Literacy, security, governmentality: Defining spaces, managing populations – How has education become part of whole of government security strategy?

In this paper I conduct a Foucauldian discourse analysis of a political speech given by Brendon Nelson in 2006 when the Australian Minister for Defence in the Howard Coalition Government. The speech connects conceptualisations of terror, globalization, education and literacy as part of a whole of government security strategy. The analysis examines this speech as an example of a liberal way of governing the conduct of diverse and unpredictable populations. My analysis suggests that the apparatus of government has been strategically used in order to biopolitically contain the rise of complex social forces and protect a set of homogenous cultural values. The purposes of education and uses of literacy are seen as instruments for the inscription of a coded set of values understood to be synonymous with civil society.

Facile Entry into Triazole Fused Heterocycles via Sulfamidate Derived Azido-alkynes

Direct synthesis of condensed triazoles from diverse sulfamidates by ring opening of sulfamidates with sodium azide followed by one-pot propargylation and cycloaddition furnished title compounds. The methodology in general has been demonstrated on diverse sulfamidates derived from amino acids, amino acid derivatives, and carbohydrates to obtain diverse triazole fused scaffolds. In one example, a condensed triazole containing amino acid has been synthesized by ring opening of a sulfamidate derivative with propargyl amine.

Assessing the significance of climate and community factors on urban water demand

Ensuring adequate water supply to urban areas is a challenging task due to factors such as rapid urban growth, increasing water demand and climate change. In developing a sustainable water supply system, it is important to identify the dominant water demand factors for any given water supply scheme. This paper applies principal components analysis to identify the factors that dominate residential water demand using the Blue Mountains Water Supply System in Australia as a case study. The results show that the influence of community intervention factors (e.g. use of water efficient appliances and rainwater tanks) on water demand are among the most significant. The result also confirmed that the community intervention programmes and water pricing policy together can play a noticeable role in reducing the overall water demand. On the other hand, the influence of rainfall on water demand is found to be very limited, while temperature shows some degree of correlation with water demand. The results of this study would help water authorities to plan for effective water demand management strategies and to develop a water demand forecasting model with appropriate climatic factors to achieve sustainable water resources management. The methodology developed in this paper can be adapted to other water supply systems to identify the influential factors in water demand modelling and to devise an effective demand management strategy.

Seeking continuity: Educational strategy in and for mobile ADF families

This report shares findings and insights from an interview study conducted in 2009, with 34 ADF families. These families were identified in the communities of primary schools in both state and Catholic systems with high ADF family enrolments in 3 towns across 2 states, with the assistance of the DCO and their embedded Defence School Transition Aides (DSTAs). In the interviews the parents were invited to describe their history of ADF relocations, and how they managed transitions for each member in terms of school choice, child care arrangements, spouse employment, and educational transitions. Parallel interviews were conducted with 12 teachers and 6 DSTAs across the identified schools to describe how schools cater for mobile ADF families flowing through their classes. Parents were invited to tell the story of their family’s sequence of moves and how each member made the transition, then reflect more generally on what advice they’d give other mobile families. Teachers were asked to describe how they respond to the mobile families in their school community, and to illustrate some of the issues and challenges from the institutional perspective. By offering perspectives from both parents and teachers, the report hopes to facilitate a dialogue between parties to address their common goal – promoting productive continuities in education for children in mobile families.

Designing an emotional strategy : Strengthening digital channel engagements

The emergence of new technologies has revolutionized the way companies interact and build relationships with customers. The channel–customer relationship has traditionally been managed via a push approach in communication (“What can we sell customers?”) with the hope of cultivating customer loyalty. However, emotional understandings of customers and how they feel about a product, service, or business can drastically alter consumers’ engagement, behavior, and purchasing preferences. This rapidly evolving landscape has left managers at a loss, and what they are experiencing is likely the beginning of a tectonic shift in the way digital channels are designed, monitored, and managed. In this article, digital channel relationships are examined, and useful concepts for clarifying and refining the emotional meaning behind company strategy and their relationship to corresponding digital channels are detailed. Using three case study examples, we discuss the process and impact of such emotionally aware digital channel designs. Recommendations are made regarding how companies can select, design, and maintain digital engagements based on their strategy and industry needs.

Lipid assisted membrane entry in specific phospholipid targeted protein systems

The purpose of this thesis project is to study changes in the physical state of cell membranes during cell entry, including how these changes are connected to the presence of ceramide. The role of enzymatical manipulation of lipids in bacterial internalization is also studied. A novel technique, where a single giant vesicle is chosen under the microscope and an enzyme coupled-particle attached to the micromanipulator pipette towards the vesicle, is used. Thus, the enzymatic reaction on the membrane of the giant vesicle can be followed in real-time. The first aim of this study is to develop a system where the localized sphingomyelinase membrane interaction could be observed on the surface of the giant vesicle and the effects could be monitored with microscopy. Domain formation, which resembles acid sphingomyelinase (ASMase), causes CD95 clustering in the cell membrane due to ceramide production (Grassmé et al., 2001a; Grassmé et al., 2001b) and the formation of small vesicles inside the manipulated giant vesicle is observed. Sphingomyelinase activation has also been found to be an important factor in the bacterial and viral invasion process in nonphagocytic cells (Grassmé et al., 1997; Jan et al., 2000). Accordingly, sphingomyelinase reactions in the cell membrane might also give insight into bacterial or viral cellular entry events. We found sphingomyelinase activity in Chlamydia pneumonia elementarybodies (EBs). Interestingly, the bacterium enters host cells by endocytosis but the internalization mechanism of Chlamydia is unknown. The hypothesis is that sphingomyelin is needed for host cell entry in the infection of C. pneumonia. The second project focuses on this subject. The goal of the third project is to study a role of phosphatidylserine as a target for a membrane binding protein. Phosphatidylserine is chosen because of its importance in fusion processes. This will be another example for the importance of lipids in cell targeting, internalization, and externalization.

Entry of the membrane-containing bacteriophages into their hosts

Viruses are biological entities able to replicate only within their host cells. Accordingly, entry into the host is a crucial step of the virus life-cycle. The focus of this study was the entry of bacterial membrane-containing viruses into their host cells. In order to reach the site of replication, the cytoplasm of the host, bacterial viruses have to traverse the host cell envelope, which consists of several distinct layers. Lipid membrane is a common feature among animal viruses but not so frequently observed in bacteriophages. There are three families of icosahedral bacteriophages that contain lipid membranes. These viruses belong to families Cystoviridae, Tectiviridae, and Corticoviridae. During the course of this study the entry mechanisms of phages representing the three viral families were investigated. We employed a range of microbiological, biochemical, molecular biology and microscopy techniques that allowed us to dissect phage entry into discrete steps: receptor binding, penetration through the outer membrane, crossing the peptidoglycan layer and interaction with the cytoplasmic membrane. We determined that bacteriophages belonging to the Cystoviridae, Tectiviridae, and Corticoviridae viral families use completely different strategies to penetrate into their host cells.

Donor strategy under the fungibility of foreign aid

We develop a political–economic model of aid fungibility: a part of aid is diverted away from its intended target by lobby groups. The size of this diversion – the degree of aid fungibility – is determined endogenously by the recipient government. The donor can affect the equilibrium degree of fungibility by choosing both the size of aid and the timing of its decision. We derive a condition under which the donor's reaction to fungibility is to reduce the amount of aid. Under this condition, if the donor acts as a follower, both the donor and the target group are better off.

Formula apportionment and transfer pricing under oligopolistic competition

This paper demonstrates that under conditions of imperfect (oligopolistic) competition, a transition from separate accounting (SA) to formula apportionment (FA) does not eliminate the problem of profit shifting via transfer pricing. In particular, if affiliates of a multinational firm face oligopolistic competition, it is beneficial for the multinational to manipulate transfer prices for tax–saving as well as strategic reasons under both FA and SA. The analysis shows that a switch from SA rules to FA rules may actually strengthen profit shifting activities by multinationals.

A Control Strategy for Reference Wave Adaptive Current Generation

Speed control of ac motors requires variable frequency, variable current, or variable voltage supply. Variable frequency supply can be obtained directly from a fixed frequency supply by using a frequency converter or from a dc source using inverters. In this paper a control technique for reference wave adaptive-current generation by modulating the inverter voltage is explained. Extension of this technique for three-phase induction-motor speed control is briefly explained. The oscillograms of the current waveforms obtained from the experimental setup are also shown.

Transfer pricing rules and competing governments

The literature on the regulation of multinationals' transfer prices has not considered the possibility that governments may use transfer pricing rules strategically when they compete with other governments. The present paper analyses this case and shows that, even in the absence of agency considerations, a non‐cooperative equilibrium is characterised by above‐optimal levels of effective taxation. We then derive conditions under which harmonization of transfer pricing rules lead to a Pareto improvement, and show that harmonization according to the ‘arm's length’ principle—the form of harmonization advocated by the OECD—may not be Pareto improving.

Asymptotic analysis of option pricing in a Markov modulated market

We address asymptotic analysis of option pricing in a regime switching market where the risk free interest rate, growth rate and the volatility of the stocks depend on a finite state Markov chain. We study two variations of the chain namely, when the chain is moving very fast compared to the underlying asset price and when it is moving very slow. Using quadratic hedging and asymptotic expansion, we derive corrections on the locally risk minimizing option price.

Lipid-Containing Icosahedral dsDNA Bacteriophages: Entry, Exit and Structure

In this thesis three icosahedral lipid-containing double-stranded (ds) deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) bacteriophages have been studied: PRD1, Bam35 and P23-77. The work focuses on the entry, exit and structure of the viruses. PRD1 is the type member of the Tectiviridae family, infecting a variety of Gram-negative bacteria. The PRD1 receptor binding complex, consisting of the penton protein P31, the spike protein P5 and the receptor binding protein P2 recognizes a specific receptor on the host surface. In this study we found that the transmembrane protein P16 has an important stabilization function as the fourth member of the receptor binding complex and protein P16 may have a role in the formation of a tubular membrane structure, which is needed in the ejection of the genome into the cell. Phage Bam35 (Tectiviridae), which infects Gram-positive hosts, has been earlier found to resemble PRD1 in morphology and genome organization The uncharacterized early and late events in the Bam35 life cycle were studied by electrochemical methods. Physiological changes in the beginning of the infection were found to be similar in both lysogenic and nonlysogenic cell lines, Bam35 inducing a temporal decrease of membrane voltage and K+ efflux. At the end of the infection cycle physiological changes were observed only in the nonlysogenic cell line. The strong K+ efflux 40 min after infection and the induced premature cell lysis propose that Bam35 has a similar holin-endolysin lysis system to that of PRD1. Thermophilic icosahedral dsDNA Thermus phages P23-65H, P23-72 and P23-77 have been proposed to belong to the Tectiviridae family. In this study these phages were compared to each other. Analysis of structural protein patterns and stability revealed these phages to be very similar but not identical. The most stable of the studied viruses, P23-77, was further analyzed in more detail. Cryo-electron microscopy and three-dimensional image reconstruction was used to determine the structure of virus to 14 Å resolution. Results of thin layer chromatography for neutral lipids together with analysis of the three dimensional reconstruction of P23-77 virus particle revealed the presence of an internal lipid membrane. The overall capsid architecture of P23-77 is similar to PRD1 and Bam35, but most closely it resembles the structure of the capsid of archaeal virus SH1. This complicates the classification of dsDNA, internal lipid-containing icosahedral viruses.

A strategy for scheduling tightly coupled parallel applications on clusters

Although various strategies have been developed for scheduling parallel applications with independent tasks, very little work exists for scheduling tightly coupled parallel applications on cluster environments. In this paper, we compare four different strategies based on performance models of tightly coupled parallel applications for scheduling the applications on clusters. In addition to algorithms based on existing popular optimization techniques, we also propose a new algorithm called Box Elimination that searches the space of performance model parameters to determine the best schedule of machines. By means of real and simulation experiments, we evaluated the algorithms on single cluster and multi-cluster setups. We show that our Box Elimination algorithm generates up to 80% more efficient schedule than other algorithms. We also show that the execution times of the schedules produced by our algorithm are more robust against the performance modeling errors.

Woolies private label strategy will play directly into the hands of Aldi

Woolworths’ plan to rebrand its private label ranges in an attempt to meet changing shopper demands and combat the growth of Aldi will simply play into the hands of this German discounter. This new strategy, a replication of what Coles did in November 2015, will see their existing “Homebrand” and “Woolworths Essential” product ranges combined under the “Essentials” brand name. However, in focusing on price and private label ranges, supermarkets are in a race to the bottom where there are no points of difference in products except for price.