6,845 research outputs found

    Converging organoids and extracellular matrix::New insights into liver cancer biology

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    Reframing museum epistemology for the information age: a discursive design approach to revealing complexity

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    This practice-based research inquiry examines the impact of an epistemic shift, brought about by the dawning of the information age and advances in networked communication technologies, on physical knowledge institutions - focusing on museums. The research charts adapting knowledge schemas used in museum knowledge organisation and discusses the potential for a new knowledge schema, the network, to establish a new epistemology for museums that reflects contemporary hyperlinked and networked knowledge. The research investigates the potential for networked and shared virtual reality spaces to reveal new ‘knowledge monuments’ reflecting the epistemic values of the network society and the space of flows. The central practice for this thesis focuses on two main elements. The first is applying networks and visual complexity to reveal multi-linearity and adapting perspectives in relational knowledge networks. This concept was explored through two discursive design projects, the Museum Collection Engine, which uses data visualisation, cloud data, and image recognition within an immersive projection dome to create a dynamic and searchable museum collection that returns new and interlinking constellations of museum objects and knowledge. The second discursive design project was Shared Pasts: Decoding Complexity, an AR app with a unique ‘anti-personalisation’ recommendation system designed to reveal complex narratives around historic objects and places. The second element is folksonomy and co-design in developing new community-focused archives using the community's language to build the dataset and socially tagged metadata. This was tested by developing two discursive prototypes, Women Reclaiming AI and Sanctuary Stories

    Epidemiological methods to evaluate the early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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    The early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic represented a major challenge for health systems and local Governments, with no drugs or vaccines available to provide a pharmaceutical response. In the absence of formal reporting, data gaps and repression by authorities, real-time open-source data can be mined for risk assessment and response early on. In this thesis, open-source and survey generated data was synthesized in novel ways to develop new epidemiological insights into the COVID-19 pandemic and advise public health policy. There were also controversies in areas where no data on risks associated with cruise ship travel, healthcare workers, aged-care, and mass gatherings was available. This thesis analyzed a range of these issues in the first year of the pandemic. In chapter 1, I summarized the literature on the COVID-19 pandemic and identified gaps in using open-source data for early responses to pandemics. In chapter 2, I assessed the impact of cruise ship travel on the transmission of COVID-19 both globally and in Australia. In chapter 3, in the absence of any reported data on healthcare workers, I estimated the burden of COVID-19 on Australian healthcare workers and the health system, by analyzing national healthcare worker infections and their occupational risk of COVID-19. Similarly, with no formal reporting on Australian COVID-19 aged-care infections and outbreaks, I estimated the burden of COVID-19 on Australian aged-care and aged-care workers in 2020, in chapter 4. With the controversy surrounding the May-June 2020, Black Lives Matter protests and COVID-19 associated risks, I estimated mask use and COVID-19 associated risks of these protests. In chapter 6, with the controversial mask mandates in Australia, I evaluated mask attitude and government and state sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sydney and Melbourne. This thesis highlights the value of open-source, and survey data, which provides good insights into population attitudes around public health issues and practice and can enhance routine surveillance, early warning, and response. With many countries now minimizing COVID-19, the use of this data is even more important as prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic requires both long-term public health and epidemiology measures

    Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management

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    This book is a reprint of the Special Issue 'Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management' that was published in the journal Buildings

    Behavioural ecology of the greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) and conservation tool development in a semi-wild sanctuary

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    Conservation translocations are becoming an increasingly necessary tool to stem the decline of threatened species globally. The greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) is a nationally threatened species in Australia. While bilby translocations are expected to contribute to the species’ persistence, the scarcity of information on their behaviour and ecology prevents informed-management. By intensively studying a population of bilbies both prior to, and following reintroduction, and subsequent reinforcements to a fenced sanctuary, I aimed to (1) advance knowledge of bilby behaviour and examine behaviours potentially relevant to fitness (i.e. survival and breeding success), (2) improve ecological knowledge of bilbies within understudied (temperate) climates, and (3) use this knowledge to suggest and develop effective tools for their conservation. Chapter 1 describes the current state of research in applied conservation research, and how increased behavioural data could help address some of the current knowledge gaps for bilby conservation. In Chapter 2, I examined patterns in bilby resource selection, finding that selection changed between seasons and years due to the environmental conditions and resources available. I also found that resource requirements are likely to be behavioural-state dependent and sex-specific. In Chapter 3, I constructed social networks to examine nocturnal proximity of bilbies and concurrent burrow sharing and found that associations were non-random. Expanding on this, in Chapter 4, I found that burrow sharing was likely to help describe breeding strategies, as males strongly avoided other males, and mixed-sex dyads exhibited kin-avoidance when mate choice was more limited. In Chapter 5, I developed a test to screen personality traits in bilbies, finding links between male response to handling and relative breeding success post-release. Lastly, in Chapter 6, I described a method to collect detailed movement data on the bilby, and discussed some of the practical and animal welfare constraints for its application. My thesis provides new insights into the behavioural ecology of the bilby with potential implications for future management of the species. With further translocations necessary for long-term persistence of the bilby, this research is highly relevant to current and future management of this ecologically important species, with potential applications to other similarly at-risk species

    Specificity of the innate immune responses to different classes of non-tuberculous mycobacteria

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    Mycobacterium avium is the most common nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM) species causing infectious disease. Here, we characterized a M. avium infection model in zebrafish larvae, and compared it to M. marinum infection, a model of tuberculosis. M. avium bacteria are efficiently phagocytosed and frequently induce granuloma-like structures in zebrafish larvae. Although macrophages can respond to both mycobacterial infections, their migration speed is faster in infections caused by M. marinum. Tlr2 is conservatively involved in most aspects of the defense against both mycobacterial infections. However, Tlr2 has a function in the migration speed of macrophages and neutrophils to infection sites with M. marinum that is not observed with M. avium. Using RNAseq analysis, we found a distinct transcriptome response in cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction for M. avium and M. marinum infection. In addition, we found differences in gene expression in metabolic pathways, phagosome formation, matrix remodeling, and apoptosis in response to these mycobacterial infections. In conclusion, we characterized a new M. avium infection model in zebrafish that can be further used in studying pathological mechanisms for NTM-caused diseases

    Geo-Information Harvesting from Social Media Data

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    As unconventional sources of geo-information, massive imagery and text messages from open platforms and social media form a temporally quasi-seamless, spatially multiperspective stream, but with unknown and diverse quality. Due to its complementarity to remote sensing data, geo-information from these sources offers promising perspectives, but harvesting is not trivial due to its data characteristics. In this article, we address key aspects in the field, including data availability, analysisready data preparation and data management, geo-information extraction from social media text messages and images, and the fusion of social media and remote sensing data. We then showcase some exemplary geographic applications. In addition, we present the first extensive discussion of ethical considerations of social media data in the context of geo-information harvesting and geographic applications. With this effort, we wish to stimulate curiosity and lay the groundwork for researchers who intend to explore social media data for geo-applications. We encourage the community to join forces by sharing their code and data

    Advancing prostate cancer therapies through integrative multi-omics:It’s about time

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    Expectations and expertise in artificial intelligence: specialist views and historical perspectives on conceptualisation, promise, and funding

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    Artificial intelligence’s (AI) distinctiveness as a technoscientific field that imitates the ability to think went through a resurgence of interest post-2010, attracting a flood of scientific and popular expectations as to its utopian or dystopian transformative consequences. This thesis offers observations about the formation and dynamics of expectations based on documentary material from the previous periods of perceived AI hype (1960-1975 and 1980-1990, including in-between periods of perceived dormancy), and 25 interviews with UK-based AI specialists, directly involved with its development, who commented on the issues during the crucial period of uncertainty (2017-2019) and intense negotiation through which AI gained momentum prior to its regulation and relatively stabilised new rounds of long-term investment (2020-2021). This examination applies and contributes to longitudinal studies in the sociology of expectations (SoE) and studies of experience and expertise (SEE) frameworks, proposing a historical sociology of expertise and expectations framework. The research questions, focusing on the interplay between hype mobilisation and governance, are: (1) What is the relationship between AI practical development and the broader expectational environment, in terms of funding and conceptualisation of AI? (2) To what extent does informal and non-developer assessment of expectations influence formal articulations of foresight? (3) What can historical examinations of AI’s conceptual and promissory settings tell about the current rebranding of AI? The following contributions are made: (1) I extend SEE by paying greater attention to the interplay between technoscientific experts and wider collective arenas of discourse amongst non-specialists and showing how AI’s contemporary research cultures are overwhelmingly influenced by the hype environment but also contribute to it. This further highlights the interaction between competing rationales focusing on exploratory, curiosity-driven scientific research against exploitation-oriented strategies at formal and informal levels. (2) I suggest benefits of examining promissory environments in AI and related technoscientific fields longitudinally, treating contemporary expectations as historical products of sociotechnical trajectories through an authoritative historical reading of AI’s shifting conceptualisation and attached expectations as a response to availability of funding and broader national imaginaries. This comes with the benefit of better perceiving technological hype as migrating from social group to social group instead of fading through reductionist cycles of disillusionment; either by rebranding of technical operations, or by the investigation of a given field by non-technical practitioners. It also sensitises to critically examine broader social expectations as factors for shifts in perception about theoretical/basic science research transforming into applied technological fields. Finally, (3) I offer a model for understanding the significance of interplay between conceptualisations, promising, and motivations across groups within competing dynamics of collective and individual expectations and diverse sources of expertise
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