Digital Commons Network^™

Facebook As A Disruptor Of Journalism And Political Debate In Vietnam, Viet Tho Le

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research interrogates Habermas’s theory of the public sphere and applies it to the specific situation of ‘state digital authoritarianism’ in the Vietnamese Facebook environment. It examines how Facebook is disrupting the situation in Vietnam, offering a new dimension to the situation and enabling greater political understanding and engagement by young Vietnamese Facebook users.

The thesis asks whether Facebook should be constructed as a new forum for the expression of public opinion, creating a quasi-public sphere, promoting the country’s democracy and fuelling dissidents’ hope? If the answer is ‘yes’, to what extent has the Vietnamese Facebook sphere expanded or deepened …

Facebook: Where Privacy Concerns And Social Needs Collide, Sonya Scherini

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Facebook is an integral part of today’s social landscape, but Facebook use involves compromising one’s privacy in relation to both other users and to the Facebook corporation and its affiliated businesses. This analysis explores respondents’ reasons for using Facebook together with their Facebook-related privacy concerns, and how these factors influence self-disclosures and privacy management strategies on the site. Also explored are respondents’ perceptions both of what the Facebook corporation ‘knows’ about them and with whom it shares their data. The research is based on the concepts of user-user and user-corporate privacy concerns versus the social needs of self-portrayal and belonging. …

Determining Ground-Level Composition And Concentration Of Particulate Matter Across Regional Areas Using The Himawari-8 Satellite, Miles Sowden

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Speciated ground-level aerosol concentrations are required to understand and mitigate health impacts from dust storms, wildfires and other aerosol emissions. Globally, surface monitoring is limited due to cost and infrastructure demands. While remote sensing can help estimate respirable (i.e. ground level) concentrations, current observations are restricted by inadequate spatiotemporal resolution, uncertainty in aerosol type, particle size, and vertical profile. One key issue with current remote sensing datasets is that they are derived from reflectances observed by polar orbiting imagers, which means that aerosol is only derived during the daytime, and only once or twice per day.

Sub-hourly, infrared (IR), geostationary …

The Making Of Broken: A Manifesto For A Democratised Cinema, Damian Fasolo

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

(Orson Welles cited in Hurbis-Cherrier, 2011, p. 16)

While much has been written on low budget independent film movements, there is little research on the correlations that exist between them, and in particular, the filmmaking approaches and techniques which significantly affect their final form. The key argument of this project is that, central to the critical success of any low budget film, is a filmmaker’s ability to transform the limitations imposed on them, and the constraints that they choose, into creative gain. Though it would appear to operate contrary to ordinary …

I Walk To See, I Walk To Know: Walking To Wongawol. An Exhibition And I Walk To See, I Walk To Know: Walking To Wongawol. An Exegesis, Cim Sears

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The context of my embodied project, I Walk to See, I Walk to Know: Walking to Wongawol, is an exploration into 1) the absence of Western Desert Aboriginal narratives via the act of walking as knowing and 2) my recently discovered ancestral connections, which were historically erased by the state. The location of my project is Wongawol Station in the Western Desert, Western Australia, where my Indigenous ancestors lived, and whose lives I draw upon to make connections with the narratives and sensations of the desert landscape. I use the methodology of walking to investigate the interconnectivity between body and …

Group Cohesion And Collaborative Information Behaviour: An Exploration Of Student Experiences Of University Group Work, Parisa Khatamian Far

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Modern organisations heavily rely on using interdisciplinary teams to accomplish intellectually demanding tasks. The advent of the World Wide Web, the advancements in communication technological tools and easy access to high volumes of information through the Web provide expanded capacity for individuals to work together and fulfil their shared goal but true collaboration is far from straightforward. Teamwork skills are identified as a desirable and distinguishing attribute of the graduates whom employers seek to employ. Accordingly, higher education institutions lay particular emphasis on developing students’ collaborative skills by designing and incorporating group projects into courses. The findings of relevant research …

Modernising Conservation Through Technology: A Metabolomic Investigation Of A Critically Endangered Freshwater Crayfish, Emily D. Lette

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

BACKGROUND: The Anthropocene has seen extinction rates orders of magnitude higher than the background rate; a trend that has been seen in all ecosystems. As a result of human activities, freshwater resources, and many of the species dependent on them have become imperilled. Freshwater crayfish are a dominant aquatic invertebrate due to their significant biomass, and they are globally distributed, highly speciose, and ecologically important. They have been referred to, inter alia, as bioindicators, keystone species, ecosystem engineers, and umbrella species and are also a valuable human food source. However, currently one-third of freshwater crayfish species worldwide are classified …

Alannah, Bree And Cassie: The Abc Of Girls On The Autism Spectrum In Early Years Classrooms, Jillian Stansfield

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The prevalence of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in classrooms is an increasingly common phenomenon in schools in Australia and in many other countries. While there is increasingly growing literature on how autistic boys manage and are managed in schools, little is known about the learning needs of girls on the autism spectrum. One reason offered for this imbalance of literature is that fewer girls are diagnosed than boys, as their presentations may differ. As girls on the autism spectrum are an underdiagnosed phenotype, it is little wonder that teachers do not have adequate knowledge or strategies to support …

In Situ Wettability Investigation Of Aging Of Sandstone Surface In Alkane Via X-Ray Microtomography, Nilesh Kumar Jha, Maxim Lebedev, Stefan Iglauer, Jitendra S. Sangwai, Mohammad Sarmadivaleh

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Wettability of surfaces remains of paramount importance for understanding various natural and artificial colloidal and interfacial phenomena at various length and time scales. One of the problems discussed in this work is the wettability alteration of a three-phase system comprising high salinity brine as the aqueous phase, Doddington sandstone as porous rock, and decane as the nonaqueous phase liquid. The study utilizes the technique of in situ contact angle measurements of the several 2D projections of the identified 3D oil phase droplets from the 3D images of the saturated sandstone miniature …

Synthesis, Characterization, And Assessment Of A Ceo2@Nanoclay Nanocomposite For Enhanced Oil Recovery, Mohammad Javad Nazarahari, Abbas Khaksar Manshad, Siyamak Moradi, Ali Shafiei, Jagar Abdulazez Ali, S. Mohammad Sajadi, Alireza Keshavarz

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. In this paper, synthesis and characterization of a novel CeO2 /nanoclay nanocomposite (NC) and its effects on IFT reduction and wettability alteration is reported in the literature for the first time. The NC was characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and EDS MAP. The surface morphology, crystalline phases, and functional groups of the novel NC were investigated. Nanofluids with different concentrations of 100, 250, 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 ppm were prepared and used as dispersants in …

Perceived Influence Of Value Systems On The Uptake Of Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision Among Men In Kweneng East, Botswana, Thandisizwe R. Mavundla, Fungai Mbengo, Khanyenda Bruce Ngomi

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Botswana is one of the countries in Eastern and Southern Africa significantly impacted by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). To control the spread of HIV, the government in 2009 rolled out the voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) programme as an additional HIV prevention strategy with the goal of circumcising 80% of HIV negative men by 2016. However, the country failed to achieve this goal as less than 30% of the targeted men were circumcised by 2016. A study was therefore conducted to explore and describe …

Interpreting Health Events In Big Data Using Qualitative Traditions, Roschelle L. Fritz, Gordana Dermody

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© The Author(s) 2020. The training of artificial intelligence requires integrating real-world context and mathematical computations. To achieve efficacious smart health artificial intelligence, contextual clinical knowledge serving as ground truth is required. Qualitative methods are well-suited to lend consistent and valid ground truth. In this methods article, we illustrate the use of qualitative descriptive methods for providing ground truth when training an intelligent agent to detect Restless Leg Syndrome. We show how one interdisciplinary, inter-methodological research team used both sensor-based data and the participant’s description of their experience with an episode of Restless Leg Syndrome for training the intelligent agent. …

Brainwave Nets: Are Sparse Dynamic Models Susceptible To Brain Manipulation Experimentation?, Diego C. Nascimento, Marco A. Pinto-Orellana, Joao P. Leite, Dylan J. Edwards, Francisco Louzada, Taiza E.G. Santos

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© Copyright © 2020 Nascimento, Pinto-Orellana, Leite, Edwards, Louzada and Santos. Sparse time series models have shown promise in estimating contemporaneous and ongoing brain connectivity. This paper was motivated by a neuroscience experiment using EEG signals as the outcome of our established interventional protocol, a new method in neurorehabilitation toward developing a treatment for visual verticality disorder in post-stroke patients. To analyze the [complex outcome measure (EEG)] that reflects neural-network functioning and processing in more specific ways regarding traditional analyses, we make a comparison among sparse time series models (classic VAR, GLASSO, TSCGM, and TSCGM-modified with non-linear and iterative optimizations) …

An Exploratory Study Of The Relative Effects Of Various Protective Factors On Depressive Symptoms Among Older People, Caitlin Worrall, Michelle I. Jongenelis, Peter M. Mcevoy, Ben Jackson, Robert U. Newton, Simone Pettigrew

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© Copyright © 2020 Worrall, Jongenelis, McEvoy, Jackson, Newton and Pettigrew. Objective: The present study investigated the relative importance of various factors found to be negatively associated with depressive symptoms in older adults and assessed the potential moderating effect of sociodemographic characteristics for each factor. Method: Depressive symptoms were measured with the Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Psychological, social, and physical health measures relating to the following factors were also administered: personal growth, purpose in life, self-esteem, self-efficacy, social support, self-rated health, life satisfaction, and physical activity. Multivariate linear regression analysis was used to investigate the most important factors …

Fruit And Vegetable Knowledge And Intake Within An Australian Population: The Ausdiab Study, Caroline R. Hill, Lauren C. Blekkenhorst, Simone Radavelli-Bagatini, Marc Sim, Richard J. Woodman, Amanda Devine, Jonathan E. Shaw, Jonathan M. Hodgson, Robin M. Daly, Joshua R. Lewis

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Understanding the relationship between fruit and vegetable knowledge (FVK) and fruit and vegetable intake (FVI) is an important consideration for improved public health and successful targeting of health promotion messaging. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between FVK and FVI in Australian adults and to identify subgroups most at risk of poor knowledge. Using data from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity, and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab), we investigated associations between FVK and FVI, as well as demographic and lifestyle factors. Baseline FVK was measured using two self-reported questions. FVI …

Do Environmental And Financial Performances Affect Environmental Disclosures? Evidence From Listed Companies In Indonesia, Indah Fajarini Sri Wahyuningrum, Mochamad Arief Budihardjo, Fadel Iqbal Muhammad, Hadrian Geri Djajadikerta, Terri Trireksani

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 by author(s) and VsI Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center. The number of companies in Indonesia that have participated in environmental-related activities continues to grow. Some of these companies have also engaged and implemented an assessment program called Program for Pollution Control, Evaluation, and Rating (PROPER). This assessment program was initially launched by the Indonesian Ministry of Environment in 1995 to measure and rate the environmental performance of companies in Indonesia. They have also administered an environmental management system as part of their environmental protection initiatives. However, the level of environmental disclosure by these companies is still low. This may …

Commemorative Insights: The Best Of Life, In Death, Martin Maccarthy, Ker Ni Heng Rigney

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This study explores visitor experience at the National Anzac Centre in Western Australia using multiple qualitative methods. Initially, Nethnography is used to assemble a blend of lived experience and online non-dialogical commentary. Nethnography (an alternative to Netnography) is used here as a mechanism for data grooming. Three data sets inform this study: 500 Trip Advisor comments, 500 Visitors’ Book comments and four days of participant observation. The data are then analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis and Leximancer in the unsupervised mode. This methodological collage is designed to improve the veracity of interpretation through both lived experience and triangulation across data …

Enchanted Animism: A Matter Of Care, Jane Merewether

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© The Author(s) 2020. Jean Piaget, whose work continues to be very influential in early childhood education, associated young children’s animism with their ‘primitive thought’ claiming children remain animists until they reach a more advanced and rational stage of development. This article proposes a rethinking of the Piagetian view of animism, suggesting instead that children’s animism be conceived as a ‘matter of care’ which may then offer possibilities for living more responsively and attentively with non human others. Drawing on two recent research projects involving two-to-eight-year-old children, the article contends that children’s playful and speculative ‘enchanted animism’ can create a …

Predictors Of Hand Hygiene Behaviours Among Primary And Secondary School Children In A Rural District Setting In Zimbabwe: A Cross-Sectional Epidemiologic Study, France Ncube, Artwell Kanda, Maude Chahwanda, Margaret Macherera, Bigboy Ngwenya

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020, IWA Publishing. All rights reserved. Hand hygiene is one of the most effective and efficient ways of controlling faecal–oral diseases. However, little is known about the predictors of hand hygiene behaviours among school children. A predesigned checklist guide was used to observe hygiene behaviours of 460 pupils from four rural schools in Shamva South district, Zimbabwe. A pretested questionnaire was administered to obtain demographic data of the observed school children. Membership of a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) club, age, gender and the level of education were associated with hand hygiene practices (p < 0.05). The findings indicated that investing in hand hygiene behaviour change processes among school children using the promotion, formation, resuscitation and empowerment of WASH clubs in schools is important in disease prevention among communities in developing countries.

Digital Citizenship In Domestic Contexts, Lelia Green

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Digital citizenship is an important aspect of children’s rights and is receiving increasing policy attention around the world, including from the United Nations. For many children, however, it is the domestic environment where core digital rights are negotiated, with parents and teens sometimes clashing over children’s digital activities. This chapter draws upon ethnographic work with adolescent male online gamers who constitute the inner circle of a Dota 2 clan of two years’ standing. Separate interviews with five parents and four teens, and follow up focus groups with each cohort, reveal details of domestic negotiations around digital citizenship rights.

Ontology‐Driven Perspective Of Cfraas, Victor R. Kebande, Nickson M. Karie, Richard A. Ikuesan, Hein S. Venter

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A Cloud Forensic Readiness as a Service (CFRaaS) model allows an environment to preemptively accumulate relevant potential digital evidence (PDE) which may be needed during a post‐event response process. The benefit of applying a CFRaaS model in a cloud environment, is that, it is designed to prevent the modification/tampering of the cloud architectures or the infrastructure during the reactive process, which if it could, may end up having far‐reaching implications. The authors of this article present the reactive process as a very costly exercise when the infrastructure must be reprogrammed every time the process is conducted. This may hamper successful …

Australian Muslim Citizens: Questions Of Inclusion And Exclusion, 2006 –2020, Nahid A. Kabir

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Muslims have a long history in Australia. In 2016, Muslims formed 2.6 per cent of the total Australian population. In this article, I will discuss Australian Muslims’ citizenship in two time periods, 2006–2018 and 2020. In the first period, I will examine Australian Muslims’ identity and sense of belonging, and whether their race or culture have any impact on their Australian citizenship. I will also discuss the political rhetoric concerning Australian Muslims. In the second period, 2020, I will examine Australian Muslims’ placement as returned travellers during the COVID-19 period. I conclude that, from 2006 to 2018, Islamophobia was rampant …

Anti-Uterine Fibroid Effect Of Standardized Labisia Pumila Var. Alata Extracts In Vitro And In Human Uterine Fibroid Cancer Xenograft Model, Norfahana Zakaria, Khamsah S. Mohd, Mohammed A. A. Saeed, Loiy E. A. Hassan, Armaghan Shafaei Darestani, Fouad S. R. Al-Suede, Abdul H. Memon, Zhari Ismail

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: Uterine fibroids are a common type of solid tumor presenting in women of reproductive age. There are very few alternative treatment available from conventional treatment involving surgeries. Labisia pumila var. alata or locally known as ‘Kacip Fatimah’ was widely used as traditional medicine in Malaysia. This plant has been used to maintain a healthy female reproductive system. The present study aimed to evaluate anti fibroid potential of L. pumila extracts through in vitro apoptosis activity against uterine leiomyoma cells (SK-UT-1) and in uterine leiomyoma xenograft model. Evaluation of bioactive markers content were also carried out. Methods: Apoptotic induction of …

How Special Is Special Interest Tourism – And How Special Are Special Interest Tourists? A Perspective Article In A Chinese Context, Jun Wen, Mao-Ying Wu

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Special interest tourism has emerged as a valuable niche market for tourism destinations in the past decade. However, tourism scholars have generally struggled to answer McKercher and Chan’s [2005. How special is special interest tourism? Journal of Travel Research, 44(1), 21–31] question, ‘How special is special interest tourism?’ Such ambiguity extends to the related enquiry, ‘How special are special interest tourists?’, in attempting to define special interest tourists. This perspective research letter discusses these questions in terms of Chinese outbound tourism. Based upon the reflection of previous research, the authors’ thoughts and ongoing research in this area, knowledge …

The Implications Of The Non-Linguistic Modes Of Meaning For Language Learners In Science: A Review, Melanie Williams

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In response to the globally escalating number of language learners tasked with learning science through a foreign language, this review seeks to bring new perspectives by reframing research findings, still dominated by historical language assumptions, through a contemporary language lens. We aim to unearth, amalgamate and expose the potentials of non-linguistic modes described by the theory of multiliteracies that appear sporadic and fragmentary within studies due to their linguistic focus, as we surmise they offer language learners alternative avenues for meaning-making. 40 peer-reviewed empirical studies published between 1995 and 2019 were systematically found and examined using theoretical thematic analysis to …

Performances Of The Lbp Based Algorithm Over Cnn Models For Detecting Crops And Weeds With Similar Morphologies, Vi Nguyen Thanh Le, Selam Ahderom, Kamal Alameh

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Weed invasions pose a threat to agricultural productivity. Weed recognition and detection play an important role in controlling weeds. The challenging problem of weed detection is how to discriminate between crops and weeds with a similar morphology under natural field conditions such as occlusion, varying lighting conditions, and different growth stages. In this paper, we evaluate a novel algorithm, filtered Local Binary Patterns with contour masks and coefficient k (k-FLBPCM), for discriminating between morphologically similar crops and weeds, which shows significant advantages, in both model size and accuracy, over state-of-the-art deep convolutional neural network (CNN) models such as VGG-16, VGG-19, …

Recent High School Graduates Support Mandatory Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Education In Australian High Schools, Tim Rankin, Lisa Holmes, Leanne Vance, Tom Crehan, Brennen Mills

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Objective:

To evaluate recent high school graduates' opinions on mandatory cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training in the high school curriculum as a solution to improving bystander CPR rates.

Methods:

Participants completed questionnaires assessing their CPR training history during their high school education, their willingness to learn CPR during their high school years and their opinion on making CPR training mandatory for high school curricula.

Results:

Of the 178 participants in this study, 60% had undertaken CPR training during their high school education. Of those who had not undertaken CPR training, 75% reported that they would have been willing …

Elecsys Csf Biomarker Immunoassays Demonstrate Concordance With Amyloid-Pet Imaging, James A. Doecke, Larry Ward, Samantha C. Burnham, Victor L. Villemagne, Qiao-Xin Li, Steven Collins, Christopher J. Fowler, Ekaterina Manuilova, Monika Widmann, Stephanie R. Rainey-Smith, Ralph N. Martins, Colin L. Masters, Aibl Research Group

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: β-amyloid (Aβ) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging is currently the only Food and Drug Administration-approved method to support clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, numerous research studies support the use of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers, as a cost-efficient, quick and equally valid method to define AD pathology. Methods: Using automated Elecsys® assays (Roche Diagnostics) for Aβ (1-42) (Aβ42), Aβ (1-40) (Aβ40), total tau (tTau) and phosphorylated tau (181P) (pTau), we examined CSF samples from 202 participants of the Australian Imaging, Biomarkers and Lifestyle (AIBL) study of ageing cohort, to demonstrate the concordance with pathological AD via PET imaging. …

Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries In Australian Football: Should Women And Girls Be Playing? You're Asking The Wrong Question, Aaron Fox, Jason Bonacci, Samantha Hoffmann, Sophia Nimphius, Natalie Saunders

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries have been a rising concern in the early years of the women's Australian Football League (AFLW), eliciting headlines of a â € knee crisis' surrounding the league. There has been a focus on female biology as the primary factor driving the high rate of ACL injuries in the AFLW. Emphasising Australian football (AF) as being dangerous predominantly due to female biology may be misrepresenting a root cause of the ACL injury problem, perpetuating gender stereotypes that can restrict physical development and participation of women and girls in the sport. We propose that an approach addressing …

Hiding In Plain Sight: The Globally Distributed Bacterial Candidate Phylum Pauc34f, Michael L. Chen, Eric D. Becraft, Maria Pachiadaki, Julia M. Brown, Jessica K. Jarett, Josep M. Gasol, Nikolai V. Ravin, Duane P. Moser, Takuro Nunoura, Gerhard J. Herndl, Tanja Woyke, Ramunas Stepanauskas

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Bacterial candidate phylum PAUC34f was originally discovered in marine sponges and is widely considered to be composed of sponge symbionts. Here, we report 21 single amplified genomes (SAGs) of PAUC34f from a variety of environments, including the dark ocean, lake sediments, and a terrestrial aquifer. The diverse origins of the SAGs and the results of metagenome fragment recruitment suggest that some PAUC34f lineages represent relatively abundant, free-living cells in environments other than sponge microbiomes, including the deep ocean. Both phylogenetic and biogeographic patterns, as well as genome content analyses suggest that PAUC34f associations with hosts evolved independently multiple times, while …