b) self-harm as an act of communication to others (termed: a cry for help). Method: Study 1 investigated 45 participants attending accident and emergency departments following an episode of self-harm. All completed a structured interview and a repertory gr...

The alkaloid uniflorine A was isolated in 2000 from the leaves of the tree Eugenia uniflora L, together with two other water soluble alkaloids, uniflorine B and the known alkaloid (+)-(3α,4α,5β)-1-methylpiperidine-3,4,5-triol piperidine. Uniflorine A was found to be an inhibitor of the α-glucosidases, rat intestinal maltase and sucrase, with IC50 values of 12 and 3.1 μM, respectively, and its structure was deduced from NMR analysis to be structure 1. Uniflorine B was also found to be an inhibito...

Discovered in 2001, magnesium diboride (MgB2) is the latest superconductor suitable for large scale applications (magnetic resonance imaging systems (MRI), fault current limiters (FCL), high-field magnets). Compared to other metallic superconductors like NbTi (Tc = 9 K) and Nb3Sn (Tc = 18 K), it has the advantage of a higher critical temperature (Tc = 39 K), which enables its application at the temperature of 20 K and, hence, significantly reduces the cost of the cooling system. This, together w...

This research paper examines the essential considerations of my role as a Father, as they reflect and inform my practice as a sculptor. Using initial collaborations with my 5-year-old daughter as a conceptual trajectory, I began to explore domestic rhythms and the communality of multiple objects. Ceramic artist Angela Valamanesh and ‘Outsider’ Howard Finster were found to represent the polarities – austere and chaotic – of repetition. Artistic engagement with the congenital temperament of a chil...

This thesis focuses on the emerging field of software art. It is concerned with questions that arise in relation to efforts to think the field of software, and software programming particularly, in aesthetic terms. Centrally, how can software as a technical field of production, as a form of engineering and as a space of abstract, instrumentally-oriented, system elaboration, possibly correspond to art? What are the dilemmas that the notion of software art confronts? How can its space of opportuni...

This thesis considers the role of the mainstream South African print media in perpetuating discrimination during the years of legalised racial discrimination - commonly known as apartheid - from when the Herenigde Nationale Party took power in May 1948 with an unprecedented 28-seat swing under the leadership of 74-year-old Dr Daniel F. Malan until it was replaced by the African National Congress, black-dominated unity government in April, 1994. Against an historical background, it focuses on the...

The ‘cocktail party problem’ is the term commonly used to describe the perceptual problem experienced by a listener who attempts to focus upon a single speaker in a scene of interfering audio and noise sources. Blind Signal Separation (BSS) is a blind identification approach that can offer an adaptive, intelligent solution to the ‘cocktail party problem’. Audio signals can be blindly retrieved from the mixture, that is, without a priori knowledge of the audio signals or the location of the audio...

Electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) was employed to investigate non-covalent associations of macromolecules with ligands, metal ions and other macromolecules. Firstly, ESI-MS was used to examine the interactions of six ruthenium compounds with three different DNA sequences (D1, D2 and D3). The relative binding affinities of these ruthenium compounds towards dsDNA was determined to be: [Ru(phen)2(dppz)]2+ . [Ru(phen)2(dpqMe2)]2+ > [Ru(phen)2(dpqC)]2+ > [Ru(phen)2(dpq)]2+ >[Ru(phen)...

The spirocyclic ring structure is a feature of a number of naturally-occurring and synthetic products that possess interesting biologically activities. This thesis describes our efforts towards synthesising various spirocyclic heterocycles as potential cancer therapeutics targeting the cell-cycle. Three different spirocyclic scaffolds, A-C, were accessed through a variety of cycloaddition reactions and several of these were investigated for their cytostaticity and protein-inhibition properties. ...

I have chosen text-based music as the avenue to create music that is meaningful to both audience and composer. I conducted substantial research into models of musical communication that revealed that these models lack clarity in the way they predict meaning, and make assumptions that cannot be generalised to all music. The development of an overarching model requires more work than possible in this document. Consideration has been given to making music from sampled, complex, autonomously produce...

The studies described in this thesis were aimed at unravelling the relationships between fire and arthropods. This has been investigated in a number ofstudies in the literature. Some studies reported finding fewer arthropods in burned than in unburned sites, others reported finding more, and still others found no difference. Factors that may help to explain this variety of outcomes include differences in arthropod taxa and habitat type, time since fire, and methods and duration of sampling. I an...

Across the popular and academic literature, it is widely recognised that young people with persistent suicidal thoughts are at high risk for suicide completion. It is also accepted that seeking and receiving appropriate help offers protection against the development of acute forms of suicidality, along with suicide completion. Yet, as promising as appropriate help-seeking appears for suicide prevention, a growing number of studies suggest that suicidal ideation itself may impede the help-seeking...

Grid computing as an emerging technology has made great achievements in scientific computation. Leveraged by other technologies, such as cluster computing and web services, Grid computing for the first time seamlessly integrated large numbers of interconnected computers and provided Internet-scale computing resource sharing, selection, and aggregation. The sheer numbers of desktop systems today make the potential advantages of interoperability between desktops and servers into a single Grid syst...

A Campus Portal is an exciting recent phenomenon forming part of the new generation of online services for all stakeholders in institutions of higher education. Conceptually the general notion of a Portal should be to be distinguished from that of other Webbased applications and the traditional Intranet of the institution. The literature review in Phase One of this research indicates that the major distinguishing characteristics of a Campus Portal are: (i) personalisation, by which end-users are...

On school culture and teacher learning.'It is a culture with very high expectations from both parents and staff. Where everyone has the belief everyone will achieve, with this principal the expectations on us are higher now. The accountability is more succinct. It has always been a culture where the staff agrees on the same sort of philosophy. When we talk about how children learn to read etc there is never much disagreement. When there is some disagreement it leads to discussion. I have wor...

Habitat loss and fragmentation are recognised as the two primary threats to biological diversity worldwide. Powerline easements are linear habitat features that occur in all land tenures, including national parks. Where they occur in areas of natural vegetation, the vegetation is periodically mowed to maintain short grassy conditions. This creates a stark discontinuity with the natural vegetation in the area.With the creation of powerline easements comes the simultaneous generation of large trac...