Digital Commons Network^™

An Exploratory Investigation Into Knowledge Management In Western Australian Knowledge-Intensive Small Businesses, Shukrullah Fassehi

Theses : Honours

From a knowledge management (KM) perspective, organisational effectiveness depends on the organisation’s capacity to effectively perform a range of processes that include identifying, acquiring, sharing, and storing valuable knowledge. The literature suggests that the growth of interest in the field of KM is largely centred on large organisations. Small businesses have not received much attention in the literature. This is surprising, given that small businesses (however defined) represent the majority of businesses in most countries and, as is the case in Australia, make a major contribution towards business activity, economic development and employment generation.

This study employed a qualitative exploratory …

Exploring The Intention Of The South West Of Western Australian Residents To Purchase Solar Panels Using The Theory Of Planned Behaviour Approach, Greg Murray

Theses : Honours

Global warming is a concern for many people around the world (Lorenzoni, Pidgeon, 2006; Searle & Gow, 2010). The negative effect of climate change is increasingly apparent (Belluscio, 2010; Dunlop, 2010; Hirabayashi, Kanae, Emori, Oki & Kimoto, 2008; Oelemans, 1994). In response to growing public concern, governments are implementing legislation and carbon initiatives to decrease the impact of climate change (Crane, 2010; D’Souza, 2005). Although these government actions are important to implement environmental preservation among industries, this study focuses on the intentions of purchasing behaviour of the individual homeowner of the South West region of Western Australia. More specifically, the …

The Impact Of Powered Mobility Devices On Occupational Performance : A Systematic Review ; And, The Experience Of Being A Motorised Mobility Scooter User, Ryan Fomiatti

Theses : Honours

The impact of powered mobility devices on occupational performance: A systematic review

Purpose: To systematically review the impact powered mobility devices have on engagement in independent occupations for adults with acquired mobility limitations. Method: The following databases were searched electronically: CINAHL Plus, Medline, PsychInfo, OT Seeker, Joanna Briggs Institute and Physiotherapy Evidence Database. The search terms used a combination of words to encompass all terms which are used for powered mobility. Studies were included if they evaluated adults’ use of a motorised mobility device, and if individuals used a powered mobility device due to acquired mobility limitation. Results: Eleven studies …

The Effect Of Working Memory (N-Back) Training On Fluid Intelligence, David Preece

Theses : Honours

The purpose of this thesis is to report on a study that examined the effect of working memory training (using the n-back task) on fluid intelligence (Gf). Recent research by Jaeggi and colleagues (2008; 2010) found that training in a visualspatial n-back task resulted in gains on two different matrix reasoning tests of fluid intelligence (compared to participants who did no task). The present study replicated and extended these results by testing the fluid intelligence construct using a different type of fluid intelligence test, and employing an ‘active’ rather than ‘no-contact’ control group to account for motivational effects on intelligence …

Retrospective Time Perception Of A Long Task: Using Music To Distinguish Between Attention-Based And Memory-Based Models, James Brooks

Theses : Honours

There are two main models of time perception, attention-based models, and memorybased models. The aim of this study was to determine which model best explained retrospective time perception of a long and monotonous task. The monotonous task was a Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) that lasted 1390s. The monotony of the task was altered by the addition of musical stimuli. Participants were randomly assigned to either a silent condition, or one of three music conditions that differed in song familiarity and performing instrument. Participants were 48 adults, primarily recruited from Edith Cowan University. The perceived duration of the task, …

Detection Of Evolving Injury To The Brachial Plexus During Transaxillary Robotic Thyroidectomy., Adam Luginbuhl, Daniel M Schwartz, Anthony K Sestokas, David Cognetti, Edmund Pribitkin

Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery Faculty Papers

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: Continuous intraoperative neuromonitoring (IONM) of transcranial electric motor evoked potentials (tceMEPs) and somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) has gained universal acceptance as an efficacious method for detecting emerging positional brachial plexopathy or peripheral nerve compression during spinal and shoulder surgery. This has implications for transaxillary thyroid surgery.

STUDY DESIGN: Case report with literature review.

METHODS: The patient underwent robotic transaxillary thyroid surgery with continuous tceMEP and SSEP monitoring of brachial plexus function. We present detailed IONM data depicting the emergence of positional brachial plexopathy.

RESULTS: Significant amplitude loss of both IONM modalities were identified during an evolving positional plexopathy, which …

Assessment And Training Of Muscular Force And Power Qualities Of The Lower Limb Using Traditional And Cluster Loading, Keir Hansen

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

It is widely accepted that lower body muscular force and power capabilities are of significant importance to many athletic tasks. Thus the assessment and training of these qualities are a key focus in both sports science and strength and conditioning practice. The purpose of this thesis was firstly to investigate previously discussed but poorly researched methods of assessing force and power characteristics of the lower limb particularly focusing on the analysis of the force-time and power-time curves during the rebound jump squat, and secondly, to investigate the effectiveness of cluster loading, an alternative resistance training paradigm, in training for lower …

Strategies For The Intelligent Selection Of Components, Valerie Maxville

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

It is becoming common to build applications as component-intensive systems - a mixture of fresh code and existing components. For application developers the selection of components to incorporate is key to overall system quality - so they want the `best'. For each selection task, the application developer will de ne requirements for the ideal component and use them to select the most suitable one. While many software selection processes exist there is a lack of repeatable, usable, exible, automated processes with tool support. This investigation has focussed on nding and implementing strategies to enhance the selection of software components. The …

Scale And Justice In Water Allocation, Marian J. Patrick

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Water allocation is a fundamental part of water resources management. Water allocation is often a contested process because it involves multiple uses and users of water. Issues of justice arise when resources are, or are perceived to be, in short supply. When water is allocated the rules for the distribution of the resource may result in just outcomes for some stakeholders but may create injustices for other stakeholders. Issues of scale thus form an important component of water allocation. This thesis draws from an amalgam of ideas on justice, scale and water management and aims to present a conceptual framework …

Implementation Of Initiatives To Reform The Quality Of Education In Rural Ghanaian Junior High Schools, Agatha Inkoom

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Despite Ghana's record investment in education, in 2008, only 40% of students passed the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE) at the end of junior high school and gained admission into senior high school. Urban schools continue to outperform rural schools and the gap between Ghana‟s best and worst performing schools continues to widen. This study investigated the effectiveness of education policy implementation and how this has impacted on education reform in one rural district of Ghana‟s Upper West Region. The research investigated the status of education in Junior High Schools, the impact of Reform 2007 and the factors that influenced …

Multi-Wavelength, Multi-Beam, Photonic Based Sensor For Object Discrimination And Positioning, Kavitha Venkataraayan

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Over the last decade, substantial research efforts have been dedicated towards the development of advanced laser scanning systems for discrimination in perimeter security, defence, agriculture, transportation, surveying and geosciences. Military forces, in particular, have already started employing laser scanning technologies for projectile guidance, surveillance, satellite and missile tracking; and target discrimination and recognition. However, laser scanning is relatively a new security technology. It has previously been utilized for a wide variety of civil and military applications. Terrestrial laser scanning has found new use as an active optical sensor for indoors and outdoors perimeter security. A laser scanning technique with moving …

Microstructure And Mechanical Properties Of Cold Drawn Steel Wires, Ning Liu

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Cold drawn eutectoid steel wires have been widely used for a variety of applications, such as suspension bridges, steel cords for automobile tires, and springs. Much research has been done to increase their mechanical strength. With advances in modern production technology, both the drawing speed and the quality of drawn steels have been enhanced. After a careful literature survey, it is obvious that some issues are still controversial. As Y.S. Yang, J.G. Bae and C.G. Park mentioned, the lamellar spacing, thickness and volume fraction of cementites have all reached the nanometer regime, and the conventional theory is not enough to …

Seeing Through Others' Eyes : Towards A Hybrid Ecology Of Marine Turtle And Dugong In Australia, Zoe Car

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis explores the conflict between conservationists and Indigenous communities over the hunting of marine turtles and dugong in Australia, with a view to finding a way to overcome the barriers that prevent the resolution of this issue. I approached this exploration as an ecologist, using the framework of Berkes (2004) who proposed three shifts for the field of ecology. This meant taking a systems approach and investigating the intertwining threads of the issue as possible, with a specific focus on integrating the human aspects of the problem in a participatory manner. By doing so my work entered into a …

The Transition Experience To Boarding School For Male Aboriginal Secondary School Students From Regional And Remote Communities Across Western Australia, David James Mander

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The experience of transitioning to boarding schools away from home for Aboriginal secondary school students from regional and remote communities in Australia has not received the attention it deserves (Calma, 2009; Dodson, 2009). The weight of public discourse and a paucity in research provided strong testimony for undertaking the current study. Moreover, it was evident the voice of those Aboriginal students undertaking the experience was absent from this public dialogue and the literature. This qualitative research investigated from a social constructionist perspective how 32 male Aboriginal secondary school students from regional and remote communities constructed meaning and understanding around the …

The Effectiveness Of Airway Management In The Pre Hospital Treatment Of Traumatic Brain Injury : A Retrospective, Observational Study Of Pre Hospital Treatment Of Traumatic Brain Injury (Tbi) In The Western Australian Ambulance Service, Joseph Cuthbertson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

There is concern over mortality and the potential for secondary brain injury in the head-injured patient. The use of advanced airway management and rapid sequence intubation in the pre hospital treatment of patients with Traumatic Brain Injury is controversial. Currently in St John Ambulance Service Australia (WA) Inc. three forms of pre hospital treatment are utilized to manage the airway of the adult head-injured patient. If attended by on-road paramedic staff, basic airway management is utilized unless the patient is unconscious and areflexic, in which case advanced airway management utilising endotracheal intubation or laryngeal mask insertion is authorised. In the …

Use Of Robotics In Spinal Cord Injury: A Case Report., Lori Siedziewski, Roseann C. Schaaf, Julie Mount

Department of Occupational Therapy Faculty Papers

OBJECTIVE: We examined the use of robotics to treat upper-extremity (UE) dysfunction in tetraplegic patients with spinal cord injury (SCI).

METHOD: a 51-yr-old man with incomplete SCI participated in an occupational therapy program that combined traditional occupational therapy with Reo Go®, a comprehensive therapy platform that includes a robotic guide featuring a telescopic arm to enable high repetitions of functionally relevant UE exercises.

RESULTS: The participant demonstrated measurable improvements in active range of motion, muscle strength as measured through manual muscle testing, perceived right UE function, and self-care performance as measured by the FIM™.

CONCLUSION: The findings from this case …

Generational Faith: Change And Consistency Across Generations, Steve Case

All Books

Will your children be just like you? Will their faith look like yours? If so, to what extent? If not, why? The Bible refers to consequences continuing to the third and fourth generations, and blessings for a thousand generations. If that’s true, why has the next generation dropped out of church and lost interest in God? Have the Bible’s promises expired? Maybe the world’s rapid changes have sped up the process, or perhaps this world has simply become too evil for faith to survive. And yet when all hope seems to be gone, young people shoot past their parents in …

Tweets And Votes: A Study Of The 2011 Singapore General Election, Marko M. Skoric, Nathaniel D. Poor, Palakorn Achananuparp, Ee Peng Lim, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study focuses on the uses of Twitter during the elections, examining whether the messages posted online are reflective of the climate of public opinion. Using Twitter data obtained during the official campaign period of the 2011 Singapore General Election, we test the predictive power of tweets in forecasting the election results. In line with some previous studies, we find that during the elections the Twitter sphere represents a rich source of data for gauging public opinion and that the frequency of tweets mentioning names of political parties, political candidates and contested constituencies could be used to make predictions about …

Japan’S Love For Derivative Actions: Irrational Behaviour And Non-Economic Motives As Rational Explanations For Shareholder Litigation, Dan W. Puchniak, Masafumi Nakahigashi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Not long ago, there was a consensus in the legal academy that the Japanese were irrational litigants. As the theory went, Japanese people would forgo litigating for financial gain because of a cultural obsession with maintaining social harmony. Based on this theory, it made perfect (but economically irrational) sense that Japanese shareholders let their U.S.-transplanted derivative action lay moribund for almost four post-war decades, while at the same time the derivative action was a staple of shareholder litigation in the United States.The 1980s brought a wave of law and economics to the scholarship of Japanese law, which largely discredited the …

A Hybridized Lagrangian Relaxation And Simulated Annealing Method For The Course Timetabling Problem, Aldy Gunawan, Kim Leng Poh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper describes a timetabling problem at universities, where a master course timetable is given extrinsically and conflicts due to students' course enrollment do not need to be considered. A solver for the problem, which integrates both teacher assignment and course scheduling, is described. An initial solution is obtained by a mathematical programming approach based on Lagrangian relaxation. This solution is further improved by a simulated annealing algorithm. The proposed method has been tested on instances from a university in Indonesia, as well as on several randomly generated datasets, and the corresponding computational results are reported.

Information Extraction From Text, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information extraction is the task of finding structured information from unstructured or semi-structured text. It is an important task in text mining and has been extensively studied in various research communities including natural language processing, information retrieval and Web mining. It has a wide range of applications in domains such as biomedical literature mining and business intelligence. Two fundamental tasks of information extraction are named entity recognition and relation extraction. The former refers to finding names of entities such as people, organizations and locations. The latter refers to finding the semantic relations such as FounderOf and HeadquarteredIn between entities. In …

A Spatial Analysis Of The Italian Second Republic, Second Version, Massimiliano Landi, Ricardo Pelizzo

Research Collection School Of Economics

We apply the Optimal Classification method to a newly created dataset to provide a spatial map of the Italian Second Republic (1996-2008). We find a bi-dimensional political space in the XIII Legislature and virtually a one dimensional political space in the XIV and XV Legislatures. In addition, the main dimension is explained along the dimension government opposition rather than on the traditional left and right dimension. During the Second Republic, Italy experienced changes in electoral system and in the format of the parties. We use our data to discuss the implications of either change on the dimensionality space. We find …

Conditional Independence Specification Testing For Dependent Processes With Local Polynomial Quantile Regression, Liangjun Su, Halbert L. White

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide straightforward new nonparametric methods for testing conditional independence using local polynomial quantile regression, allowing weakly dependent data. Inspired by Hausman's (1978) specification testing ideas, our methods essentially compare two collections of estimators that converge to the same limits under correct specification (conditional independence) and that diverge under the alternative. To establish the properties of our estimators, we generalize the existing nonparametric quantile literature not only by allowing for dependent heterogeneous data but also by establishing a weak consistency rate for the local Bahadur representation that is uniform in both the conditioning variables and the quantile index. We also …

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Severity, Dissociation, And Perceived Social Support Predict Performance On Event Processing And Memory Tasks, Michelle Eisenberg

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

No abstract provided.

Strategic Insight And Age-Related Goal-Neglect Influence Risky Decision-Making, John Westbrook

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Maximizing long-run gains often requires taking on some degree of risk, yet decision-makers often exhibit risk aversion: RA), rejecting risky prospects even when these may have higher expected value than safer alternatives. We investigated whether explicit strategy instruction and practice can decrease prepotent RA, and whether aging impacts the efficacy of such an intervention. Participants performed a paired lottery task with options varying in risk and magnitude, both before and after practice with a similar task that encouraged maximization of expected value and instruction to use this strategy in risky decisions. In both younger and older adults, strategy training reduced …

Novel Roles For A-Type Lamins In Maintaining Genomic Stability, Abena Redwood

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

A-type lamins, key structural components of the nucleus, have been implicated in the maintenance of nuclear architecture and chromatin organization. Mutations in A-type lamins have been associated with defects in a number of nuclear processes, including DNA replication and repair, and gene transcription and silencing. In support of an important role for nuclear organization in pathogenesis, mutations in A-type lamins are associated with a wide variety of degenerative diseases which range from muscular dystrophies and lipodystrophies to premature aging syndromes. In addition, alterations in the expression of A-type lamins are associated with different cancers such as small cell lung carcinoma …

The Failed Promise Of A General Theory Of Pure Economic Loss: An Accident Of History?, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

The article explores the evolution and challenges of pure economic loss doctrine in American tort law, focusing on the contrasting approaches of Robert Rabin and Gary Schwartz. While Schwartz critiques the feasibility of a general theory due to the diversity of economic injuries, Rabin advocates for a nuanced, fact-specific approach. The article highlights the ad hoc nature of the doctrine, as seen in key cases like JAire Corp. v. Gregory and Aas v. Superior Court, which reflect shifting judicial attitudes toward negligence and liability. It concludes that the failure to establish a coherent principle for determining duty underscores the ongoing …

Rescuing The Dignitary Torts From The Constitution, Cristina Carmody Tilley

Faculty Publications

The rights of individuals to recover for dignitary torts has been withering for the past forty years, since the Supreme Court constitutionalized the state common law tort of defamation in New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964. The Court announced in that case that the First Amendment required it to impose high standards for individual defamation claims in order to protect robust speech. As that principle has taken hold, it has in effect squeezed the rights of individuals to recover for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress as well as defamation. Just last Term, the Court held …

Development And Application Of Fluxomics Tools For Analyzing Metabolisms In Non-Model Microorganisms, Xueyang Feng

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Decoding microbial metabolism is of great importance in revealing the mechanisms governing the physiology of microbes and rewiring the cellular functions in metabolic engineering. Complementing the genomics, transcriptomics, proteinomics and metabolomics analysis of microbial metabolism, fluxomics tools can measure and simulate the in vivo enzymatic reactions as direct readouts of microbial metabolism. This dissertation develops and applies broad-scope tools in metabolic flux analysis to investigate metabolic insights of non-model environmental microorganisms. 13C-based pathway analysis has been applied to analyze specific carbon metabolic routes by tracing and analyzing isotopomer labeling patterns of different metabolites after growing cells with 13C-labeled substrates. Novel …

Quantification And Reconstruction In Photoacoustic Tomography, Zijian Guo

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Optical absorption is closely associated with many physiological important parameters, such as the concentration and oxygen saturation of hemoglobin. Conventionally, accurate quantification in PAT requires knowledge of the optical fluence attenuation, acoustic pressure attenuation, and detection bandwidth. We circumvent this requirement by quantifying the optical absorption coefficients from the acoustic spectra of PA signals acquired at multiple optical wavelengths. We demonstrate the method using the optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy: OR-PAM) and the acoustical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy: AR-PAM) in the optical ballistic regime and in the optical diffusive regime, respectively. The data acquisition speed in photoacoustic computed tomography: PACT) is limited by the …