7,569 research outputs found
A view of colonial life in South Australia: An osteological investigation of the health status among 19th-century migrant settlers
Studies of human skeletal remains contribute to understanding the extent to which conditions
prevailing in various past communities were detrimental to health. Few of these studies have
evaluated the situation in which the first European colonists of South Australia lived.
Colonial Australian skeletal collections are scarce, especially for research purposes. This
makes the 19th-century skeletal remains of individuals, excavated from St Mary’s Cemetery,
South Australia, a rare and valuable collection.
The overarching aim of this thesis was to investigate the general and oral health of this
specific group of 19th-century settlers, through the examination of their skeletons and
dentitions. Four research papers in this thesis address this overarching aim. The first two
papers determine the general skeletal health of the settlers, with a focus on pathological
manifestations on bones associated with metabolic deficiencies and the demands of
establishing an industrial society. Paper 3 investigated whether Large Volume Micro-
Computed Tomography (LV Micro-CT) could be used as a single technique for the analysis
of the in situ dentoalveolar complex of individuals from St Mary’s. This led to a detailed
investigation of the dentitions of the St Mary’s sample, in paper 4, with the aims of
determining the oral health status of these individuals, and understanding how oral conditions
may have influenced their general health.
The skeletal remains of 65 individuals (20 adults and 45 subadults) from St Mary’s sample
were available for the four component investigations using non-destructive techniques -
macroscopic, radiographic and micro-CT methods.
Signs of nutritional deficiencies (vitamin C and iron) were identified in Paper 1. The findings
of paper 2 showed joint diseases and traumatic fractures were seen and that gastrointestinal and pulmonary conditions were the leading causes of death in subadults and adults
respectively. Paper 3 found that the LV Micro-CT technique was the only method able to
generate images that allowed the full range of detailed measurements across all the oral
health categories studied. A combination of macroscopic and radiographic techniques
covered a number of these categories, but was more time-consuming, and did not provide the
same level of accuracy or include all measurements. Results for paper 4 confirmed that
extensive carious lesions, antemortem tooth loss and evidence of periodontal disease were
present in the St Mary’s sample. Developmental defects of enamel (EH) and areas of
interglobular dentine (IGD) were identified. Many individuals with dental defects also had
skeletal signs of co-morbidities. St Mary’s individuals had a similar percentage of carious
lesions as the British sample, which was more than other historic Australian samples, but less
than a contemporary New Zealand sample.
The 19th-century migrants to the colony of South Australia were faced with multiple
challenges such as adapting to local environmental conditions as well as participating in the
development of settlements, infrastructure and new industries. Evidence of joint diseases,
traumatic injuries and health insults, seen as pathological changes and/ or abnormalities on
the bone and/or teeth, confirmed that the settlers' health had been affected. The number of
burials in the ‘free ground’ area between the 1840s -1870s was greater than the number in the
leased plots, reflecting the economic problems of the colony during these early years.
Validation of the reliability and accuracy of the LV Micro-CT system for the analysis of the
dentoalveolar complex, in situ within archaeological human skull samples, provided a
microanalytical approach for the in-depth investigations of the St Mary’s dentition. Extensive
carious lesions, antemortem tooth loss and periodontal disease seen in this group would have
affected their general health status. The presence of developmental defects (EH and IGD)
indicated that many of the settlers had suffered health insults in childhood to young adulthood. Contemporaneous Australian, New Zealand and British samples had comparable
findings suggesting that little improvement had occurred in their oral health since arriving in
South Australia.
In conclusion, the findings of this investigation largely fulfilled the initial aims. Our
understanding of the extent to which conditions prevailing in the new colony were
detrimental to human health has increased, as has our knowledge of why pathological
manifestations and/or abnormalities were seen on the bones and teeth of individuals from the
St Mary’s sample. A multiple-method approach, to derive enhanced information has been
shown to be effective, whilst establishing a new methodology (LV Micro-CT) for the analysis
of dentition in situ in human archaeological skulls. Further, this investigation has digitally
preserved data relating to this historical group of individuals for future comparisons.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Biomedicine, 202
Endogenous measures for contextualising large-scale social phenomena: a corpus-based method for mediated public discourse
This work presents an interdisciplinary methodology for developing endogenous measures of group membership through analysis of pervasive linguistic patterns in public discourse. Focusing on political discourse, this work critiques the conventional approach to the study of political participation, which is premised on decontextualised, exogenous measures to characterise groups. Considering the theoretical and empirical weaknesses of decontextualised approaches to large-scale social phenomena, this work suggests that contextualisation using endogenous measures might provide a complementary perspective to mitigate such weaknesses.
This work develops a sociomaterial perspective on political participation in mediated discourse as affiliatory action performed through language. While the affiliatory function of language is often performed consciously (such as statements of identity), this work is concerned with unconscious features (such as patterns in lexis and grammar). This work argues that pervasive patterns in such features that emerge through socialisation are resistant to change and manipulation, and thus might serve as endogenous measures of sociopolitical contexts, and thus of groups.
In terms of method, the work takes a corpus-based approach to the analysis of data from the Twitter messaging service whereby patterns in users’ speech are examined statistically in order to trace potential community membership. The method is applied in the US state of Michigan during the second half of 2018—6 November having been the date of midterm (i.e. non-Presidential) elections in the United States. The corpus is assembled from the original posts of 5,889 users, who are nominally geolocalised to 417 municipalities. These users are clustered according to pervasive language features. Comparing the linguistic clusters according to the municipalities they represent finds that there are regular sociodemographic differentials across clusters. This is understood as an indication of social structure, suggesting that endogenous measures derived from pervasive patterns in language may indeed offer a complementary, contextualised perspective on large-scale social phenomena
CITIES: Energetic Efficiency, Sustainability; Infrastructures, Energy and the Environment; Mobility and IoT; Governance and Citizenship
This book collects important contributions on smart cities. This book was created in collaboration with the ICSC-CITIES2020, held in San José (Costa Rica) in 2020. This book collects articles on: energetic efficiency and sustainability; infrastructures, energy and the environment; mobility and IoT; governance and citizenship
Technologies and Applications for Big Data Value
This open access book explores cutting-edge solutions and best practices for big data and data-driven AI applications for the data-driven economy. It provides the reader with a basis for understanding how technical issues can be overcome to offer real-world solutions to major industrial areas. The book starts with an introductory chapter that provides an overview of the book by positioning the following chapters in terms of their contributions to technology frameworks which are key elements of the Big Data Value Public-Private Partnership and the upcoming Partnership on AI, Data and Robotics. The remainder of the book is then arranged in two parts. The first part “Technologies and Methods” contains horizontal contributions of technologies and methods that enable data value chains to be applied in any sector. The second part “Processes and Applications” details experience reports and lessons from using big data and data-driven approaches in processes and applications. Its chapters are co-authored with industry experts and cover domains including health, law, finance, retail, manufacturing, mobility, and smart cities. Contributions emanate from the Big Data Value Public-Private Partnership and the Big Data Value Association, which have acted as the European data community's nucleus to bring together businesses with leading researchers to harness the value of data to benefit society, business, science, and industry. The book is of interest to two primary audiences, first, undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in various fields, including big data, data science, data engineering, and machine learning and AI. Second, practitioners and industry experts engaged in data-driven systems, software design and deployment projects who are interested in employing these advanced methods to address real-world problems
New Research and Trends in Higher Education
This book aims to discuss new research and trends on all dimensions of Higher Education, as there is a growing interest in the field of Higher Education, regarding new methodologies, contexts, and technologies. It includes investigations of diverse issues that affect the learning processes in Higher Education: innovations in learning, new pedagogical methods, and new learning contexts.In this sense, original research contributions of research papers, case studies and demonstrations that present original scientific results, methodological aspects, concepts and educational technologies, on the following topics:a) Technological Developments in Higher Education: mobile technology, virtual environments, augmented reality, automation and robotics, and other tools for universal learning, focusing on issues that are not addressed by existing research;b) Digital Higher Education: mobile learning, eLearning, Game-based Learning, social media in education, new learning models and technologies and wearable technologies for education;c) Case Studies in Higher Education: empirical studies in higher education regarding digital technologies, new methodologies, new evaluation techniques and tools, perceptions of learning processes efficiency and digital learning best practice
Digital asset management via distributed ledgers
Distributed ledgers rose to prominence with the advent of Bitcoin, the first provably secure protocol to solve consensus in an open-participation setting. Following, active research and engineering efforts have proposed a multitude of applications and alternative designs, the most prominent being Proof-of-Stake (PoS). This thesis expands the scope of secure and efficient asset management over a distributed ledger around three axes: i) cryptography; ii) distributed systems; iii) game theory and economics. First, we analyze the security of various wallets. We start with a formal model of hardware wallets, followed by an analytical framework of PoS wallets, each outlining the unique properties of Proof-of-Work (PoW) and PoS respectively. The latter also provides a rigorous design to form collaborative participating entities, called stake pools. We then propose Conclave, a stake pool design which enables a group of parties to participate in a PoS system in a collaborative manner, without a central operator. Second, we focus on efficiency. Decentralized systems are aimed at thousands of users across the globe, so a rigorous design for minimizing memory and storage consumption is a prerequisite for scalability. To that end, we frame ledger maintenance as an optimization problem and design a multi-tier framework for designing wallets which ensure that updates increase the ledger’s global state only to a minimal extent, while preserving the security guarantees outlined in the security analysis. Third, we explore incentive-compatibility and analyze blockchain systems from a micro and a macroeconomic perspective. We enrich our cryptographic and systems' results by analyzing the incentives of collective pools and designing a state efficient Bitcoin fee function. We then analyze the Nash dynamics of distributed ledgers, introducing a formal model that evaluates whether rational, utility-maximizing participants are disincentivized from exhibiting undesirable infractions, and highlighting the differences between PoW and PoS-based ledgers, both in a standalone setting and under external parameters, like market price fluctuations. We conclude by introducing a macroeconomic principle, cryptocurrency egalitarianism, and then describing two mechanisms for enabling taxation in blockchain-based currency systems
Full stack development toward a trapped ion logical qubit
Quantum error correction is a key step toward the construction of a large-scale quantum computer, by preventing small infidelities in quantum gates from accumulating over the course of an algorithm. Detecting and correcting errors is achieved by using multiple physical qubits to form a smaller number of robust logical
qubits. The physical implementation of a logical qubit requires multiple qubits, on which high fidelity gates
can be performed.
The project aims to realize a logical qubit based on ions confined on a microfabricated surface trap. Each
physical qubit will be a microwave dressed state qubit based on 171Yb+ ions. Gates are intended to be realized through RF and microwave radiation in combination with magnetic field gradients. The project vertically integrates software down to hardware compilation layers in order to deliver, in the near future, a fully functional small device demonstrator.
This thesis presents novel results on multiple layers of a full stack quantum computer model. On the hardware level a robust quantum gate is studied and ion displacement over the X-junction geometry is demonstrated.
The experimental organization is optimized through automation and compressed waveform data transmission. A new quantum assembly language purely dedicated to trapped ion quantum computers is introduced. The demonstrator is aimed at testing implementation of quantum error correction codes while preparing for larger
scale iterations.Open Acces
Graphical scaffolding for the learning of data wrangling APIs
In order for students across the sciences to avail themselves of modern data streams, they must first know how to wrangle data: how to reshape ill-organised, tabular data into another format, and how to do this programmatically, in languages such as Python and R. Despite the cross-departmental demand and the ubiquity of data wrangling in analytical workflows, the research on how to optimise the instruction of it has been minimal. Although data wrangling as a programming domain presents distinctive challenges - characterised by on-the-fly syntax lookup and code example integration - it also presents opportunities. One such opportunity is how tabular data structures are easily visualised. To leverage the inherent visualisability of data wrangling, this dissertation evaluates three types of graphics that could be employed as scaffolding for novices: subgoal graphics, thumbnail graphics, and parameter graphics. Using a specially built e-learning platform, this dissertation documents a multi-institutional, randomised, and controlled experiment that investigates the pedagogical effects of these. Our results indicate that the graphics are well-received, that subgoal graphics boost the completion rate, and that thumbnail graphics improve navigability within a command menu. We also obtained several non-significant results, and indications that parameter graphics are counter-productive. We will discuss these findings in the context of general scaffolding dilemmas, and how they fit into a wider research programme on data wrangling instruction
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