West elevation, General Purpose North 3, University of Queensland, St Lucia

Formal elevation facing University of Queensland entrance roads.

West elevation, General Purpose North 3, University of Queensland, St Lucia

Formal elevation facing University of Queensland entrance roads.

Amphitheatre entry court, Collaborative Workshop, University of Queensland, St Lucia

Entry from landscaped amphitheatre area.

Gutter detail, Collaborative Workshop, University of Queensland, St Lucia

Open-ended folded sheet metal gutter.

Amphitheatre entry court, Collaborative Workshop, University of Queensland, St Lucia

Entry from landscaped amphitheatre area.

A Computational Framework for Institutional Agency

This paper provides a computational framework, based on Defeasible Logic, to capture some aspects of institutional agency. Our background is Kanger-Lindahl-P\"orn account of organised interaction, which describes this interaction within a multi-modal logical setting. This work focuses in particular on the notions of counts-as link and on those of attempt and of personal and direct action to realise states of affairs. We show how standard Defeasible Logic can be extended to represent these concepts: the resulting system preserves some basic properties commonly attributed to them. In addition, the framework enjoys nice computational properties, as it turns out that the extension of any theory can be computed in time linear to the size of the theory itself.

Catalogue of manuscripts from the Hayes Collection in the University of Queensland Library

Index to correspondence and manuscript material on literary and historical matters, mostly in Queensland and New South Wales, Australia held in the Fryer Library, University of Queensland - UQFL2. Authors and subjects include J.H.M. Abbott, Archer Family, E. Armitage, R. Bedford, H.S. Bloxome, E.J. Brady, 'Broadside', F. Broomfield, A.H. Chisholm, C.B. Christesen, R.H. Croll, Z. Cross, F.W.S. Cumbrae-Stewart, E. Dark, D. Deamer, C.J. Dennis, J. Devaney, E.M. England, P. Fitzgerald, R.D. Fitzgerald, Dame Mary Gilmore, C. Gittins, A.L. Gordon (criticism), P. Grano, M. Haley, W.A. Horn, R.G. Howarth, J. Howlett Ross, E.H. Lane, H. Lane, F.J. McAuley, D. McConnel, G. McCrae, K. (S) Mackenzie, P. Miles, J.K. Moir, C.P. Mountford, A. Muir, D.A. O'Brien, J.H. O'Dwyer, W.H. Ogilvie, M. Potter, T. Playford, H. Power, Queensland Authors' and Artists' Association, I. Southall, W. Sowden, A.G. Stephens, P.R. Stephensen, H. Tyron, A.J. Vogan, B. Vrepont, T. Welsby, H.R. White and Duke of Windsor. Also personal papers of Father Hayes, relating to his activities as parish priest.

UQ eSpace Poster

UQ eSpace (http://espace.uq.edu.au/) is The University of Queensland's institutional digital repository. The poster outlines all the different ways academic staff and postgraduate students can make use of the repository.

Environmental Risk Factors for Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive, degenerative, neurological disease. The progressive disability associated with PD results in substantial burdens for those with the condition, their families and society in terms of increased health resource use, earnings loss of affected individuals and family caregivers, poorer quality of life, caregiver burden, disrupted family relationships, decreased social and leisure activities, and deteriorating emotional well-being. Currently, no cure is available and the efficacy of available treatments, such as medication and surgical interventions, decreases with longer duration of the disease. Whilst the cause of PD is unknown, genetic and environmental factors are believed to contribute to its aetiology. Descriptive and analytical epidemiological studies have been conducted in a number of countries in an effort to elucidate the cause, or causes, of PD. Rural residency, farming, well water consumption, pesticide exposure, metals and solvents have been implicated as potential risk factors for PD in some previous epidemiological studies. However, there is substantial disagreement between the results of existing studies. Therefore, the role of environmental exposures in the aetiology of PD remains unclear. The main component of this thesis consists of a case-control study that assessed the contribution of environmental exposures to the risk of developing PD. An existing, previously unanalysed, dataset from a local case-control study was analysed to inform the design of the new case-control study. The analysis results suggested that regular exposure to pesticides and head injury were important risk factors for PD. However, due to the substantial limitations of this existing study, further confirmation of these results was desirable with a more robustly designed epidemiological study. A new exposure measurement instrument (a structured interviewer-delivered questionnaire) was developed for the new case-control study to obtain data on demographic, lifestyle, environmental and medical factors. Prior to its use in the case-control study, the questionnaire was assessed for test-retest repeatability in a series of 32 PD cases and 29 healthy sex-, age- and residential suburb-matched electoral roll controls. High repeatability was demonstrated for lifestyle exposures, such as smoking and coffee/tea consumption (kappas 0.70-1.00). The majority of environmental exposures, including use of pesticides, solvents and exposure to metal dusts and fumes, also showed high repeatability (kappas >0.78). A consecutive series of 163 PD case participants was recruited from a neurology clinic in Brisbane. One hundred and fifty-one (151) control participants were randomly selected from the Australian Commonwealth Electoral Roll and individually matched to the PD cases on age (± 2 years), sex and current residential suburb. Participants ranged in age from 40-89 years (mean age 67 years). Exposure data were collected in face-to-face interviews. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated using conditional logistic regression for matched sets in SAS version 9.1. Consistent with previous studies, ever having been a regular smoker or coffee drinker was inversely associated with PD with dose-response relationships evident for packyears smoked and number of cups of coffee drunk per day. Passive smoking from ever having lived with a smoker or worked in a smoky workplace was also inversely related to PD. Ever having been a regular tea drinker was associated with decreased odds of PD. Hobby gardening was inversely associated with PD. However, use of fungicides in the home garden or occupationally was associated with increased odds of PD. Exposure to welding fumes, cleaning solvents, or thinners occupationally was associated with increased odds of PD. Ever having resided in a rural or remote area was inversely associated with PD. Ever having resided on a farm was only associated with moderately increased odds of PD. Whilst the current study’s results suggest that environmental exposures on their own are only modest contributors to overall PD risk, the possibility that interaction with genetic factors may additively or synergistically increase risk should be considered. The results of this research support the theory that PD has a multifactorial aetiology and that environmental exposures are some of a number of factors to contribute to PD risk. There was also evidence of interaction between some factors (eg smoking and welding) to moderate PD risk.

Gauge P-representations for quantum-dynamical problems: Removal of boundary terms

P-representation techniques, which have been very successful in quantum optics and in other fields, are also useful for general bosonic quantum-dynamical many-body calculations such as Bose-Einstein condensation. We introduce a representation called the gauge P representation, which greatly widens the range of tractable problems. Our treatment results in an infinite set of possible time evolution equations, depending on arbitrary gauge functions that can be optimized for a given quantum system. In some cases, previous methods can give erroneous results, due to the usual assumption of vanishing boundary conditions being invalid for those particular systems. Solutions are given to this boundary-term problem for all the cases where it is known to occur: two-photon absorption and the single-mode laser. We also provide some brief guidelines on how to apply the stochastic gauge method to other systems in general, quantify the freedom of choice in the resulting equations, and make a comparison to related recent developments.

Corner connection detail, Sunshine Coast University Library, Maroochydore

Detailed external view of north-west elevation corner.

North-west elevation, Sunshine Coast University Library, Maroochydore

North-west elevation as seen from library forecourt.

Northern entrance court under construction, Sunshine Coast University Library, Maroochydore

View to library entrance court under construction.

North-west elevation and entrance court, Sunshine Coast University Library, Maroochydore

View of entrance court under construction, with north-west elevation behind.