Webpage design is an important factor in the capturing of new donor populations and increasing charitable giving. Charities often use emotional appeals when soliciting donations but little is known about the effects of embedding different verbal triggers directly into donation buttons. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of three emotional triggers on donor compliance, donation amount and trust in the charity. A between-groups experimental design was used to test six hypotheses regarding the impact of social approval, empowerment, and guilt on donor compliance, donation amount and trust in the charity. Eighty students completed the research protocol using a simulated online donating platform. The hypotheses were not supported and the implications of the findings are discussed within the context of the strengths and limitations of the research design.

Through the recruitment of immunologic mechanisms, allogeneic hematopoeitic cell transplantation (HCT) has been establiched as a curative treatment for various hematologic diseases. The most convenient source to obtain hematopoietic progenitor cells are peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs) which are harvested from the donor via leukapheresis after mobilization with granulocyte-colony stimulating factors. With the introduction of reduced intensity condition (RIC), the curative potential of allogeneic HCT became accessible to older and/or frail patients otherwise ineligible for HCT. However, new challenges arise as the increasing age of patients is inevitably accompanied by a comparable increase in the age of donors. Safety considerations of collecting PBSCs might attain new dimensions. Data to potential risks in elderly donors are lacking. Moreover, the impact of donor’s age on the feasibility of PBSCs collection and on the quality of the harvest in terms of stem cells (CD34+) and natural killer (NK)-cells has not been studied. It is also unknown whether PBSCs obtained from donors above 50 years would negatively influence engraftment or the incidence of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in the recipient. These questions were explored in a retrospective study including 167 recipients of an allogeneic HCT (52.7% after RIC) from a matched related sibling. Median donors’ age was 47 years [67 (40%) donors were > 50 years including 34 donors > 60 years]. Safety of mobilization and leukapheresis was age independent. Adequate PBSCs were collected from all donors though a higher CD34+-cell count was seen in donors < 50 years (p<0.0005), whereas harvests from donors > 60 years contained a higher NK-cell count (p=0.003). Engraftment in the recipient occurred after a median of 12 days and was not affected by an advanced donor age. Similarly, a higher incidence of GVHD was not seen in recipients of harvests from older donors. For the first time, we show that donor’s age, even beyond 60 years, does not preclude successful collection of PBSCs from siblings, does not jeopardize the short-term safety of the donor, and is not associated with deleterious sequels for the recipient in terms of engraftment or GVHD. As NK-cells have been implicated in the suppression of GVHD, and the mediation of a graft versus leukemia effect, the impact of the higher number of NK-cells in harvests from elderly donors on relapse of hematologic malignancies in the recipient warrants further studies.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - James Cook University, 2005. / Journal publications by the author contained on CD-ROM. Typescript (photocopy) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 1981. / Description based on print version record. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 204-213).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 338-377) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Kidney transplantation is a lifesaving treatment for end stage kidney disease that offers considerable benefits to recipients in terms of survival and quality of life. The growing demand for transplants to treat conditions stemming from a rising prevalence of end stage renal disease, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases has to be met increasingly with donors who are older with a high incidence of comorbid conditions. Organs obtained from these higher risk donors are more likely to have either suboptimal short and long-term transplant outcomes or even fail to function altogether. Transplant clinicians, who have to balance the risk of patients dying while waiting for a transplant against the uncertainty of outcomes, often decline organs as transplants. These clinical challenges entail difficult decisions, and more refined tools to assess and quantify the risks of marginal donor organs are lacking. Diagnostic markers of donor kidney quality that can predict transplantation outcomes are highly desirable in order to discriminate the suboptimal from those allografts that will recover and have good long-term function. My doctoral research using donor samples collected within the Quality of Organ Donation (QUOD) programme has shown for first time that it is possible, on the basis of a tissue proteomic profile, to discriminate donor kidneys at the time of retrieval that will have suboptimal allograft function from those kidneys that could recover and have good function at three and 12 months post transplantation. Despite AKIN classification and Remuzzi scoring showing no evidence of acute kidney injury or chronic kidney disease in the analysed biopsies, quantitative mass spectrometry and degredomics experiments with a subsequent validation analysis on an independent cohort of biopsy samples confirmed the increased levels of inflammation and pro-fibrotic proteins in the allografts with suboptimal function, while increased levels of cytoprotective proteins were detected in the kidneys that recovered with a good function one year after transplantation. Furthermore, the kidneys with suboptimal function demonstrated enhanced degradation of cytoskeletal proteins that are vital in sustaining the glomerular basement membrane cytoskeleton. In addition, I conducted a pilot study using proteomic analysis of serum and urine of donors whose kidneys either developed delayed graft function or functioned immediately. This study confirmed that is feasible to identify alterations in the blood and urine proteome that are biologically meaningful. In preparation of the discovery and development of diagnostic biomarkers of long-term outcome after kidney transplantation using QUOD plasma samples, I assessed the pre-analytical variability associated with the processing of whole blood during QUOD sample collection in order to identify a baseline proteomic and peptidomic profile against which candidate protein markers relevant for clinical correlates can be selected. Based on the findings reported in this thesis, future work should aim to identify and develop better diagnostic tools that can more reliably predict donor organ quality. In addition, novel intervention strategies can be explored that either attenuate pro-fibrotic and proteolytic activities or enhance antioxidant and cytoprotective mechanisms in deceased donor kidneys prior to transplantation.

This thesis presents the application and development of H-bond donor organocatalysts. Chapter 2 presents an intramolecular Michael addition of &beta;-dicarbonyls onto &alpha;,&beta;-unsaturated esters catalyzed by tertiary amine/H-bond donor bifunctional catalysts, achieving up to 88&percnt; ee. Chapter 3 outlines the design and synthesis of a new family of cinchona-derived H-bond donor/ammonium salt phase-transfer catalysts. The ability of these asymmetric phase-transfer catalysts to activate less reactive substrates than their tertiary amine analogues and to induce higher levels of enantiocontrol than commercially available phase-transfer catalysts was demonstrated in an intramolecular Michael addition. Chapter 4 details the highly successful application of these new H-bond donor/ammonium salt phase-transfer catalysts to the enantio- and diastereoselective nitro-Mannich reaction of &alpha;-amido sulfones with nitroalkanes. Preliminary investigations into a novel phase-transfer catalyzed asymmetric ketimine reduction demonstrate the ability of these catalysts to provide access to new methods.

M.Sc. / The main objective of the work presented in this dissertation was to investigate the application of the phosphorus atom as a probe to evaluate stereo-electronic effects in arylphosphines. Traditionally, electronic effects are described as having inductive or resonance origins. In addition to the aforementioned mechanisms, the possibility of an additional field effect pathway was also investigated. For this purpose, a series of ortho, meta and para mono-substituted triaryl phosphines, i.e. Ph2(C6H4-X), were synthesised using a lithium-halogen exchange pathway. This series included a selection of electron-withdrawing and electron-donating substituents (X = F, CN, COOtBu, Me, OMe, NMe2) as well as combinations of these. Most of these ligands are crystalline which allowed analysis of their electronic nature by means of X-ray crystallography. From these ligands a representative range of electron-donating and electron-withdrawing aryl substituted phosphines was chosen to collect high-resolution (d=0.5 Å) data. An aspherical multipole refinement was carried out on each of the high-resolution data sets by employing the Hansen Coppens multipole formalism. This was followed by an experimental charge density analysis of each phosphine by employing the principles of QTAIM employed in WinXD. From topological analysis of the Laplacian of the electron density, properties at the (3,-3) lone pair critical points were evaluated. Similarly, the density properties at the (3,-1) bond critical points of the P-Cipso bond were evaluated by analysis of the topology of the electron density. In addition, several integrated properties including the volume, charge and electron population of the phosphorus atom were evaluated. All of the above properties showed very good linear correlations with the infrared CO stretching frequencies of the Rh-Vaska-type complexes corresponding to these phosphines. Furthermore, computational chemistry was employed as a complementary investigation tool to the X-ray crystallographic study. A theoretical charge density study was conducted for the complete range of phosphines described above in paragraph 1 of this Synopsis by employing the principles of QTAIM employed in AIMAll. All of the properties mentioned in the above paragraph were also calculated. In addition, the calculated molecular electrostatic potential properties of the phosphorus lone pair (Vmin and dcp), the integrated substituent bond dipole and NBO (Natural bond orbital) analysis was used to evaluate substituent electronic effects. All of the calculated properties (with the exception of the charge and electron population of the phosphorus atom calculated from NBO analysis) showed good linear correlations with the infrared CO stretching frequencies of the Vaska-type complexes corresponding to these phosphines within a particular electron-withdrawing/electron-donating or ortho/meta and para series. In addition, very ii good linear correlations were obtained between the experimental and theoretical properties within a particular electron-withdrawing/electron-donating or ortho/meta and para series. As additional investigation tools, the ligands were characterised by several techniques including infrared CO stretching frequency measurements performed on Rh Vaska-type compounds derived from the synthesised ligands, 31P NMR chemical shift measurements as well as 103Rh-31P coupling constant measurements to evaluate the effect of various substituents on the electron density at the phosphorus lone pair. In conclusion, it was found that the phosphorus atom is a sensitive probe of substituent electronic effects. Furthermore, it was found that high-resolution X-ray crystallography, computational chemistry, 31P NMR and infrared spectroscopy are all excellent techniques that can be employed to obtain a better understanding of the nature and transmission of substituent effects. From this study, it appeared that the electronic effects in phosphine ligands could not be rationalised by an inductive mechanism alone, but seemingly more correctly by an additional field effect mechanism.