http://hdl.handle.net/11343/159 2017-10-21T02:34:26Z http://hdl.handle.net/11343/192954 Writing at closer quarters: Melbourne in the novel and literary criticism, 1940 - 1971 McGregor, James In the postwar years, a number of literary critics, commentators and novelists complained of an undersupply of urban novels and an under-representation of the cities that housed the bulk of the Australian population. This thesis tests that assessment by reconsidering the diversity of novels published in the middle decades of the 20th Century, with a focus on one Australian city, Melbourne. Evidently, postwar critics underappreciated the diversity of Melbourne’s novels, and many credible works have long fallen out of sight of literary historians. By recovering that work, the thesis aims to reconstruct a complex picture of the imagined metropolis that those novels collectively provided. The thesis gathers up more than seventy novels published in the three decades after 1940 that located their settings in metropolitan Melbourne. Those novels form the primary research material for the thesis. The analysis of that material proceeds first by recovering the relationship of the novels with Australian literary history, considering to what extent literary historiography has been selective in its approach to Melbourne’s fiction. This provides the prelude to an exploration of the metropolis as represented in those novels: if some of those novels have been excluded from Melbourne’s literary history, how might their recovery alter our understanding of fictional Melbourne? To explore that question, techniques in literary cartography are adapted to the analysis of the Melbourne novels’ topographic content through metropolitan scale maps. Those maps reveal a rich variety of topographic detail dispersed through city centre, inner suburbs, and the middle and outer suburbs. Ultimately, the thesis reveals how the functional differences available in the everyday sites of the imagined metropolis, and the patterns in their topographic distribution, provided a source of rich environmental meaning for the novelist. The middle chapters of the thesis read mid-Century literary criticism to decipher its perspectives on the Australian city and the responsibilities of literature towards that increasingly modernising context. That discussion focuses on three influential, yet highly combative critical movements in the mid-Century literary field. Models of the city provided by those movements enable the thesis to contrast the critics’ theoretical models of the modern city, and the images of the city revealed by the topographic analyses of the novels. © 2016 Dr. James McGregor 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11343/192953 Exquisite joy, exquisite privilege: the unrealised Great War memorial designs of Australian architect William Lucas Williams, Katharine Emily This thesis is the first sustained scholarly examination of the unrealised Great War memorial designs of the Australian architect William Lucas. Its thorough examination of previously unstudied research material enables a detailed evaluation of Lucas’ intellectual and aesthetic outlook, and the way in which this manifested in his war memorial designs for Melbourne and Villers-Bretonneux. During his time practising in South Africa, Lucas was exposed to an Imperially nuanced revival of classical form, a lesson which consolidated his own first-hand experience of classical architecture, which he had gained in a journey to the Mediterranean in 1908. His own experience as a non-combatant YMCA volunteer during the Boer War, meanwhile, fostered and amplified his belief that war had spiritual value. It enabled an essentially distant view of war as a scene played out within a spectacular landscape. This vision was echoed in scenic terms by the accounts his son Norman sent home from the Dardanelles and Macedonia during the Great War. Dying of wounds in 1916, Norman fulfilled Lucas’ own firm conception of Christian manhood, proving his belief that a just war had spiritual value by facilitating opportunities for self-sacrifice. For his own Great War memorial designs, Lucas continued to look to classicism, but applied it within the parameters of his own spiritual and aesthetic outlook. His design for a war memorial for Melbourne took the form of a semicircular ancient theatre, inspired by the structures he had seen in the Mediterranean in 1908. Lucas intended the theatre form as a symbol of democracy: an open-air gathering place for sacred military, civic and spiritual ritual. His design for the Australian Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, France, employed classical form to create the aesthetic of an ancient ruin. To convey this aesthetic, Lucas looked to the principles of the sublime as expounded by John Ruskin, and harnessed the symbolic potential of the ever-changeable sky. Both designs drew on Lucas’ own spiritual convictions. Lucas’ memorial designs were expressions of his own interwoven beliefs in the superiority and righteousness of the British Empire, his faith in his God, the romantic possibilities of landscape and form, and his own conviction of the righteousness of a just war. But what was missing from his mindset was the insight necessary to address the problematic and poignant absence of the dead. His own grief at the loss of his son was touched with his own unshakeable religious convictions, and a belief in the righteousness of the British Empire. As such, his memorial designs were essays in an architectural and ideological vocabulary which would become defunct in the decades following the Great War. © 2017 Dr. Katharine (Katti) Emily Williams 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11343/192948 Falls risk assessment and prevention in the acute hospital setting Walsh, Willeke Aldegonda Maria Falls are a major public health problem. They can have physical and psychological sequelae and may impose an economic burden for the patient, family, carers, staff and the healthcare system. Although much of the focus of falls prevention and its impact is in the community setting, falls can have equally devastating impact when they occur in hospitals. Despite an expansion in research investigating falls in hospitals, there remains uncertainty about the best way to help prevent falls, thereby minimising potential detrimental outcomes, in the acute setting. Prior to commencement of this research, falls prevention within the acute hospital setting was thought to be best addressed using multifactorial falls prevention initiatives, guided by falls prevention screening or assessment. This research sought to develop a unique two-stage falls risk screening and assessment tool, the Western Health Falls Risk Assessment (WHeFRA), purposely designed for the acute hospital setting, and to determine its rater reliability and predictive validity. This tool was then utilised as the foundation for a multifactorial falls prevention program in the acute hospital setting, and evaluation of the immediate and sustained outcomes was undertaken. Investigation of the clinimetric properties of the WHeFRA on acute hospital wards revealed very good intra-rater reliability and good inter-rater reliability. A further prospective investigation of WHeFRA screening tool accuracy in predicting patients at risk of falls found good predictive validity, and also favourable accuracy compared with the “gold standard” screening tool (STRATIFY). A falls prevention program, based on the WHeFRA and utilising Falls Resource Nurses (FRN’s) as key drivers and ward champions, was implemented on 14 acute wards utilising a staggered rollout over three years. Falls rates monitored over ten years increased initially compared with the two-year baseline rate. Rates then gradually decreased for nearly three years post program completion, after which the rate began to increase again, however still remaining lower than baseline. The program was further investigated through audits of WHeFRA compliance and nurses’ surveys at two time points, at completion of program implementation and 2.5 years following this. Sustainability of program achievements also appeared to be maintained initially, however at 2.5 years post completion it was apparent that booster activity and support avenues were required to preserve benefits longer-term. Although growth in investigations based in the acute hospital setting occurred following commencement of this research, debate regarding the most ideal prevention approach and the use of falls screening tools continues today. Knowledge about staff acceptance of falls risk screening tools and falls prevention programs, and sustainability outcomes of falls prevention initiatives, remains limited. In summary, this research spanning ten years in an acute hospital setting: i) developed a unique two-stage, reliable and accurate, falls risk screen and assessment tool, ii) successfully implemented a multifactorial falls prevention program, and iii) identified important elements required to initially achieve practice change and to maintain this culture change over a sustained period, highlighting what is needed to accomplish optimal long-term falls prevention benefits. © 2017 Dr. Willeke Aldegonda Maria Walsh 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11343/192947 Using dendritic cell receptors to enhance immunity Li, Jessica Dendritic cells (DCs) are the most potent initiators of immune responses, being highly specialised for the uptake and presentation of antigens (Ag) to activate T cells. Their priming potential can be harnessed to generate stronger immune responses by targeting Ag to DCs via monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) specific for DC-expressed surface receptors. This thesis builds upon the concept of targeting DCs in two main ways: firstly, by investigating a novel method of targeting adjuvant to DCs, and secondly, by investigating how DC-targeting constructs can be used to prime and boost responses. It was considered whether not only Ag, but also adjuvants could be targeted to DCs to improve their efficacy. A recent finding that the DC receptor DEC-205 can bind to and mediate the immunostimulatory effects of CpG oligonucleotide (ODN) adjuvants led to the hypothesis that CpG ODNs could be targeted to DCs via DEC-205 in order to enhance their potency. The interaction between DEC-205 and CpG ODNs was further characterised to determine the molecular properties of ODNs required for binding. This information was then used to enhance the DEC-205 binding capacity of a particular CpG ODN that normally only weakly binds DEC-205. Enhanced DEC-205 binding was found to significantly improve the stimulatory capacity of this ODN, demonstrating that targeting adjuvant to DCs could be a viable method to improve adjuvant potency. Another receptor, CD14, has also been reported to bind CpG ODNs, so the potential for CD14 to act in synergy with DEC-205 was investigated. However, CD14 was not observed to mediate the uptake or stimulatory effects of CpG ODNs. The identification of natural ligands of DEC-205 is critical for understanding its physiological function. Although ODNs are synthetic molecules, their binding to DEC-205 may signify that DEC-205 is capable of binding other types of DNA that structurally resemble ODNs. A panel of biological DNA samples was screened for DEC-205 binding. While none of the DNA samples were observed to bind DEC-205, some DNA samples were found to bind another receptor, RAGE, suggesting a role for RAGE as a detector of both pathogenic and self-DNA. Most vaccines must be administered more than once, or “boosted”, to achieve optimal efficacy, and DC-targeted vaccines should be no exception. However, our data suggested that simply administering the same DC-targeting construct twice does not effectively boost the response. This was due to interference from the primary antibody response, which can cross-react with and neutralise a subsequently administered boosting construct. To overcome this issue, the efficacy of various heterologous prime-boost strategies designed to reduce the reactivity of the primary response against the boosting construct was assessed. Ultimately, a combination of anti-Clec9A and anti-XCR1 targeting constructs was found to induce the least cross-reactivity and strongest response after boosting. These findings contribute to the development of better adjuvants and immunisation strategies that optimise the efficacy of DC-targeted vaccines. More broadly, they also highlight the value of understanding the underlying biological mechanisms that drive immune responses, which can then be applied to the rational design of more effective vaccines. © 2017 Dr. Jessica Li 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z