Integrating science through Bayesian Belief Networks : case study of Lyngbya in Moreton Bay

Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) are emerging as valuable tools for investigating complex ecological problems. In a BBN, the important variables in a problem are identified and causal relationships are represented graphically. Underpinning this is the probabilistic framework in which variables can take on a finite range of mutually exclusive states. Associated with each variable is a conditional probability table (CPT), showing the probability of a variable attaining each of its possible states conditioned on all possible combinations of it parents. Whilst the variables (nodes) are connected, the CPT attached to each node can be quantified independently. This allows each variable to be populated with the best data available, including expert opinion, simulation results or observed data. It also allows the information to be easily updated as better data become available ----- ----- This paper reports on the process of developing a BBN to better understand the initial rapid growth phase (initiation) of a marine cyanobacterium, Lyngbya majuscula, in Moreton Bay, Queensland. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Lyngbya blooms in this region have increased in severity and extent over the past decade. Lyngbya has been associated with acute dermatitis and a range of other health problems in humans. Blooms have been linked to ecosystem degradation and have also damaged commercial and recreational fisheries. However, the causes of blooms are as yet poorly understood.

Youth Festival Music Performance : Deception Bay

Research Background - Young people with negative experiences of mainstream education often display low levels of traditional academic achievement. These young people tend to display considerable cultural and social resources developed through their repeated experiences of adversity. Education research has a duty to provide these young people with opportunities to showcase, assess and translate their social and cultural resources into symbolic forms of capital. This creative work addresses the following research question. How can educators develop disengaged teenager's social and cultural capital through live music performances? Research Contribution - These live music performances afford the young participants opportunities to display their artistic, technical, social and cultural resources through a popular cultural format. In doing so they require education institutions to provide venues that demonstrate the skills these young people acquire through flexible learning environments. The new knowledge derived from this research focuses on the academic and self confidence benefits for disengaged young people using festival performances as authentic learning activities. Research Significance - This research is significant because it aims to maximise the number of tangible outcomes related to a school-based arts project. The young participants gained technical, artistic, social and commercial skills during this project. This performance led to more recording and opportunities to perform at other youth festivals in SE QLD. Individual performances were distributed and downloaded via creative commons licences at the Australian Creative Resource Archive. It also contributed to their certified qualifications and acted as pilot research data for two competitively funded ARC grants (DP0209421 & LP0883643)

H-house

The author's approach to the problems associated with building in bushfire prone landscapes comes from 12 years of study of the biophysical and cultural landscapes in the Great Southern Region of Western Australia - research which resulted in the design and construction of the H-house at Bremer Bay. The house was developed using a 'ground up' approach whereby Dr Weir conducted topographical surveys and worked with a local botanist and a bushfire risk consultant to ascertain the level of threat that fire presented to this particular site. The intention from the outset however, was not to design a bushfire resistant house per se, but to develop a design which would place the owners in close proximity to the highly biodiverse heath vegetation of their site. The research aim was to find ways - through architectural design-to link the patterns of usage of the house with other site specific conditions related to the prevailing winds, solar orientation and seasonal change. The H-house has a number of features which increase the level of bushfire safety. These include: Fire rated roller shutters (tested by the CSIRO for ember attack and radiant heat), Fire resistant double glazing (on windows not protected by the shutters), Fibre-cement sheet cladding of the underside of the elevated timber floor structure, Manually operated high pressure sprinkler system on exposed timber decks, A fire refuge (an enlarged laundry, shower area) within the house with a dedicated cabinet for fire fighting equipment) and A low pressure solar powered domestic water supply system.

The use of cement in hip arthroplasty

Written by the surgeons of the Exeter Hip Team and their colleagues from around the world, this book describes 40 years of innovation and development with cemented hip replacement. Topics covered include the basic science behind successful cemented hip replacement, modern surgical techniques and recent advances. There is also extensive coverage of the revision techniques developed at Exeter and elsewhere, focussing on femoral and acetabular impaction grafting. Each chapter is a self-contained article with an emphasis, where appropriate, on practical techniques and surgical tips, supported by line drawings and intra-operative photographs.

Jack's Bay (the architecturalisation of memory)

Jack's Bay (the architecturalisation of memory) is a key work of the author's exhibition Lightsite, which toured Western Australian galleries from February 2006 to November 2007. It is a five-minute-long exposure photographic image captured inside a purpose-built, room-sized pinhole camera which is demountable and does not have a floor. The work depicts octogenarian Jack Morris, who for forty years held the professional salmon fishing license in the hamlet of Bremer Bay, on the SE coast of Western Australia. The pinhole camera-room is sited within sand dunes new Jack's now demolished beachside camp. Three generations of Jack's descendents stand outside the room - from his daughter to his great grand children. The light from this exterior landscape is 'projected' inside the camera-room and illuminates the interior scene which includes that part of the sand dune upon which the floorless room is erected, along with Jack who is sitting inside. The image evokes the temporality of light. Here, light itself is portrayed as the primary medium through which we both perceive and describe landscape. In this way it is through the agency of light that we construct our connectivity to landscape.

Jack's Bay

Jack's Bay expands understandings of the role of photographic media in the representation of landscapes. It does so by combining architectural construction with B&W photographic processing techniques. A purpose-built room-sized camera obscura is first constructed over a portion of the landscape to be recorded. Photosensitive paper is applied to the interior wall surfaces and is exposed to the inverted light entering a small aperture. These photographs are subsequently developed within the camera itself and consequently 'suffer' embellishments and aberrations from the makeshift darkroom conditions. In this way the specificity of both the landscape and the event of its recording are registered in the final image. Many images were destroyed in the process. The idea of the work is to help the viewer reflect on the role media plays in our understanding of landscape and to thus question the means by which they themselves record and interpret landscape representations.

Investigation of hybridized polyurethane, glass fibre reinforced cement and steel laminate in structural floor plate systems

Sandwich components have emerged as light weight, efficient, economical, recyclable and reusable building systems which provide an alternative to both stiffened steel and reinforced concrete. These components are made of composite materials in which two metal face plates or Glassfibre Reinforced Cement (GRC) layers are bonded and form a sandwich with light weight compact polyurethane (PU) elastomer core. Existing examples of product applications are light weight sandwich panels for walls and roofs, Sandwich Plate System (SPS) for stadia, arena terraces, naval construction and bridges and Domeshell structures for dome type structures. Limited research has been conducted to investigate performance characteristics and applicability of sandwich or hybrid materials as structural flooring systems. Performance characteristics of Hybrid Floor Plate Systems comprising GRC, PU and Steel have not been adequately investigated and quantified. Therefore there is very little knowledge and design guidance for their application in commercial and residential buildings. This research investigates performance characteristics steel, PU and GRC in Hybrid Floor Plate Systems (HFPS) and develops a new floor system with appropriate design guide lines.