Development and integration of a solar powered unmanned aerial vehicle and a wireless sensor network to monitor greenhouse gases

Measuring gases for environmental monitoring is a demanding task that requires long periods of observation and large numbers of sensors. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) currently represent the best alternative to monitor large, remote, and difficult access areas, as these technologies have the possibility of carrying specialized gas sensing systems. This paper presents the development and integration of a WSN and an UAV powered by solar energy in order to enhance their functionality and broader their applications. A gas sensing system implementing nanostructured metal oxide (MOX) and non-dispersive infrared sensors was developed to measure concentrations of CH4 and CO2. Laboratory, bench and field testing results demonstrate the capability of UAV to capture, analyze and geo-locate a gas sample during flight operations. The field testing integrated ground sensor nodes and the UAV to measure CO2 concentration at ground and low aerial altitudes, simultaneously. Data collected during the mission was transmitted in real time to a central node for analysis and 3D mapping of the target gas. The results highlights the accomplishment of the first flight mission of a solar powered UAV equipped with a CO2 sensing system integrated with a WSN. The system provides an effective 3D monitoring and can be used in a wide range of environmental applications such as agriculture, bushfires, mining studies, zoology and botanical studies using a ubiquitous low cost technology.

Health care consumers’ perspectives on pharmacist integration into private general practitioner clinics in Malaysia: A qualitative study

Background Pharmacists are considered medication experts but are underutilized and exist mainly at the periphery of the Malaysian primary health care team. Private general practitioners (GPs) in Malaysia are granted rights under the Poison Act 1952 to prescribe and dispense medications at their primary care clinics. As most consumers obtain their medications from their GPs, community pharmacists’ involvement in ensuring safe use of medicines is limited. The integration of a pharmacist into private GP clinics has the potential to contribute to quality use of medicines. This study aims to explore health care consumers’ views on the integration of pharmacists within private GP clinics in Malaysia. Methods A purposive sample of health care consumers in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were invited to participate in focus groups and semi-structured interviews. Sessions were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed using NVivo 10. Results A total of 24 health care consumers participated in two focus groups and six semi-structured interviews. Four major themes were identified: 1) pharmacists’ role viewed mainly as supplying medications, 2) readiness to accept pharmacists in private GP clinics, 3) willingness to pay for pharmacy services, and 4) concerns about GPs’ resistance to pharmacist integration. Consumers felt that a pharmacist integrated into a private GP clinic could offer potential benefits such as to provide trustworthy information on the use and potential side effects of medications and screening for medication misadventure. The potential increase in costs passed on to consumers and GPs’ reluctance were perceived as barriers to integration. Conclusion This study provides insights into consumers’ perspectives on the roles of pharmacists within private GP clinics in Malaysia. Consumers generally supported pharmacist integration into private primary health care clinics. However, for pharmacists to expand their capacity in providing integrated and collaborative primary care services to consumers, barriers to pharmacist integration need to be addressed.

GABAA and NMDA receptors contribute to synaptic integration in lateral amygdala neurons

In classical fear conditioning a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS), is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US). The CS thereby acquires the capacity to elicit a fear response. This type of associative learning is thought to require co-activation of principal neurons in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA) by two sets of synaptic inputs...

GABAa receptors contribute to synaptic integration in lateral amygdala neurons

In classical fear conditioning a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) such as a tone, is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) such as a shock. The CS thereby acquires the capacity to elicit a fear response. This type of associative learning is thought to require co-activation of principle neurons in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA) by two sets of synaptic inputs, a weak CS and a strong US...

Two-way strong: A study of vertebrates using Queensland Indigenous knowledges and Montessori Linnaean materials to engage Indigenous secondary school students

The marginalisation that Indigenous secondary students experience in zoology science lessons can be attributed to a chasm they experience between their life in community and the classroom. The study found that the integration of Indigenous and Western science knowledge can provide transformative learning experiences for students which work to strengthen their sense of belonging to community and school. Using action research, the study investigated the integration of both-ways science education into students' zoology lessons. It privileged the community's cultural expertise, practices and connections with students and their families, which worked to enhance student engagement in their learning.

Integration of Opinion Mining into customer analysis model

This research proposes a multi-dimensional model for Opinion Mining, which integrates customers' characteristics and their opinions about products (or services). Customer opinions are valuable for companies to deliver right products or services to their customers. This research presents a comprehensive framework to evaluate opinions' orientation based on products' hierarchy attributes. It also provides an alternative way to obtain opinion summaries for different groups of customers and different categories of produces.

A Web-based system enabling the integration, analysis, and 3D sub-surface visualization of groundwater monitoring data and geological models

The 3D Water Chemistry Atlas is an intuitive, open source, Web-based system that enables the three-dimensional (3D) sub-surface visualization of ground water monitoring data, overlaid on the local geological model (formation and aquifer strata). This paper firstly describes the results of evaluating existing virtual globe technologies, which led to the decision to use the Cesium open source WebGL Virtual Globe and Map Engine as the underlying platform. Next it describes the backend database and search, filtering, browse and analysis tools that were developed to enable users to interactively explore the groundwater monitoring data and interpret it spatially and temporally relative to the local geological formations and aquifers via the Cesium interface. The result is an integrated 3D visualization system that enables environmental managers and regulators to assess groundwater conditions, identify inconsistencies in the data, manage impacts and risks and make more informed decisions about coal seam gas extraction, waste water extraction, and water reuse.

Integration over song classification replicates: song variant analysis in the hihi

Human expert analyses are commonly used in bioacoustic studies and can potentially limit the reproducibility of these results. In this paper, a machine learning method is presented to statistically classify avian vocalizations. Automated approaches were applied to isolate bird songs from long field recordings, assess song similarities, and classify songs into distinct variants. Because no positive controls were available to assess the true classification of variants, multiple replicates of automatic classification of song variants were analyzed to investigate clustering uncertainty. The automatic classifications were more similar to the expert classifications than expected by chance. Application of these methods demonstrated the presence of discrete song variants in an island population of the New Zealand hihi (Notiomystis cincta). The geographic patterns of song variation were then revealed by integrating over classification replicates. Because this automated approach considers variation in song variant classification, it reduces potential human bias and facilitates the reproducibility of the results.

Global business services: Increasing specialization and integration of the world economy as drivers of economic growth

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of global business services to improved productivity and economic growth of the world economy, which has gone largely unnoticed in service research. Design/methodology/approach The authors draw on macroeconomic data and industry reports, and link them to the non-ownership-concept in service research and theories of the firm. Findings Business services explain a large share of the growth of the global service economy. The fast growth of business services coincides with shifts from domestic production towards global outsourcing of services. A new wave of global business services are traded across borders and have emerged as important drivers of growth in the world’s service sector. Research limitations/implications This paper advances the understanding of non-ownership services in an increasingly global and specialized post-industrial economy. The paper makes a conceptual contribution supported by descriptive data, but without empirical testing. Originality/value The authors integrate the non-ownership concept and three related economic theories of the firm to explain the role of global business services in driving business performance and the international transformation of service economies.

The impact of snares on the continuity of adolescent-onset antisocial behaviour: A test of Moffitt's developmental taxonomy

Moffitt’s dual typology of ‘life-course persistent’ and ‘adolescence limited’ offending has received extensive empirical attention, but the extent to which the antisocial behaviour of adolescence limited offenders is constrained to adolescence is relatively under-examined.Using data from the Australian Mater University Study of Pregnancy and its Outcomes, we explore Moffitt’s concept of snares, or those factors that may lead to an adolescent persisting in antisocial behaviour such as drug addiction, educational failure, and contact with the justice system. The Mater University Study of Pregnancy and its Outcomes is a longitudinal study of mother–child dyads from the pre-natal stage to 21 years of age. Findings show that one-third of individuals identified as having an adolescent onset of antisocial behaviour persisted with this antisocial behaviour as young adults. This continuity can, in part, be explained by snares and the research suggests that reducing exposure to snares may lead to less antisocial behaviour in adulthood.

The role of knowledge integration in innovation and capability development

Purpose This paper investigates the interrelationships between knowledge integration (KI), product innovation and capability development to enhance our understanding of how firms can develop capability at the firm level, which in turn enhances their performance. One of the critical underlying mechanisms for capability building identified in the literature is the role of knowledge integration, which operates within product innovation projects and contributes to dynamic capability development. Therefore, the main research question is “how does the integration of knowledge across product innovation projects lead to the development of capability?” Design/methodology/approach We adopted a case-based approach and investigated the case of a successful firm that was able to sustain its performance through a series of product innovation projects. In particular this research focused on the role of KI and firm-level capability development over the course of four projects, during which the firm successfully managed the transformation of its product base and renewal of its competitive advantage. For this purpose an in-depth case study of capability development was undertaken at the Iran Khodro Company (IKCO), the key player in the Iranian auto industry transformation. Originality/value This research revealed that along with changes at each level of product architecture “design knowledge” and “design capability” have been developed at the same level of product architecture, leading to capability development at that level. It can be argued that along the step by step maturation of radical innovation across the four case projects, architectural knowledge and capability have been developed at the case company, resulting in the gradual emergence of a modular product and capability architecture across different levels of product architecture. Such findings basically add to extensive emphasis in the literature on the interrelationship of the concept of modularity with knowledge management and capability development. Practical implications Findings of this study indicate that firms manage their knowledge in accordance with the level of specialization in knowledge and capability. Furthermore, firms design appropriate knowledge integration mechanisms within and among functions in order dynamically align knowledge processes at different levels of the product architecture. Accordingly, the outcomes of this study may guide practitioners in managing their knowledge processes, through dynamically employing knowledge integration modes step-by-step and from the part level to the architectural level of product architecture across a sequence of product innovation projects to encourage learning and radical innovation.

Quality-aware review selection based on product feature taxonomy

As of today, user-generated information such as online reviews has become increasingly significant for customers in decision making process. Meanwhile, as the volume of online reviews proliferates, there is an insistent demand to help the users tackle the information overload problem. In order to extract useful information from overwhelming reviews, considerable work has been proposed such as review summarization and review selection. Particularly, to avoid the redundant information, researchers attempt to select a small set of reviews to represent the entire review corpus by preserving its statistical properties (e.g., opinion distribution). However, one significant drawback of the existing works is that they only measure the utility of the extracted reviews as a whole without considering the quality of each individual review. As a result, the set of chosen reviews may consist of low-quality ones even its statistical property is close to that of the original review corpus, which is not preferred by the users. In this paper, we proposed a review selection method which takes review quality into consideration during the selection process. Specifically, we examine the relationships between product features based upon a domain ontology to capture the review characteristics based on which to select reviews that have good quality and preserve the opinion distribution as well. Our experimental results based on real world review datasets demonstrate that our proposed approach is feasible and able to improve the performance of the review selection effectively.

Integration of Geospatial and Built Environment - National Data Policy

Digital technology offers enormous benefits (economic, quality of design and efficiency in use) if adopted to implement integrated ways of representing the physical world in a digital form. When applied across the full extent of the built and natural world, it is referred to as the Digital Built Environment (DBE) and encompasses a wide range of approaches and technology initiatives, all aimed at the same end goal: the development of a virtual world that sufficiently mirrors the real world to form the basis for the smart cities of the present and future, enable efficient infrastructure design and programmed maintenance, and create a new foundation for economic growth and social well-being through evidence-based analysis. The creation of a National Data Policy for the DBE will facilitate the creation of additional high technology industries in Australia; provide Governments, industries and citizens with greater knowledge of the environments they occupy and plan; and offer citizen-driven innovations for the future. Australia has slipped behind other nations in the adoption and execution of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the principal concern is that the gap is widening. Data driven innovation added $67 billion to the Australian economy in 20131. Strong open data policy equates to $16 billion in new value2. Australian Government initiatives such as the Digital Earth inspired “National Map” offer a platform and pathway to embrace the concept of a “BIM Globe”, while also leveraging unprecedented growth in open source / open data collaboration. Australia must address the challenges by learning from international experiences—most notably the UK and NZ—and mandate the use of BIM across Government, extending the Framework for Spatial Data Foundation to include the Built Environment as a theme and engaging collaboration through a “BIM globe” metaphor. This proposed DBE strategy will modernise the Australian urban planning and the construction industry. It will change the way we develop our cities by fundamentally altering the dynamics and behaviours of the supply chains and unlocking new and more efficient ways of collaborating at all stages of the project life-cycle. There are currently two major modelling approaches that contribute to the challenge of delivering the DBE. Though these collectively encompass many (often competing) approaches or proprietary software systems, all can be categorised as either: a spatial modelling approach, where the focus is generally on representing the elements that make up the world within their geographic context; and a construction modelling approach, where the focus is on models that support the life cycle management of the built environment. These two approaches have tended to evolve independently, addressing two broad industry sectors: the one concerned with understanding and managing global and regional aspects of the world that we inhabit, including disciplines concerned with climate, earth sciences, land ownership, urban and regional planning and infrastructure management; the other is concerned with planning, design, construction and operation of built facilities and includes architectural and engineering design, product manufacturing, construction, facility management and related disciplines (a process/technology commonly known as Building Information Modelling, BIM). The spatial industries have a strong voice in the development of public policy in Australia, while the construction sector, which in 2014 accounted for around 8.5% of Australia’s GDP3, has no single voice and because of its diversity, is struggling to adapt to and take advantage of the opportunity presented by these digital technologies. The experience in the UK over the past few years has demonstrated that government leadership is very effective in stimulating industry adoption of digital technologies by, on the one hand, mandating the use of BIM on public procurement projects while at the same time, providing comparatively modest funding to address the common issues that confront the industry in adopting that way of working across the supply chain. The reported result has been savings of £840m in construction costs in 2013/14 according to UK Cabinet Office figures4. There is worldwide recognition of the value of bringing these two modelling technologies together. Australia has the expertise to exercise leadership in this work, but it requires a commitment by government to recognise the importance of BIM as a companion methodology to the spatial technologies so that these two disciplinary domains can cooperate in the development of data policies and information exchange standards to smooth out common workflows. buildingSMART Australasia, SIBA and their academic partners have initiated this dialogue in Australia and wish to work collaboratively, with government support and leadership, to explore the opportunities open to us as we develop an Australasian Digital Built Environment. As part of that programme, we must develop and implement a strategy to accelerate the adoption of BIM processes across the Australian construction sector while at the same time, developing an integrated approach in concert with the spatial sector that will position Australia at the forefront of international best practice in this area. Australia and New Zealand cannot afford to be on the back foot as we face the challenges of rapid urbanisation and change in the global environment. Although we can identify some exemplary initiatives in this area, particularly in New Zealand in response to the need for more resilient urban development in the face of earthquake threats, there is still much that needs to be done. We are well situated in the Asian region to take a lead in this challenge, but we are at imminent risk of losing the initiative if we do not take action now. Strategic collaboration between Governments, Industry and Academia will create new jobs and wealth, with the potential, for example, to save around 20% on the delivery costs of new built assets, based on recent UK estimates.

A manager-centred perspective on work-life integration

Decades of research has shown that the uptake of workplace ‘flexibility’ provisions set out in organizational/HR policies rests heavily on the support of line managers. However, the majority of scholarship addressing the intersection of managers’ roles and work-life integration has been employee-centred. That is, the literature primarily situates managers as gatekeepers to the effective implementation of work and family policies as they affect employees or workers, examining their role in, for example, approving requests to adjust or personalise employees’ work schedules; influencing whether employees are cross-trained to undertake the work of others during absences; publicising available policies; and creating norms supporting the use of formal provisions (Ryan & Ernst Kossek, 2008). Managers’ actions are primarily seen as key, contingent phenomena affecting the adoption and diffusion of work-life initiatives in an organization; consequently impacting on the work-life outcomes of subordinate employees (Bardoel, 2003; Gregory & Milner, 2012).