A Virtual Evaluation Track for Cross Language Link Discovery

The Wikipedia has become the most popular online source of encyclopedic information. The English Wikipedia collection, as well as some other languages collections, is extensively linked. However, as a multilingual collection the Wikipedia is only very weakly linked. There are few cross-language links or cross-dialect links (see, for example, Chinese dialects). In order to link the multilingual-Wikipedia as a single collection, automated cross language link discovery systems are needed – systems that identify anchor-texts in one language and targets in another. The evaluation of Link Discovery approaches within the English version of the Wikipedia has been examined in the INEX Link the-Wiki track since 2007, whilst both CLEF and NTCIR emphasized the investigation and the evaluation of cross-language information retrieval. In this position paper we propose a new virtual evaluation track: Cross Language Link Discovery (CLLD). The track will initially examine cross language linking of Wikipedia articles. This virtual track will not be tied to any one forum; instead we hope it can be connected to each of (at least): CLEF, NTCIR, and INEX as it will cover ground currently studied by each. The aim is to establish a virtual evaluation environment supporting continuous assessment and evaluation, and a forum for the exchange of research ideas. It will be free from the difficulties of scheduling and synchronizing groups of collaborating researchers and alleviate the necessity to travel across the globe in order to share knowledge. We aim to electronically publish peer-reviewed publications arising from CLLD in a similar fashion: online, with open access, and without fixed submission deadlines.

A Cochrane review on the effects of end-of-life care pathways : do they improve patient outcomes?

Clinical pathways for end-of-life care management are used widely around the world and have been regarded as the gold standard. The aim of this review was to assess the effects of end-of-life care pathways (EOLCP), compared with usual care (no pathway) or with care guided by a different end-of-life care pathway, across all healthcare settings (e.g. hospitals, residential aged care facilities, community). We searched the Cochrane Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), the Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care Review group specialised register, MEDLINE, EMBASE, review articles and reference lists of relevant articles. The search was carried out in September 2009. All randomised controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-randomised trials or high quality controlled before and after studies comparing use versus non-use of an EOLCP in caring for the dying were considered for inclusion. The search identified 920 potentially relevant titles, but no studies met criteria for inclusion in the review. Without further available evidence, recommendations for the use of end-of-life pathways in caring for the dying cannot be made. There are now recent concerns regarding the big scale roll-out of EOLCP despite the lack of evidence, nurses should report any safety concerns or adverse effects associated with such pathways.

Fundus image registration algorithms for a pc-based image processing system

We have developed digital image registration program for a MC 68000 based fundus image processing system (FIPS). FIPS not only is capable of executing typical image processing algorithms in spatial as well as Fourier domain, the execution time for many operations has been made much quicker by using a hybrid of "C", Fortran and MC6000 assembly languages.

Locating 'Agency' Within Ubiquitous Computing Systems

The final shape of the "Internet of Things" ubiquitous computing promises relies on a cybernetic system of inputs (in the form of sensory information), computation or decision making (based on the prefiguration of rules, contexts, and user-generated or defined metadata), and outputs (associated action from ubiquitous computing devices). My interest in this paper lies in the computational intelligences that suture these positions together, and how positioning these intelligences as autonomous agents extends the dialogue between human-users and ubiquitous computing technology. Drawing specifically on the scenarios surrounding the employment of ubiquitous computing within aged care, I argue that agency is something that cannot be traded without serious consideration of the associated ethics.

Knowledge based urban development in classrooms : planning Taipei's knowledge based development

Rapid urbanisation of the global population over the last two centuries has inevitably brought with it a number of challenges and opportunities for economic, environmental and social sustainability of regions. This is arguably a result of rapid globalisation and subsequent growth in knowledge and service based economic markets. This paper reviews the introduction of a specialised teaching structure where the concepts of Knowledge Based Urban Development and Knowledge Cities were taught to various students of the discipline of Urban and Regional Planning at the Queensland University of Technology, through their study tour to the city of Taipei, Taiwan. The concepts were conveyed under the name ‘Taipei Metropolis Knowledge Based Regional Planning Studio’ and its methodology reviewed a series of tasks that was considered to provide a stronger level of understanding of how Knowledge Cities and Knowledge Based Urban Development had been formed in some areas of Taiwan. Findings from this international collaborative planning studio indicate that students have gained a greater level of understanding and insight into planning systems and processes in a trans-cultural context. The students have also been exposed to ideas and knowledge that have challenged conventional perspectives and encouraged global awareness.

The development and evaluation of a culturally affirmative counselling model for deaf clients in Australia

In Australia, there is only one, newly established, dedicated mental health service catering specifically for the signing *Deaf community. It is staffed by four part-time hearing professionals and based in Brisbane. There are currently no Deaf psychologists or psychiatrists and there is no valid or reliable empirical evidence on outcomes for Deaf people accessing specialised or mainstream mental health services. Further compounding these issues, is the fact that there are no sign language versions of the most common standardised mental health or psychological instruments available to clinicians in Australia. Contemporary counselling literature is acknowledging the role of the therapeutic alliance and the impact of 'common factors' on therapeutic outcomes. However, these issues are complicated by the relationship between the Deaf client and the hearing therapist being a cross-cultural exchange. The disability model of deafness is contentious and few professionals in Australia have the requisite knowledge and understanding of deafness from a cultural perspective to attend to the therapeutic relationship with this in mind. Consequently, Deaf people are severely disadvantaged by the current lack of services, resources and skilled professionals in the field of deafness and psychology in this country. The primary aim of the following program of research has been to propose a model for culturally affirmative service delivery and to provide clinicians with tools to evaluate the effect of their therapeutic work with Deaf people seeking mental health treatment. The research document is presented as a thesis by publication and comprises four specific objectives formulated in response to the lack of existing services and resources. The first objective was to explore the use of social constructionist counselling techniques and a reflecting team with Deaf clients, hearing therapists and an interpreter. Following the establishment of a pilot counselling clinic, indepth semi-structured interviews were conducted with two long-term clients following the one year pilot of this service. These interviews generated recommendations for the development of a new 'enriched' model of counselling to be implemented and evaluated in later stages of the research program. The second objective was to identify appropriate psychometric measures that could be translated into Australian Sign Language (Auslan) for research into efficacy, effectiveness and counselling outcomes. Two instruments were identified as potentially suitable; the Outcome Rating Scale (ORS), a measure of global functioning, and the Session Rating Scale (SRS), a measure of therapeutic alliance. A specialised team of bi-lingual and bi-cultural interpreters, native signers and the primary researcher for this thesis, produced the ORS-Auslan and the SRS-Auslan in DVD format, using the translation and back-translation process. The third objective was to establish the validity and reliability of these new Auslan measures based on normative data from the Deaf community. Data from the ORS-Auslan was collected from one clinical and one non-clinical sample of Deaf people. Statistical analyses revealed that the ORS-Auslan is reliable, valid and adequately distinguishes between clinical and non-clinical presentations. Furthermore, construct validity has been established using a yet to be validated sign language version of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 items (DASS-21), providing a platform for further research using the DASS-21 with Deaf people. The fourth objective was to evaluate counselling outcomes following the implementation of an enriched counselling service, based on the findings generated by the first objective, and using the newly translated Auslan measures. A second university counselling clinic was established and implemented over the course of one year. Practice-based evidence guided the research and the ORS-Auslan and the SRS-Auslan were administered at every session and provided outcome data on Deaf clients' global functioning. Data from six clients over the course of ten months indicated that this culturally affirmative model was an effective approach for these six clients. This is the first time that outcome data have been collected in Australia using valid and reliable Auslan measures to establish preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of any therapeutic intervention for clinical work with adult, signing Deaf clients. The research generated by this thesis contributes theoretical knowledge, professional development and practical resources that can be used by a variety of mental health clinicians in the context of mental health service delivery to Deaf clients in Australia.

University students’ depression : a cross-cultural investigation

Australian, Iranian and Portuguese university students (N = 967) completed University Students Depression Inventory (USDI; Khawaja & Bryden, 2006) in English, Persian, and Portuguese languages respectively. A series of MANOVA were used to examine differences in depression symptoms as an effect of the country and demographic variables. Interactions were also examined. The results indicated that country, gender, and year level had some impact on the depressive symptoms of the university students. Australian students were more depressed than the Iranian and Portuguese students, while Iranian students were more depressed than the Portuguese students. Subscales of USDI: Lethargy, Motivation, and Cognitive/Emotional were also used to compare the depressive symptoms of students. The Australian female students reported a significantly higher level of lethargy than their male counterparts. Similarly, the first year male students from Iran were significantly more lethargic than the first year Iranian female students. Iranian and Portuguese male students, compared to the female students of these countries, experienced a lower level of motivation. The Australian and Iranian students, compared to the Portuguese students, reported a significantly higher level of cognitive and affective symptoms. The scores on the Cognitive/Emotional subscale increased with the year level. Differences among students’ depression are described and implications discussed.

Methods used in cross-cultural comparisons of vasomotor symptoms and their determinants

Methodological differences among studies of vasomotor symptoms limit rigorous comparison or systematic review. Vasomotor symptoms generally include hot flushes and night sweats although other associated symptoms exist. Prevalence rates vary between and within populations, but different studies collect data on frequency, bothersomeness, and/or severity using different outcome measures and scales, making comparisons difficult. We reviewed only cross-cultural studies of menopausal symptoms that explicitly examined symptoms in general populations of women in different countries or different ethnic groups in the same country. This resulted in the inclusion of nine studies: Australian/Japanese Midlife Women's Health Study (AJMWHS), Decisions At Menopause Study (DAMeS), Four Major Ethnic Groups (FMEG), Hilo Women's Health Survey (HWHS), Mid-Aged Health in Women from the Indian Subcontinent (MAHWIS), Penn Ovarian Aging Study (POAS), Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), Women's Health in Midlife National Study (WHiMNS), and Women's International Study of Health and Sexuality (WISHeS). These studies highlight the methodological challenges involved in conducting multi-population studies, particularly when languages differ, but also highlight the importance of performing multivariate and factor analyses. Significant cultural differences in one or more vasomotor symptoms were observed in 8 of 9 studies, and symptoms were influenced by the following determinants: menopausal status, hormones (and variance), age (or actually, the square of age, age2), BMI, depression, anxiety, poor physical health, perceived stress, lifestyle factors (hormone therapy use, smoking and exposure to passive smoke), and acculturation (in immigrant populations). Recommendations are made to improve methodological rigor and facilitate comparisons in future cross-cultural menopause studies.

Ensuring Correctness During Process Configuration via Partner Synthesis

Variants of the same process can be encountered within one organization or across different organizations. For example, different municipalities, courts, and rental agencies all need to support highly similar processes. In fact, procurement and sales processes can be found in almost any organization. However, despite these similarities, there is also the need to allow for local variations in a controlled manner. Therefore, many academics and practitioners have advocated the use of configurable process models (sometimes referred to as reference models). A configurable process model describes a family of similar process models in a given domain. Such a model can be configured to obtain a specific process model that is subsequently used to handle individual cases, for instance, to process customer orders. Process configuration is notoriously difficult as there may be all kinds of interdependencies between configuration decisions. In fact, an incorrect configuration may lead to behavioral issues such as deadlocks and livelocks. To address this problem, we present a novel verification approach inspired by the “operating guidelines” used for partner synthesis. We view the configuration process as an external service, and compute a characterization of all such services which meet particular requirements via the notion of configuration guideline. As a result, we can characterize all feasible configurations (i. e., configurations without behavioral problems) at design time, instead of repeatedly checking each individual configuration while configuring a process model.

A semantics-based approach to querying process model repositories

As business process management technology matures, organisations acquire more and more business process models. The resulting collections can consist of hundreds, even thousands of models and their management poses real challenges. One of these challenges concerns model retrieval where support should be provided for the formulation and efficient execution of business process model queries. As queries based on only structural information cannot deal with all querying requirements in practice, there should be support for queries that require knowledge of process model semantics. In this paper we formally define a process model query language that is based on semantic relationships between tasks. This query language is independent of the particular process modelling notation used, but we will demonstrate how it can be used in the context of Petri nets by showing how the semantic relationships can be determined for these nets in such a way that state space explosion is avoided as much as possible. An experiment with three large process model repositories shows that queries expressed in our language can be evaluated efficiently.

Fundamentals of process integration

Technologies and languages for integrated processes are a relatively recent innovation. Over that period many divergent waves of innovation have transformed process integration. Like sockets and distributed objects, early workflow systems ordered programming interfaces that connected the process modelling layer to any middleware. BPM systems emerged later, connecting the modelling world to middleware through components. While BPM systems increased ease of use (modelling convenience), long-standing and complex interactions involving many process instances remained di±cult to model. Enterprise Service Buses (ESBs), followed, connecting process models to heterogeneous forms of middleware. ESBs, however, generally forced modellers to choose a particular underlying middleware and to stick to it, despite their ability to connect with many forms of middleware. Furthermore ESBs encourage process integrations to be modelled on their own, logically separate from the process model. This can lead to the inability to reason about long standing conversations at the process layer. Technologies and languages for process integration generally lack formality. This has led to arbitrariness in the underlying language building blocks. Conceptual holes exist in a range of technologies and languages for process integration and this can lead to customer dissatisfaction and failure to bring integration projects to reach their potential. Standards for process integration share similar fundamental flaws to languages and technologies. Standards are also in direct competition with other standards causing a lack of clarity. Thus the area of greatest risk in a BPM project remains process integration, despite major advancements in the technology base. This research examines some fundamental aspects of communication middleware and how these fundamental building blocks of integration can be brought to the process modelling layer in a technology agnostic manner. This way process modelling can be conceptually complete without becoming stuck in a particular middleware technology. Coloured Petri nets are used to define a formal semantics for the fundamental aspects of communication middleware. They provide the means to define and model the dynamic aspects of various integration middleware. Process integration patterns are used as a tool to codify common problems to be solved. Object Role Modelling is a formal modelling technique that was used to define the syntax of a proposed process integration language. This thesis provides several contributions to the field of process integration. It proposes a framework defining the key notions of integration middleware. This framework provides a conceptual foundation upon which a process integration language could be built. The thesis defines an architecture that allows various forms of middleware to be aggregated and reasoned about at the process layer. This thesis provides a comprehensive set of process integration patterns. These constitute a benchmark for the kinds of problems a process integration language must support. The thesis proposes a process integration modelling language and a partial implementation that is able to enact the language. A process integration pilot project in a German hospital is brie°y described at the end of the thesis. The pilot is based on ideas in this thesis.

Developing a creative cluster in a postindustrial city : CIDS and Manchester

This paper takes the establishment and demise of Manchester’s Creative Industries Development Service as an exemplary case study for the ways in which creative industry policy has intersected with urban economic policy over the last decade. It argues that the creative industries required specific kinds of economic development agencies which would be able to act as ‘intermediary’ between the distinct languages of policy makers and ‘creatives’. The paper discusses the tensions inherent in such an approach and how CIDS attempted to manage them. It suggests that which particular circumstances might have intervened the main reason for the demise of the CIDS was the domination of the ‘economic’ over the ‘cultural logic’ both of which are embedded within the creative industries policy discourse.

The wandering

In this video, text sourced from dream description websites is combined into a narrative. The words floating against an animated cloud background are set to a stock music track. This work examines the nature of consciousness and identity in a contemporary context. It mixes the languages of dream description and cinematic narrative. By extending on some of Nicolas Bourriaud’s ideas around “postproduction” and the creative and critical strategies of ‘editing’, this work draws attention to the ways popular culture and private anxieties continually mix together in our experiences of lived and imagined realities.

Teacher education to meet the challenges of child sexual abuse

The phenomenon of child sexual abuse has significant implications for teachers’ pre-service training and professional development. Teachers have a pedagogical role in dealing with abused children, and a legal and professional duty to report suspected child sexual abuse. Teachers require support and training to develop the specialised knowledge and confidence needed to deal with this complex context. This article explains the social context of child sexual abuse, its health and educational consequences, and the legal context, showing why teachers require this specialised training. It then reports on findings from an Australian study into the amount of training received by teachers about child sexual abuse, and teachers’ satisfaction with that training. Results have implications for teacher training strategies in pre-service and in-service settings.