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Synaesthesia is a hereditary, neurological condition in which common stimuli trigger unexpected secondary sensations. For example, reading letters may result in the visualisation of colour, a variant known as grapheme-colour synaesthesia. While synaesthesia is thought to confer a range of benefits such as improved memory, empathy, visual search and creativity to the synaesthete, there is a small, yet growing, body of evidence that suggests synaesthesia may also be associated with more clinical conditions. This thesis investigates potential associations between synaesthesia and a range of clinical conditions, identifying a set of cormorbidities, and exploring the possible genetic roots of these associations. First, I identified an increased prevalence of multiple sclerosis (MS) and its clinical precursor, radiologically isolated syndrome (RIS) in synaesthetes self-referring for participation in scientific studies. Furthermore, I identified an increased occurrence of anxiety disorder in randomly sampled synaesthetes. In addition, I show that synaesthetes with anxiety disorder experience reduced luminance in their synaesthetic colours. I also conducted an association study into the genetic origins of synaesthesia and propose the immune hypothesis of synaesthesia, which provides a theoretical basis for comorbidities (linked to the altered cortical connectivity thought to underlie the development of synaesthesia). Finally, in phenotyping synaesthesia in individuals, I also validated the most widely used online test for synaesthesia, and use this test to provide a reliable prevalence of grapheme-colour synaesthesia in the general population. Such baselines are important for establishing whether other (e.g., clinical) populations are showing rates of synaesthesia higher than otherwise expected. I also demonstrate there is no significant difference in grapheme-colour synaesthesia prevalence between the sexes and discuss its implications for genetic theories of synaesthesia.

The advances of information technologies have forced many enterprises to reconsider the way their business processes are conducted. Among the various information technologies, workflow management systems (WFMSs) are widely recognized as an effective tool to greatly improve the efficiency of business processes and customers¡¦ satisfaction. Today, a great number of commercial WFMSs have been available on the market; however, none of them are very successful due to the lack of some important features. One of the features that are needed by many business processes is the specification and enforcement of time constraints. In this thesis, we propose a time constraint model that helps workflow designer to define and verify time constraints. Different constraints may be verified at different times, e.g., definition time, invocation time, execution time. A workflow instance, once detected as a violation of some time constraint, could be terminated immediately to avoid the waste of precious resources as well as to provide prompt response to users. A variety of algorithms for verifying time constraints are proposed and analyzed.

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v, 275 leaves : appendices / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.1972) from the Dept. of Psychology, University of Adelaide

Thesis (Ph.D. 1972) from the Dept. of Psychology, University of Adelaide.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2000. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iii, 46 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 41-46).