The population dynamics of the Galapagos Flightless Cormorant Phalacrocorax harrisi in relation to sea temperature

The Flightless Cormorant Phalacrocorax harrisi is restricted to c. 400 km of the western coastline of the Galápagos archipelago coinciding with the local occurrence of seasonal upwelling of oceanic currents. Individuals frequently make more than one breeding attempt per year, usually change mates, and when juveniles are raised, females desert them to the further care of their mates who complete the rearing alone. Here we report data from a ten-year historical study of a colony stretching c.2 km along the coast-line and representing c. 12% of the total population of the species. The number of clutches laid and juveniles fledged were linked to the occurrence of cold water in off-shore foraging grounds. Most Flightless Cormorants have attachments to local stretches of coastline several hundred metres long. However, a few birds travelled many kilometres, including between colonies, sometimes over open sea. We show that males invest more in nest-building and feeding of the offspring than their mates, and we relate this to the (presumed) in-bred nature of the colony and to male and female reproductive strategies. Our data validate a published demographic model of the species (Valle 1995).

Poststructuralism, qualitative methodology, and public health : research methods as a legitimization strategy for knowledge

The appearance of poststructuralism as a research methodology in public health literature raises questions about the history and purpose of this research. We examine (a) some aspects of the history of qualitative methods and their place within larger social and research domains, and (b) the purposes of a public health research that employs poststructuralist philosophy delineating the methodological issues that require consideration in positing a poststructural analysis. We argue against poststructuralism becoming a research methodology deployed to seize the pubic health debate, rather than being employed for its own particular critical strengths.

UNCLOS and regional action for protection of the marine environment : perspectives of the South Asian Seas region

In very clear language the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) calls upon the parties to initiate regional action for protection of marine environment. Although the UNCLOS gives special recognition in various ways to developing countries, the South Asian developing countries continue to encounter some bottlenecks in complying with the provisions of the Convention relating to marine environment. Against this backdrop, this paper tends to examine the need for a regional approach towards conservation of marine environment. Moreover, the paper aims to explore possible ways to establish a regional legal framework for conservation of marine environment in South Asian region. In doing so, the paper critically examines existing mechanisms already in place including the South Asian Seas Programme and South Asian Seas Action Plan

A UKF-based estimation strategy for actuator fault detection of UASs

This paper presents a recursive strategy for online detection of actuator faults on a unmanned aerial system (UAS) subjected to accidental actuator faults. The proposed detection algorithm aims to provide a UAS with the capability of identifying and determining characteristics of actuator faults, offering necessary flight information for the design of fault-tolerant mechanism to compensate for the resultant side-effect when faults occur. The proposed fault detection strategy consists of a bank of unscented Kalman filters (UKFs) with each one detecting a specific type of actuator faults and estimating correspond- ing velocity and attitude information. Performance of the proposed method is evaluated using a typical nonlinear UAS model and it is demonstrated in simulations that our method is able to detect representative faults with a sufficient accuracy and acceptable time delay, and can be applied to the design of fault-tolerant flight control systems of UASs.

Local on-ramp queue management strategy with mainline speed recovery

Ramp metering is an effective motorway control tool beneficial for mainline traffic, but the long on-ramp queues created interfere with surface traffic profoundly. This study deals with the conflict between mainline benefits and thecosts of on-ramp and surface traffic. A novel local on-ramp queue management strategy with mainline speed recovery is proposed. Microscopic simulation is used to test the new strategy and compare it with other strategies. Simulation results reveal that the ramp metering with queue management strategy provides a good balance between the mainline and on-ramp performances.

China’s new creative strategy : the utilization of cultural soft power and new markets

This book examines different aspects of Asian popular culture, including films, TV, music, comedy, folklore, cultural icons, the Internet and theme parks. It raises important questions such as – What are the implications of popularity of Asian popular culture for globalization? Do regional forces impede the globalizing of cultures? Or does the Asian popular culture flow act as a catalyst or conveying channel for cultural globalization? Does the globalization of culture pose a threat to local culture? It addresses two seemingly contradictory and yet parallel processes in the circulation of Asian popular culture: the interconnectedness between Asian popular culture and western culture in an era of cultural globalization that turns subjects such as Pokémon, Hip Hop or Cosmopolitan into truly global phenomena, and the local derivatives and versions of global culture that are necessarily disconnected from their origins in order to cater for the local market. It thereby presents a collective argument that, whilst local social formations, and patterns of consumption and participation in Asia are still very much dependent on global cultural developments and the phenomena of modernity, yet such dependence is often concretized, reshaped and distorted by the local media to cater for the local market. Contents: Introduction: Asian Popular Culture: The Global (Dis)continuity Anthony Y.H. Fung Part 1: The Dominance of Global Continuity: Cultural Localization and Adaptation 1. One Region, Two Modernities: Disneyland in Tokyo and Hong Kong Micky Lee and Anthony Y.H. Fung 2. Comic Travels: Disney Publishing in the People’s Republic of China Jennifer Altehenger 3. When Chinese Youth Meet Harry Potter: Translating Consumption and Middle Class Identification John Nguyet Erni 4.New Forms of Transborder Visuality in Urban China: Saving Face for Magazine Covers Eric Kit-Wai Ma 5. Cultural Consumption and Masculinity: A Case Study of GQ Magazine Covers in Taiwan Hong-Chi Shiau Part 2: Global Discontinuity: The Local Absorption of Global Culture 6. An Unlocalized and Unglobalized Subculture: English Language Independent Music in Singapore Kai Khiun Liew and Shzr Ee Tan 7. The Localized Production of Jamaican Music in Thailand Viriya Sawangchot 8. Consuming Online Games in Taiwan: Global Games and Local Market Lai-Chi Chen 9. The Rise of the Korean Cinema in Inbound and Outbound Globalization Shin Dong Kim Part 3: Cultural Domestication: A New Form of Global Continuity 10. Pocket Capitalism and Virtual Intimacy: Pokémon as a Symptom of Post-Industrial Youth Culture Anne Allison 11. Playing the Global Game: Japan Brand and Globalization Kukhee Choo Part 4: China as a Rising Market: Cultural Antagonism and Globalization 12. China’s New Creative Strategy: The Utilization of Cultural Soft Power and New Markets Michael Keane and Bonnie Liu 13. Renationalizing Hong Kong Cinema: The Gathering Force of the Mainland Market Michael Curtin

Automated marine mammal detection from aerial imagery

This paper presents two algorithms to automate the detection of marine species in aerial imagery. An algorithm from an initial pilot study is presented in which morphology operations and colour analysis formed the basis of its working principle. A second approach is presented in which saturation channel and histogram-based shape profiling were used. We report on performance for both algorithms using datasets collected from an unmanned aerial system at an altitude of 1000 ft. Early results have demonstrated recall values of 48.57% and 51.4%, and precision values of 4.01% and 4.97%.

NTCIR-10 crosslink-2 task : a link mining strategy

At NTCIR-10 we participated in the cross-lingual link discovery (CrossLink-2) task. In this paper we describe our systems for discovering cross-lingual links between the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) Wikipedia and the English Wikipedia. The evaluation results show that our implementation of the cross-lingual linking method achieved promising results.

Customer equity management : the impact of strategy drivers and customer data management on customer equity outcomes

This research contributes to the field of customer equity by examining how important the strategy drivers of consumption and customer data management are in contributing to the value of the customer asset. A mixed methods approach focused on one sector: the Australian accommodation hotels. From this research, a deeper understanding of how to theorise, conceptualise and practice customer equity management has been achieved.

Climate variability over the last 35,000 years recorded in marine and terrestrial archives in the Australian region : an OZ-INTIMATE compilation

The Australian region spans some 60° of latitude and 50° of longitude and displays considerable regional climate variability both today and during the Late Quaternary. A synthesis of marine and terrestrial climate records, combining findings from the Southern Ocean, temperate, tropical and arid zones, identifies a complex response of climate proxies to a background of changing boundary conditions over the last 35,000 years. Climate drivers include the seasonal timing of insolation, greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere, sea level rise and ocean and atmospheric circulation changes. Our compilation finds few climatic events that could be used to construct a climate event stratigraphy for the entire region, limiting the usefulness of this approach. Instead we have taken a spatial approach, looking to discern the patterns of change across the continent. The data identify the clearest and most synchronous climatic response at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (21 ± 3 ka), with unambiguous cooling recorded in the ocean, and evidence of glaciation in the highlands of tropical New Guinea, southeast Australia and Tasmania. Many terrestrial records suggest drier conditions, but with the timing of inferred snowmelt, and changes to the rainfall/runoff relationships, driving higher river discharge at the LGM. In contrast, the deglaciation is a time of considerable south-east to north-west variation across the region. Warming was underway in all regions by 17 ka. Post-glacial sea level rise and its associated regional impacts have played an important role in determining the magnitude and timing of climate response in the north-west of the continent in contrast to the southern latitudes. No evidence for cooling during the Younger Dryas chronozone is evident in the region, but the Antarctic cold reversal clearly occurs south of Australia. The Holocene period is a time of considerable climate variability associated with an intense monsoon in the tropics early in the Holocene, giving way to a weakened monsoon and an increasingly El Niño-dominated ENSO to the present. The influence of ENSO is evident throughout the southeast of Australia, but not the southwest. This climate history provides a template from which to assess the regionality of climate events across Australia and make comparisons beyond our region. The data identify the clearest and most synchronous climatic response at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (21 ± 3 ka), with unambiguous cooling recorded in the ocean, and evidence of glaciation in the highlands of tropical New Guinea, southeast Australia and Tasmania. Many terrestrial records suggest drier conditions, but with the timing of inferred snowmelt, and changes to the rainfall/runoff relationships, driving higher river discharge at the LGM. In contrast, the deglaciation is a time of considerable south-east to north-west variation across the region. Warming was underway in all regions by 17 ka. Post-glacial sea level rise and its associated regional impacts have played an important role in determining the magnitude and timing of climate response in the north-west of the continent in contrast to the southern latitudes. No evidence for cooling during the Younger Dryas chronozone is evident in the region, but the Antarctic cold reversal clearly occurs south of Australia. The Holocene period is a time of considerable climate variability associated with an intense monsoon in the tropics early in the Holocene, giving way to a weakened monsoon and an increasingly El Niño-dominated ENSO to the present. The influence of ENSO is evident throughout the southeast of Australia, but not the southwest. This climate history provides a template from which to assess the regionality of climate events across Australia and make comparisons beyond our region.

A statistical strategy to select optimal structural health monitoring data in operational modal analysis

Operational modal analysis (OMA) is prevalent in modal identifi cation of civil structures. It asks for response measurements of the underlying structure under ambient loads. A valid OMA method requires the excitation be white noise in time and space. Although there are numerous applications of OMA in the literature, few have investigated the statistical distribution of a measurement and the infl uence of such randomness to modal identifi cation. This research has attempted modifi ed kurtosis to evaluate the statistical distribution of raw measurement data. In addition, a windowing strategy employing this index has been proposed to select quality datasets. In order to demonstrate how the data selection strategy works, the ambient vibration measurements of a laboratory bridge model and a real cable-stayed bridge have been respectively considered. The analysis incorporated with frequency domain decomposition (FDD) as the target OMA approach for modal identifi cation. The modal identifi cation results using the data segments with different randomness have been compared. The discrepancy in FDD spectra of the results indicates that, in order to fulfi l the assumption of an OMA method, special care shall be taken in processing a long vibration measurement data. The proposed data selection strategy is easy-to-apply and verifi ed effective in modal analysis.

Integrating Intangible Cultural Heritage elements and learning strategy : a case study

Tanzania has a rich and diverse cultural history based on community cultural life. However, at present, young people have limited opportunity to exploit this richness of creative expressions and engage in creative jobs as their future career. Hence, the significant challenge remains: how to integrate Intangible cultural heritage elements and learning strategy as a means of promoting creative jobs for youth. This paper presents a case study on 'Strategies for youth employment in Tanzania: A creative industries approach'. The case study employed mixed methods incorporating questionnaires, interviews and focus groups and was held in Dar-Es-Salaam, Mwanza, Dodoma, Lindi and Morogoro from July to October, 2012. This paper discusses some of the issues and argues that there is no virtual utilization of the intangible cultural heritage knowledge and skills in 'putting education to work' (UNESCO, 2012) for the better prospects of youth. Although the discussion is specific to Tanzania, the case may also apply to other developing countries.

Reflection as a dialogic strategy for developing a professional identity

The benefits of reflective practice have been well established in the literature (Rogers, 2001), as have models to embed reflective thinking in higher education curriculum (Ryan and Ryan, 2012). Reflection is commonly envisaged as a textual practice, through which students ‘reflect in and on action’ (Schön 1983), and articulate their experiences, learning and outcomes in written portfolios, journals, or blogs. While such approaches to individual written reflection are undoubtedly beneficial for deepening insight and self-criticality, reflection can also provide other benefits when approached as a collaborative, oral activity. This poster presents a dialogic model of reflective practice that affords the opportunity for developing presentation skills, critique, community and professional identity formation. This dialogic approach to reflection is illustrated by a first year subject (‘KIB101 Visual Communication’ at QUT), in which students apply visual theory (presented in lectures) to communication and graphic design problems in the studio. In regular (fortnightly) presentations, they critically reflect upon their work in progress by aligning it with the concepts, design principles and professional language of the lectures. This iterative process facilitates responsive peer feedback, similarly couched in the formal terms of the discipline. This ‘mirrored reflection’ not only provides opportunities to incrementally improve, it also sets designs in a theoretical frame; provides the opportunity for comparative analysis (to see design principles applied by peers in different ways); to practice formal design language and presentation techniques of the discipline and; because peer critique is framed as an act of generosity; it affords the development of a supportive community of practice. In these ways, dialogic reflection helps students develop a professional voice and identity from first year. Evidence of impact is provided by quantitative and qualitative student feedback over several years, as well as institutional feedback and recognition.