Empathy : narrative empathy and children's literature

The term empathy has only existed in English for a little over a hundred years, but the idea of feeling with another person is an old one. Because of its perceived connection to moral behaviour, empathy and its development are of great interest to educators, policy makers, psychologists, and philosophers. Reading children’s literature is often considered important for developing (among other things) children’s ethical and empathic understandings of society and its people. However, claims as to the impact of reading on readers’ ability to become more empathic, tolerant, and better people are divided. While many readers may attribute positive influences that authors and texts have had on shaping their attitudes and actions, there is no guarantee that a desirable affective and cognitive response will follow the reading experience. The complexity of readers and texts refuses to be reduced to simple universal statements about the capacity of narrative empathy to create a particular kind of empathic reader or person: fiction that engages a reader with the emotional plight of a character does not necessarily translate into actions in the real world towards people who are similarly suffering, marginalized, or victimized. This chapter asks: Does children’s literature foster empathy? There are two implicit features of this question: one concerns narrative empathy; the other concerns empathic reader response. The discussion will focus on how a selection of ‘multicultural’ picture books attempts to create narrative empathy by focussing on cultural and spatial differences.

Arguing the Autopsy : mutual suspicion, jurisdictional confusion and the socially marginal

Vulnerable and marginalised populations are not only over-represented in the criminal justice system, but also in civil jurisdictions like the coronial system. Moreover, many of the personnel who deal with criminal matters, especially in rural and regional areas, are also those who manage the coronial death investigation. This movement back and forth between civil and criminal jurisdictions is difficult for the both professional personnel and the families, but especially for those families who may also have had dealings with these personnel in the criminal justice system, or who present as suspicious due to larger historical and global issues. While coronial legislation now allows families to raise cultural and religious concerns about the process, particularly to do with the autopsy of their loved one, this also requires them to identify themselves to police at the initial stage of the death investigation. This paper, part of a larger body of work on autopsy decision making, discusses the ways in which this information is gathered by police, how it is communicated through the system, the ways in which families are supported through the process, and the difficulties that ensue.

Morphology of osteocyte cells in normal and hyper-gravity

Osteocyte cells are the most abundant cells in human bone tissue. Due to their unique morphology and location, osteocyte cells are thought to act as regulators in the bone remodelling process, and are believed to play an important role in astronauts’ bone mass loss after long-term space missions. There is increasing evidence showing that an osteocyte’s functions are highly affected by its morphology. However, changes in an osteocyte’s morphology under an altered gravity environment are still not well documented. Several in vitro studies have been recently conducted to investigate the morphological response of osteocyte cells to the microgravity environment, where osteocyte cells were cultured on a two-dimensional flat surface for at least 24 hours before microgravity experiments. Morphology changes of osteocyte cells in microgravity were then studied by comparing the cell area to 1g control cells. However, osteocyte cells found in vivo are with a more 3D morphology, and both cell body and dendritic processes are found sensitive to mechanical loadings. A round shape osteocyte’s cells support a less stiff cytoskeleton and are more sensitive to mechanical stimulations compared with flat cellular morphology. Thus, the relative flat and spread shape of isolated osteocytes in 2D culture may greatly hamper their sensitivity to a mechanical stimulus, and the lack of knowledge on the osteocyte’s morphological characteristics in culture may lead to subjective and noncomprehensive conclusions of how altered gravity impacts on an osteocyte’s morphology. Through this work empirical models were developed to quantitatively predicate the changes of morphology in osteocyte cell lines (MLO-Y4) in culture, and the response of osteocyte cells, which are relatively round in shape, to hyper-gravity stimulation has also been investigated. The morphology changes of MLO-Y4 cells in culture were quantified by measuring cell area and three dimensionless shape features including aspect ratio, circularity and solidity by using widely accepted image analysis software (ImageJTM). MLO-Y4 cells were cultured at low density (5×103 per well) and the changes in morphology were recorded over 10 hours. Based on the data obtained from the imaging analysis, empirical models were developed using the non-linear regression method. The developed empirical models accurately predict the morphology of MLO-Y4 cells for different culture times and can, therefore, be used as a reference model for analysing MLO-Y4 cell morphology changes within various biological/mechanical studies, as necessary. The morphological response of MLO-Y4 cells with a relatively round morphology to hyper-gravity environment has been investigated using a centrifuge. After 2 hours culture, MLO-Y4 cells were exposed to 20g for 30mins. Changes in the morphology of MLO-Y4 cells are quantitatively analysed by measuring the average value of cell area and dimensionless shape factors such as aspect ratio, solidity and circularity. In this study, no significant morphology changes were detected in MLO-Y4 cells under a hyper-gravity environment (20g for 30 mins) compared with 1g control cells.

Peer review : a professional development process for librarians

Peer review is a reflective process which allows us to formalise, and gain maximum benefit from, collegial feedback on our professional performance. It is also a process that encourages us to engage in cycles of planning, acting, recording and reflection which are familiar components of action learning and action research. Entering into these cycles within the peer-review framework is a powerful and cost-effective means of facilitating professional development which is readily adapted to the library context. In 1996, a project implementing peer review, in order to improve client interaction at the reference desk, was completed at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) Library. For that project we developed a set of guidelines for library staff involved in peer review. These guidelines explained the value of peer review, and described its principles and purposes. We also devised strategies to assist staff as they prepared for the experience of peer review, engaged in the process and reflected on the outcomes. A number of benefits were identified; the peer-review process enhanced team spirit, enhanced client-orientation, and fostered collaborative efforts in improving the reference service. It was also relatively inexpensive to implement. In this paper we will discuss the nature of peer review and its importance to library and information professionals. We will also share the guidelines we developed, and discuss the implementation and outcomes of the peer review project at the University of Southern Queensland. We will conclude by discussing the benefits perceived and the issues that arose in the USQ context, and by suggesting a range of other aspects of library service in which peer-review could be implemented.

What it means to be green : an examination of early stage environmental and sustainability focused firms

This paper examines ‘green’ entrepreneurial nascent and young firms in Australia. Findings of interest in this paper include: • Green entrepreneurs are more likely to be highly educated and have an extended depth of experience within their industry and are more likely to have started a business prior to their current venture. • Green entrepreneurs exhibit increased levels of innovation, with an increased focus on new & high technology, R&D and the development of proprietary technology. • Green entrepreneurs are most likely to be based upon a product rather than a service and have a higher emphasis upon growth when compared with non-green entrepreneurs. • Green entrepreneurial firms tend to have a longer venture creation process and draw financial resources from a larger number of sources and rely more upon equity as a means of financing their venture.

Unpacking ‘lessons learned’ : investigating failures and considering alternative solutions

One of the most common ways to share project knowledge is to capture the positive and negative aspects of projects in the form of lessons learned (LL). If effectively used, this process can assist project managers in reusing project knowledge and preventing future projects from repeating mistakes. Nevertheless, the process of capturing, storing, reviewing and reusing LL often remains suboptimal. Despite the potential for rich knowledge capture, lessons are often documented as simple, line-item statements devoid of context. Findings from an empirical investigation across four cases revealed a range of reasons related to the perceived quality, process and visibility of LL that lead to their limited use and application. Drawn from the cross-case analysis, this paper investigates an integrated approach to LL involving the use of a collaborative Web-based tool, which is easily accessible, intelligible and user-friendly, allowing more effective sharing of project knowledge and overcoming existing problems with LL.

The importance of individual difference : examining anthropomorphic tendency and responses to spokes-characters

Anthropomorphism is a cognitive bias, which occurs when individuals see human characteristics in a non-human agent, object or animal. Anthropomorphism is especially interesting to marketers, because once anthropomorphic bias has been triggered, it can lead to a greater feeling of connectedness to a non-human agent (Tam, Lee and Chao, 2013), the emulation of behaviours (Aggarwal and McGill, 2012) or greater attribution of brand personality and brand liking (Delbaere, McQuarrie and Phillips, 2011). Importantly, research now shows that levels of this tendency vary between individuals (Waytz, Cacioppo and Epley, 2010), but research to date has failed to focus on how anthropomorphic tendency influences individual responses to marketing communications messages. Spokes-characters present an ideal context through which to examine this gap, given that they function as personified brands, designed to trigger consumer anthropomorphic tendency. Further, little is understood about how spokes-characters operate and which consumers will prefer them to their human counterparts. Like anthropomorphic research, much empirical work to date has focused on design and outcomes, examining the sender’s encoding process and the feedback generated, but ignoring the individual decoding process that is so important to understanding individual differences and message effectiveness. The current research employs three experiments using an online survey with stimulus exposure to show that anthropomorphic tendency, personality similarity and spokes-character type all have relevance to the understanding of this complex relationship. Study one and two indicate that while a human spokesperson is still preferred by many, higher levels of anthropomorphic tendency increase likeability of cartoon spokes characters. Study three highlights the importance of personality similarity, which further increases likability. Additional analyses provide key findings concerning the nature of anthropomorphic tendency as an individual difference and trait. This research contributes to a greater understanding of anthropomorphism theory and fills existing gaps in the consumer psychology and marketing communications literature.

A systematic approach for selecting lean strategies and assessing leanness in manufacturing organizations

Lean strategies have been developed to eliminate or reduce manufacturing waste and thus improve operational efficiency in manufacturing processes. However, implementing lean strategies requires a large amount of resources and, in practice, manufacturers encounter difficulties in selecting appropriate lean strategies within their resource constraints. There is currently no systematic methodology available for selecting appropriate lean strategies within a manufacturer's resource constraints. In the lean transformation process, it is also critical to measure the current and desired leanness levels in order to clearly evaluate lean implementation efforts. Despite the fact that many lean strategies are utilized to reduce or eliminate manufacturing waste, little effort has been directed towards properly assessing the leanness of manufacturing organizations. In practice, a single or specific group of metrics (either qualitative or quantitative) will only partially measure the overall leanness. Existing leanness assessment methodologies do not offer a comprehensive evaluation method, integrating both quantitative and qualitative lean measures into a single quantitative value for measuring the overall leanness of an organization. This research aims to develop mathematical models and a systematic methodology for selecting appropriate lean strategies and evaluating the leanness levels in manufacturing organizations. Mathematical models were formulated and a methodology was developed for selecting appropriate lean strategies within manufacturers' limited amount of available resources to reduce their identified wastes. A leanness assessment model was developed by using the fuzzy concept to assess the leanness level and to recommend an optimum leanness value for a manufacturing organization. In the proposed leanness assessment model, both quantitative and qualitative input factors have been taken into account. Based on program developed in MATLAB and C#, a decision support tool (DST) was developed for decision makers to select lean strategies and evaluate the leanness value based on the proposed models and methodology hence sustain the lean implementation efforts. A case study was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of these proposed models and methodology. Case study results suggested that out of 10 wastes identified, the case organization (ABC Limited) is able to improve a maximum of six wastes from the selected workstation within their resource limitations. The selected wastes are: unnecessary motion, setup time, unnecessary transportation, inappropriate processing, work in process and raw material inventory and suggested lean strategies are: 5S, Just-In-Time, Kanban System, the Visual Management System (VMS), Cellular Manufacturing, Standard Work Process using method-time measurement (MTM), and Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED). From the suggested lean strategies, the impact of 5S was demonstrated by measuring the leanness level of two different situations in ABC. After that, MTM was suggested as a standard work process for further improvement of the current leanness value. The initial status of the organization showed a leanness value of 0.12. By applying 5S, the leanness level significantly improved to reach 0.19 and the simulation of MTM as a standard work method shows the leanness value could be improved to 0.31. The optimum leanness value of ABC was calculated to be 0.64. These leanness values provided a quantitative indication of the impacts of improvement initiatives in terms of the overall leanness level to the case organization. Sensitivity analsysis and a t-test were also performed to validate the model proposed. This research advances the current knowledge base by developing mathematical models and methodologies to overcome lean strategy selection and leanness assessment problems. By selecting appropriate lean strategies, a manufacturer can better prioritize implementation efforts and resources to maximize the benefits of implementing lean strategies in their organization. The leanness index is used to evaluate an organization's current (before lean implementation) leanness state against the state after lean implementation and to establish benchmarking (the optimum leanness state). Hence, this research provides a continuous improvement tool for a lean manufacturing organization.

Analysis of nonlinear sequences and streamciphers

Streamciphers are common cryptographic algorithms used to protect the confidentiality of frame-based communications like mobile phone conversations and Internet traffic. Streamciphers are ideal cryptographic algorithms to encrypt these types of traffic as they have the potential to encrypt them quickly and securely, and have low error propagation. The main objective of this thesis is to determine whether structural features of keystream generators affect the security provided by stream ciphers.These structural features pertain to the state-update and output functions used in keystream generators. Using linear sequences as keystream to encrypt messages is known to be insecure. Modern keystream generators use nonlinear sequences as keystream.The nonlinearity can be introduced through a keystream generator's state-update function, output function, or both. The first contribution of this thesis relates to nonlinear sequences produced by the well-known Trivium stream cipher. Trivium is one of the stream ciphers selected in a final portfolio resulting from a multi-year project in Europe called the ecrypt project. Trivium's structural simplicity makes it a popular cipher to cryptanalyse, but to date, there are no attacks in the public literature which are faster than exhaustive keysearch. Algebraic analyses are performed on the Trivium stream cipher, which uses a nonlinear state-update and linear output function to produce keystream. Two algebraic investigations are performed: an examination of the sliding property in the initialisation process and algebraic analyses of Trivium-like streamciphers using a combination of the algebraic techniques previously applied separately by Berbain et al. and Raddum. For certain iterations of Trivium's state-update function, we examine the sets of slid pairs, looking particularly to form chains of slid pairs. No chains exist for a small number of iterations.This has implications for the period of keystreams produced by Trivium. Secondly, using our combination of the methods of Berbain et al. and Raddum, we analysed Trivium-like ciphers and improved on previous on previous analysis with regards to forming systems of equations on these ciphers. Using these new systems of equations, we were able to successfully recover the initial state of Bivium-A.The attack complexity for Bivium-B and Trivium were, however, worse than exhaustive keysearch. We also show that the selection of stages which are used as input to the output function and the size of registers which are used in the construction of the system of equations affect the success of the attack. The second contribution of this thesis is the examination of state convergence. State convergence is an undesirable characteristic in keystream generators for stream ciphers, as it implies that the effective session key size of the stream cipher is smaller than the designers intended. We identify methods which can be used to detect state convergence. As a case study, theMixer streamcipher, which uses nonlinear state-update and output functions to produce keystream, is analysed. Mixer is found to suffer from state convergence as the state-update function used in its initialisation process is not one-to-one. A discussion of several other streamciphers which are known to suffer from state convergence is given. From our analysis of these stream ciphers, three mechanisms which can cause state convergence are identified.The effect state convergence can have on stream cipher cryptanalysis is examined. We show that state convergence can have a positive effect if the goal of the attacker is to recover the initial state of the keystream generator. The third contribution of this thesis is the examination of the distributions of bit patterns in the sequences produced by nonlinear filter generators (NLFGs) and linearly filtered nonlinear feedback shift registers. We show that the selection of stages used as input to a keystream generator's output function can affect the distribution of bit patterns in sequences produced by these keystreamgenerators, and that the effect differs for nonlinear filter generators and linearly filtered nonlinear feedback shift registers. In the case of NLFGs, the keystream sequences produced when the output functions take inputs from consecutive register stages are less uniform than sequences produced by NLFGs whose output functions take inputs from unevenly spaced register stages. The opposite is true for keystream sequences produced by linearly filtered nonlinear feedback shift registers.

Design LED innovation to rejuvenate local food systems and healthy communities : an emerging research agenda

Food Sovereignty (food freedom) is about empowering people to develop their own local food system. Food Sovereignty challenges designers to enable people to innovate the local food system, rather than having a food system which is dictated by corporate interests and failed business ethics. Communities are realising the potential for design to assist in the innovation process, and add strategic value to potentially localise the food system. Design Led Innovation (DLI) offers a strategic framework to address large-scale cultural, systemic and economic changes. The DLI approach empowers communities to take organised action to achieve a healthy, prosperous and happy way of life. DLI can assist with business models in the business world and it is evident this approach can assist with creating social change too. This paper presents on an emerging research agenda aimed to assist designer’s focus from individuals and systems to communities and urban problems. This paper also presents the research proposition that DLI and service design coupled with social entrepreneurial ventures such as local food projects and creative community inventions, have the potential to enable social innovation for healthy and happy communities.

Experiential learning as a constraint-led process: an ecological dynamics perspective

In this paper we present key ideas for an ecological dynamics approach to learning that reveal the importance of learner–environment interactions to frame outdoor experiential learning.We propose that ecological dynamics provides a useful framework for understanding the interacting constraints of the learning process and for designing learning opportunities in outdoor experiential learning.

Imagining in the spatial design process

This thesis aims to expand our understanding of imagining in the spatial design disciplines of architecture and interior design. More than three decades after Lawson’s statement, the matter of “what goes on in a designer’s head”, or imagining and mental problem solving remains just as mysterious and just as pertinent, possibly more so given the social and environmental challenges facing humankind. The lines on a page, the small perspective sketches, the connection of lines and scrawled notes and other clues help us understand what may be going on in the mind of the architect or designer. However, how designers know that space intimately before it is built is not greatly understood and articulated – even by designers themselves. There is a gap in the market in terms of informed exploration of the thinking that occurs during the design process, and how this is translated into physical outcomes. In other words, what do we see in our mind’s eye during the design process? This thesis explores design thinking and design process; what we ‘see’ when we draw, what we ‘see’ when we design.

Fractal dimension of dried foods : a correlation between microstructure and porosity

The quality of dried food is affected by a number of factors including quality of raw material, initial microstructure, and drying conditions. The structure of the food materials goes through deformations due to the simultaneous effect of heat and mass transfer during the drying process. Shrinkage and changes in porosity, microstructure and appearance are some of the most remarkable features that directly influence overall product quality. Porosity and microstructure are the important material properties in relation to the quality attributes of dried foods. Fractal dimension (FD) is a quantitative approach of measuring surface, pore characteristics, and microstructural changes [1]. However, in the field of fractal analysis, there is a lack of research in developing relationship between porosity, shrinkage and microstructure of different solid food materials in different drying process and conditions [2-4]. Establishing a correlation between microstructure and porosity through fractal dimension during convective drying is the main objective of this work.

"Ruby's Music Festival" : developing problem solving skills using online scenarios and creating opportunities to feed forward

One of the characteristics of good teaching is giving the highest quality feedback on student work but the term “feedback” is most commonly associated with summative assessment given by a teacher after work is completed. The student can often be a passive participant in the process. This article looks at the implementation of web based scenarios completed by students prior to summative assessment with the objective of improving legal problem solving skills. It examines the design process and the implementation of the problem solving activity and the approach to teaching and learning taken in the new law unit of which it is part. We argue that such activities are effective tools to feed forward and reflect on the implications for the effective teaching of law in higher education.

Peer review of teaching practice and resources : exploring new spaces to embrace cultural change

The implementation of systematic peer review as a professional development activity, and as a support for educational design activities is under-utilised in many Australian higher education institutions. This case study reports on the first stages of planning and implementation of an institution-wide project to enhance teaching and learning quality at a remote and regional university, where one of the major strategies for improvement is peer review. Through a systematic process of staff engagement in peer review, within and from outside the organisation, a substantial change in flexible learning is envisaged. A mix of new and different learning spaces are to be used in the project, including blended learning spaces for academic development. This paper describes the research framework that will guide the peer review process and examines the early findings of the design-based research. Leadership, awareness raising and development of a supportive community of inquiry are seen as key components for successful implementation of peer review. In addition, unique contextual elements add to the complexity of designing for transformative change within such a relatively new organization.