Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) have received increasing attention from researchers and practitioners due to their potential advantages: quicker response to market changes, reduction in work-in-process (WIP), high inventory turnover and high levels of productivity. Two groups of problems in an FMS are of importance: (1) design problems and (2) operational problems. Operational problems can be effectively separated into 4 sub-problems: planning, grouping, machine loading problem (MLP) and scheduling. Problems from machine loading to scheduling and control of an FMS can be handled with neural networks approaches and simulation. The machine loading problem as a combinatorial optimization problem is actually a classic problem in operations research and is known to be NP-hard. MLP formulated as 0-1 integer programming problems has been solved by the methods of linearizing the nonlinear terms, branch and bound algorithm, and heuristic methods which have also been popularly applied. Hopfield Networks as a class of artificial neural networks have been adapted as an efficient method to solve the MLP, as these are able to find the solutions quickly through massive and parallel computation. Unfortunately, the quality of the solutions can occasionally be poor owing to the values of the weighting parameters in the energy function of the Hopfield Networks. One alternative approach used is to imbed mean field annealing into Hopfield Networks. The hybrid method of Hopfield Networks and mean field annealing can find near-optimal solutions as well as overcome the difficulties with decisions about the weighting of parameters in the energy function. The AGV scheduling problem can be regarded as the problem of selecting appropriate dispatch rules. Many dispatch rules have been introduced by a number of researchers. Even though vqarious formulations of the FMS scheduling problem can be presented, simulation methods are popular and often used. A solution methodology for MLP and AGV scheduling problems is proposed and specific models based on the literature are subjected to experimented through simulation. The proposed methodology can be also applied without difficulty to of breakdowns of machines and AGV. Results from simulation experiment s show that superior performance and capability of the proposed to existing methods are demonstrated by applying them to the test problems represented by simulation..

Genetically engineered insulin-producing cells, surrogate ?? cells, offer a solution to the shortage of ?? cells available for transplantation in individuals with Type 1 diabetes. Hepatocytes are a promising starting cell in the quest for surrogate ?? cells. However, achieving glucose-regulated insulin secretion in the genetically engineered liver cells is a difficult task as liver cells do not possess regulated secretory pathway. NeuroD, a pancreatic ?? cell transcription factor is involved in the differentiation of endocrine pancreatic cells and also directly regulates the expression of genes in the differentiated cells. However, little is known about the role of NeuroD in the glucose-regulated insulin secretion. The aim of this study was to investigate whether NeuroD induces glucose-regulated insulin secretion in the insulin-producing rat liver cell line, FAO-ins. The human NeuroD gene was stably expressed in FAO-ins cells. In the transfected cells (FAOins-Nd) the expression of genes encoding transcription factor Foxa2, L-type calcium channel subunits and secretory granule protein CgA was up-regulated. FAOins-Nd also showed greater intracellular insulin content and secretion as well as released insulin in a regulated manner to calcium stimulus. Further, growth factors namely betacellulin, activin A, nicotinamide and exendin-4 as well as insulin secretagogues such as theophylline, IBMX and carbachol were examined by static incubation in inducing glucose-regulated insulin secretion. Exendin-4 and insulin secretagogues stimulate insulin secretion in the presence of 1.5 mM glucose but the addition of 20 mM glucose had no further stimulatory effect. These results indicate that FAOins-Nd cells are sensitive to glucose and the release of insulin is non-glucose dependent. Overexpression of NeuroD and further treatment with exendin-4 or insulin secretagogues up-regulated insulin secretion but did not render these cells glucose-responsive. An attempt was made to generate transgenic NOD mice expressing large amounts of insulin in the liver using PEPCK promoter with SV40 poly adenylation sequence. Transgenic NOD mice were generated and the presence of insulin transgene was demonstrated. However, insulin mRNA and protein were not expressed in the liver of transgenic mice.

This research investigated if exogenous growth factors (GFs), in particular platelet derived growth factor (PDGF), has an in vivo effect on the healing response of normal healthy bone. The research was orientated to study whether a clinical beneficial effect could be demonstrated. To achieve this two animal models were utilised, namely, a rabbit tibial osteotomy model and an ovine tibial defect and porous implant ingrowth model. The rabbit model comprised of a unilateral V-shaped tibial osteotomy, stabilised with an absorbable intramedullary pin and figure-of-eight tension band suture, with a 3 week survival period. The GFs tested in this model were 3 concentrations of PDGF, a single dose of insulin-like growth factor binding protein (IGF-BP) and a combination of the two. Each osteotomy was injected with a single bolus of collagen (control) or collagen containing GF (treatment) during surgery. After sacrifice tibiae were CT-scanned in situ, harvested and subject to 4-point bend testing. The callus, underlying bone and contralateral bone's greyscales and mechanical testing results were used for comparative analysis. The ovine model consisted of implanting 6 small rectangular shaped titanium alloy porous implants and one empty defect bilaterally in sheep's tibiae, for 4 and 6 weeks. The sheep were injected with tetracycline bone marker at 2 week intervals. The model's characteristics and any positional effects were initially investigated. Followed by an investigation into the influence of various exogenous GFs on the healing response and ingrowth characteristics of bone into the porous implants. The GFs investigated were PDGF, IGF-BP and fibroblast growth factor impregnated into the porous implants in a collagen carrier. Comparative analysis was done on results from 3-point bend testing of the bone/implant interface, image analysis to quantify percentage of bone, from scanning electron microscopy images of implant sections and confocal microscopy images of tibial defect sections. Analyses indicate that the GFs investigated have a direct and quantifiable positive in vivo effect. The more significant finding is that the growth factors have a potent systemic effect. These results were confirmed by both the sheep porous bone plug model and the rabbit tibial osteotomy model used within this research.

Cultures in contact over a considerable period influence intellectual traditions, practices and habits relating to musical expression and the manner of teaching it. This study investigates the effects of different cultural contacts on Vietnamese student pianists, especially from Russian-style piano pedagogy and associated educational ideas and methods in music conservatoires. The purpose of this study was to compare various teaching approaches and learning styles, and the reactions of Vietnamese students to three different sources of training of piano teachers: Russia, Vietnam and England. Different sources of training affected piano pedagogy, and different musical traditions affected expression in piano performance, especially where students are from a cultural background different from that of their teacher. Observations of actual piano lessons were undertaken, and data were also obtained from interviews and questionnaires and analysed statistically. Results are reported and discussed in relation to four prominent features of the Russian piano school: achieving a powerful and substantial sound; the requirement for ???singing??? quality on the piano; the solid technical training which requires an enormous amount of practice time; and the necessity to play from memory. These are four prominent features of the Russian piano schooling. In addition, Vietnamese students??? problems regarding rhythmic accuracy highlight an inherent difference between the Vietnamese and Russian piano school. Major differences and similarities in teaching styles between Russian teachers and those from the UK and Vietnam were described and commented on under the following headings: use of mental practice; the role of listening; teacher demonstration; freedom for students in learning and making decisions (choice of repertoire; performance opportunities for students; students??? emotional reactions); the more liberal approach of the UK teachers; and the piano teaching styles at the Hanoi Conservatory that have been strongly influenced by the Russian piano school through Russian graduates??? teaching in Vietnam. These findings have important pedagogical implications. The more teachers control there was in lessons, the less a student would contribute to lessons actively. More liberal or less authoritarian approaches to teaching do not necessarily inculcate the discipline required for high achievement technically and expressively. There needs to be a balance between liberal approaches and encouraging the student to become autonomous in their efforts, and ensuring that they realize the importance of being disciplined in their practice habits.

This study is a comprehensive account of Indonesian foreign policy. It analyses the perceptions of the country???s foreign policy elite about other states and the manner in which these shape the decision-making process and determine policy outcomes. It demonstrates that the dynamics of Indonesian foreign relations in the reformasi period can be understood in terms of elite perceptions. Policy-makers??? perceptions are as important as realities, insofar as they shape their real actions. The balance-of-threat theory is the principal analytical tool used to examine elite perceptions. The study argues that the key realist balance-of-power theory lacks the power to explain past dynamics or to predict future direction of Indonesian foreign relations. The balance-of-threat theory is employed here as a predictor about how Indonesia will behave and whether it will implement policies intended to prevent other countries from endangering Indonesia???s national interests and security. The combined qualitative and quantitative research strategy is based on, but by no means limited to, archival study, content analysis of literature and official statements of relevant Indonesian policy-makers and the survey data. The latter approach draws on a series of 45 in-depth interviews with members of the Indonesian foreign policy elite. Indonesian relations with the United States and China are the highest concern of the elite. The leaders believe that, in the future, Indonesia will increasingly have to manoeuvre between the two rival powers. While the United States is currently seen as the main security threat to Indonesia, China is considered the main malign factor in the long run with power capabilities that need to be constrained and counter-balanced. The ambiguity, dichotomy and haphazardness that have characterized Indonesian foreign policy in the reformasi period are caused by four factors: first, the existence of a plurality of disparate views and attitudes among the contemporary Indonesian elite; second, the perceived complex security challenges on all fronts that are both internal and external in origins and traditional and non-traditional in nature; third, a low level of elite consensus about how to rank the external threats according to their urgency; and, fourth, a significant disparity between the elite???s present threat assessment and its long-term threat assessment.

Chapter 2: Welfare comparisons between funded and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) or unfunded pension systems are often made using the Aaron condition (Aaron, 1966). However, the Aaron condition as usually stated is not precise enough about the exact form of the PAYG pension system. PAYG pension systems can be either of the defined benefit or defined contribution variety. They can also differ with regard to intra-generational redistribution, for example pension benefits can be flat or earnings related. Here, four alternative PAYG pension systems are considered. It is shown that each system generates its own Aaron condition. In addition, the standard Aaron condition assumes that the wage rate and labour participation rate does not vary across individuals. These assumptions are also relaxed. Using US data covering the period 1933-2001, it is shown that the results of welfare comparisons are highly sensitive to different specifications of PAYG systems. Chapter 3: The sustainability of a defined benefit pay-as-you-go (DBPAYG) pension system is investigated in the context of an overlapping-generations model of endogenous fertility. The model places particular emphasis on the time costs of child rearing. It illustrates the mechanism by which such a pension system can increase the opportunity cost of having children and hence sow the seeds of its own destruction. The model is then extended to allow for fertility-based payments. Such a system is more likely to be sustainable. These models highlight a number of issues that are of considerable relevance to a number of OECD countries that have generous DBPAYG pension systems and falling fertility rates. Chapter 4: The previous chapter focused on transition dynamics, while this chapter investigates steady state outcomes of fertility based defined benefit pay-as-you-go (DB-PAYG) pension systems in the context of an overlapping-generations model with endogenous fertility and heterogeneous agents. Special attention is paid to the impact on fertility, utility, taxation, and per capita saving. Chapter 5: A two-stage bargaining model is developed to describe how fertility decisions are made in a strategic family setting. Given the assumption that family contracts are incomplete and cannot be used to enforce optimal behaviour, it is shown that investments in children (i.e. the fertility rate) may be sub-optimal. This is because the woman may find it in her interest to invest too little in children in stage 1 of the model in order to protect her bargaining status in stage 2. The chapter then considers in the context of this model the impact on fertility rates of changes in child custody rules (in the case of divorce), the wage rate, and the male-female wage differential. It concludes by exploring how the introduction of child subsidies can change the results.

???Sing at the Moon: the contextual narrative of isolation and grief in Australia women???s writing??? comprises two complementary elements of a single thesis: a novel and a critical essay. My novel takes as its starting point the impact of unsolved murders on small regional communities and uses this to explore the effects of isolation and grief on subjectivities, particularly women???s. The novel represents an original contribution to that strand of contemporary Australian fiction, especially as written by women, which deals with the Australian bush myth and the effects on women of the masculinism of Australian national identity. The critical component of my thesis examines Thea Astley???s Drylands and Dorothy Hewett???s Neap Tide in terms of how each novel engages with Australian literary traditions and offers an explicit critique of Australian masculinist culture. I focus on the ways the novels represent violence against women and show how this violence works to underpin the masculinist myth of mateship - to reveal a more sinister underbelly of Australian culture. Their critique of Australian masculinist culture also works at the level of form where both writers subvert a traditional ???realist??? form for political as well as aesthetic purposes. I see myself primarily as a writer and feminist who uses theory and criticism as a way of reflecting on my own creative practice in the light of writing as social responsibility. My approach both to my own novel and to Drylands and Neap Tide is shaped by Susan Lever???s proposal that ???writing and reading lie at the heart of feminism; they are the means by which women can explore and communicate the deepest aspects of their condition??? (2000,132). In my essay I am interested in providing a critical context for the novel by exploring feminist theories of subjectivity and the ways these can be represented in fiction. As a result I will analyse some of the narrative conventions employed in Hewett???s and Astley???s novels. I will show that the work of both writers operates in the context of an Australian literary tradition ??? both past and present ??? and informs and negotiates new ways that accommodate feminist concerns with fictional practice.

This thesis is about the way memory and identity are continually reconstituted and how they shape and impinge upon each other. I use my own experience of growing up in Italian and Anglo Australian cultures as a primary source to examine the changing nature of memory affects and to consider they ways in which events of the past have formed and transformed my cultural identity. I also explore the intermingling of personal and collective memory and how ethnic groups negotiate community identity within national identity formations. Concepts of Deleuze and Guattari, particularly those of the rhizome, the refrain and territorialisation, are keys to understanding practices associated with memory and identity and I apply them throughout the thesis. Nostalgia and loss are emotions often tangled up with memory and identity and I use the work of Barthes, Stewart and Woodward in discussing these. I use other diverse theories to look at the ways memory is embedded in the body ?? manifested in gestures, performance and everyday practices ?? and mediated in rituals, film, photographs, documents and objects. The style of writing does not adhere to the conventions of academic discourse and diverts intermittently from scholarly argumentation. It assembles disparate memory events ?? both personal and collective ?? along with factual information, fragments of biography and autobiography, and reflection and analysis. It is written this way in part to resemble the process of thinking and remembering which is never a smooth, logically flowing stream of intelligence.

Carbon nanotube (CNT) polymer composites have attracted much attention since the extraordinary electrical and mechanical properties of CNTs were realised. However research into biomedical applications of CNT/polymer composites has received little attention. The aim of this thesis was to fabricate an electrically conductive, biocompatible polymer based on a poly(ether)urethane (PEU) with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) as the conductive filler. Paramount to achieving this was to obtain good dispersion and integration of MWNTs within the host polymer matrix. A number of different strategies were investigated including high energy mixing of MWNTs in PEU and covalent functionalisation of MWNTs with long chain hydrocarbons, poly(tetramethylene oxide) (PTMO) and poly(acrylic acid) (pAA) for enhanced miscibility with PEU. The impact of these strategies was assessed by testing the tensile properties, electrical conductivity as well as cytotoxicity of resulting MWNT/PEU composites. It was found that high energy mixing in the presence of MWNTs caused severe degradation of PEU, resulting in significant cytotoxicity and reductions in composite tensile strength. Covalent functionalisation of MWNTs was achieved by utilising defect group chemistry to attach a range of molecules. PTMO covalently attached to MWNTs was found to cause significant nanotube aggregation in PEU composites. Long chain hydrocarbons covalently attached to MWNTs exhibited enhanced dispersability in PEU with increasing molecular weight, attributed to disrupting intertube Van der Waals forces and providing favourable hydrophobic interactions with PEU. Additionally these composites exhibited increased conductivity and decreased cytotoxicity with increasing hydrocarbon length. However increasing long chain hydrocarbon molecular weight also caused significant reductions in MWNT conductivity. MWNTs surface modified with carboxylic acid groups exhibited favourable hydrophilic interactions with PEU but did not retain tensile properties at nanotube loadings where electrical conductivity was significant. Successful polymerisation of acrylic acid monomer initiated from MWNTs using a reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerisation was demonstrated. Resulting pAA-MWNTs exhibited enhanced dispersability in water but not in PEU composites, resulting in severe degradation in composite tensile properties. PAA-MWNTs also exhibited decreased conductivity with increasing pAA molecular weight. Incorporating MWNTs in PEU composites has been demonstrated to impart multi-functionality to existing biomaterials for potential uses in a range of biomedical applications.

In this research, we look at the problem of detecting complex situations arising in Electronic Markets or e-markets. E-markets have been growing in size rapidly over the past few years. Large amounts of transactions are being generated from e-markets everyday so data analysis tools are required for several business processes such as market strategy evaluation or illegal trading activity detection. However, our literature review shows existing tools available today still cannot overcome all the main challenges such as dealing with a large amount of incoming real-time data from multiple market feeds and providing a user with no programming skills the ability to extract data efficiently. This thesis proposes to address this problem using the Event Processing concept. We model an e-market as a distributed event-driven system. Therefore, we can refer to e-market transactions as events and use an Event Processing System (EPS) as a data analysis tool. To implement our solution, we propose a new EPS architecture that allows the integration of several existing EPSs (called slave EPSs) under a unified domain-specific user interface and execution environment. Since different EPSs rely on different data models and event pattern models, our proposal also includes a unified e-market data model and event pattern framework for defining, composing and executing event patterns. Selected common event patterns used for financial market surveillance in several stock exchanges have been used to evaluate the proposed work. The proposed event pattern framework has proved that it has the capability of expressing event patterns of varying complexities. In terms of the proposed EPS architecture, a system prototype has been successfully developed using two sophisticated commercial systems, Coral8 and SMARTS, as slave EPSs. The experiments performed involve the execution of selected event patterns against real historical data from the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). Our solution is cost-efficient and provides a number of benefits that can be used in practice. The proposed data model and event pattern framework can be used during the requirement gathering phase. The proposed EPS architecture provides users a unified interface with no programming skills for application development and the ability to customise and execute event patterns for different existing EPSs. Moreover, it can be used to facilitate the suitable EPS selection to achieve a more efficient event pattern detection process.