An evaluation of the effect of a planned and guided European travel experience on the attitudes, understandings, and knowledge of fifty-one women teachers.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Improving Information Sharing for Effective Social Outcomes

The research project focused on the following questions: To what extent and how is personal information of individuals with complex social needs collected, managed, and shared across government and other organisations? What are barriers and enablers to cross-government information sharing? What are existing strategies and arrangements for enabling cross-government information sharing in other jurisdictions? What can New Zealand learn from other jurisdictions in that respect? How, and under what conditions, can cross-government information sharing be improved in order to achieve more effective social outcomes

E-Government: Transformation of Public Governance in New Zealand?

New information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been introduced in the government sector throughout the world in the past 10 - 20 years in an attempt to achieve greater operational efficiency and effectiveness. The benefits of ICTs include faster, streamlined administrative processing; lower transaction costs; better use of information resources; greater public access to government information and services; and more opportunities for public participation in democratic processes. These changes are often heralded by e-government commentators as "transformative'.This implies that technical innovation will deliver business benefits and produce radical change in the way that government agencies are organised to service parliament and the public. That is, a change in state sector governance arrangements. This thesis examines the concept of 'transformation' in the New Zealand state sector context with a view to determining the form and nature of governance changes that may occur as a consequence of e-government implementation. Two streams of empirical data gathering have been completed. These provide data on how e-government initiatives are currently being implemented in New Zealand, and the impact senior public officials and public management experts consider e-government will have in the future. A Weberian analytical framework is used to identify the nature of changes that occur as a consequence of e-government initiatives, and where changes may occur in the current public sector governance model. The empirical evidence suggests that e-government will have two transformational effects in New Zealand: instrumental and systemic. These effects will occur as public officials use ICTs to increase operational efficiency and effectiveness; develop broad-based collaboration and co-production working arrangements; and expand the resources available to government to address policy issues and delivery services. Adjustments to current governance arrangements are required to position public officials to use communication technologies effectively in the future. Initial reform efforts need to be made in the areas of accountability structures and leadership

Numerical modelling of perimeter pile groups in clay

The load distribution among piles in a group varies such that the inner piles often carry a smaller share of the total load compared to the outer piles, which is a result of increased soil–pile interaction. The main objective of this paper is to establish the relative effectiveness of pile groups with no inner piles (perimeter group), when compared to the more common grid configuration. The numerical investigation utilized the finite element programme ABAQUS and considered a range of variables that affect pile group behaviour including number of piles, pile spacing, length/diameter ratio, and soil strength. It was demonstrated that a complete grid group is less efficient than a perimeter group, where efficiency is defined as the load capacity of the whole group expressed as a ratio of the number of piles in the group multiplied by the load capacity of a single isolated pile. Efficiencies close to unity were observed for some perimeter groups. Perimeter groups also showed that a “block” type group failure could occur, where piles were placed at a spacing of less than 2.0 pile diameters,d, centre-to-centre. This often, but not always, led to a reduction in the efficiency of the pile group

Radiofluorination of a highly potent ATM inhibitor as a potential PET imaging agent

PURPOSE: Ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) is a key mediator of the DNA damage response, and several ATM inhibitors (ATMi) are currently undergoing early phase clinical trials for the treatment of cancer. A radiolabelled ATMi to determine drug pharmacokinetics could assist patient selection in a move towards more personalised medicine. The aim of this study was to synthesise and investigate the first 18F-labelled ATM inhibitor [18F]1 for non-invasive imaging of ATM protein and ATMi pharmacokinetics. METHODS: Radiofluorination of a confirmed selective ATM inhibitor (1) was achieved through substitution of a nitro-precursor with [18F]fluoride. Uptake of [18F]1 was assessed in vitro in H1299 lung cancer cells stably transfected with shRNA to reduce expression of ATM. Blocking studies using several non-radioactive ATM inhibitors assessed binding specificity to ATM. In vivo biodistribution studies were performed in wild-type and ATM-knockout C57BL/6 mice using PET/CT and ex vivo analysis. Uptake of [18F]1 in H1299 tumour xenografts was assessed in BALB/c nu/nu mice. RESULTS: Nitro-precursor 2 was synthesised with an overall yield of 12%. Radiofluorination of 2 achieved radiochemically pure [18F]1 in 80 ± 13 min with a radiochemical yield of 20 ± 13% (decay-corrected) and molar activities up to 79.5 GBq/μmol (n = 11). In vitro, cell-associated activity of [18F]1 increased over 1 h, and retention of [18F]1 dropped to 50% over 2 h. [18F]1 uptake did not correlate with ATM expression, but could be reduced significantly with an excess of known ATM inhibitors, demonstrating specific binding of [18F]1 to ATM. In vivo, fast hepatobiliary clearance was observed with tumour uptake ranging 0.13-0.90%ID/g after 1 h. CONCLUSION: Here, we report the first radiofluorination of an ATM inhibitor and its in vitro and in vivo biological evaluations, revealing the benefits but also some limitations of 18F-labelled ATM inhibitors