Girl in the Shadows and resilience and coping strategies in contemporary young adult fiction

The novel manuscript Girl in the Shadows tells the story of two teenage girls whose friendship, safety and sanity are pushed to the limits when an unexplained phenomenon invades their lives. Sixteen-year-old Tash has everything a teenage girl could want: good looks, brains and freedom from her busy parents. But when she looks into her mirror, a stranger’s face stares back at her. Her best friend Mal believes it’s an evil spirit and enters the world of the supernatural to find answers. But spell books and ouija boards cannot fix a problem that comes from deep within the soul. It will take a journey to the edge of madness for Tash to face the truth inside her heart and see the evil that lurks in her home. And Mal’s love and courage to pull her back into life. The exegesis examines resilience and coping strategies in adolescence, in particular, the relationship of trauma to brain development in children and teenagers. It draws on recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology to provide a framework to examine the role of coping strategies in building resilience. Within this broader context, it analyses two works of contemporary young adult fiction, Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates and Sonya Hartnett’s Surrender, their use of the split persona as a coping mechanism within young adult fiction and the potential of young adult literature as a tool to help build resilience in teen readers.

Peripherally η1-Platinated Organometallic Porphyrins as Building Blocks for Multiporphyrin Arrays

The modification of peripherally metalated meso-η1-platiniometalloporphyrins, such as trans-[PtBr(NiDAPP)(PPh3)2] (H2DAPP = 5-phenyl-10,20-bis(3‘,5‘-di-tert-butylphenyl)porphyrin), leads to the analogous platinum(II) nitrato and triflato electrophiles in almost quantitative yields. Self-assembly reactions of these meso-platinioporphyrin tectons with pyridine, 4,4‘-bipyridine, or various meso-4-pyridylporphyrins in chloroform generate new multicomponent organometallic porphyrin arrays containing up to five porphyrin units. These new types of supramolecular arrays are formed exclusively in high yields and are stable in solution or in the solid state for extended periods. They were characterized by multinuclear NMR and UV−visible spectroscopy as well as high-resolution electrospray ionization mass spectrometry.

Guidelines on building design and operation to minimize air quality impacts from major roads in transit oriented development

Poor air quality has a huge detrimental effect, both economic and on the quality of life, in Australia. Transit oriented design (TOD), which aims to minimise urban sprawl and lower dependency on vehicles, leads to an increasing number of buildings close to transport corridors. This project aims at providing guidelines that are appropriate to include within City Plan to inform future planning along road corridors, and provide recommendations on when mitigation measures should be utilised.