Digital Commons Network^™

From Isolation To Inclusion: Embracing Local Perspectives In Examining The Treatment Model Of Care For Aboriginal Persons Affected By Tuberculosis Or Leprosy In The Kimberley Region, North Western Australia, Stefanie Jane Oliver

Theses

In the remote Kimberley region of North Western Australia, tuberculosis (TB) and leprosy continue to affect a small number of Aboriginal people, despite historical efforts to eliminate either disease. Treatment, predominantly antibiotic therapy, is a principal therapeutic intervention used to cure TB and leprosy and halt infection transmission. Decisions made around treatment therefore impact not only the individual person affected, but also their families and communities. The well-worn models of Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) and case management are used nationally to assist treatment continuity and completion. Neither model has been substantiated for cultural appropriateness nor for meeting the specific needs …

The Role Of Experts In Policymaking: An Assessment Of Witness Educational Backgrounds In Congressional Testimony, Benedicte Adair

Theses

This thesis provides a first-of-its kind benchmark on the extent to which academically-trained professionals in the United States are availed of opportunities to directly deliver evidence to the United States Congress, as well as how contemporary party politics shapes this system. We randomly sample and manually code the educational backgrounds of 2,147 witnesses from 32 Congressional Committee Hearings that occurred between 2001 and 2020. This study reveals three key findings. The first is that academically-trained professionals have extensive access to the halls of Congress. Second, that all types of degrees have at least some representation amongst witness calls. The third …

Predicting Students' Mental Disorders Using Machine Learning, Maryam Sadiq

Theses

The mental health issues among students are prevailing due to predictions of low mood, anxiety, depression, and academic difficulties. Late diagnosis of these mental health issues takes prolonged measures to minimise its impact. Nowadays, machine learning is used to assess mental health by detecting signals that provide information about mental health through brain scans and questionnaires. Early detection of mental health issues in students possible to control them effectively. Colleges and universities are trying to improve student care by assessing their mental health and reducing mental health problems through psychological therapies. Machine learning techniques, including Multiclass Classifier, LAD Tree, and …

Sediment Transport On The River Bandon, Co. Cork, Ireland, Laurence Lomasney

Theses

This thesis analyses sediment transport on the River Bandon, Co. Cork, Ireland. Bedload transport and suspended sediment transport were monitored on the River Bandon over an extended period to determine rates of transport over varying flow conditions. A literature review of sediment properties (individual and bulk sediment), sediment transport, and numerical modelling was undertaken. A manual field sampling programme was undertaken at different locations on the River Bandon to collect bed sediment and suspended sediment for laboratory testing. This data, and data collected using an automatic water sampler and bed sediment traps also, was used to determine baseline conditions for …

Genetic Selection For Improved Efficiency And Profitability In Beef Cattle, David Kelly

Theses

Despite the importance of feed intake and efficiency in beef production, there are still gaps in our knowledge on optimal production efficiency traits and breeding strategies for improved feed, production and economic efficiency. The objectives of this thesis were to redefine production efficiency in growing cattle by exploiting carcass information and to validate current beef breeding goals for improving efficiency, and to investigate the relationships of feeding behaviour with performance, feed efficiency, and carcass merit. Feed intake and liveweight data were available on up to 6,088 cattle, of which 3,146 had carcass data, 4,672 had ultrasound data and 1,548 had …

Model-Based Cognitive Communications For Low-Power Wireless Networks, Indika Sanjeewa Abeywickrama Dhanapala

Theses

Our world is increasingly being instrumented with low-power wireless networks that deliver data for diverse application domains such as energy management, health and well-being, security, and other Internet of Things services. As these wireless networks operate in the unlicensed radio spectrum while co-existing with various other communication networks, their communication reliability and energy efficiency are affected by the radio environment. Because of this vulnerability to radio interference, low-power wireless networks may be unable to deliver their application requirements and be inefficiently consuming energy, functioning as a low-dependability network. The situation is exacerbated in indoor environments such as office and residential …

Robust Control Strategies For Optimal Operation Of Distributed Generation In Smart Microgrids, Chi-Thang Phan-Tan

Theses

The high penetration of PV systems and fast communications networks increase the potential for PV inverters to support the stability and performance of smart grids and microgrids. PV inverters in the distribution network can work cooperatively and follow centralized and decentralized control commands to optimize energy production while meeting grid code requirements. However, there are older autonomous inverters that have already been installed and will operate in the same network as smart controllable ones. This research proposes a decentralized optimal control (DOC) that performs multi-objective optimization for a group of PV inverters in a network of existing residential loads and …

Without Hindrance Or Fear Of Reprisals: The Attitudes And Experiences Of Doctors With A Conscientious Objection To Abortion In New South Wales And Victoria, Anna Walsh

Theses

This thesis explores the phenomena of conscience from the perspective of doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion. Its focus is a novel empirical study on the attitudes and experiences of 35 doctors who self-identify as having a conscientious objection to abortion and who practice in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia. Findings include the reasons for their objection and the types of actions they refuse to perform, whether and how the law has limited the free expression of their beliefs in the workplace, and what they would change to achieve a more reasonable accommodation of their conscientious objection in …

The Golden Age Of The Economics Of Bureaucracy, Chang-Yeh (Michael) Wu

Theses

The economics of bureaucracy (EOB) is a field of research that emerged from the public choice movement in the mid-1960s through to the early 1970s. It entailed applying traditional economic theories and modelling techniques to study decision-making in non-market hierarchies that are often referred to as bureaucracies. The field was pioneered and codified by Gordon Tullock, Anthony Downs, and William Niskanen in what may be called the ‘golden age’ of EOB. Establishing EOB as a bona fide research domain was a challenging intellectual enterprise due to the absence of a pre-existing conceptual framework to readily model bureaucracies within the economics …

Prediction Of Dubai Apartment Prices Using Machine Learning, Ali Alshamsi

Theses

The Real Estate Industry has been facing an unprecedented fluctuation in prices in the recent past. The most alarming of all is the drastic fall in the prices of Apartments in Arab regions from Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the past year. In comparison to the rest of the cities in the world, Knight Frank Global Residential Cities Index shows a drastic drop in the prices of apartments by about 6.6 percent in Dubai and 8.3 percent in the recent 12 months of business (Arabianbusiness.Com, 2021). In this regard, this study aims at developing a machine learning model able to …

An Evaluation Of The Biologics Price Competition And Innovation Act And Its Impact On Innovation In The Pharmaceutical Industry, Tara Williams

Theses

In the pharmaceutical industry, innovation is vital to bring more life-saving treatment options to patients. However, pharmaceutical manufacturers face strict safety and effectiveness guidelines set forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), before being able to place their innovations on the market. In attempts to balance the need for continuous innovation and stringent regulation, policymakers created the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA) of 2009. The BPCIA allows biosimilars manufacturers to enter a shortened FDA approval pathway and provides incentives for biologics manufacturers with the aims to decrease cost and increase access to medications for patients by …

Do The Safeguards In The Victorian Assisted-Dying Legislation Adequately Account For The Experiences Of Other Nations?, Heath Harley-Bellemore

Theses

In 2017 the Victorian State Parliament passed the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017, making it the first Australian jurisdiction since 1996 to pass assisted dying legislation. The Victorian model was hailed by the Government of Victoria as the ‘safest and most conservative in the world’, and had the benefit of drawing on over 20 years of voluntary assisted dying experiences of other jurisdictions for its development. This thesis examines the experiences of other jurisdictions and how they informed the development of the Victorian model. It examines available data, reports, and criticisms of international experiences and applies them to the Victorian …

Exploration Of The Role Of The Enrolled Nurse Within A Team Nursing Model: Perspectives Of Enrolled Nurses And Registered Nurses, Anna Gardner

Theses

Background: The role of the nurse and the way in which nursing care is delivered has undergone significant change in recent years. Enrolled nursing, in particular, epitomises the extent of these changes. The scope within which enrolled nurses (ENs) may now practice grows ever wider, reaching into the skill domains once reserved for registered nurses (RNs). Medication administration is one such example. These changes, while addressing issues of nursing shortages and workforce flexibility, have also resulted in increasing role confusion between RNs and ENs, creating issues around appropriate delegation and adequate supervision.

Aim:The study aim was fourfold. First to …

Implementing Quality Improvement Strategies In Real-World General Practice- A Study Focused On Cardiovascular Disease, Charlotte Hespe

Theses

Introduction

General practitioners (GPs) are central to cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention and management. However, multiple studies show they have sub-optimal assessment and management of CVD risk. The central question addressed in this thesis was: How do we translate preventive care guidelines into the real world of Australian general practice through Quality Improvement Collaboration (QIC)?

Methods

The research comprised of four studies. The first examined the experiences of stakeholders participating in a quality improvement collaboration (QIC) intervention undertaken in Australian primary care [the Australian Primary Care Collaboratives [APCC] program], and the second assessed implementation of the 2012 CVD risk management guidelines …

Multilayered Agency And Religion: A Study Of The Catholic Bishops Conference Of The Philippines (1986–1998), Christian Santos

Theses

The present thesis examines the core issue of how to understand and situate the agency of a religious actor in International Relations (IR). This is investigated through a case study of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) in two comparative policy contexts: agrarian land reform and family planning. The CBCP is a permanent institution within the Catholic Church as a collective of the bishops of the Philippines. The research employs analytic eclecticism as the method to integrate select works from four principal scholars: Colin Wight, Adrian Pabst, Atalia Omer and Mariano Barbato. Wight’s tripartite multilayered framework of agency …

The Synthesis And Biological Assessment Of Novel Ursolic Acid Derivatives As Potential Chemotherapeutic Agents For Cancer, Julie Rose Mae Mondala

Theses

Glioblastoma (GBM) is considered to be the most biologically aggressive type of brain tumour accounting for approximately 48% of all malignant primary brain tumours. GBM patients diagnosed have poor prognosis with a low five-year survival rate of

The aim of this study was to develop novel UA derivatives to enhance its bioavailability. Nine novel UA derivatives: three different diamine linkers, with Boc-protected and deprotected ends, and with folic acid were designed and synthesized to improve compound activity and/or delivery. The structures of the newly synthesised compounds were confirmed using mass spectrometry, FTIR, 1H NMR and 13C NMR. The structural activity …

Geospatial Analysis Of Wildland Fire Impact On Surface Air Pollution Utilizing Data Fusion, Ashlyn Lee Shirey

Theses

As vehicular and industrial impacts on air pollution continue to decrease over the continental United States (CONUS), smoke from wildland fires has become the major contributor to particulate matter pollution (PM2.5). With the frequency of wildland fires expected to increase, there is considerable interest in quantifying their impact on PM2.5 pollution. For the first time, this work estimates smoke impact on PM2.5 pollution over CONUS using direct observations of presence of smoke at the surface made by trained observers. These observations are combined with in situ observations of PM2.5 and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) smoke forecast fields to …

Investigations Of Surface Film Cooling Characteristics Along The Trailing Edge Of The Tip Of A Transonic Turbine Blade, Matthew Cox

Theses

The present study investigates film cooling in the trailing edge region of a transonic turbine blade tip, employing five rectangular film cooling holes downstream of a squealer recess. Heat transfer coefficient, heat transfer coefficient ratio, and adiabatic film cooling effectiveness data are provided for two tip gaps, 0.8 mm and 1.4 mm, over a range of blowing ratios. Surface heat transfer characteristics are measured using a transient impulse-response approach with infrared thermography. Local values of adiabatic film cooling effectiveness increase with increasing blowing ratio and are consistently higher when the tip gap is 0.8 mm. Values of heat transfer coefficient …

Differentiating Oil Palm Plantations From Natural Forest To Improve Land Cover Mapping In Ghana, Jacob C. Abramowitz

Theses

Tree crops like oil palm present a unique challenge in land cover mapping, as they are often misclassified as natural forest. The area cultivated with oil palm in Ghana has rapidly expanded since 2000, and production is expected to continue to increase. Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite data was used to map mature, closed-canopy oil palm extent in 2019 around a known oil palm mill in a Ghana study area that includes both industrial plantations and smallholders. The combination of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 inputs outperformed either input alone for mapping industrial oil palm. A separate accuracy assessment for this combined input …

A Deep Learning Framework For Consensus Based Multilabel Classification And Image Generation, Digya Acharya

Theses

In this thesis we address the problem of consensus based multi-label classification. In the general multi-label classification problem, an input is assigned to multiple classes without any constraints. However, there are applications where the multi-label classification needs to be solved under the constraint of a consensus among the assigned labels. We address this problem here using a deep learning approach. We conduct experiments with the MNIST dataset and establish the possibility of using such approaches for traditional multi-class problems. Furthermore, we demonstrate the use of our consensus based classifier in a generative adversarial framework for training a generator for handwritten …

The Intercomparison Of Wind Profiles From Various Ground-Based Profiling Systems, Preston Pangle

Theses

Dense profiling networks that have been used in previous studies have utilized a variety of wind profilers (radar wind profilers, Doppler sodars, Doppler lidars, and scanning radars) to capture boundary layer (BL) heterogeneity. The many profilers that are used not only implement different retrieval schemes, but also have differing sample volumes and beam widths. Because these systems can have different footprints and even different temporal averaging, some of these systems may not capture small-scale or short period horizontal variations across the BL. Utilizing data that is routinely collected by Mobile Atmospheric Profiling Network (MAPNet) platforms at the Severe Weather Institute …

Intelligent Navigation Service Robot Working In A Flexible And Dynamic Environment, Said Abdallah

Theses

Numerous sensor fusion techniques have been reported in the literature for a number of robotics applications. These techniques involved the use of different sensors in different configurations. However, in the case of food driving, the possibility of the implementation has been overlooked. In restaurants and food delivery spots, enhancing the food transfer to the correct table is neatly required, without running into other robots or diners or toppling over. In this project, a particular algorithm module has been proposed and implemented to enhance the robot driving methodology and maximize robot functionality, accuracy, and the food transfer experience. The emphasis has …

A Modified Model For The Long-Term Prediction Of Tropospheric Scintillation From Coarse-Resolution Atmospheric Data, James L. Suggs Jr.

Theses

It has been well established that scintillation, or random fades and enhancements of a propagating wave due to turbulence-induced fluctuations of the refractive index, can have deleterious effects on radar and satellite communications systems, especially for frequencies above 10 GHz (3 cm). Kolmogorov theory characterizes turbulence along a given propagation path in terms of the refractive index structure parameter C(superscript 2)(subscript n) . Tropospheric scintillation models are typically driven by C(superscript 2)(subscript n)(z) profiles developed from atmospheric measurements/predictions of pressure, temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed/direction along a given propagation path. In this work, high-resolution distributions of outer-scale, wind shear, …

Math Anxiety And Performance Following Observational Learning And Performance Pressure, Michael G. Duthie

Theses

Past research demonstrated that a variety of factors contribute to the severity of math anxiety and its detriments on math performance. The present study examined the influence of performance pressure, sex, second-hand success or failure of a male or female, and problem difficulty on math anxiety and performance. The design included a 2 (Participant sex: male, female) x 2 (Student actor sex: male, female) x 2 (Video outcome: success, failure) x 2 (Problem difficulty: easy, difficult) x 2 (Pressure: low, high) mixed design. Participants (UAH students, n = 232) were recruited from introductory psychology courses and completed the study via …

Augmented Reality-Supported Spatially Aware Visual Links For Multiple Displays And Devices, Jordan Gilbreath

Theses

Visual data analysis and sensemaking can benefit from utilizing multiple displays to organize large amounts of information. However, analyzing information scattered across multiple displays can be challenging. Existing solutions to solving this problem often require mental effort to understand cross-display relationships. A hybrid approach, named AR-SAViL, is presented which addresses this problem by using an augmented reality headset to track displays and their contents in real time, drawing visual links directly between related information. The performance of the system is evaluated through exploration of an existing dataset and expert review, and findings suggest AR-SAViL has potential to assist visual analysis …

Pegylated Poly(Amino Acid) Copolymers For Delivery Of Magnetic Nanoparticles, Carl Steven Amborski

Theses

Block copolymers of poly(ethylene glycol) and poly(L-Leucine) were synthesized to study their self-assembly behavior and ability to form polymeric micelles. These micelles were mPEGn-b-p(L-Leu)x, HO-PEGn-b-p(L-Leu)x, and p(L-Leu)x-b- PEGn-bp( L-Leu)x. The molecular weight of PEG varied between 2000 and 500 Da and the weight of p(L-Leu) varied between 1965 and 8515 Da. These micelles were assembled in aqueous solution both with and without 5nm diameter iron oxide nanoparticles and then analyzed with a zetasizer to determine their diameter. The goal was to find a combination of chain lengths that consistently produce a micelle that fully encapsulates 5nm iron oxide nanoparticles without …

Experimental Investigation Of Swept Bio-Inspired Wing Planforms, Arnab Chatterjee

Theses

The aerodynamic efficiency of the Swift (Apus Apus) and its resultant wing morphology merit further study for applications towards micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). Three bio-inspired wing planforms form the focus of this study to investigate the impact of sweep and spanwise chord variation on their local flow physics. The suction side flow characteristics are investigated using 2D particle image velocimetry (at Re = 4.0 × 10⁴ and 6.0 × 10⁴) to identify the effects induced by the planform geometry, followed by direct force measurements (at Re = 6.0 × 10⁴) to correlate the …

Applying Data Science And Machine Learning Techniques For Hydrological Applications : Case Study In Cambodia, Biplov Bhandari

Theses

Cambodia suffers from flooding and flash-flooding events every year, and thus better flood management and forecasting are crucial in taking early action. The Streamflow Prediction Tool (SPT) provides forecast discharge 15 days in advance globally. This thesis applies data-driven and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to improve Cambodia’s hydrological applications. Two case studies are presented – the first predicts the river discharge from the water level using time-series information; the second uses the predicted discharge from the first to bias-correct the SPT’s historical reanalysis data using several ML techniques. The historical Bias Correction (BC) is the first step toward the forecasted …

Flexible Microfluidic Device With Nonplanar Interdigitated Microelectrodes, Saud Alssaidy

Theses

The lab-on-a-chip concept has improved significantly in recent years to meet global demand for various applications with the advent of new technologies. Much progress has been achieved, but many microfluidic devices still suffer from design limitations in terms of sensitivity and selectivity because they use rigid, fragile substrate materials and conventional electrodes, which do not provide high sensitivity or selectivity and suffer from signal-to-noise ratio issues. This work proposes a novel device architecture that uses flexible, transparent top and bottom layers integrated with (nonplanar interdigitated microelectrodes) to create a sandwich-like flexible substrate base. The top and bottom layers consist of …

Energy Consumption Forecasting Using Machine Learning, Mahdi Mohammadigohari

Theses

Forecasting electricity demand and consumption accurately is critical to the optimal and costeffective operation system, providing a competitive advantage to companies. In working with seasonal data and external variables, the traditional time-series forecasting methods cannot be applied to electricity consumption data. In energy planning for a generating company, accurate power forecasting for the electrical consumption prediction, as a technique, to understand and predict the market electricity demand is of paramount importance. Their power production can be adjusted accordingly in a deregulated market. As data type is seasonal, Persistence Models (Naïve Models), Seasonal AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Averages with eXogenous regressors (SARIMAX), …