Future Information Communication Technology and Applications : ICFICE 2013

Focuses on the various aspects of advances in future information communication technology and its applications Presents the latest issues and progress in the area of future information communication technology Applicable to both researchers and professionals These proceedings are based on the 2013 International Conference on Future Information & Communication Engineering (ICFICE 2013), which will be held at Shenyang in China from June 24-26, 2013. The conference is open to all over the world, and participation from Asia-Pacific region is particularly encouraged. The focus of this conference is on all technical aspects of electronics, information, and communications ICFICE-13 will provide an opportunity for academic and industry professionals to discuss the latest issues and progress in the area of FICE. In addition, the conference will publish high quality papers which are closely related to the various theories and practical applications in FICE. Furthermore, we expect that the conference and its publications will be a trigger for further related research and technology improvements in this important subject. "This work was supported by the NIPA (National IT Industry Promotion Agency) of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning)."

Role of charge in destabilizing AlH4 and BH4 complex anions for hydrogen storage applications : Ab initio density functional calculations

NaAlH4 and LiBH4 are potential candidate materials for mobile hydrogen storage applications, yet they have the drawback of being highly stable and desorbing hydrogen only at elevated temperatures. In this letter, ab initio density functional theory calculations reveal how the stabilities of the AlH4 and BH4 complex anions will be affected by reducing net anionic charge. Tetrahedral AlH4 and BH4 complexes are found to be distorted with the decrease of negative charge. One H-H distance becomes smaller and the charge density will overlap between them at a small anion charge. The activation energies to release of H2 from AlH4 and BH4 complexes are thus greatly decreased. We demonstrate that point defects such as neutral Na vacancies or substitution of a Na atom with Ti on the NaAlH4(001) surface can potentially cause strong distortion of neighboring AlH4 complexes and even induce spontaneous dehydrogenation. Our results help to rationalize the conjecture that the suppression of charge transfer to AlH4 and BH4 anion as a consequence of surface defects should be very effective for improving the recycling performance of H2 in NaAlH4 and LiBH4. The understanding gained here will aid in the rational design and development of hydrogen storage materials based on these two systems.

Proteomics science and society :the role of knowledge translation in moving towards clinical applications

Gaining support for proteomics science requires effective knowledge translation. Knowledge translation (KT) processes turn the evidence generated by scientific discovery into recommendations for clinical applications, funding priorities, and policy/regulatory reforms. Clinicians, regulators, and funders need to understand why emerging proteomics knowledge is relevant, and what are the potential applications of that knowledge. A lack of clarity remains about what KT means.

Australian Tax Analysis : Cases, Commentary, Commercial Applications and Questions [9th Ed.]

Now in its ninth edition, Australian Tax Analysis: Cases, Commentary, Commercial Applications and Questions has a proven track record as a high-level work for students of taxation law written by a team of authors with many years experience. Taking into account the fact that the volume of material needed to be processed by today’s taxation student can be overwhelming, the well-chosen extracts and thought-provoking commentary in Australian Tax Analysis, 9th edition, provide readers with the depth of knowledge, and reasoning and analytical skills which will be required of them as practitioners. In addition to the carefully selected case extracts and the helpful commentary, each chapter is supplemented by engaging practice questions involving problem solving, commercial decision-making, legal analysis and quantitative application. All these elements combined make Australian Tax Analysis an invaluable aid to the understanding of a subject which can be both technical and complex.

Generalized-positioning for mixed-frequency of mixed-GNSS and its preliminary applications

Modernized GPS and GLONASS, together with new GNSS systems, BeiDou and Galileo, offer code and phase ranging signals in three or more carriers. Traditionally, dual-frequency code and/or phase GPS measurements are linearly combined to eliminate effects of ionosphere delays in various positioning and analysis. This typical treatment method has imitations in processing signals at three or more frequencies from more than one system and can be hardly adapted itself to cope with the booming of various receivers with a broad variety of singles. In this contribution, a generalized-positioning model that the navigation system independent and the carrier number unrelated is promoted, which is suitable for both single- and multi-sites data processing. For the synchronization of different signals, uncalibrated signal delays (USD) are more generally defined to compensate the signal specific offsets in code and phase signals respectively. In addition, the ionospheric delays are included in the parameterization with an elaborate consideration. Based on the analysis of the algebraic structures, this generalized-positioning model is further refined with a set of proper constrains to regularize the datum deficiency of the observation equation system. With this new model, uncalibrated signal delays (USD) and ionospheric delays are derived for both GPS and BeiDou with a large dada set. Numerical results demonstrate that, with a limited number of stations, the uncalibrated code delays (UCD) are determinate to a precision of about 0.1 ns for GPS and 0.4 ns for BeiDou signals, while the uncalibrated phase delays (UPD) for L1 and L2 are generated with 37 stations evenly distributed in China for GPS with a consistency of about 0.3 cycle. Extra experiments concerning the performance of this novel model in point positioning with mixed-frequencies of mixed-constellations is analyzed, in which the USD parameters are fixed with our generated values. The results are evaluated in terms of both positioning accuracy and convergence time.

Controlling buoyancy-driven profiling floats for applications in ocean observation

Establishing a persistent presence in the ocean with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) capable of observing temporal variability of large-scale ocean processes requires a unique sensor platform. In this paper, we examine the utility of vehicles that can only control their depth in the water column for such extended deployments. We present a strategy that utilizes ocean model predictions to facilitate a basic level of autonomy and enables general control for these profiling floats. The proposed method is based on experimentally validated techniques for utilizing ocean current models to control autonomous gliders. With the appropriate vertical actuation, and utilizing spatio–temporal variations in water speed and direction, we show that general controllability results can be met. First, we apply an A* planner to a local controllability map generated from predictions of ocean currents. This computes a path between start and goal waypoints that has the highest likelihood of successful execution. A computed depth plan is generated with a model-predictive controller (MPC), and selects the depths for the vehicle so that ambient currents guide it toward the goal. Mission constraints are included to simulate and motivate a practical data collection mission. Results are presented in simulation for a mission off the coast of Los Angeles, CA, USA, that show encouraging results in the ability of a drifting vehicle to reach a desired location.

Exploring dependencies of 5.9 GHz DSRC throughput and reliability on safety applications

Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) is the emerging key technology supporting cooperative road safety systems within Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The DSRC protocol stack includes a variety of standards such as IEEE 802.11p and SAE J2735. The effectiveness of the DSRC technology depends on not only the interoperable cooperation of these standards, but also on the interoperability of DSRC devices manufactured by various manufacturers. To address the second constraint, the SAE defines a message set dictionary under the J2735 standard for construction of device independent messages. This paper focuses on the deficiencies of the SAE J2735 standard being developed for deployment in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET). In this regard, the paper discusses the way how a Basic Safety Message (BSM) as the fundamental message type defined in SAE J2735 is constructed, sent and received by safety communication platforms to provide a comprehensive device independent solution for Cooperative ITS (C-ITS). This provides some insight into the technical knowledge behind the construction and exchange of BSMs within VANET. A series of real-world DSRC data collection experiments was conducted. The results demonstrate that the reliability and throughput of DSRC highly depend on the applications utilizing the medium. Therefore, an active application-dependent medium control measure, using a novel message-dissemination frequency controller, is introduced. This application level message handler improves the reliability of both BSM transmissions/receptions and the Application layer error handling which is extremely vital to decentralized congestion control (DCC) mechanisms.

The next generation health intervention tool - Can smart phone applications help young people track and moderate alcohol use and potential harms?

Whilst alcohol is a common feature of many social gatherings, there are numerous immediate and long-term health and social harms associated with its abuse. Alcohol consumption is the world’s third largest risk factor for disease and disability with almost 4% of all deaths worldwide attributed to alcohol. Not surprisingly, alcohol use and binge drinking by young people is of particular concern with Australian data reporting that 39% of young people (18-19yrs) admitted drinking at least weekly and 32% drank to levels that put them at risk of alcohol-related harm. The growing market penetration and connectivity of smartphones may be an opportunities for innovation in promoting health-related self-management of substance use. However, little is known about how best to harness and optimise this technology for health-related intervention and behaviour change. This paper explores the utility and interface of smartphone technology as a health intervention tool to monitor and moderate alcohol use. A review of the psychological health applications of this technology will be presented along with the findings of a series of focus groups, surveys and behavioural field trials of several drink-monitoring applications. Qualitative and quantitative data will be presented on the perceptions, preferences and utility of the design, usability and functionality of smartphone apps to monitoring and moderate alcohol use. How these findings have shaped the development and evolution of the OnTrack app will be specifically discussed, along with future directions and applications of this technology in health intervention, prevention and promotion.

Second international workshop on theory and applications of process visualization

The representation of business process models has been a continuing research topic for many years now. However, many process model representations have not developed beyond minimally interactive 2D icon-based representations of directed graphs and networks, with little or no annotation for information overlays. In addition, very few of these representations have undergone a thorough analysis or design process with reference to psychological theories on data and process visualization. This dearth of visualization research, we believe, has led to problems with BPM uptake in some organizations, as the representations can be difficult for stakeholders to understand, and thus remains an open research question for the BPM community. In addition, business analysts and process modeling experts themselves need visual representations that are able to assist with key BPM life cycle tasks in the process of generating optimal solutions. With the rise of desktop computers and commodity mobile devices capable of supporting rich interactive 3D environments, we believe that much of the research performed in computer human interaction, virtual reality, games and interactive entertainment have much potential in areas of BPM; to engage, provide insight, and to promote collaboration amongst analysts and stakeholders alike. We believe this is a timely topic, with research emerging in a number of places around the globe, relevant to this workshop. This is the second TAProViz workshop being run at BPM. The intention this year is to consolidate on the results of last year's successful workshop by further developing this important topic, identifying the key research topics of interest to the BPM visualization community.

Synthesis and modification of Alumina nanofibres and its applications

This thesis is a forward study of alumina nanofiber material in developing its applications biology field. It demonstrates that by applying proper modification strategy, alumina nanofiber is a promising material in protein purification and enzyme immobilization. The hydrophobic modification has dramatically improved the rejecting of protein molecular in purification system. On the other hand, utilisation of cross-linking agent firmly combined alumina nanofiber and target enzyme for immobilisation purpose. This step of progress could lead to inspiration of alumina nanofiber’s application in various area.

Improving the design of online applications for social benefit through a behaviour change model

Community support agencies routinely employ a web presence to provide information on their services. While this online information provision helps to increase an agency’s reach, this paper argues that it can be further extended by mapping relationships between services and by facilitating two-way communication and collaboration with local communities. We argue that emergent technologies, such as locative media and networking tools, can assist in harnessing this social capital. However, new applications must be designed in ways that both persuade and support community members to contribute information and support others in need. An analysis of the online presence of community service agencies and social benefit applications is presented against Fogg’s Behaviour Model. From this evaluation, design principles are proposed for developing new locative, collaborative online applications for social benefit.

High frequency high power converters for industrial applications

The main contribution of this project was to investigate power electronics technology in designing and developing high frequency high power converters for industrial applications. Therefore, the research was conducted at two levels; first at system level which mainly encapsulated the circuit topology and control scheme and second at application level which involves with real-world applications. Pursuing these objectives, varied topologies have been developed and proposed within this research. The main aim was to resolving solid-state switches limited power rating and operating speed while increasing the system flexibility considering the application characteristics. The developed new power converter configurations were applied to pulsed power and high power ultrasound applications for experimental validation.

Robots for environmental monitoring : significant advancements and applications

Robotic systems are increasingly being utilised as fundamental data-gathering tools by scientists, allowing new perspectives and a greater understanding of the planet and its environmental processes. Today's robots are already exploring our deep oceans, tracking harmful algal blooms and pollution spread, monitoring climate variables, and even studying remote volcanoes. This article collates and discusses the significant advancements and applications of marine, terrestrial, and airborne robotic systems developed for environmental monitoring during the last two decades. Emerging research trends for achieving large-scale environmental monitoring are also reviewed, including cooperative robotic teams, robot and wireless sensor network (WSN) interaction, adaptive sampling and model-aided path planning. These trends offer efficient and precise measurement of environmental processes at unprecedented scales that will push the frontiers of robotic and natural sciences.

Practical applications for clay-derived zeolite N : an ammonium-selective ion exchanger for industry use

Over the past ten years, scaled-up utilisation of a previously under-exploited zeolite, Zeolite N1, has been demonstrated for selective ion exchange of ammonium and other ions in aqueous environments. As with many zeolite syntheses, the required source material should contain predictable levels of aluminium and silicon and, for full-scale industrial applications, kaolin and/or montmorillonite serve such a purpose. Field, pilot and commercial scale trials of kaolin-derived Zeolite N have focused on applications in agriculture and water treatment as these sectors are primary producers or users of ammonium. The format for the material – as fine powders, granules or extrudates – depends on the specific application albeit each has been evaluated.

Distributed low-power image processing in wireless sensor networks for intelligent video surveillance applications

Distributed Wireless Smart Camera (DWSC) network is a special type of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) that processes captured images in a distributed manner. While image processing on DWSCs sees a great potential for growth, with its applications possessing a vast practical application domain such as security surveillance and health care, it suffers from tremendous constraints. In addition to the limitations of conventional WSNs, image processing on DWSCs requires more computational power, bandwidth and energy that presents significant challenges for large scale deployments. This dissertation has developed a number of algorithms that are highly scalable, portable, energy efficient and performance efficient, with considerations of practical constraints imposed by the hardware and the nature of WSN. More specifically, these algorithms tackle the problems of multi-object tracking and localisation in distributed wireless smart camera net- works and optimal camera configuration determination. Addressing the first problem of multi-object tracking and localisation requires solving a large array of sub-problems. The sub-problems that are discussed in this dissertation are calibration of internal parameters, multi-camera calibration for localisation and object handover for tracking. These topics have been covered extensively in computer vision literatures, however new algorithms must be invented to accommodate the various constraints introduced and required by the DWSC platform. A technique has been developed for the automatic calibration of low-cost cameras which are assumed to be restricted in their freedom of movement to either pan or tilt movements. Camera internal parameters, including focal length, principal point, lens distortion parameter and the angle and axis of rotation, can be recovered from a minimum set of two images of the camera, provided that the axis of rotation between the two images goes through the camera's optical centre and is parallel to either the vertical (panning) or horizontal (tilting) axis of the image. For object localisation, a novel approach has been developed for the calibration of a network of non-overlapping DWSCs in terms of their ground plane homographies, which can then be used for localising objects. In the proposed approach, a robot travels through the camera network while updating its position in a global coordinate frame, which it broadcasts to the cameras. The cameras use this, along with the image plane location of the robot, to compute a mapping from their image planes to the global coordinate frame. This is combined with an occupancy map generated by the robot during the mapping process to localised objects moving within the network. In addition, to deal with the problem of object handover between DWSCs of non-overlapping fields of view, a highly-scalable, distributed protocol has been designed. Cameras that follow the proposed protocol transmit object descriptions to a selected set of neighbours that are determined using a predictive forwarding strategy. The received descriptions are then matched at the subsequent camera on the object's path using a probability maximisation process with locally generated descriptions. The second problem of camera placement emerges naturally when these pervasive devices are put into real use. The locations, orientations, lens types etc. of the cameras must be chosen in a way that the utility of the network is maximised (e.g. maximum coverage) while user requirements are met. To deal with this, a statistical formulation of the problem of determining optimal camera configurations has been introduced and a Trans-Dimensional Simulated Annealing (TDSA) algorithm has been proposed to effectively solve the problem.