Enablers and barriers to the organizational adoption of sustainable business practices

Individuals, organizations, and governments are increasingly becoming aware of the necessity of sustainability in living, organizing, performing, and managing work. In this context, “green IS” has become an established colloquial term, acknowledging that information technology, corporate information systems, and the surrounding practices are both a contributor to the sustainability challenge and a potential enabler for green and sustainable practices. To date, however, there are few reported studies on the role of information systems for the challenge, and solution, of sustainability. This paper presents results from a case study of a world-wide operating IT software solution provider that is engaged in the development and adoption of sustainable practices. Our study suggests that the adoption of sustainable practices comes along with a number of particularities. We found information technology to be a key enabler of transparency about the progress of sustainability operations. We further found personal, motivator factors as well as organizational factors such as business inclusion, strategy definition, and a dialectic top-management and bottom-up support, to play a role in enabling a company to manage their sustainability. We describe a set of conjectures forthcoming from our case analysis, and detail some implications for further research in this area.

The home stigma : adverse selection in ADRs and the home capital market environment

We investigate whether characteristics of the home country capital environment, such as information disclosure and investor rights protection continue to affect ADRs cross-listed in the U.S. Using microstructure measures as proxies for adverse selection, we find that characteristics of the home markets continue to be relevant, especially for emerging market firms. Less transparent disclosure, poorer protection of investor rights and weaker legal institutions are associated with higher levels of information asymmetry. Developed market firms appear to be affected by whether or not home business laws are common law or civil law legal origin. Our finding contributes to the bonding literature. It suggests that cross-listing in the U.S. should not be viewed as a substitute for improvement in the quality of local institutions, and attention must be paid to improve investor protection in order to achieve the full benefits of improved disclosure. Improvement in the domestic capital market environment can attract more investors even for U.S. cross-listed firms.

Contemporary dramaturgy in theatre for young people : the conceptual shape of displacement and installation

This thesis investigates Theatre for Young People (TYP) as a site of performance innovation. The inquiry is focused on contemporary dramaturgy and its fieldwork aims to identify new dramaturgical principles operating in the creation and presentation of TYP. The research then seeks to assess how these new principles contribute to Postdramatic Theatre theory. This research inquiry springs from an imperative based in practice: Young people under 25 years have a literacy based on online hypertextual experiences which take the reader outside the frames of a dramatic narrative and beyond principles such as linearity, dramatic unity, teleology and resolution. As a dramaturg and educator I wanted to understand the new ways that young people engage in cultural products, to identify and utilize the new principles of dramaturgy that are now in evidence. My research examines how two playwright/directors approach their work and the new principles that can be identified in their dramaturgy. The fieldwork is scoped into two case studies: the first on TJ Eckleberg working in Australian Theatre for Young People and the second on Kristo Šagor working in German Children’s and Young People’s Theatre (KJT). These case studies address both types of production dramaturgy - the dramaturgy emergent through process in devised performance making, and that emergent in a performance based on a written playscript. On Case Study One the researcher, as participant observer, worked as production dramaturg on a large scale, site specific performance, observing the dramaturgy in process of its director and chief devisor. On Case Study Two the researcher, as observer and analyst, undertook a performance analysis of three playscripts and productions by a contemporary German playwright and director. Utilizing participant observation, reflective practice and grounded analysis the case studies have identified two new principles animating the dramaturgy of these TYP practitioners, namely ‘displacement’ and ‘installation.’ Taking practice into theory, the thesis concludes by demonstrating how displacement and installation contribute to Postdramatic Theatre’s “arsenal of expressive gestures which serve as theatre’s response to changed social communication under the conditions of generalized communication technologies” (Lehmann, H.-T., 2006, p.23). This research makes an original contribution to knowledge by evidencing that the principles of Postdramatic Theory lie within the practice of contemporary Theatre for Young People. It also contributes valuable research to a specialized, often overlooked terrain, namely Dramaturgy in Theatre for Young People, presented here with a contemporary, international and intercultural perspective.

Mobile data technologies and SME adoption and diffusion : an empirical study on barriers and facilitators

The technological environment in which Australian SMEs operate can be best described as dynamic and vital. The rate of technological change provides the SME owner/manager a complex and challenging operational context. Wireless applications are being developed that provide mobile devices with Internet content and e-business services. In Australia the adoption of e-commerce by large organisations has been relatively high, however the same cannot be said for SMEs where adoption has been slower than other developed countries. In contrast however mobile telephone adoption and diffusion is relatively high by SMEs. This exploratory study identifies attitudes, perceptions and issues for mobile data technologies by regional SME owner/managers across a range of industry sectors. The major issues include the sector the firm belongs to, the current adoption status of the firm, the level of mistrust of the IT industry, the cost of the technologies and the applications and attributes of the technologies.

Mobile data technology for small business : needs, uses, and adoption

The technological environment in which contemporary small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operate can only be described as dynamic. The exponential rate of technological change, characterised by perceived increases in the benefits associated with various technologies, shortening product life cycles and changing standards, provides the SME a complex and challenging operational context. The primary aim of this research was to identify the needs of SMEs in regional areas for mobile data technologies (MDT). In this study a distinction was drawn between those respondents who were full-adopters of technology, those who were partial-adopters and those who were non-adopters and these three segments articulated different needs and requirements for MDT. Overall the needs of regional SMEs for MDT can be conceptualised into three areas where the technology will assist business practices, communication, e-commerce and security.

Music, media and making : humanising digital media in music education

This paper examines three functions of music technology in the study of music. Firstly, as a tool, secondly, as an instrument and, lastly, as a medium for thinking. As our societies become increasingly embroiled in digital media for representation and communication, our philosophies of music education need to adapt to integrate these developments while maintaining the essence of music. The foundation of music technology in the 1990s is the digital representation of sound. It is this fundamental shift to a new medium with which to represent sound that carries with it the challenge to address digital technology and its multiple effects on music creation and presentation. In this paper I suggest that music institutions should take a broad and integrated approach to the place of music technology in their courses, based on the understanding of digital representation of sound and these three functions it can serve. Educators should reconsider digital technologies such as synthesizers and computers as music instruments and cognitive amplifiers, not simply as efficient tools.

Rethinking health planning : a framework for organising information to underpin collaborative health planning

The field of collaborative health planning faces significant challenges created by the narrow focus of the available information, the absence of a framework to organise that information and the lack of systems to make information accessible and guide decision-making. These challenges have been magnified by the rise of the ‘healthy communities movement’, as a result of which, there have been more frequent calls for localised, collaborative and evidence-driven health related decision-making. This paper discusses the role of decision support systems as a mechanism to facilitate collaborative health decision-making. The paper presents a potential information management framework to underpin a health decision support system and describes the participatory process that is currently being used to create an online tool for health planners using geographic information systems. The need for a comprehensive information management framework to guide the process of planning for healthy communities has been emphasised. The paper also underlines the critical importance of the proposed framework not only in forcing planners to engage with the entire range of health determinants, but also in providing sufficient flexibility to allow exploration of the local setting-based determinants of health.

Towards developing an integrated model of information behaviour

This paper presents the results from a study of information behaviors in the context of people's everyday lives undertaken in order to develop an integrated model of information behavior (IB). 34 participants from across 6 countries maintained a daily information journal or diary – mainly through a secure web log – for two weeks, to an aggregate of 468 participant days over five months. The text-rich diary data was analyzed using a multi-method qualitative-quantitative analysis in the following order: Grounded Theory analysis with manual coding, automated concept analysis using thesaurus-based visualization, and finally a statistical analysis of the coding data. The findings indicate that people engage in several information behaviors simultaneously throughout their everyday lives (including home and work life) and that sense-making is entangled in all aspects of them. Participants engaged in many of the information behaviors in a parallel, distributed, and concurrent fashion: many information behaviors for one information problem, one information behavior across many information problems, and many information behaviors concurrently across many information problems. Findings indicate also that information avoidance – both active and passive avoidance – is a common phenomenon and that information organizing behaviors or the lack thereof caused the most problems for participants. An integrated model of information behaviors is presented based on the findings.

Competency Standards and Educational Requirements for Specialist Breast Nurses in Australia

There is substantial evidence that Specialist Breast Nurses (SBNs) make an important contribution to improved outcomes for women with breast cancer, by providing information and support and promoting continuity of care. However, a recent study has identified significant variation in how the role functions across individual nurses and settings, which is likely to contribute to varied outcomes for women with breast cancer. The project reported in this paper illustrates how a set of competency standards for SBNs were developed by the National Breast Cancer Centre. The competency standards were developed through a review of published literature and consultation with key stakeholders. The resulting SBN Competency Standards reflect the core domains and elements of SBN practice seen as integral to achieving optimal outcomes for women with breast cancer. This project identifies the SBN as a registered nurse who applies advanced knowledge of the health needs, preferences and circumstances of women with breast cancer to optimise the individual's health and well-being at various phases across the continuum of care, including diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, follow-up and palliative care. The five core domains of practice identified are: Supportive care; Collaborative care; Coordinated care; Information provision and education; and Clinical leadership. A variety of education programs are currently available for nurses who wish to learn about breast cancer nursing. The majority of stakeholders consulted in this project agreed that a Graduate Diploma level of education is required at minimum in order for an SBN to develop the minimum level of competence required to perform the role. The evidence supports the view that as an advanced role, nurses practising as SBNs require high-quality programs of sufficient depth and scope to achieve the required level of competence

Clustering with random indexing K-tree and XML structure

This paper describes the approach taken to the clustering task at INEX 2009 by a group at the Queensland University of Technology. The Random Indexing (RI) K-tree has been used with a representation that is based on the semantic markup available in the INEX 2009 Wikipedia collection. The RI K-tree is a scalable approach to clustering large document collections. This approach has produced quality clustering when evaluated using two different methodologies.

ERTP : Energy-efficient and reliable transport protocol for data streaming in wireless sensor networks

Emerging data streaming applications in Wireless Sensor Networks require reliable and energy-efficient Transport Protocols. Our recent Wireless Sensor Network deployment in the Burdekin delta, Australia, for water monitoring [T. Le Dinh, W. Hu, P. Sikka, P. Corke, L. Overs, S. Brosnan, Design and deployment of a remote robust sensor network: experiences from an outdoor water quality monitoring network, in: Second IEEE Workshop on Practical Issues in Building Sensor Network Applications (SenseApp 2007), Dublin, Ireland, 2007] is one such example. This application involves streaming sensed data such as pressure, water flow rate, and salinity periodically from many scattered sensors to the sink node which in turn relays them via an IP network to a remote site for archiving, processing, and presentation. While latency is not a primary concern in this class of application (the sampling rate is usually in terms of minutes or hours), energy-efficiency is. Continuous long-term operation and reliable delivery of the sensed data to the sink are also desirable. This paper proposes ERTP, an Energy-efficient and Reliable Transport Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. ERTP is designed for data streaming applications, in which sensor readings are transmitted from one or more sensor sources to a base station (or sink). ERTP uses a statistical reliability metric which ensures the number of data packets delivered to the sink exceeds the defined threshold. Our extensive discrete event simulations and experimental evaluations show that ERTP is significantly more energyefficient than current approaches and can reduce energy consumption by more than 45% when compared to current approaches. Consequently, sensor nodes are more energy-efficient and the lifespan of the unattended WSN is increased.

System identification and control of an aerobot drive system

Fast thrust changes are important for authoritive control of VTOL micro air vehicles. Fixed-pitch rotors that alter thrust by varying rotor speed require high-bandwidth control systems to provide adequate performace. We develop a feedback compensator for a brushless hobby motor driving a custom rotor suitable for UAVs. The system plant is identified using step excitation experiments. The aerodynamic operating conditions of these rotors are unusual and so experiments are performed to characterise expected load disturbances. The plant and load models lead to a proportional controller design capable of significantly decreasing rise-time and propagation of disturbances, subject to bus voltage constraints.

Improved algebraic cryptanalysis of QUAD, Bivium and Trivium via graph partitioning on equation systems

We present a novel approach for preprocessing systems of polynomial equations via graph partitioning. The variable-sharing graph of a system of polynomial equations is defined. If such graph is disconnected, then the corresponding system of equations can be split into smaller ones that can be solved individually. This can provide a tremendous speed-up in computing the solution to the system, but is unlikely to occur either randomly or in applications. However, by deleting certain vertices on the graph, the variable-sharing graph could be disconnected in a balanced fashion, and in turn the system of polynomial equations would be separated into smaller systems of near-equal sizes. In graph theory terms, this process is equivalent to finding balanced vertex partitions with minimum-weight vertex separators. The techniques of finding these vertex partitions are discussed, and experiments are performed to evaluate its practicality for general graphs and systems of polynomial equations. Applications of this approach in algebraic cryptanalysis on symmetric ciphers are presented: For the QUAD family of stream ciphers, we show how a malicious party can manufacture conforming systems that can be easily broken. For the stream ciphers Bivium and Trivium, we nachieve significant speedups in algebraic attacks against them, mainly in a partial key guess scenario. In each of these cases, the systems of polynomial equations involved are well-suited to our graph partitioning method. These results may open a new avenue for evaluating the security of symmetric ciphers against algebraic attacks.

Exercise, appetite, and energy balance: The interactions between energy expenditure and intake, and the implications for weight management

This book disseminates current information pertaining to the modulatory effects of foods and other food substances on behavior and neurological pathways and, importantly, vice versa. This ranges from the neuroendocrine control of eating to the effects of life-threatening disease on eating behavior. The importance of this contribution to the scientific literature lies in the fact that food and eating are an essential component of cultural heritage but the effects of perturbations in the food/cognitive axis can be profound. The complex interrelationship between neuropsychological processing, diet, and behavioral outcome is explored within the context of the most contemporary psychobiological research in the area. This comprehensive psychobiology- and pathology-themed text examines the broad spectrum of diet, behavioral, and neuropsychological interactions from normative function to occurrences of severe and enduring psychopathological processes

A hidden Markov model and relative entropy rate approach to vision-based dim target detection for UAV sense-and-avoid

Uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) are a cutting-edge technology that is at the forefront of aviation/aerospace research and development worldwide. Many consider their current military and defence applications as just a token of their enormous potential. Unlocking and fully exploiting this potential will see UAVs in a multitude of civilian applications and routinely operating alongside piloted aircraft. The key to realising the full potential of UAVs lies in addressing a host of regulatory, public relation, and technological challenges never encountered be- fore. Aircraft collision avoidance is considered to be one of the most important issues to be addressed, given its safety critical nature. The collision avoidance problem can be roughly organised into three areas: 1) Sense; 2) Detect; and 3) Avoid. Sensing is concerned with obtaining accurate and reliable information about other aircraft in the air; detection involves identifying potential collision threats based on available information; avoidance deals with the formulation and execution of appropriate manoeuvres to maintain safe separation. This thesis tackles the detection aspect of collision avoidance, via the development of a target detection algorithm that is capable of real-time operation onboard a UAV platform. One of the key challenges of the detection problem is the need to provide early warning. This translates to detecting potential threats whilst they are still far away, when their presence is likely to be obscured and hidden by noise. Another important consideration is the choice of sensors to capture target information, which has implications for the design and practical implementation of the detection algorithm. The main contributions of the thesis are: 1) the proposal of a dim target detection algorithm combining image morphology and hidden Markov model (HMM) filtering approaches; 2) the novel use of relative entropy rate (RER) concepts for HMM filter design; 3) the characterisation of algorithm detection performance based on simulated data as well as real in-flight target image data; and 4) the demonstration of the proposed algorithm's capacity for real-time target detection. We also consider the extension of HMM filtering techniques and the application of RER concepts for target heading angle estimation. In this thesis we propose a computer-vision based detection solution, due to the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) availability of camera hardware and the hardware's relatively low cost, power, and size requirements. The proposed target detection algorithm adopts a two-stage processing paradigm that begins with an image enhancement pre-processing stage followed by a track-before-detect (TBD) temporal processing stage that has been shown to be effective in dim target detection. We compare the performance of two candidate morphological filters for the image pre-processing stage, and propose a multiple hidden Markov model (MHMM) filter for the TBD temporal processing stage. The role of the morphological pre-processing stage is to exploit the spatial features of potential collision threats, while the MHMM filter serves to exploit the temporal characteristics or dynamics. The problem of optimising our proposed MHMM filter has been examined in detail. Our investigation has produced a novel design process for the MHMM filter that exploits information theory and entropy related concepts. The filter design process is posed as a mini-max optimisation problem based on a joint RER cost criterion. We provide proof that this joint RER cost criterion provides a bound on the conditional mean estimate (CME) performance of our MHMM filter, and this in turn establishes a strong theoretical basis connecting our filter design process to filter performance. Through this connection we can intelligently compare and optimise candidate filter models at the design stage, rather than having to resort to time consuming Monte Carlo simulations to gauge the relative performance of candidate designs. Moreover, the underlying entropy concepts are not constrained to any particular model type. This suggests that the RER concepts established here may be generalised to provide a useful design criterion for multiple model filtering approaches outside the class of HMM filters. In this thesis we also evaluate the performance of our proposed target detection algorithm under realistic operation conditions, and give consideration to the practical deployment of the detection algorithm onboard a UAV platform. Two fixed-wing UAVs were engaged to recreate various collision-course scenarios to capture highly realistic vision (from an onboard camera perspective) of the moments leading up to a collision. Based on this collected data, our proposed detection approach was able to detect targets out to distances ranging from about 400m to 900m. These distances, (with some assumptions about closing speeds and aircraft trajectories) translate to an advanced warning ahead of impact that approaches the 12.5 second response time recommended for human pilots. Furthermore, readily available graphic processing unit (GPU) based hardware is exploited for its parallel computing capabilities to demonstrate the practical feasibility of the proposed target detection algorithm. A prototype hardware-in- the-loop system has been found to be capable of achieving data processing rates sufficient for real-time operation. There is also scope for further improvement in performance through code optimisations. Overall, our proposed image-based target detection algorithm offers UAVs a cost-effective real-time target detection capability that is a step forward in ad- dressing the collision avoidance issue that is currently one of the most significant obstacles preventing widespread civilian applications of uninhabited aircraft. We also highlight that the algorithm development process has led to the discovery of a powerful multiple HMM filtering approach and a novel RER-based multiple filter design process. The utility of our multiple HMM filtering approach and RER concepts, however, extend beyond the target detection problem. This is demonstrated by our application of HMM filters and RER concepts to a heading angle estimation problem.