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My thesis is a collection of non-fiction and fictional narratives focused on domestic space and its impact on father-daughter relationships and vice versa. In all of the narratives the notion of a house under renovation serves as a vehicle for the figurative tension between members of the family and family space. The narratives offer no internal markers to indicate whether they are fiction or non-fiction, which demonstrates my conviction that only factors external to the text---relation to fact or to imagination---can determine a narrative's status as fiction or non-fiction. / The required afterword to my narratives discusses the theoretical problem of the distinction between fiction and non-fiction as well as the living nature of material culture and space as reflections and mediators of father-daughter relationships.

Pauline Melville’s The Ventriloquist’s Tale is an intricately layered novel in which the myths and folktales of the Amerindians of Guyana, as they are represented in Melville’s novel, are engaged in a dialogue with their reality. This narrative/mythical dialogue results in enactments and re-enactments of the myths and folktales, not only retelling them, but also recycling them, resulting in the Amerindians interpreting their myths and folktales nonmetaphorically. Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of settings as chronotopes, “timespaces” in which time and space are inseparable from each other and from the theme, is used to define the distinct thematic qualities of the three narrative layers in the novel. I label these three chronotopes unfixed space, the juncture, and the interior. The interior is established as the chronotope in which the enactments and reenactments of myths and folktales primarily take place, re/enactments which add yet another layer to the novel. I argue that the reason the chronotope of the interior is the nexus of these myths and folktales is largely because the Amerindians adhere to a concept of time which is cyclical rather than linear. The enactments and reenactments are then unfolded as intentionally complex and contradictory threads, which are then untangled to show how the myths and folktales are recycled in the novel. This untangling reveals how the threads interconnect, and how they can all be traced back to the narrator, the trickster deity Macunaima, suggesting he is as unbound by temporal and spatial limitations as the narrative layer of myths and folktales from which he has emerged.

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Background: The prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity is increasing worldwide. One main determinant of overweight and obesity is inactivity. Little is known about the factors that influence physical activity and sedentary behaviour among young children. Seasonal variation was examined as a correlate of physical activity in both a literature review and in a sample of pre-school children in Edmonton, Alberta. Neighbourhood socioeconomic status (SES) was examined as a correlate of screen time use in the same sample of children. Methods: For study 1, databases were searched for studies on seasonal variation in physical activity levels. Studies 2 and 3 involved a sample of 4- and 5-year-old children, who were attending a health center in and around Edmonton, Alberta for preschool immunization between November, 2005 and August, 2007. Parents provided proxy reports of their children’s screen time viewing and physical activity. Height and weight were measured by a trained health assistant and body mass index (BMI) was calculated. Children’s postal codes were retrieved from health records to calculate neighbourhood SES through census data. The month the proxy report was completed was used to determine seasonality. Several regression models were constructed to examine relationships between variables in studies 2 and 3. Results: The review of literature revealed that 83% (29/35) of the studies found seasonal variation in physical activity among children and/or adolescents. For study 2, total physical activity as well as active play, weekday and weekend minutes were highest in the summer and lowest in the winter. Finally, neighbourhood SES was a predictor of screen time and TV/video use for girls but not for boys in study 3. Conclusion: Some consideration should be given to increasing physical activity opportunities in the winter for children, especially in areas of the world that experience extreme winter conditions. As well some consideration should be given to providing alternative activity opportunities for young girls who live in lower SES neighbourhoods.

The main focus of this thesis is the investigation of a number of different space-time coding scenarios based on predominately the application of turbo codes and low density parity check (LDPC) codes to a multi-antenna system. Both codes structures make use of the BPSK stacking construction that readily applies binary linear codes to the space-time channel while also providing a check on the suitability of the resulting code in order to achieve maximum diversity advantage. The turbo-like codes investigated are based upon the application of a parallel concatenated scheme to directly map the data and parity bits generated by the encoder to one of three possible antennas outputs. It is further highlighted in this case how the interleaver plays a crucial role in determining overall performance as this determines whether the resulting space-time codes achieve maximum diversity advantage or otherwise. Performance results are presented for a number of different constituent codes and interleaver design. The LDPC space-time codes considered herein again are based on satisfying the BPSK stacking construction to ensure full diversity advantage is achieved. The code design is based on a recursive application of the Shur complement in order to devise block based codes that have a resulting parity check matrix that is relatively sparse. A number of various code constructions that satisfy the conditions are then simulated in order to determine performance in both slow and fast fading channel conditions. This thesis also investigates the use of certain non-linear codes termed “chaotic codes” and their application as constituent codes within a parallel concatenated (turbo-like) coding scheme. Performance of such codes is shown to be readily analysed via the use extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) techniques. The modified codes are simulated over an AWGN channel using BPSK modulation for a number of different block lengths. / Thesis (PhDTelecommunications)--University of South Australia, 2006.

I examine the extent to which accounting information is reflected in market prices at different points in time. The efficient market hypothesis implies that price always reflects (value-relevant) accounting information, based on the assumptions of rational investors and costless arbitrage. I examine the time-series relation between price and value in two studies which are motivated by potential shortcomings of these assumptions. First, there is significant debate regarding the rationality of equity investors during the late 1990s. I therefore contrast the historical time-series relation between price and value with that of the 1990s, and show that the historical tendency of price to converge towards value breaks down during this period. Second, I examine the impact of the lack of close substitutes - an arbitrage cost - on the time-series relation between price and value. I find some evidence of a positive association between this arbitrage cost and both the level and the duration of the disparity between price and value. My results provide empirical support for the hypothesis that price requires time to reflect (accounting) information and has implications for research that assumes that prices are measured without error.

Time series datasets are useful in a wide range of diverse real world applications. Retrieving or querying from a collection of time series is a fundamental task, with a key example being the similarity query. A similarity query returns all time series from the collection that are similar to a given reference time series. This type of query is particularly useful in prediction and forecasting applications. / A key challenge for similarity queries is efficiency and for large datasets, it is important to develop efficient indexing techniques. Existing approaches in this area are mainly based on the Generic Multimedia Indexing Method (GEMINI), which is a framework that uses spatial indexes such as the R-tree to index reduced time series. For processing a similarity query, the index is first used to prune candidate time series using a lower bounding distance. Then, all remaining time series are compared using the original similarity measure, to derive the query result. Performance within this framework depends on the tightness of the lower bounding distance with respect to the similarity measure. Indeed much work has been focused on representation and dimensionality reduction, in order to provide a tighter lower bounding distance. / Existing work, however, has not used employed dimensionality reduction in a flexible way, requiring all time series to be reduced to have the same dimension. In contrast, in this thesis, we investigate the possibility of allowing a variable dimension reduction. To this end, we develop a new and more flexible tree based indexing structure called the Multi-Resolution Index (MR-Index), which allows dimensionality to vary across different levels of the tree. We provide efficient algorithms for querying, building and maintaining this structure. Through an experimental analysis, we show that the MR-Index can deliver improved query efficiency compared to the traditional R-tree index, using both the Euclidean and dynamic time warping similarity measures.

Time series datasets are useful in a wide range of diverse real world applications. Retrieving or querying from a collection of time series is a fundamental task, with a key example being the similarity query. A similarity query returns all time series from the collection that are similar to a given reference time series. This type of query is particularly useful in prediction and forecasting applications. / A key challenge for similarity queries is efficiency and for large datasets, it is important to develop efficient indexing techniques. Existing approaches in this area are mainly based on the Generic Multimedia Indexing Method (GEMINI), which is a framework that uses spatial indexes such as the R-tree to index reduced time series. For processing a similarity query, the index is first used to prune candidate time series using a lower bounding distance. Then, all remaining time series are compared using the original similarity measure, to derive the query result. Performance within this framework depends on the tightness of the lower bounding distance with respect to the similarity measure. Indeed much work has been focused on representation and dimensionality reduction, in order to provide a tighter lower bounding distance. / Existing work, however, has not used employed dimensionality reduction in a flexible way, requiring all time series to be reduced to have the same dimension. In contrast, in this thesis, we investigate the possibility of allowing a variable dimension reduction. To this end, we develop a new and more flexible tree based indexing structure called the Multi-Resolution Index (MR-Index), which allows dimensionality to vary across different levels of the tree. We provide efficient algorithms for querying, building and maintaining this structure. Through an experimental analysis, we show that the MR-Index can deliver improved query efficiency compared to the traditional R-tree index, using both the Euclidean and dynamic time warping similarity measures.