A prototype augmented reality collaborative process modelling tool

Identifying, modelling and documenting business processes usually requires the collaboration of many stakeholders that may be spread across companies in inter-organizational business settings. While there are many process modelling tools available, the support they provide for remote collaboration is still limited. This demonstration showcases a novel prototype application that implements collaborative virtual environment and augmented reality technologies to improve remote collaborative process modelling, with an aim to assisting common collaboration tasks by providing an increased sense of immersion in an intuitive shared work and task space. Our tool is easily deployed using open source software, and commodity hardware, and is expected to assist with saving money on travel costs for large scale process modelling projects covering national and international centres within an enterprise.

Using reputation management in participatory sensing for data classification

Participatory sensing enables collection, processing, dissemination and analysis of environmental sensory data by ordinary citizens, through mobile devices. Researchers have recognized the potential of participatory sensing and attempted applying it to many areas. However, participants may submit low quality, misleading, inaccurate, or even malicious data. Therefore, finding a way to improve the data quality has become a significant issue. This study proposes using reputation management to classify the gathered data and provide useful information for campaign organizers and data analysts to facilitate their decisions.

The last post? Tracking the Australasian to Aussie Post, 1864-2002

Aussie Post, the flagship of ocker Australiana, folded in January 2002. Post began life as the Australasian, a middlebrow magazine steeped in a nineteenth century civics of stable citizenship with a modicum of diversionary leisure. The transformation began when the Australasian became Australasian Post in 1946 under George Johnston's brief 15-week editorship. Johnston's idealistic vision of Post as a voice of post-war Australian modernity was soon overtaken by commercial imperatives as Post's identity wavered between its civic antecedents and a new low-brow populism, a niche it had finally settled into by the mid-1950s. This tension between staid civics and risqué populism shaped the magazine's long evolution into its final realisation of the pictorial general interest genre. This paper, based on a close examination of the magazines themselves, tracks Post's generic evolution and focuses on the struggle to redefine the magazine’s identity during the post-war period when the axis of Australian identity was reluctantly shifting from the staid traditions of Rule Britannia to the flashy modernity of Pax Americana.

Can compensation be claimed under the standard commercial land and building contract where the property sold has no legally enforceable vehicular access?

This was the question that confronted Wilson J in Jarema Pty Ltd v Michihiko Kato [2004] QSC 451. Facts The plaintiff was the buyer of a commercial property at Bundall. The property comprised a 6 storey office building with a basement car park with 54 car parking spaces. The property was sold for $5 million with the contract being the standard REIQ/QLS form for Commercial Land and Buildings (2nd ed GST reprint). The contract provided for a “due diligence” period. During this period, the buyer’s solicitors discovered that there was no direct access from a public road to the car park entrance. Access to the car park was over a lot of which the Gold Coast City Council was the registered owner under a nomination of trustees, the Council holding the property on trust for car parking and town planning purposes. Due to the absence of a registered easement over the Council’s land, the buyer’s solicitors sought a reduction in the purchase price. The seller would not agree to this. Finally the sale was completed with the buyer reserving its rights to seek compensation.

Examination of process to develop a framework for better implementation of quality practices in building projects

Quality, as well as project success, in construction projects should be capable of being regarded as the fulfillment of expectation of those contributors and stakeholders involved in such projects. Although a significant amount of quality practices have been introduced within the industry, establishment and attainment of reasonable levels of quality internationally in construction projects continues to be an ongoing problem. To date, some investigation into the introduction and improvement of quality practices and stakeholder management in the construction industry has been accomplished independently, but so far no major studies have been completed that examine comprehensively how quality management practices that particularly concentrate on the stakeholders’ perspective of quality can be used to contribute to final project quality outcomes. This paper aims to examine the process for development of a framework for better involvement of stakeholders in quality planning and practices and subsequently to contribute to higher quality outcomes within construction projects. Through extensive literature review it highlights various perceptions of quality, categorizes quality issues with particular focus on benefits and shortcomings and also examines stakeholders’ viewpoint of project quality in order to promote the improvement of outcomes throughout a project’s lifecycle. It proposes a set of arranged information as a basis for development of prospective framework which ultimately aims to improve project quality outcomes. The subsequent framework that will be developed from this research will provide project managers and owners with the required information and strategic direction to achieve their own and their stakeholders’ targets for implementation of quality practices and achievement of high quality outcomes on their future projects.

Charity law

Charity Law - 2nd edition addresses the modern law relating to this sector. Like the first edition, it comes at a time of public concern about the law regulating charitable activity. While concentrating on both legal and practitioner issues, this book also explores the modern concept of charity. It examines and explains the regulatory framework for charity and the need for transparency and public accountability. It gives you a complete understanding of the changes introduced by the Charities Act 2009, giving particular attention to the responsibilities of the new regulatory authority for charities, the importance of the role now statutorily allocated to the public benefit principle, and the significance of a new extended range of charitable purposes.

Accommodating serendipity in the active studio

This paper presents a series of ongoing experiments to facilitate serendipity in the design studio through a diversity of delivery modes. These experiments are conducted in a second year architectural design studio, and include physical, dramatic and musical performance. The act of designing is always exploratory, always seeking an unknown resolution, and the ability to see and capture the value in the unexpected is a critical aspect of such creative design practice. Engaging with the unexpected is however a difficult ability to develop in students. Just how can a student be schooled in such abilities when the challenge and the context are unforeseeable? How can students be offered meaningful feedback about an issue that cannot be predicted, when feedback comes in the form of extrinsic assessment from a tutor? This project establishes a number of student activities that seek to provide intrinsic feedback from the activity itself. Further to this, the project seeks to heighten student engagement with the project through physical expression and performance: utilising more of the students’ senses than just vision and hearing. Diana Laurillard’s theories of conversational frameworks (2002) are used to interrogate the act of dramatic performance as an act of learning, with particular reference to the serendipitous activities of design. Such interrogation highlights the feedback mechanisms that facilitate intrinsic feedback and fast, if not instantaneous, cycles of learning. The physical act of performance itself provides a learning experience that is not replicable in other modes of delivery. Student feedback data and independent assessment of project outcomes are used to assess the success of this studio model.

Shanghai: city of other people’s dreams

Shanghai as a place where other people's dreams inform the imaginary landscape. How does this relate to the new possibilities available to the current citizens of the city?

Tea ceremony and Sukiya : negating social hierarchy

There is a widely held view that architecture is very strongly and even primarily determined by the society and culture rather than geographical, technical, economic or cli-matic factors. This is especially evident in societies where rituals, customs and tradition play a significant role in the design of built forms. One such society was that of Feudal Japan under the rule of samurai warriors. The strictly controlled hierarchical society of Feudal Japan, isolated from the rest of the world for over 250 years, was able to develop the art and architecture borrowed from neighboring older cultures of China and Korea into what is now considered uniquely Japanese. One such architecture is the Sukiya style tea houses where the ritual of tea ceremony took place. This ritual was developed by the tea masters who were Zen monks or the merchants who belonged to the lowest class in the hierarchical feudal society. The Sukiya style developed from 14th to 16th century and became an architectural space that negated all the rules imposed on commoners by the samurai rulers. The tea culture had a major influence on Japanese architecture, the concept of space and aesthetics. It extended into the design of Japanese gardens, clothes, presentation of food, and their manners in day to day life. The focus of this paper is the Japanese ritual of tea ceremony, the architecture of the tea house it inspired, the society responsible for its creation and the culture that promoted its popularity and its continuation into the 21st century.

Gap analysis of intrusion detection in smart grids

Given the recent emergence of the smart grid and smart grid related technologies, their security is a prime concern. Intrusion detection provides a second line of defense. However, conventional intrusion detection systems (IDSs) are unable to adequately address the unique requirements of the smart grid. This paper presents a gap analysis of contemporary IDSs from a smart grid perspective. This paper highlights the lack of adequate intrusion detection within the smart grid and discusses the limitations of current IDSs approaches. The gap analysis identifies current IDSs as being unsuited to smart grid application without significant changes to address smart grid specific requirements.

Mobile banking customization via user-defined tags

In this paper, we describe on-going work on mobile banking customization, particularly in the Australian context. The use of user-defined tags to facilitate personalized interactions in the mobile context is explored. The aim of this research is to find ways to improve mobile banking interaction. Customization is more significant in the mobile context than online due to factors such as smaller screen sizes and limited software and hardware capabilities, placing an increased emphasis on usability. This paper explains how user-defined tags can aid different types of customization at the interaction level. A preliminary prototype has been developed to demonstrate the mechanics of the proposed approach. Potential implications, design decisions and limitations are discussed with an outline of future work.

Teachers’ and parents’ perspectives of digital technology in the lives of young children

The pervasiveness of technology in the 21st Century has meant that adults and children live in a society where digital devices are integral to their everyday lives and participation in society. How we communicate, learn, work, entertain ourselves, and even shop is influenced by technology. Therefore, before children begin school they are potentially exposed to a range of learning opportunities mediated by digital devices. These devices include microwaves, mobile phones, computers, and console games such as Playstations® and iPods®. In Queensland preparatory classrooms and in the homes of these children, teachers and parents support and scaffold young children’s experiences, providing them with access to a range of tools that promote learning and provide entertainment. This paper examines teachers’ and parents’ perspectives and considers whether they are techno-optimists who advocate for and promote the inclusion of digital technology, or whether they are they techno-pessimists, who prefer to exclude digital devices from young children’s everyday experiences. An exploratory, single case study design was utilised to gather data from three teachers and ten parents of children in the preparatory year. Teacher data was collected through interviews and email correspondence. Parent data was collected from questionnaires and focus groups. All parents who responded to the research invitation were mothers. The results of data analysis identified a misalignment among adults’ perspectives. Teachers were identified as techno-optimists and parents were identified as techno-pessimists with further emergent themes particular to each category being established. This is concerning because both teachers and mothers influence young children’s experiences and numeracy knowledge, thus, a shared understanding and a common commitment to supporting young children’s use of technology would be beneficial. Further research must investigate fathers’ perspectives of digital devices and the beneficial and detrimental roles that a range of digital devices, tools, and entertainment gadgets play in 21st Century children’s lives.

Modelling travelling waves in spatially constrained environment solutions

In this study, we consider how Fractional Differential Equations (FDEs) can be used to study the travelling wave phenomena in parabolic equations. As our method is conducted under intracellular environments that are highly crowded, it was discovered that there is a simple relationship between the travelling wave speed and obstacle density.

Bridging the representation and interaction challenges of mobile context-aware computing: designing agile ridesharing

The increasing capability of mobile devices and social networks to gather contextual and social data has led to increased interest in context-aware computing for mobile applications. This paper explores ways of reconciling two different viewpoints of context, representational and interactional, that have arisen respectively from technical and social science perspectives on context-aware computing. Through a case study in agile ridesharing, the importance of dynamic context control, historical context and broader context is discussed. We build upon earlier work that has sought to address the divide by further explicating the problem in the mobile context and expanding on the design approaches.