This thesis is an investigation of how spiritual ideas have contributed to West Australian academic and artist Tom Gibbons’s approach to Modernism. Against the backdrop of the local context I show how Gibbons’s 1950s undergraduate and 1960s post-graduate studies in the area of the occult and esoteric influences on Early Modernism provided him with an atypical perspective on Modernism itself but that this perspective resulted in his development of a Modernist sensibility particularly suitable for the type of questions asked about art in the later part of last century. My thesis traces Gibbons’s development of an integrated aesthetic “theory” that bridged for him the gap between a host of contrary sources. For Gibbons the bridge between divergent views on art, from the Modern period to the Renaissance period, is an ahistorical perspective based on Christian Immanence. He thus adopted a perspective that redefined the metaphysical aspects of Modernist abstraction through a particular approach to realism which celebrates the everyday world because of the Christian structures that for him condition it. I argue that his sensibility, which combines the stylistic features of a Modernist literature witty juxtaposition, irony and paradox with the concept of Christian Immanence, resulted in an oeuvre which can be read as a particular example of what Ken Wilber in the late 1990s termed Integral Studies. I argue that underlying Gibbons’s use of Christian Immanence is the Integralist’s understanding that the world’s great philosophical and spiritual traditions approach consciousness and experience through similar ideas. The argument presented, in agreement with writers such as Wilber, is that Gibbons’s capacity to develop a sense of life’s irony and metaphor, and to then use this as a capacity to embrace the beauty and outrageousness of the whole, is a mature spirituality that provides an integrated perspective filled with joy for the ordinary. I conclude that his art provides a particular example of how the loss of meaning felt by Modernists may be addressed.

Over the last decade, there has been rapid growth in research into the influence of the physical environment on physical activity. Previously, individual and social factors dominated research into the influences of physical activity. This new area of study has been built on the understanding that the physical environment may create an opportunity or a barrier to engagement in physical activity behaviours (Sallis & Owen, 1997). This research develops objectively measured features of the physical environment in order to investigate relationships with walking behaviour. Public health research of this nature is still at a preliminary stage, although research expertise outside of public health including transportation, urban planning and geographic information science has much to contribute to this emerging field. This study investigated walking in the neighbourhood in a sample of adults residing in Perth, Western Australia. Objective measurement of the physical environment using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was conducted including measurement of street connectivity, residential density, land use mix and retail floor area ratio at three different geographic scales (suburb, census collection district, 15 minute walk from a survey participants home). These measures were then combined into an index known as a walkability index and validated against survey participant reported data on walking within the neighbourhood using binary logistic regression. Among other findings, the evidence presented shows that depending on which geographic scale the physical environment is measured at and what type of walking in the neighbourhood is reported, the strength of relationship varies between an objectively measured walkability index and walking behaviour in the neighbourhood. These findings highlight the need to differentiate between walking for transport and walking for recreation, health and exercise when investigating the relationship between physical activity and the environment. These findings also show the importance of geographic scale of measurement in the relationship between physical activity and the physical environment, and the need for current high quality geographic data in this type of research.

This research project investigates the processes of capturing corporate knowledge in an Australian local government context. The City of Perth, the capital city local government of Perth, Western Australia, is the organisation within which this study was conducted. A qualitative research methodology was utilised for this study in order to understand all the factors involved in knowledge sharing, including the human aspects. Data was collected exclusively through structured interviews consisting of a series of open questions. Digital transcripts of these interviews were produced and analysed by the researcher using qualitative data analysis software. The application of the research methodology has produced a rich set of results. The different types and sources of corporate knowledge used by participants and their views on knowledge capture processes are explored. Participants provide insight into their motivations in undertaking knowledge capture, the extent knowledge is shared in the organisation and barriers to sharing knowledge that they had encountered. The utilisation of the organisation’s information management processes and the overall purposes of knowledge capture were also explored by the study. Some of the results are quite predictable and generally supported by the literature, such as a preference for interpersonal communication in the sharing of knowledge. Other results are more unexpected including strongly expressed altruistic support for the good of the employing organisation as their motivation in supporting knowledge management activities and an understanding of the need for knowledge codification.

[Truncated abstract] Gastroenteritis is frequently associated with a food or water borne source and the investigation of such cases is undertaken to identify potential sources of infection. Where contaminated food or water are identified as the source of infection/intoxication, action may be taken to limit or prevent further people being affected, and in so doing limit costs to the health care system. This study was undertaken to determine if there is a more effective and efficient way to collect information from patients with certain enteric illnesses. This was based on a trial process of posting self-administered questionnaires with a reply-paid return envelope to the patient and compared with the existing process where local government Environmental Health Officers interview the patient and provide a report to the Department of Health. A limiting factor in the existing process is the time lapse between the onset of illness and follow-up by Environmental Health Officers (EHOs), which results in difficulties in contacting the patient and obtaining a dietary history. Furthermore, the existing system is resource intense, requiring officers to individually interview patients either in person or by telephone. The study was of those patients living in the Perth metropolitan area whose doctor notified the Department of Health that the patient had contracted any of three notifiable enteric illnesses (campylobacterosis, giardiasis or salmonellosis), and the patient was not part of a known outbreak and was assessed as not requiring urgent follow-up. The trial process was used for patients living in five local government areas and the return rate, timeliness of return and completeness of questionnaires in the trial process was compared with the reports returned under the existing process of investigation and reporting by EHOs from 24 metropolitan local government areas that were not part of the trial process. An estimate of the potential costs to local government and the Department of Health was undertaken for both the existing and trial processes of collecting information from patients. A survey of local government EHOs in the metropolitan area was also undertaken to assess the perception of EHOs about roles and responsibilities in the follow-up investigation, the use of the Enteric Disease Investigation Report (EDIR) and the limitations that they identified in the current investigation process.

Young children have becoming an important target by marketers. Marketers have used many strategies to influence their food choices including advertising and free gifts. According to literature, young children, are cognitively vulnerable and may make unhealthy decisions about their food choices that could lead to serious problems associated with being overweight and obese. This thesis examines whether price and health claim information can shift young childrens' choices towards healthier foods. Most of the previous published research literature has focused on adults. Those findings, using surveys and experiments, suggest that adults' food preferences and choices can be influenced by setting price and by providing health information. These findings suggest that these strategies may have a potential effect in young children decision making. The literature on Children Socialization and Information Processing Theory in consumer behaviour suggests that most young children under 8 are not cognitively skilled to use price and health claim information for their decision making. Nonetheless, most 5 to 8 year olds are making purchases of food at their school canteen several times a week. In order to test for the effects of price and nutrition information, several experiments that used discrete choice modelling were conducted to determine their choices, the reliability of their choices and the between their experimental choice behaviour and their choice in the market place. More than one hundred young children, aged from five to eight years old, completed the discrete choice experiments conducted in two primary schools in the suburbs of Perth. The choice experiments on subjects that had previous experience with the food items, but did not know their relative nutritional value, showed a strong positive effect of price. In other words, higher priced options were often in more demand. Although this may appear a poor response to price by an observer, children have little knowledge of food costs, so they may use price as a surrogate for quality. Price level was also a main effect in reducing the share of unhealthy choices. The results of the analyses also show that young children can provide reliable choice decisions within 5 months of experiment. However, their experimental choices were not associated with their later choices in the canteen. These findings provide evidence of the effectiveness of price and health claim information in changing young childrens' preference toward healthy choices, and the potential usefulness of using discrete choice techniques to shift children to more healthy food options.

[Truncated abstract] This thesis examines the phenomenon of repeat burglary and its significance for crime prevention, criminology and victimology. The research program for this thesis was inspired some time ago by the Kirkholt burglary prevention project in the United Kingdom. The reduction of repeat victimisation quickly came to be seen as the key to Kirkholt?s success and by the late twentieth century victim-based crime prevention projects had been implemented in many parts of the world. However, even though these projects have achieved notable success there is still intense debate about why one-time victims are more likely than others to become future victims. This thesis aims to increase understanding of repeat burglary and other forms of repeat victimisation by contributing to its key concepts and its methods of analysis, and by applying these insights in Australian settings. In pursuing this endeavour the thesis links the problems of repeat victimisation with problems in other areas of criminology and social science. In particular the issue of whether prior victimisation is a cause of future victimisation or merely a marker of pre-existing risk has analogs in the areas of offending, of employment, in international disputes, and in many others. Despite this, there has been limited transfer of methods and concepts between repeat victim researchers and researchers in other areas. The thesis examines repeat burglary as a substantive area of research, but its approaches to method, concepts and data are relevant to all repeat victimisation research. ... It draws together criminological theory, conceptual analysis, and a pioneering application of survival analysis to pursue the mechanisms underlying repeat burglary in a Perth suburb. In doing so it illuminates issues about the relative power of state dependence and heterogeneity explanations of repeat burglary and arrives at substantive results that in some aspects differ from findings in the United Kingdom. This section also argues that the concept of state dependence commonly adopted is iv unnecessarily constraining and that a broader concept can explain some potentially conflicting findings of repeat victimisation research. Section 3 is an evaluation of a victim-focused burglary prevention initiative in Adelaide one of two nationally supported pilot projects. Section 4 examines carefully the claimed advantages of victim-focused crime prevention for distributing burglary prevention resources in an efficient and equitable way. It examines evidence concerning the differential capacity and willingness of victims to take effective preventive action and the need for both individual and collective support for effective preventive initiatives. Section 5 concludes the thesis by arguing first that the merging of victim support and crime prevention is not as simple as is sometimes claimed. It also argues that crime prevention needs to take into account more than criminological theory if it is to be effective. An important argument of the conclusion is that criminological imagination has been overly limited in comprehending repeat victimisation, and it explores the ways in which criminological research still struggles to appreciate the importance of the victim for theory and crime prevention. It also argues that the implications of repeat victimisation have yet to be fully developed and accepted. Fuller details of the thesis structure are given at the end of the introduction.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Australia, 2005.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciada en Lengua y Literatura Hispánica / Las aproximaciones de Arenas con el surrealismo son en su obra evidentes: revitalización del sueño y de la imaginación, de las capas inferiores del inconsciente, riqueza de imágenes y la poesía como elemento separado de la moral y la lógica. Sin embargo, el carácter revolucionario de los surrealistas franceses y que en algún momento los hizo militar políticamente en las filas del Partido Comunista (1925), no está presente en el autor chileno. Su posición literaria no es políticamente activa, no busca a través de sus imágenes la adhesión del lector al cambio político, lo hace cuestionarse, pero no en este sentido. Es por eso que señalamos que El castillo de Perth es una obra que toma elementos del surrealismo, pero sólo estéticamente, pues no pretende incitar al cambio social, que fue una de las premisas fundamentales de Bretón, a razón de la crítica a una sociedad de orientación burguesa y capitalista que por sus intereses materiales había originado la Primera Guerra Mundial. Sin ir más lejos, un antecedente que no podemos olvidar son las muestras de simpatía del autor por el golpe de Estado de Augusto Pinochet en 1973. Es decir, cinco años después de la publicación de la novela que hasta aquí nos ha convocado, de corte surrealista, su autor, legitima un régimen con los valores opuestos. Un régimen bajo la arbitrariedad más absoluta, dónde la búsqueda de libertad, de expresividad y la instauración del yo quedan completamente postergadas.

[Formulae and special characters can only be approximated here. Please see the pdf version of the abstract for an accurate reproduction.] This thesis reviews, extends and applies to urban traffic analysis the entropy concept of Shannon and Luce's mathematical psychology in a fairly complex and mathematically demanding model of human decision making, if it is solved as a deeply nested structure of logit calculus. Recognising consumers' different preferences and the universal propensity to seek the best choice when going to some desired goal (k), a transparent mathematical program (MP) is developed: the equivalent of a nested multinomial logit model without its inherent computational difficulty. The MP model makes a statistical assessment of individual decisions based on a randomised (measurable) utility within a given choice structure: some path through a diagram (Rk, Dk), designed a priori, of a finite number of sequential choices. The Equivalence Theorem (ET) formalises the process and states a non-linear MP with linear constraints that maximises collective satisfaction: utility plus weighted entropy, where the weight (1/θn) is a behavioural parameter to be calibrated in each case, eg for the Perth CBD. An optimisation subject to feasible routes through the (Rk, Dk) network thus captures the rational behaviour of consumers on their individually different best-choice decision paths towards their respective goals (k). This theory has been applied to urban traffic assignment before: a Stochastic User Equi-librium (SUE). What sets this thesis apart is its focus on MP models that can be solved with standard Operations Research software (eg MINOS), models for which the ET is a conditio sine qua non. A brief list of SUE examples in the literature includes Fisk's logit SUE model in (impractically many) route flows. Dial's STOCH algorithm obviates path enumeration, yet is a logit multi-path assignment procedure, not an MP model; it is nei-ther destination oriented nor an optimisation towards a SUE. A revision of Dial's method is provided, named STOCH[k], that computes primal variables (node and link flows) and Lagrangian duals (the satisfaction difference n→k). Sheffi & Powell presented an unconstrained optimisation problem, but favoured a probit SUE, defying closed formulae and standard OR software. Their model corresponds to the (constrained) dual model here, yet the specifics of our primary MP model and its dual are possible only if one restricts himself to logit SUE models, including the ET, which is logit-specific. A real world application needs decomposition, and the Perth CBD example is iteratively solved by Partial Linearisation, switching from (measured) disutility minimisation to Sheffi & Powell's Method of Successive Averages near the optimum. The methodology is demonstrated on the Perth Central Business District (CBD). To that end, parameter Θ is calibrated on Main Roads' traffic count data over the years 1997/98 and 1998/99. The method is a revision of Liu & Fricker's simultaneous estimation of not only Θ but an appropriate trip matrix also. Our method handles the more difficult variable costs (congestion), incomplete data (missing observations) and observation errors (wrong data). Finally, again based on Main Roads' data (a sub-area trip matrix), a Perth CBD traffic assignment is computed, (a) as a logit SUE and - for comparison - (b) as a DUE (using the PARTAN method of Florian, Guélat and Spiess). The results are only superficially similar. In conclusion, the methodology has the potential to replace current DUE models and to deepen transport policy analysis, taking into account individual behaviour and a money-metric utility that quantifies 'social benefits', for instance in a cost-benefit-analysis.

Rapid development and growth of industrialization has brought immense enrichments in living standards of humans, however, improper planned development also brings along several environmental problems such as pollution of environment and excessive consumption of natural resources. Among all the others, uncontrolled utilization of water poses a severe threat to the coming generations. Past decades have witnessed water shortage in various countries of the world. Although about 80% of the earth’s surface is covered with water, around 97.2% of water is salty making it inappropriate for general usage. Among the rest of the 2.8%, which is present as fresh water on surface, a large proportion of it has been found to be severely polluted. The increasing demand of fresh water both for industrial and domestic usage adds great demand on the available groundwater. Moreover, the severe pollution of fresh water on the surface adds more stress on the available groundwater. In Australia, approximately 20% of water supply is from groundwater and in the case of Western Australia groundwater provides two thirds of its water supply needs. Thus, it is important to manage groundwater sources in Western Australia to achieve the optimum water utilization and maintain the water table and it is also essential to decide on an appropriate water budget. Groundwater flow modelling is an effective tool to get appropriate water distribution and, to examine effects from pumping on water levels and direction of groundwater flow paths, thereby helping in its proper management and utilization. Apart from monitoring the flow and utilization, groundwater flow modeling is also vital to keep the track of pollutant in the groundwater. Increasing surface pollution and landfill sites tend to pollute the groundwater due to leaching. / The above mentioned aspects formed the basis of the present research. A groundwater flow model was developed in Visual MODFLOW Premium to study the effect of three different types of soil in and around Perth region. This study also shows the hypothetical contaminated site model for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) transport in Perth Superficial unconfined aquifer which includes three major aquifer sediments namely Bassendean Sand, Safety Bay Sand and Tamala Limestone. Among the four different contaminants it was observed that benzene is able to migrate quickly as compared to the other contaminants due to its smaller distribution coefficient. / This study also explored the major soil parameters such as effect of sorption, effective porosity and hydraulic conductivity on contaminant plume configuration and contaminants concentration for the three types of aquifer sediments. A critical comparison of the behaviour of the three different types of soils was also conducted. / Simulation results of sensitivity analysis have shown that sorption and hydraulic conductivity greatly affected the contaminant plume length and concentration of contaminants with much lesser effect shown by the effective porosity. The simulated results also showed that the movement of contaminant in Tamala Limestone is most rapid by comparing these three types of aquifer sediments together. Thus, it can be said that contaminated sites found in Tamala Limestone needs immediate remediation of contaminants to bring down the contaminants concentration in groundwater. / In brief, the thesis explores the current groundwater scenario in and around Perth region. Based on the information a hypothetical scenario simulation has critically analyzed the various parameters affecting the water and contaminant flow for the various soil parameters. The study is considered as a building block for further research on developing a remediation technique for groundwater contaminant treatment.