The study of working memory has become a main focus of memory research since the turn of the millennium. Working memory is a multi-component system for temporarily storing and managing of information. In the studies of working memory, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) has always been a particular area of focus. The prefrontal cortex is known to be the most evolved brain region that was responsible for various cognitive functions including memory. It has been widely acknowledged that different levels of sex hormones in an individual can lead to differences in working memory performance. In this study, it was hypothesized that there were gender differences in working memory performance and the development of the prefrontal cortex influenced by different level of sex hormones (indicated by the 2D:4D ratio) affected working memory performance. 497 Monash University’s students from the School of Psychological Sciences participated in the study. Results showed that there were no significant gender differences in working memory performance. In addition, the results also did not find a significant correlation between working memory accuracy and 2d:4D ratio. However, it was found that a weak correlation between working memory reaction time and the 2D:4D ratio existed. The present results indicate that working memory performance could be affected by factors other than gender.

The Muller-Lyer illusion has encouraged many theories explaining its deception. Illusionary lines with ‘fins-out’ at either end are perceived as being longer than in reality, whilst lines with ‘fins-in’ are perceived as being shorter. Mundy (2014) found that perceptual processing bias can be induced using ‘Navon stimuli’ to enhance the misperception of line length, given the conflict between global and local cues (Day, 1989; Navon, 1977). The current study aimed to strengthen Mundy’s findings by investigating whether the duration of priming, number of trials and colour of the stimuli can disrupt processing bias induced by Navon stimuli. 330 undergraduates completed a 7-minute Navon priming sequence, where they read aloud either the global or local stimulus features, before assessing line length in 22 varying Muller-Lyer stimuli, using a computerised slider. The current study failed to support Mundy’s conclusions, with no significant difference in perceived line length between groups induced to global processing, local processing or unbiased control. Increased priming duration may allow for greater interference between global and local elements, making increased Navon exposure less effective in increasing bias (Tsal, 1984). The reduced number of trials in the current study could mean that increased exposure to the Muller-Lyer figure increases veridical perception. Dichromatic stimuli in the current study, compared to Mundy’s monochromic stimuli, may reduce the contrast at the apices of the lines, creating less inhibitory signals in the retina (Wickelgren, 1965). Future research should focus on isolating these elements to establish the level each influences the misperception of line length.

This thesis attempts to demonstrate what erudite comedy theatre can tell historians about gender in early cinquecento Northern Italy. Although a source that has been used extensively by theatre scholars, historians have only more recently seen its value, with investigations into particular plays or themes across a number of comedies. Although gender has been one of the more focused themes, this research aims to take it further, presenting erudite comedy’s ability to reinforce relationships, reflect presence and mock ideals relating to early cinquecento gender. As part of this, it will be shown that Venetian plays and contemporary elites enforced gender patriarchal traditions the most strictly out of the three groupings, while Tuscan comedies used satire to a greater extent to mock ideals. In order to demonstrate this result, I have used ten erudite comedies, by a variety of authors and geographical origins, within the early cinquecento. From them, themes relating to gender have been extracted and explained. This research relies mainly on the use of English translations, but has included some reference to Italian versions of the plays, to retain the flavour of the original plays that may have been lost in translation. This is reinforced by the use of non-theatre primary sources from the period and a wide range of secondary literature, from both theatre studies and history, creating a more interdisciplinary approach to this historical topic.

The role of trade Diasporas can be examined on a global scale through their interactions across religious boundaries. Focusing on several case studies spanning from the trade node of New Julfa, during the 17th Century, (located in modern day Iran) to the migrant diaspora established in Lemberg, Poland near the end of the 16th Century. The aim is to convey the many unique attributes Armenian Diasporic merchants had in order to successfully connect Euro-Asian trade, with an in depth focus on the tight hold they had over Iranian Silk. Attention will also be drawn to the Western Coast of Africa (Cabo Verde Islands) and the Tuscan Diaspora of Jewish merchants, during the 16th and 17th Centuries respectively. A detailed view on the progressive reforms of the Medici in order to attract Jewish merchants to the area, should display their (Jewish Merchants) prestige as gatekeepers to the Middle Eastern markets. Diaspora presence resulted in the development of Governmental control over economic and societal factors. The Civil freedom granted to Diasporas (as well as their civil limits) provides a fascinating study of early modern multiculturalism and the problems that they faced in intolerant societies, the privileges given to Armenian and Jewish nations demonstrate a mixture of capitalism and liberalism during times of persecution. The seemingly natural ability these nomadic merchants had in the field of assimilation was exemplified in the actions of both the Jewish and Armenian merchants, whose trade networks were a testament to their own success.

The diagnosis of cancer and following treatment can bring about significant changes to women’s bodies and well-being. Taking a Feminist Foucauldian stance, this research situates the body as a site constituted by discourses and various forms of power, thus the research sought to identify these forms and analyse the accounts of lived experiences of breast cancer in the context of inscriptive practices and sociocultural conceptions of the body governed by neoliberal governmentality. Ten semi-structured in-depth interviews with self-identifying women who had experienced breast cancer in the past ten years were conducted, followed by feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis revealing four key themes: the body as site of control, where medical authority and patients’ autonomy collide; the body as site of performance, regarding adoption of various social roles and stigma management in order to contain the abject ‘out of control’ body from the social regulatory gaze whilst recognising the discourses of ‘healthism’ and normative beauty; the body as a site of resistance, with the interviewees opposing the dominant neoliberal discourses of idealised femininity and challenging the prescriptive notion of post-transformational growth; the body as a site of politics, regarding support groups, health care and work place policies affecting, enabling or constraining, cancer patients and survivors. Furthermore, with a feminist ethos in mind, this research argues for the necessity of adequate psychological help available to individuals affected by cancer, and the establishment of work place policies ensuring training for every employee regarding cancer patients and survivors return to work.

Introduction: The potential use of gene therapy for cancer treatment has been widely studied and novel approaches improving patient’s quality of life are still aspiring. As a candidate of that, we chose holin, lytic enzyme, derived from thermophilic bacteriophage ϕOH2. Previous work showedϕOH2-holin (OH2hol) oligomers form a lesion in the cytoplasmic membranes of bacterial cell, triggering cell lysis. On the other hand, Bax/Bak proteins form a lesion in mitochondrial outer membrane, contributing mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization and induce apoptosis. We consider the similar function between Holin and Bax/Bak. Therefore we are trying induction of apoptotic death to cancer cells. Materials and Methods The effect of OH2hol on human cells was studied by applying viability assays as follows. To express OH2hol in mitochondria of human cell OH2hol gene and mitochondria target signal (MTS) cassette were cloned into doxycycline-inducible Tet-One system vector. Then, human lung cancer cells, A549 were transfected with retrovirus to harbor the Tet-One system. Results and Discussion Expression of OH2hol led to substantial reduction of cell viability of more than 70%. Chromatin-like aggregation, the feature of apoptosis, was observed from visualized dead cells. Activation of caspase 3, 7 which are major contributor of apoptosis was detected from A549. These results suggest that MTS-OH2hol induces apoptosis of A549 as well as Bax/Bak proteins. Further study will be examined the effect of OH2hol for other cells such as cancer cells (HepG2, Caco-2) and normal cells (TIG1, HUC-F2) to clarify if there are specificities of OH2hol.

Japan is the largest breeding area for loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) in the Northern Pacific Ocean. Nichinan coast is the part of coasts in Miyazaki, the second largest breeding area in Japan. There are so beautiful nature such as beach, forests, river and so on. I was brought up in such a beautiful area and had been engaged in activities to protect the environment for sea turtles laying eggs for seven years. Through the activities, I faced so many problems surrounding sea turtles in Nichinan coast. Especially, two of them is very serious. One is encroachment. It narrows down the area of sandy beaches and results in sea turtles giving up laying eggs. Even if they lay eggs, the eggs are exposed to danger of flown out by approaching low pressure and typhoons. The other is float trashes. Since they accumulate on beaches, they also obstruct sea turtle’s landing. Moreover, some scientists argue that sea turtles might be killed by eating trashes like plastic bags. In Nichinan, many trials are put into practice. Beach clean is the most ordinary way. In addition, eggs are moved to hatchery to protect from encroachment. However, these attempts also contains many problems including human resources, budgets and ethics. My research theme in the University is how we can protect and recover environment suitable for sea turtles effectively. In the presentation, I would like to introduce present situation and problems. Also, I wish I can discuss on these problems.

Extreme learning machine (ELM) is a single-hidden layer feed-forward neural network with an efficient learning algorithm. Conventionally an ELM is trained using all the data based on the least square solution, and thus it may suffer from overfitting. In this paper, we present a new method of data and feature mixed ensemble based extreme learning machine (DFEN-ELM). DFEN-ELM combines data ensemble and feature subspace ensemble to tackle the overfitting problem and it takes advantage of the fast speed of ELM when building ensembles of classifiers. Both one-class and two-class ensemble based ELM have been studied.

Experiments were conducted on computed tomography (CT) data for liver tumor detection and segmentation as well as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data for rodent brain segmentation. To improve the ensembles with new training data, sequential kernel learning is adopted further in the experiments on CT data for speedy retraining and iteratively enhancing the image segmentation performance. Experiment results on different testing cases and various testing datasets demonstrate that DFEN-ELM is a robust and efficient algorithm for medical object detection and segmentation. Besides, two-class imbalance problem is also addressed in the liver tumor segmentation experiment since we would expect “healthy� pixels exceed greatly “cancerous� pixels under most of the cases. Experiment results show that by alleviating two-class imbalance problem, the segmentation results can be more accurate and more stable.

Part of the work was accepted by Multimedia Tools and Applications international journal publisher.

Australia has decided that automotive manufacturing is not in its future; by 2017, neither Holden, Ford or Toyota will produce another car here. For communities faced with major job losses, the question is: where will the new jobs come from? The state government has identified six sectors with the most potential for growth; medical technology and pharmaceuticals; new energy technology; food and fibre processing; transport; defence and construction technology; international education and professional services. This paper applies these to Melbourne’s North by analysing their potential for job creation in the region. It also posits the additional significance of high-tech manufacturing and other industries. More immediately, the paper outlines the transitional assistance for affected workers and supply chain companies. With unemployment in Broadmeadows already equal to Greece, such measures aim to retain the skills base and replace the number of jobs lost. In addition to a review of relevant journal articles, news, ABS data, case studies and economic development reports, interviews were conducted with business and all three levels of government. The paper also explores the economic and social characteristics of Broadmeadows which must be leveraged to ensure it becomes the ‘capital of the north’ and not a ghost town, when the Ford factory shuts its doors in October 2016. The opportunity exists for Broadmeadows to create itself as an example for other communities experiencing this transition, by identifying and harnessing areas of future employment growth.

The trap lane and option lane configurations (the intersection between a freeway facility and its connecting on- or off-ramp) are evaluated against various performance measures at a selection of sites along the Mitchell Freeway, located in Perth, Western Australia.

To determine the impact that lane configuration has on freeway performance, both a theoretical and an empirical analysis are undertaken to assess the current freeway conditions. Both these analyses show that changes to lane configuration can have an impact on freeway performance, as the vehicle demand is in excess of capacity during peak times and below capacity at other times. Prior research considered ramps only in isolation, and used capacity as a sole measure of performance.

Results from a microsimulation model showed that for a high-volume environment, a trap lane configuration offered better average travel times. Changes in lane configuration can provide improvement to the Level of Service of a freeway facility, although other factors exist which can affect the performance of a freeway.

In this day and age, the objectionable nature of colonialism is beyond dispute. However, seventeen colonies still remain and there has been no change to the United Nations List of Non-Self-Governing Territories since 2002. The effectiveness of the UN decolonisation process is therefore questioned, especially by the remaining seventeen colonies and their Administering Powers. The 2006 Constitution of Gibraltar establishes a modern, non-colonial relationship between the United Kingdom and Gibraltar. However, Gibraltar is still included in the List of Non-Self-Governing Territories. The matter is further complicated by the existence of a third party, Spain, claiming sovereignty rights over Gibraltar with no regard to the wishes of the people of Gibraltar. Some of the most contentious criteria to be fulfilled in order for a territory to be recognised as having achieved a full measure of self-government will be assessed. A comparison will be drawn with territories in similar circumstances which have been removed from the UN List of Non-Self-Governing Territories, in an attempt to expose the inconsistency of the UN’s approach to the case of Gibraltar. Although there is some literature on the constitutional status of Gibraltar, and plenty of academic opinion on the right to self-determination, an in-depth analysis of Gibraltar’s current Constitution and what it means for Gibraltar’s constitutional status generally, is an original concept, which I hope will provide the audience with the necessary information to understand the difficulties faced by the remaining ‘colonies,’ in the international fora.