Open Access Theses
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Item Open Access Mastering old age : Buddhist practice and techniques of the self among elderly laywomen in Ho Chi Minh City(2016-09) Le, Hoang Anh ThuThis thesis is an anthropological study of old age and Buddhism in Vietnam. It explores how Vietnamese women utilise Buddhist practice to navigate the late stage of life. Embedded in the context of a fast growing aging population and the present lack of studies that focus on aging in Vietnam, this research looks to contribute to the understanding of aging and the life course, and the role of religious practice in informing and reconstructing the everyday experience of being old in Vietnam. This research shows that Buddhism is a regime of practice that elderly women follow in their everyday life. As a daily practice, Buddhism shapes women’s experience of being old, by transforming the temporal and spatial structure of their everyday lives, and extending their social networks and engagements far beyond their families and feminine roles at home. Buddhist imaginaries and conceptualisations of life redefine the way women conduct themselves in their everyday lives and perceive and live out their roles at home and in wider society. In the process, elderly women also transform Buddhist practice to make it respond to their lived realities. Buddhism is lived out by elderly women not as a doctrine but as a practical way of life. The way of life that Buddhism carves out for its elderly adepts is embedded in the socioeconomic landscape of the contemporary socialist market economy in Vietnam and is imprinted with its practitioners’ gender- and age-specific habitus. This research finds out that Buddhism is also a set of techniques that work on the self, through which elderly women redefine their relational personhood in their interactions with their families and the wider society. Buddhism provides its elderly adepts with self-mastery resources which enable them face the dreadful thresholds of the final stage of life. As a technique of the self, Buddhism enables elderly practitioners to adjust their identities and personhood, which in turn give them a sense of purposefulness, agency and control over the various realities that emerge in the course of old age, such as physical decline, ambiguities in identity and loss of agency at the end stage of life. Old age is therefore mastered with Buddhist practice, and is transformed from a life stage of marginality and infirmity, to an experience of continuing personal development and empowerment.Item Open Access Epidemiological investigation of diseases of public health importance in Victoria, Australia(2017-07) Arnott, AliciaIn this thesis, I present the projects and activities I have undertaken as a Master of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology (MAE) Scholar in Victoria between February 2015 and September 2016. I was placed with the Communicable Disease Epidemiology and Surveillance (CDES) Unit at the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, and the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) Epidemiology Unit. Through these placements I experienced the day-to-day activities of a state public health unit as well as an applied public health research environment. I conducted a cohort study to identify the source of a large, highly publicised outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium at a five-star hotel in Melbourne, which was identified as raw-egg mayonnaise used in sandwich fillings served at a High Tea. For my data analysis project, I investigated the epidemiology of legionellosis in Victoria between 2000 and 2015 to determine whether the ubiquity of the Legionella pneumophila specific urinary antigen test is creating an 'epidemiological blind spot' for non - Legionella pneumophila infections. I found that whilst this method was ubiquitous prior to and during the study period, the rate of infection with non-Legionella pneumophila species did not decline in parallel as expected if urinary antigen testing routinely precluded their detection. I evaluated the complex Victorian influenza surveillance system, which involved analysis of data captured by the system from 2005 - 2014. As a whole, the system was found to perform well and the data collected were used to inform public health activities. Geographic representativeness of syndromic ILI data was high, demonstrating its utility as a surveillance tool, and the widespread uptake of molecular diagnostic testing enhanced overall system sensitivity, timeliness and flexibility. In addition, the data collected enabled robust estimates of seasonal vaccine effectiveness to be determined which informs local public health action and global vaccine development. However, important deficiencies that prevent the system from achieving a number of its objectives were identified. Most importantly, the ability of the current system to guide planning and implementation of policy and to detect and control outbreaks is limited, and laboratory testing denominator data are not available to facilitate interpretation of seasonal trends and true influenza incidence. My epidemiological project was an analysis of whether registering with Spleen Australia [formerly the Victorian Spleen Registry (VSR)], which provides education, clinical guidance and health promotion reminders, reduces the incidence of overwhelming post splenectomy infection amongst Victorian registrants without a spleen. By conducting a survival analysis, I found that VSR registration was indeed associated with a highly significant (p<0.001) 88% reduction in the incidence of severe infection amongst splenectomised registrants. Finally, I present two teaching activities conducted during my MAE: a session on how to conduct outbreak investigation interviews and a lesson from the field highlighting the utility and pitfalls of culture-independent diagnostic testing when investigating an outbreak of Shigella. This thesis provides an account of my MAE experience, fulfills the requirements of the program and outlines the contribution my work has made to public health in Victoria.Item Open Access The ecology and conservation of southern squirrel glider populations in agricultural landscapes(2016-04) Crane, Mason JamesMuch of the world's terrestrial environment is transformed by human activities, particularly agriculture. Within these anthropogenic landscapes some wildlife persists but, with varying degrees of success. Increasingly, there is a realisation of the importance of natural and seminatural features within agricultural landscapes for biodiversity conservation. For species whose geographical range or habitat preference largely coincides with landscapes transformed by other land uses, understanding key habitats, how they are used, and the threats posed to these habitats is essential. This work focuses on the southern population of the squirrel glider Petaurus norfolcensis, a genetically distinct subpopulation with a geographic range that largely coincides with the sheep/wheat belt of eastern Australia. This thesis explores the use of relictual and seminatural habitats of the species in highly modified agricultural landscapes, via radio-tracking collared individuals. The research aims to examine key habitats and their use, and to close some of the knowledge gaps relating to their ecology and conservation. I describe crucial denning and feeding habitats of the species. Detailed field measurements and logistic regression models were used to identify key physical characteristics of these habitats and their biophysical context. Large, healthy Eucalyptus trees were significant in all models. Gliders used numerous den sites, often sharing with other individuals. Den tree selection was often associated with the location of nocturnal activity, indicating the role of den trees in facilitating efficient foraging. The majority of nocturnal activity took place in the canopy of Eucalyptus trees, with a strong preference for those trees in flower. In the absence of flowering, gliders focused their feeding activity in Eucalyptus trees close to drainage lines. These results highlight the importance of habitats in different parts of the landscape and of maintaining connectivity across them, but particularly, the importance of the mesic parts of the landscape in sustaining populations between flowering events. Gliders used four distinct countryside elements: linear roadside remnants, native vegetation patches (typically on travelling stock reserves), native tree plantings, and scattered trees. Gliders were found to survive entirely within these four elements, with some individuals able to persist in just one element (with the exception of native tree plantings). I demonstrate that the relative habitat value of each element varied, evident from the preferential selection of elements and the impact of their availability on home range size. Scattered trees had a disproportionately high value when compared to other countryside elements. My thesis presents new knowledge of key habitats of the squirrel glider, their use and threats (including a detailed examination of the threat of wildfire on scattered trees). This information has direct conservation implications for the species and adds to the broader discussion on conservation in agricultural landscapes. The thesis is concluded with a synthesis of the new and existing knowledge of southern squirrel gliders and an assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, apparent in the conservation efforts for the species. I recommend ten points of action to improve the conservation outcomes of the southern squirrel glider population.Item Open Access Journey to excellence : characteristics of sustainable elite athlete organisations(2015-07) Stephens, CliveIn the past, management of elite athletes has focused on a coach-athlete (CA) relationship model. More recently, there has been a shift in thinking, to accommodate inputs from the multidisciplines of science, medicine and technology. To better understand the effect of the expanding resources, relationships and networks in elite athlete management, this thesis develops and defines the concept of an Elite Athlete Organisation (EAO), and from an organisational perspective, seeks to answer the question, “What are the organisational factors, practices, and resources that together enable an EAO to be effective and to consistently build a sustainable competitive advantage "? The research was conducted over a three and a half year period, utilising a concurrent mixed method approach (longitudinal case studies and a specially developed survey instrument). Data was collected from a cohort of twelve elite athlete organisations (six key members from each organisation (n = 72 in total). The thesis is an original contribution that validates the emergence and importance of an EAO by comparing the Top 10 and Top 50 EAOs in elite sport. The thesis empirically validates the organisational factors that influence or impeded organisational effectiveness. The primary theoretical contribution is to theory development of an EAO, which sees it as a tightly coupled emergent system made up from the totality of organisational factors, artefacts networks and individuals. Essentially, an EAO is a high functioning knowledge based multidisciplinary entity, delivering a range of specialised integrated services to elite athletes who are capable of podium positions at world-class events. Secondly, the thesis contributes to the discussion of effective management practices in multidisciplinary environments.Item Open Access Understanding Australian Orchids and their Mycorrhizal Fungi: Macro to Microevolutionary Perspectives(2026) O'Donnell, RyanThe Orchidaceae is one of the most speciose flowering plant families on Earth, and questions surrounding the family's extraordinary diversification through time continue to captivate biologists. The family is renowned for its diversity of floral forms and intricate pollination systems, and for their obligate dependence on symbiotic associations with mycorrhizal fungi for seed germination. Australia plays host to some of the world's most unusual terrestrial orchids, many of which exhibit a remarkable degree of both above and below ground specificity with respect to their pollinator and fungal associates. The majority of studies into the Australian orchid flora and its associated funga have thus far been narrow in scope with a focus on either a macro- or microevolutionary scale. In this thesis, I studied the Australian terrestrial orchid flora and its associated funga as a unified system spanning from the macro to microevolutionary scale. Beginning at the macroevolutionary scale, I synthesised phylogenomic data with over 70 years of orchid mycorrhizal fungal research incorporating fungal sequences, morphology, and germination data to detangle recalcitrant evolutionary relationships within the terrestrial orchid tribe Diurideae. I uncovered an unprecedented degree of fungal niche specificity and demonstrated that fungal symbiont preferences in the Diurideae are phylogenetically structured and can be used to support certain topological hypotheses despite confounding evolutionary histories. At population scale, I focused on a species complex of sexually deceptive greenhood orchids (Pterostylis; Pterostylidinae) where cryptic species are likely, and performed a population genomic study to determine levels of genomic variation between putative species and whether there is support for existing species hypotheses. Genotyping-by-sequencing revealed the presence of discrete genetic clusters, providing molecular support for morphologically delimited taxa. In this chapter I also provide the first preliminary evidence in the literature for hybridisation between species of Pterostylis within a clade where pollination by sexual deception has been experimentally confirmed and is predicted to be the dominant mode of pollination. Moving to the fungal side of the orchid-mycorrhizal interaction, I present two studies with a close focus on one of the core orchid mycorrhizal fungal families: Ceratobasidiaceae (Agaricomycetes; Cantharellales). Firstly, I performed a taxonomic review of the various anamorph-teleomorph typified generic names within the Ceratobasidiaceae. Using publicly-available ex-type sequence data, I inferred a phylogeny which reiterated the paraphyly of several genera within the family and formalised the synonymisation of several genera under a unified Rhizoctonia. Finally, to investigate fungal species boundaries at the genome-scale, I sequenced several putative operational taxonomic units of Rhizoctonia known to associate with species of Pterostylis using long-read sequencing. I present 38 new high quality whole-genome assemblies of Rhizoctonia. Using these data, I found clear genomic divergence thresholds across the Ceratobasidiaceae, allowing us to describe at least six new species of Rhizoctonia. I show that divergence thresholds currently in use do not adequately represent the level of diversity within the family, and highlight the discovery of several lineages that are entirely new to science.Item Open Access The Social Structure of Geoeconomics: Institutional Transformations Underpinning Weaponisation of Economic Interdependence in East Asia after the 2008 Financial Crisis(2025) Jaknanihan, ArrizalWhy have geoeconomic tensions continued to rise in East Asia despite the deepening level of economic interdependence in the region? This thesis analyses the global and regional transformation of institutions that contributed to the rise of the weaponisation of economic interdependence in East Asia after the 2008 global financial crisis. It uses the concept of primary institution (i.e. normative principles ordering international society) from the English School of International Relations to conceptualise institutional transformations underpinning weaponised interdependence. The thesis finds that the transformation of the market (i.e. liberal market ideology) as a primary institution after the 2008 crisis has changed the way states view the security value of economic interdependence. The declining influence of liberal market ideology after the crisis has increasingly allowed and legitimised subordination of economic relations to the state’s security and nationalist imperatives, allowing the weaponisation of economic interdependence to rise during conflict. Through the case of China’s economic coercion in East Asia, the thesis demonstrates that the deepening and weaponisation of economic interdependence came together as the downstream impact of declining influence of the market in ordering international society. This thesis contributes to the study of geoeconomics by analysing weaponised interdependence as part of broader institutional changes unfolding in the global and regional levels.Item Open Access Peptide hormone regulation and synthesis(2015-09) Caron, KarineThe work presented in this thesis focuses on the study of peptide hormones, their post-translational biosynthesis and regulation, and the synthesis of unnatural peptide hormone analogues using cell-fee protein synthesis. In the first instance, the enzymatic activity of peptidylglycine a-amidating monooxygenase (PAM) was studied, an enzyme that catalyses the final post-translational step for many hormones. A novel whole-cell assay is described in Chapter 2, utilising HPLC, which allows simultaneous detection of multiple species of calcitonin (CT). Regulation of PAM activity was examined through measurement of variation in CT and pro-CT levels, in a small cell lung carcinoma cell line (DMS53), to evaluate the effect of PAM inactivators on CT amidation, and in extension, on cancer cell survival. It was found that CT levels relative to CT precursor levels could not be decreased below a certain level in a dose-dependent manner, which signifies the presence of a mechanism for maintenance of homeostasis. Furthermore, through the identification of CT degradation products generated in DMS53 cells medium, it was possible to further probe the degradative pathways for CT in this cell line. To better understand the interactions of PAM with natural substrates, the binding affinities of a series of peptide prohormones were determined, in Chapter 3, using PAM from DMS53 cell medium. While the role of the penultimate amino acid in substrate recognition has been previously reported for short synthetic substrates, the work presented herein highlights the role of the entire peptidic sequence in substrate recognition. It was found that though trends are similar, the extent of the effect of the penultimate amino acid on substrate binding is exaggerated in synthetic substrates, when compared to natural substrates. Furthermore, this variation in peptide hormone binding does not appear to govern the relative levels of those hormones in vivo. Due to our interest in the study of peptide hormones, a new methodology was developed as an alternative to laborious solid phase synthesis for the production of peptide hormones and peptide analogues. As presented in Chapter 4, cell-free protein synthesis, which is commonly used for the production of natural proteins and proteins containing non-canonical amino acids, was applied as a simple and cheap means for generating peptides and unnatural peptide analogues. To do this a new strategy was employed, making use of fusion partner methodology. An expression plasmid was designed and produced, which expresses the peptide of choice as a fusion with a soluble protein, through an enterokinase cleavable linker. This allowed production of CTG and CTG analogues containing the non-canonical amino acids chloro-Val, chloro-Ile, chloro-Tyr, fluoro-Leu and fluoro-Phe. Finally, with the aim of making this new technique more efficient and cost-effective for the production of peptides, in Chapter 5, the use of acetyl phosphate to drive nucleoside triphosphate-dependent protein synthesis together with the generation of the expensive and unstable nucleoside triphosphates was undertaken. This process required characterisation of the endogenous phosphorylating enzymes of the commonly used E. coli BL21(DE3) star strain used for cell-free protein synthesis.Item Open Access Characterisation of flagellar mastigoneme components of phytophthora nicotianae(2015-04) Hee, Wei YihPlant diseases caused by Phytophthora species pose significant threats to agriculture and natural biodiversity throughout the world. Motile, flagellate zoospores of Phytophthora and most Oomycete species play a key role in pathogen dissemination and initiation of infection of host plants. Tripartite tubular hairs called mastigonemes on the zoospore anterior flagellum are responsible for cell motility by reversing the thrust of flagellar beat. The objective of the work presented in this thesis was to identify and characterise components of Phytophthora mastigonemes. In previous studies, peptide sequencing and electron microscopy using an antibody directed towards mastigonemes of Phytophthora nicotianae zoospores had identified a gene, PnMas2, which encodes a protein in the tubular shaft of the mastigoneme. Bioinformatic analysis revealed that PnMas2 belongs to a protein family consisting of three or four members. In the current study, degenerate primers were used to clone PnMasl and PnMas3, the two other members of the Mas family in the P. nicotianae genome. Homologues of the three PnMas genes were identified in the genomes of 30 species of Stramenopiles, the major protist assemblage to which the Oomycetes belong. Phylogenetic analyses indicated that the Mas family can be divided into three sub-families, namely Masl, Mas2 and Mas3. Extensive BLAST analyses of Stramenopile and other eukaryotic genomes demonstrated that the Mas protein family occurs only within the Stramenopile taxon and is not found in those few Stramenopile species that do not produce flagellate cells. Quantitative real-time PCR showed that all three Mas genes are expressed during asexual sporulation but that relative levels of expression at other stages of the asexual life cycle differ for the three genes. This suggests that the Mas proteins may have different functions apart from their role in flagellar mastigonemes. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) specific for PnMasl and PnMas3 were generated to study the localisations and protein-protein interactions of the two putative mastigoneme proteins. On immunoblots, anti-PnMasl and anti-PnMas3 each reacted with a single polypeptide with a relative molecular weight close to that predicted from the amino acid sequence of the protein - 64 kDa for PnMasl and 24 kDa for PnMas3. Immunoblotting of zoospore protein extracts in native gels indicated that PnMasl and PnMas2 both PnMas proteins has provided clues as to their function. The new information resulting from my study will contribute to increase the understanding of Phytophthora zoospore motility and subsequently the mechanism of Oomycete disease dissemination.Item Open Access The cultural context and poetic tradition of some of the vernacular lyrics from MS. Harley 2253(1973) Willetts, Marjorie R."King John", wrote A. A.. Milne with unhistorical simplicity, "was not a good man»" Probably not for he was one of the first royal bureaucrats*Item Open Access Some aspects of the biology of Velacumantus australis (Quoy and Gaimard) (Gastropoda: Potamididae)(1967) Ewers, WilliamVelacumantus australis (Q,uoy and Gaimard) (Gastropoda : Potamididae) is common in estuaries, coastal lakes and sheltered bays along the eastern coast of Australia, south of the Tropic of Capricorn, along the eastern part of the Victorian coast and the southwest part of the coast of Western Australia.Item Open Access Double Burden of Food Insecurity and Poor WASH Access: Health Impacts on Mothers and Children in Coastal Bangladesh.(2026) Mondal, ShuvagatoBangladesh, among the world's most climate-vulnerable nations, faces increasing challenges to ensure food security and universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities. This doctoral research investigates the dual burden of household food insecurity and inadequate WASH access and their combined impacts on child and maternal nutritional outcomes in climate-sensitive coastal regions of Bangladesh. Using a multidimensional framework, this study aimed to identify socioeconomic and demographic determinants of food insecurity and WASH access, measure prevalence and examine their combined effects on nutritional health among disadvantaged coastal populations. The study adopted a mixed-methods design, integrating secondary and primary data analyses. Secondary data from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2017- 18 were analysed to explore the links between socioeconomic inequalities, sanitation and childhood malnutrition. A cross-sectional household survey using a three-stage cluster sampling strategy recruited 471 mother-child pairs for primary data. Quantitative analyses, including multivariable logistic regression and structural equation modelling (SEM), identified individual, household, environmental-level factors, and assessed the dual burden of food insecurity and inadequate WASH access on undernutrition. In addition, qualitative insights from focus group discussions and key informant interviews explored community perspectives, underlying drivers, consequences, self-efficacy and policy implications regarding food and WASH insecurity. A thematic content analysis approach revealed deeper contextual insights into lived experiences and sociocultural factors shaping vulnerability, informing evidence-based, community-focused and context-specific interventions. In coastal Bangladesh, prevalence of child stunting (31.4%) and wasting (8.5%) exceeded national estimates, influenced by age, maternal education, household wealth, sanitation, child morbidity and maternal undernutrition. Food insecurity affected nearly 29% of households, with a majority lacking at least one basic WASH service. Lower chance of experiencing food insecurity was in households with younger head (40 years or less) [Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR): 0.42] compared to older group, having educated mothers (AOR: 0.22) compared to uneducated and higher monthly income (AOR: 0.09) compared to lower income. WASH access was linked to household size, wealth, location, head's occupation and education. Poorer households had significantly lower odds (AOR: 0.24) of safe water access than the wealthiest, while access was higher in southeastern coastal part (AOR: 1.67) than those in southwest. Larger households (AOR: 0.61) and fishermen headed (AOR: 0.30) were less likely to have improved sanitation access than smaller and headed by service-holders. Lower adults' educational attainment was associated with reduced access to basic hygiene and combined WASH services. Among coastal communities, 54.4% of children were stunted, 25.2% underweight and 9.4% wasted, with 61.6% exhibiting at least one anthropometric failure. Among mothers, one-third were obese and 34.5% anaemic. Child malnutrition was strongly associated with younger age, lower household wealth, food insecurity, poor water and sanitation access, maternal underweight and recent occurrence of diarrhea. SEM demonstrated that combined effect of food security and WASH access had a larger positive effect on both child's and maternal better nutritional outcomes, with standardised coefficient values of 0.50 and 0.68, respectively. This thesis highlights the urgent need for integrated, multisectoral, and context specific policy interventions to combat malnutrition in coastal Bangladesh. It provides a robust foundation of evidence to support equity-focused health and nutrition strategies that tackle the interconnected issues of food insecurity and inadequate WASH access among geographically vulnerable communities.Item Open Access Characterisation of the SIX6 effector protein from Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici(2026) Khambalkar, PravinThe phytopathogenic fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici (Fol) causes vascular wilt disease in tomato. During host colonisation, Fol secretes multiple effector proteins into the xylem sap, including fourteen SIX (Secreted In Xylem) proteins. Three of these SIX proteins function as the avirulence determinants Avr1 (SIX4), Avr2 (SIX3) and Avr3 (SIX1) recognised by tomato resistance proteins I, I-2 and I-3, respectively. Despite identifying the I-7 resistance gene, which encodes a leucine-rich repeat receptor protein, its corresponding avirulence gene remains undetermined. This work initially aimed to identify Avr7 by evaluating untested SIX genes and novel effector candidates. Effector candidates from transcriptomic analysis of infected tomato roots were assessed via Agrobacterium-mediated co-expression with I-7 in Nicotiana benthamiana. I-7-dependent leaf cell death would indicate recognition. None of the examined candidates exhibited I-7-dependent cell death, but SIX6 induced cell death independently of I-7 (Chapter 2). This observation prompted experiments to characterise SIX6 function in planta. In collaboration with Daniel Yu from the Williams Laboratory at ANU, Fol SIX6 was expressed in E. coli and recombinant protein purified for functional analyses. Purified recombinant Fol SIX6 induced cell death in N. benthamiana and tomato (Chapter 3). Subsequently, SIX6 homologues from F. oxysporum ff. spp. cubense TR4, melonis and vasinfectum (Foc, Fom and Fov SIX6) were expressed and purified, and found to induce cell death responses in N. benthamiana and tomato (Chapter 3). Testing purified Fol, Foc and Fom SIX6 proteins in foliar tissues of representatives from multiple taxonomic families (Solanaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Brassicaceae and Leguminosae) revealed broad yet differential plant sensitivity (Chapter 3). Notably, Fol and Fov SIX6 induced stronger cell death in the corresponding tomato and cotton hosts than vice versa. VIGS of known plant defence-signalling components in N. benthamiana was used to test whether Fol SIX6-induced cell death might constitute a plant immune response. VIGS targets included pattern recognition co-receptors BAK1 and SOBIR1, and mitogen-activated protein kinases WIPK and SIPK. VIGS-mediated depletion of these signalling components failed to attenuate Agrobacterium-mediated Fol SIX6-induced cell death (Chapter 4). These experiments were complemented by challenging mutant tomato lines compromised in defence signalling with Fol SIX6 protein. The ethylene-insensitive Never Ripe mutant and sun1-1 mutant deficient in EDS1-mediated resistance exhibited cell-death responses comparable to wild-type controls following SIX6 infiltration (Chapter 4). These findings suggested SIX6 induced cell death through a mechanism distinct from these plant defence pathways. A microscopic investigation of cellular responses leading to SIX6-induced cell death revealed that Fol SIX6 protein causes stomatal opening in tomato and N. benthamiana before visible cell death (Chapter 5). Physiological measurements demonstrated that Fol SIX6 infiltration significantly increased stomatal conductance and transpiration rates in N. benthamiana leaves, regardless of light conditions (Chapter 5). Confocal fluorescence microscopy following Agrobacterium-mediated expression of a vacuole-targeted fluorescent protein revealed that SIX6 treatment caused vacuolar shrinkage and leakage in N. benthamiana leaf epidermal cells (Chapter 5). An examination of the effect of Fol SIX6 on N. benthamiana and tomato roots showed that Fol SIX6 protein caused electrolyte leakage (Chapter 6). In vitro growth assays on medium supplemented with purified Fol SIX6 protein resulted in significant inhibition of primary root elongation in tomato seedlings (Chapter 6). These findings suggest SIX6 exerts physiological effects on root tissues that may contribute to Fol pathogenicity during infection.Item Open Access Soviet foreign trade(1967-02) Haddad, L.The primary purpose of this study is to record and explain recent trends in Soviet foreign trade. In particular, it is proposed to analyse the factors governing the decisions of Soviet planners in the field of foreign trade and to examine more closely their trade and aid activities in the underdeveloped areas, paying special attention to the countries of South and South-East Asia.Item Open Access Robust and Scalable Deep Learning for Historical Document Analysis in Adverse Archival Conditions(2026) Rasyidi, HanifHistorical Document Analysis and Recognition (HisDAR) remains technically challenging due to the degraded condition of source materials and the scarcity of annotated data. Although handcrafted methods perform well on specific datasets, they lack scalability and generalisation. This thesis demonstrates that deep learning methods, when adapted to address the unique characteristics of historical documents, can achieve robust performance across multiple HisDAR tasks while reducing reliance on handcrafted, task-specific solutions. Binarization is treated as a semantic segmentation task, recovering meaningful text while suppressing background degradation. We proposed an atrous convolutional encoder-decoder model that captured detailed features without excessive downsampling. This design, enhanced by multi-scale decoding, produced binary masks that preserve handwriting structure. To improve generalisation, a style augmentation module introduced visual variability using transformations inspired by style transfer, while a custom Pseudo-F loss enhanced structural fidelity. Evaluations on nine DIBCO competition datasets confirmed the model's robustness across domains, achieving more than 10 per cent improvement in Pseudo-F Measure compared to standard encoder-decoder architectures. We then examined historical writer identification (HWI), particularly in zero-shot scenarios where test writers are absent from training data. We assessed pre-processing techniques, including binarization and text area of interest (Text-AOI) selection, backbone networks (pre-trained CNN and SwinV2 with LoRA fine-tuning), and postprocessing methods such as patch sampling and feature pooling. Our results highlighted the value of consistent patch representations and discriminative features learned through ArcFace loss. A simplified end-to-end pipeline was proposed that achieved 97.40% Top-1 accuracy on ICDAR2013-WI, surpassing the handcrafted competition winner (95.60%), and 97.15% Top-1 accuracy on zero-shot historical writer identification (ICDAR2017), compared to 76.40% for handcrafted approaches. To overcome the scarcity of annotated historical data, we developed HistoriCraft, a lightweight document generation pipeline that converts modern datasets into historicalstyle outputs. This framework combines handwriting generation and visual style adaptation using a hybrid of encoder-decoder CNN and vision transformer. The model outperformed existing style transfer methods on perceptual quality metrics (SSIM: 0.8172 vs 0.5355 for neural style transfer) while preserving original annotations. The generated samples successfully augmented training data for segmentation and classification tasks in low-resource domains. This thesis presents a unified deep learning approach to historical document analysis across segmentation, classification, and generation. The key insight is that successful application of modern neural networks to historical documents requires more than simply adopting the latest architecture. It demands careful design choices that account for degraded image quality, limited annotated data, and the need for cross-domain generalisation. By addressing these limitations through targeted adaptations, this work demonstrates that adapted deep learning provides a practical and scalable alternative to handcrafted methods for digital heritage preservation.Item Open Access Investigation of neural-like signalling in human germinal centres(2017-04) Papa, IleniaProtective high affinity antibody responses depend on competitive selection of B cells carrying somatically-mutated BCRs by Tfh cells in germinal centres (GC). The rapid T:B synaptic interactions that occur during this process are reminiscent of those within the nervous system. Therefore, we asked whether neural transmission pathways participate in GC selection. This thesis shows that a proportion of human, but not mouse, GC Tfh cells contained dense-core granules marked by chromogranin B, which are normally found in neuronal pre-synaptic terminals and their main function is to store neuropeptides and/or catecholamines, such as dopamine. Further, GC Tfh cells contained high concentrations of dopamine and released it upon cognate interaction with GC B cells. In a search for dopamine-mediated effects on human GC B cells, we identified selective and rapid upregulation of ICOSL. ICOSL-mediated costimulation has been shown to increase the contact area between GC B cells and Tfh cells, which maximises antigen presentation and delivery of Tfh cell help. In mice, upregulation of ICOSL by GC B cells is driven by TFH expressed CD40L in a process that takes hours. In this thesis, we show that ICOSL upregulation by human GC B cells did not depend on CD40L. of note, high amount of intracellular preformed ICOSL was expressed in human GC B cells and translocated to the surface within minutes of stimulation by dopamine. ICOSL was able to enhance accumulation of CD40L and chromogranin B granules at the human Tfh:GC B cell synapse and increase the contact area. Further, mathematical modelling suggests that faster dopamineinduced T:B interactions do not change affinity maturation but rather increase total output and accelerate it by days. This thesis demonstrates that Tfh cells have co-opted yet another form of synaptic help that may provide an advantage in the face of infection.Item Open Access Roar: a Melbourne phenomenon(2014-08) Morgan, DeniseIn late 1981 shared ideas about art and the Melbourne art world drew a group of neo-expressionist artists together. Most were still in art school. Plans to open their own gallery attracted other artists who, although they had different art styles, shared a vision of an independent artist run gallery and studios. Together they opened Roar Studios in June 1982. At the time the Western art world was returning to regionalised subjective art, particularly painting. Melbourne commentators therefore focussed on the expressionist artists of Roar Studios —Wayne Eager, Sarah Faulkner, Andrew Ferguson, Peter Ferguson, Pasquale Giardino, Karan Hay man, Mark Howson, David Larwill, Karl Morkel, Mike Nicholls, Jill Noble, Mark Schaller and Judi Singleton — and, when these artists left Roar Studios, the Roar name and the Roar myth went with them. The group's composition was identified and reinforced by Sydney art collector and dealer, Chandler Coventry, and James Mollison, Director of the Australian National Gallery, both of whom sought out and showed their work. The Roar myth is comprised of elements associated with youthful enthusiasm; a style of art that is colourful, deliberately not theoretically based, quickly executed, and highly subjective; shown in an independent art gallery forever on the brink of financial ruin; wild parties and fundraisers to remedy that situation; and a reckless lifestyle to nourish the muse. The Roar myth is complex and rich. It includes influences of abstraction, minimalism and the constructivism of Torres-Garcia as well as the work of Australian artists — Booth, Kemp, Whisson and Olsen among them. Roar's strong foundations in the influence of naive art allowed it to negotiate a post-colonial shift away from primitivism — a driver that formed part of its artistic habitus of modernism — while maintaining the integrity of its own trajectory. Roar's engagement with Australia's indigenous culture, both the people and the art, helped negotiate a path away from primitivism's objectifying discourse and introduced new technical and spiritual elements to the work of the Roar artists.Item Open Access Perceived Age Discrimination and Performance among Older Workers: The Moderating Role of Job Level(2026) Liu, LuyangThis thesis examines the detrimental effects of perceived age discrimination (PAD) on older workers' job performance. It begins with a comprehensive literature review on the antecedents and outcomes of PAD in the workplace and the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions. Next, it presents the theoretical framework and hypotheses, which are grounded in conservation of resources theory. The proposed model suggests that PAD negatively influences older workers' job performance via reduced job engagement, with job level serving as a critical moderator. The model was tested on 1,442 Australian older workers, controlling for lagged variables at each stage. The results demonstrate that PAD in the workplace undermines older workers' task and proactive performance via reduced job engagement. Older workers with a lower job level (e.g., frontline employees) experience greater negative consequences from PAD compared with those with higher job levels (e.g., managers), resulting in lower job engagement, thus poorer task performance. However, the influence of PAD on the proactive performance of older workers does not differ across job levels. These findings underscore the need to protect older frontline workers, who experience stronger negative effects of PAD. This thesis contributes to conservation of resources theory and the PAD literature. First, it addresses why and how PAD undermines older workers' job performance and identifies those who are particularly vulnerable to these detrimental effects. Second, it offers a novel perspective by examining how job level functions as a "resource caravan" that can protect older workers against PAD, thereby advancing the resource perspective beyond its traditional focus on discrete resources at a given point in time. Third, it advances the research on the discrimination--performance relationship by examining job performance more comprehensively and providing a role-based perspective to better understand how PAD influences job performance. Finally, the thesis reconciles the mixed findings on the relationship between PAD and job engagement by bridging two research perspectives--the resource-based and the role-based perspectives. From the perspective of management practice, this thesis demonstrates that the adverse effects of PAD vary with job level, highlighting that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for supporting older workers and the importance of resources to mitigate age discrimination in the workplace. Finally, the thesis presents future research directions, such as replicating the model with broader samples across cultural contexts and clarifying the inconclusive role of job level in the relationship between PAD and proactive performance.Item Open Access Engineering Nonlinear and Quantum Photonics in Two-Dimensional Materials(2026) Tang, YilinTwo-dimensional (2D) nonlinear quantum materials, especially transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), are highly promising for next-generation devices due to their strong light-matter interaction. A key challenge is the interface between materials and electrodes, where high contact resistivity (RC) hinders device performance. This work introduces a novel method for direct RC measurement in monolayer TMD-metal junctions using photoluminescence (PL) microscopy, a simple approach that overcomes the limitations of traditional electrical methods. Building on this, the thesis tackles the challenge of phase mismatch in nonlinear optics. It presents a quasi-phase-matching (QPM) technique using van der Waals (vdW) stacking of 3R MoS2 layers with specific twist angles, which periodically reverses the nonlinear dipole to significantly enhance second-harmonic generation (SHG) and spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). To further amplify efficiency, the research explores resonant field enhancement using metasurfaces supporting quasi-bound states in the continuum (qBIC). This approach, leveraging the high refractive index and nonlinearity of 3R MoS2, led to a remarkable 2000-fold enhancement in SHG intensity, achieved by aligning the metasurface design with the material's lattice and resonances. Culminating this work, the principles of enhanced local fields were applied to the generation of quantum light. The thesis demonstrates enhanced SPDC from a vdW metasurface, producing a high-quality quantum light source. Ultimately, this thesis provides a comprehensive framework, from fundamental material characterization to advanced device engineering, paving the way for the next generation of on-chip quantum light sources and optical technologies. The methodologies and devices presented here establish 2D vdW materials as a powerful platform for the future of integrated photonics.Item Open Access Rogue Parliament: Politics versus the rule of law in Papua New Guinea (7 July 2010 to 3 August 2012)(2026) Thomas, MurrayThis thesis chronicles and examines the political and legal turmoil that engulfed Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the period from 7 July 2010 to 3 August 2012. The replacement of Sir Michael Somare as prime minister by Peter O'Neill on 2 August 2011 and a 'whatever it takes' attitude to holding on to political power were cloaked by the slogan - 'the Parliament is supreme'. The new government, headed by O'Neill and Belden Namah, presided over a dramatic retreat from the rule of law and a serious attempt at tampering with the constitutionally mandated national election cycle. A detailed history has been developed with a view to addressing three questions: 1) Was the takeover of government lawful or unlawful?; 2) Why and how did the new government remain in power?; and 3) What, if any, are the likely long-term effects of this turbulent time on the operation of the rule of law and democracy in PNG? Archival research was complimented by semi-structured interviews with participants and close observers of relevant events. Existing analytical work was also drawn upon and critiqued. The analysis considered three deeply interwoven drivers of political change in PNG, namely the country's circumstances as a 'fragile state', the influence of custom and the primacy given to local over national needs. The period (2010-12) and events covered here have attracted far less academic interest than they deserve. This thesis offers several reflections on PNG politics. First, the electorate gives politicians considerable latitude with respect to political manoeuvrings between elections. Between 2010 and 2012, this latitude facilitated the illegal takeover of the government and, in turn, a retreat from the rule of law. Second, the country is locked into a framework of highly fluid political allegiances, with leaders and parties constantly having to provide inducements to maintain the loyalty of individual members of parliament. Third, the formation of new governments is essentially a rebadging exercise, with most members being drawn from the former government. This continuity helps to explain the absence of significant policy differences between administrations and undermines any zeal and scope for serious reform of PNG politics and governance. Finally, the period has established many precedents that are more likely than not to encourage future politicians to ignore the national interest and legal obligations in favour of personal advancement. Notably, Peter O'Neill was rewarded for his political adventurism by becoming prime minister after the 2012 general election, no-one was punished for illegal activities, and Sir Michael Somare and his loyal ministers were compensated for losing their positions.Item Open Access Time-dependent Wave Packet Scattering Theory for Asymptotically Coulomb Potentials with Applications to Nuclear Collisions(2025) Tejas, Aditya SinghNon-relativistic quantum scattering theory informs our broad understanding of nuclear collision processes. However, detailed theoretical insights into the dynamics of fusion, whereby the colliding nuclei form a compound nucleus, remain elusive with conventional approaches. Fundamentally, understanding the complex dissipative processes inherent to compound nucleus formation and when they occur during the collision remains challenging. This, for example, prevents a consistent description of heavy-ion fusion over a wide range of collision energies and hinders searches for new super-heavy elements. To understand these dynamics, we need time-dependent approaches to nuclear collisions. In this thesis, a non-relativistic, time-dependent wave packet theory for potential scattering of charged quantum particles (such as nuclei) has been developed. It formally extends the application of Tannor and Weeks's (1993) formulation of the scattering matrix theory to systems containing the long-range Coulomb potential, by utilising Dollard's (1964) Møller operators. Using the asymptotic localisation of wave packets, analytical theorems have been formulated that allow convenient numerical application of this method. Numerical tests illustrating the theory mark the first rigorous application of this method in nuclear physics. Further insights are gained through a novel analysis of the wave packet time-correlation function (which underlies the theory) to understand how different dynamical processes, such as the formation of long-lived, quasi-bound states, during scattering contribute to the scattering matrix. This provides guidance on using the time-correlation function to obtain fusion observables, along with the associated challenges. Furthermore, this analysis showed that time-correlation functions can be obtained from static calculations, opening numerous new possibilities for studying the dynamics of nuclear reactions, in general, using this approach. This work opens new avenues for studying the dynamics of compound nucleus formation and other dissipative processes in nuclear reactions.