2 Cool 4 Skool

Musical work composed by me entitled 2 Cool 4 Skool. One of twelve compositions in this book - the other eleven composed by other composers: Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB) publication - Alto Saxophone Series 2 Grade 4

2 Cool 4 Skool

Musical work composed by me entitled 2 Cool 4 Skool. One of twelve compositions in this book - the other eleven composed by other composers: Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB) publication - Tenor Saxophone Series 2 Grade 4

A new Salmonella typhimurium NM5004 strain expressing rat glutathione S-transferase 5-5 : use in detection of genotoxicity of dihaloalkanes using an SOS/umu test system

The Escherichia coli mu operon was subcloned into a pKK233-2 vector containing rat glutathione S-transferase (GST) 5-5 cDNA and the plasmid thus obtained was introduced into Salmonella typhimurium TA1535. The newly developed strain S.typhimurium NM5004, was found to have 52-fold greater GST activity than the original umu strain S.typhimurium TA1535/pSK1002. We compared sensitivities of these two tester strains, NM5004 and TA1535/ pSK1002, for induction of umuC gene expression with several dihaloalkanes which are activated or inactivated by GST 5-5 activity. The induction of umuC gene expression by these chemicals was monitored by measuring the cellular P-galactosidase activity produced by umuC'lacZ fusion gene in these two tester strains. Ethylene dibromide, 1-bromo-2-chloroethane, 1,2-dichloroethane, and methylene dichloride induced umuC gene expression more strongly in the NM5004 strain than the original strain, 4-Nitroquinoline 1-oxide and N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine were found to induce umuC gene expression to similar extents in both strains. In the case of 1-nitropyrene and 2-nitrofluorene, however, NM5004 strain showed weaker umuC gene expression responses than the original TA1535/ pSK1002 strain, 1,2-Epoxy-3-(4'-nitrophenoxy)propane, a known substrate for GST 5-5, was found to inhibit umuC induction caused by 1-bromo-2-chloroethane. These results indicate that this new tester NM5004 strain expressing a mammalian GST theta class enzyme may be useful for studies of environmental chemicals proposed to be activated or inactivated by GST activity.

Expression of mammalian glutathione S-transferase 5-5 in Salmonella typhimurium TA1535 leads to base-pair mutations upon exposure to dihalomethanes

Dihalomethanes can produce liver tumors in mice but not in rats, and concern exists about the risk of these compounds to humans. Glutathione (GSH) conjugation of dihalomethanes has been considered to be a critical event in the bioactivation process, and risk assessment is based upon this premise; however, there is little experimental support for this view or information about the basis of genotoxicity. A plasmid vector containing rat GSH S-transferase 5-5 was transfected into the Salmonella typhimurium tester strain TA1535, which then produced active enzyme. The transfected bacteria produced base-pair revertants in the presence of ethylene dihalides or dihalomethanes, in the order CH2Br2 > CH2BrCl > CH2Cl2. However, revertants were not seen when cells were exposed to GSH, CH2Br2, and an amount of purified GSH S-transferase 5-5 (20-fold excess in amount of that expressed within the cells). HCHO, which is an end product of the reaction of GSH with dihalomethanes, also did not produce mutations. S-(1-Acetoxymethyl)GSH was prepared as an analog of the putative S-(1-halomethyl)GSH reactive intermediates. This analog did not produce revertants, consistent with the view that activation of dihalomethanes must occur within the bacteria to cause genetic damage, presenting a model to be considered in studies with mammalian cells. S-(1-Acetoxymethyl)GSH reacted with 2′-deoxyguanosine to yield a major adduct, identified as S-[1-(N2-deoxyguanosinyl)methyl]GSH. Demonstration of the activation of dihalomethanes by this mammalian GSH S-transferase theta class enzyme should be of use in evaluating the risk of these chemicals, particularly in light of reports of the polymorphic expression of a similar activity in humans.

Pharmacokinetics and tumor disposition of PEGylated, methotrexate conjugated poly-l-lysine dendrimers

Dendrimers have potential for delivering chemotherapeutic drugs to solid tumours via the enhanced permeation and retention (EPR) effect. The impact of conjugation of hydrophobic anticancer drugs to hydrophilic PEGylated dendrimer surfaces, however, has not been fully investigated. The current study has therefore characterised the effect on dendrimer disposition of conjugating α-carboxyl protected methotrexate (MTX) to a series of PEGylated 3H-labelled poly-L-lysine dendrimers ranging in size from generation 3 (G3) to 5 (G5) in rats. Dendrimers contained 50% surface PEG and 50% surface MTX. Conjugation of MTX generally increased plasma clearance when compared to conjugation with PEG alone. Conversely, increasing generation reduced clearance, increased metabolic stability and reduced renal elimination of the administered radiolabel. For constructs with molecular weights >20 kDa increasing the molecular weight of conjugated PEG also reduced clearance and enhanced metabolic stability but had only a minimal effect on renal elimination. Tissue distribution studies revealed retention of MTX conjugated smaller (G3-G4) PEG570 dendrimers (or their metabolic products) in the kidneys. In contrast, the larger G5 dendrimer was concentrated more in the liver and spleen. The G5 PEG1100 dendrimer was also shown to accumulate in solid Walker 256 and HT1080 tumours and comparative disposition data in both rats (1 to 2% dose/g in tumour) and mice (11% dose/g in tumour) are presented. The results of this study further illustrate the potential utility of biodegradable PEGylated poly-L-lysine dendrimers as long circulating vectors for the delivery and tumour-targeting of hydrophobic drugs.

Speaker verification using I-vector features

This PhD research has provided novel solutions to three major challenges which have prevented the wide spread deployment of speaker recognition technology: (1) combating enrolment/ verification mismatch, (2) reducing the large amount of development and training data that is required and (3) reducing the duration of speech required to verify a speaker. A range of applications of speaker recognition technology from forensics in criminal investigations to secure access in banking will benefit from the research outcomes.

Cytotoxicity testing of silver-containing burn treatments using primary and immortal skin cells

A novel burn wound hydrogel dressing has been previously developed which is composed of 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid sodium salt with silver nanoparticles (silver AMPS). This study compared the cytotoxicity of this dressing to the commercially available silver products; Acticoat™, PolyMem Silver® and Flamazine™ cream. Human keratinocytes (HaCaT and primary HEK) and normal human fibroblasts (NHF) were exposed to dressings incubated on Nunc™ polycarbonate inserts for 24, 48 and 72h. Four different cytotoxicity assays were performed including; Trypan Blue cell count, MTT, Celltiter-Blue™ and Toluidine Blue surface area assays. The results were expressed as relative cell viability compared to an untreated control. The cytotoxic effects of Acticoat™ and Flamazine™ cream were dependent on exposure time and cell type. After 24h exposure, Acticoat™ and Flamazine™ cream were toxic to all tested cell lines. Surprisingly, HaCaTs treated with Acticoat™ and Flamazine™ had an improved ability to survive at 48 and 72h while HEKs and NHFs had no improvement in survival with any treatment. The novel silver hydrogel and PolyMem Silver® showed low cytotoxicity to all tested cell lines at every time interval and these results support the possibility of using the novel silver hydrogel as a burn wound dressing. Researchers who rely on HaCaT cells as an accurate keratinocyte model should be aware that they can respond differently to primary skin cells.

Audit committee effectiveness in a mandatory disclosure environment

This study examines audit committee effectiveness in its association with regulatory compliance in a highly sanctioned environment. It uses the Australian continuous disclosure regime to investigate whether audit committee effectiveness is associated with a higher frequency of disclosures, thereby enhancing the efficiency of the capital market and creating more informed individual investors. The findings show that, as hypothesised, audit committee effectiveness measured as an index composed of sub-components involving audit committee size, meeting frequency, independence, member financial literacy and membership of other audit committees, is positively associated with disclosure frequency. Further tests show that it is the financial literacy sub component which is most implicated in this relationship. Company size, years of listing, the proportion of inventories and receivables to total assets, whether or not the company has been involved in a takeover offer or bid or in changes to its number of shares are significant control variables.

Injury narrative text classification : a preliminary study

Description of a patient's injuries is recorded in narrative text form by hospital emergency departments. For statistical reporting, this text data needs to be mapped to pre-defined codes. Existing research in this field uses the Naïve Bayes probabilistic method to build classifiers for mapping. In this paper, we focus on providing guidance on the selection of a classification method. We build a number of classifiers belonging to different classification families such as decision tree, probabilistic, neural networks, and instance-based, ensemble-based and kernel-based linear classifiers. An extensive pre-processing is carried out to ensure the quality of data and, in hence, the quality classification outcome. The records with a null entry in injury description are removed. The misspelling correction process is carried out by finding and replacing the misspelt word with a soundlike word. Meaningful phrases have been identified and kept, instead of removing the part of phrase as a stop word. The abbreviations appearing in many forms of entry are manually identified and only one form of abbreviations is used. Clustering is utilised to discriminate between non-frequent and frequent terms. This process reduced the number of text features dramatically from about 28,000 to 5000. The medical narrative text injury dataset, under consideration, is composed of many short documents. The data can be characterized as high-dimensional and sparse, i.e., few features are irrelevant but features are correlated with one another. Therefore, Matrix factorization techniques such as Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Non Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF) have been used to map the processed feature space to a lower-dimensional feature space. Classifiers with these reduced feature space have been built. In experiments, a set of tests are conducted to reflect which classification method is best for the medical text classification. The Non Negative Matrix Factorization with Support Vector Machine method can achieve 93% precision which is higher than all the tested traditional classifiers. We also found that TF/IDF weighting which works well for long text classification is inferior to binary weighting in short document classification. Another finding is that the Top-n terms should be removed in consultation with medical experts, as it affects the classification performance.

SEM, EDS and vibrational spectroscopic study of dawsonite NaAl(CO3)(OH)2

In this work we have studied the mineral dawsonite by using a combination of scanning electron microscopy with EDS and vibrational spectroscopy. Single crystals show an acicular habitus forming aggregates with a rosette shape. The chemical analysis shows a phase composed of C, Al, and Na. Two distinct Raman bands at 1091 and 1068 cm−1 are assigned to the CO32− ν1 symmetric stretching mode. Multiple bands are observed in both the Raman and infrared spectra in the antisymmetric stretching and bending regions showing that the symmetry of the carbonate anion is reduced and in all probability the carbonate anions are not equivalent in the dawsonite structure. Multiple OH deformation vibrations centred upon 950 cm−1 in both the Raman and infrared spectra show that the OH units in the dawsonite structure are non-equivalent. Raman bands observed at 3250, 3283 and 3295 cm−1 are assigned to OH stretching vibrations. The position of these bands indicates strong hydrogen bonding of the OH units in the dawsonite structure. The formation of the mineral dawsonite has the potential to offer a mechanism for the geosequestration of greenhouse gases.

Business transformation management : composition and orchestration of management services

This research develops a better understanding on how large-scale and complex IT-enabled business transformations are managed. Evidence from three global case studies suggest that business transformations can be composed and orchestrated like a jazz band, where improvisation plays a fundamental role to maintain the melody, harmony and rhythm of such initiatives. The thesis details how the jazz metaphor can assist senior management on how to reuse and reconfigure capabilities as services for transforming organizations. To the academic body of knowledge, the thesis provides a study on the use of management services as a theoretical lens to examine Business Transformation Management.

Choosing an appropriate modelling framework for analysing multispecies co-culture cell biology experiments

In vitro cell biology assays play a crucial role in informing our understanding of the migratory, proliferative and invasive properties of many cell types in different biological contexts. While mono-culture assays involve the study of a population of cells composed of a single cell type, co-culture assays study a population of cells composed of multiple cell types (or subpopulations of cells). Such co-culture assays can provide more realistic insights into many biological processes including tissue repair, tissue regeneration and malignant spreading. Typically, system parameters, such as motility and proliferation rates, are estimated by calibrating a mathematical or computational model to the observed experimental data. However, parameter estimates can be highly sensitive to the choice of model and modelling framework. This observation motivates us to consider the fundamental question of how we can best choose a model to facilitate accurate parameter estimation for a particular assay. In this work we describe three mathematical models of mono-culture and co-culture assays that include different levels of spatial detail. We study various spatial summary statistics to explore if they can be used to distinguish between the suitability of each model over a range of parameter space. Our results for mono-culture experiments are promising, in that we suggest two spatial statistics that can be used to direct model choice. However, co-culture experiments are far more challenging: we show that these same spatial statistics which provide useful insight into mono-culture systems are insuffcient for co-culture systems. Therefore, we conclude that great care ought to be exercised when estimating the parameters of co-culture assays.

Discovery of a lipid synthesising organ in the auditory system of an insect

Weta possess typical Ensifera ears. Each ear comprises three functional parts: two equally sized tympanal membranes, an underlying system of modified tracheal chambers, and the auditory sensory organ, the crista acustica. This organ sits within an enclosed fluid-filled channel-previously presumed to be hemolymph. The role this channel plays in insect hearing is unknown. We discovered that the fluid within the channel is not actually hemolymph, but a medium composed principally of lipid from a new class. Three-dimensional imaging of this lipid channel revealed a previously undescribed tissue structure within the channel, which we refer to as the olivarius organ. Investigations into the function of the olivarius reveal de novo lipid synthesis indicating that it is producing these lipids in situ from acetate. The auditory role of this lipid channel was investigated using Laser Doppler vibrometry of the tympanal membrane, which shows that the displacement of the membrane is significantly increased when the lipid is removed from the auditory system. Neural sensitivity of the system, however, decreased upon removal of the lipid-a surprising result considering that in a typical auditory system both the mechanical and auditory sensitivity are positively correlated. These two results coupled with 3D modelling of the auditory system lead us to hypothesize a model for weta audition, relying strongly on the presence of the lipid channel. This is the first instance of lipids being associated with an auditory system outside of the Odentocete cetaceans, demonstrating convergence for the use of lipids in hearing.

Dual-functional gum arabic binder for silicon anodes in lithium ion batteries

Si has attracted enormous research and manufacturing attention as an anode material for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) because of its high specific capacity. The lack of a low cost and effective mechanism to prevent the pulverization of Si electrodes during the lithiation/ delithiation process has been a major barrier in the mass production of Si anodes. Naturally abundant gum arabic (GA), composed of polysaccharides and glycoproteins, is applied as a dualfunction binder to address this dilemma. Firstly, the hydroxyl groups of the polysaccharide in GA are crucial in ensuring strong binding to Si. Secondly, similar to the function of fiber in fiberreinforced concrete (FRC), the long chain glycoproteins provide further mechanical tolerance to dramatic volume expansion by Si nanoparticles. The resultant Si anodes present an outstanding capacity of ca. 2000 mAh/g at a 1 C rate and 1000 mAh/g at 2 C rate, respectively, throughout 500 cycles. Excellent long-term stability is demonstrated by the maintenance of 1000 mAh/g specific capacity at 1 C rate for over 1000 cycles. This low cost, naturally abundant and environmentally benign polymer is a promising binder for LIBs in the future.

Characterization and Mapping of Patterned Ground in the Saginaw Lowlands, Michigan: Possible Evidence for Late-Wisconsin Permafrost

We identified, mapped, and characterized a widespread area (gt;1,020 km2) of patterned ground in the Saginaw Lowlands of Michigan, a wet, flat plain composed of waterlain tills, lacustrine deposits, or both. The polygonal patterned ground is interpreted as a possible relict permafrost feature, formed in the Late Wisconsin when this area was proximal to the Laurentide ice sheet. Cold-air drainage off the ice sheet might have pooled in the Saginaw Lowlands, which sloped toward the ice margin, possibly creating widespread but short-lived permafrost on this glacial lake plain. The majority of the polygons occur between the Glacial Lake Warren strandline (~14.8 cal. ka) and the shoreline of Glacial Lake Elkton (~14.3 cal. ka), providing a relative age bracket for the patterned ground. Most of the polygons formed in dense, wet, silt loam soils on flat-lying sites and take the form of reticulate nets with polygon long axes of 150 to 160 m and short axes of 60 to 90 m. Interpolygon swales, often shown as dark curvilinears on aerial photographs, are typically slightly lower than are the polygon centers they bound. Some portions of these interpolygon swales are infilled with gravel-free, sandy loam sediments. The subtle morphology and sedimentological characteristics of the patterned ground in the Saginaw Lowlands suggest that thermokarst erosion, rather than ice-wedge replacement, was the dominant geomorphic process associated with the degradation of the Late-Wisconsin permafrost in the study area and, therefore, was primarily responsible for the soil patterns seen there today.