Conceptual and statistical framework for a water quality component of the integrated report card for the Great Barrier Reef catchments

This report presents the final deliverable from the project titled Conceptual and statistical framework for a water quality component of an integrated report card’ funded by the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility (MTSRF; Project 3.7.7). The key management driver of this, and a number of other MTSRF projects concerned with indicator development, is the requirement for state and federal government authorities and other stakeholders to provide robust assessments of the present ‘state’ or ‘health’ of regional ecosystems in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchments and adjacent marine waters. An integrated report card format, that encompasses both biophysical and socioeconomic factors, is an appropriate framework through which to deliver these assessments and meet a variety of reporting requirements. It is now well recognised that a ‘report card’ format for environmental reporting is very effective for community and stakeholder communication and engagement, and can be a key driver in galvanising community and political commitment and action. Although a report card it needs to be understandable by all levels of the community, it also needs to be underpinned by sound, quality-assured science. In this regard this project was to develop approaches to address the statistical issues that arise from amalgamation or integration of sets of discrete indicators into a final score or assessment of the state of the system. In brief, the two main issues are (1) selecting, measuring and interpreting specific indicators that vary both in space and time, and (2) integrating a range of indicators in such a way as to provide a succinct but robust overview of the state of the system. Although there is considerable research and knowledge of the use of indicators to inform the management of ecological, social and economic systems, methods on how to best to integrate multiple disparate indicators remain poorly developed. Therefore the objective of this project was to (i) focus on statistical approaches aimed at ensuring that estimates of individual indicators are as robust as possible, and (ii) present methods that can be used to report on the overall state of the system by integrating estimates of individual indicators. It was agreed at the outset, that this project was to focus on developing methods for a water quality report card. This was driven largely by the requirements of Reef Water Quality Protection Plan (RWQPP) and led to strong partner engagement with the Reef Water Quality Partnership.

Fuzzy logic to evaluate driving maneuvers: An integrated approach to improve training

Driver training is one of the interventions aimed at mitigating the number of crashes that involve novice drivers. Our failure to understand what is really important for learners, in terms of risky driving, is one of the many drawbacks restraining us to build better training programs. Currently, there is a need to develop and evaluate Advanced Driving Assistance Systems that could comprehensively assess driving competencies. The aim of this paper is to present a novel Intelligent Driver Training System (IDTS) that analyses crash risks for a given driving situation, providing avenues for improvement and personalisation of driver training programs. The analysis takes into account numerous variables acquired synchronously from the Driver, the Vehicle and the Environment (DVE). The system then segments out the manoeuvres within a drive. This paper further presents the usage of fuzzy set theory to develop the safety inference rules for each manoeuvre executed during the drive. This paper presents a framework and its associated prototype that can be used to comprehensively view and assess complex driving manoeuvres and then provide a comprehensive analysis of the drive used to give feedback to novice drivers.

The effect of work-integrated learning in highlighting the complexity of work : a pilot study of work self-efficacy

This pilot study aims to examine the effect of work-integrated learning (WIL) on work self-efficacy (WSE) for undergraduate students from the Queensland University of Technology. A WSE instrument was used to examine the seven subscales of WSE. These were; learning, problem solving, pressure, role expectations, team work, sensitivity and work politics. The results of this pilot study revealed that, overall the WSE scores were highest when the students’ did not participate in the WIL unit (comparison group) in comparison to the WIL group. The current paper suggests that WSE scores were changed as a result of WIL participation. These findings open a new path for future studies allowing them to explore the relationship between WIL and the specific subscales of WSE.

Integrated approach to optimize open-pit mine block sequencing

Critical stage in open-pit mining is to determine the optimal extraction sequence of blocks, which has significant impacts on mining profitability. In this paper, a more comprehensive block sequencing optimisation model is developed for the open-pit mines. In the model, material characteristics of blocks, grade control, excavator and block sequencing are investigated and integrated to maximise the short-term benefit of mining. Several case studies are modeled and solved by CPLEX MIP and CP engines. Numerical investigations are presented to illustrate and validate the proposed methodology.

Advertising : an integrated marketing communication perspective

This text provide the ideal student-centered introduction to the fast-changing field of integrated marketing communications. Technologies such as the convergence of the internet, mobile devices, and traditional channels are changing the way companies use marketing tools to communicate with their customers. The third edition of this market-leading text has been extensively revised to examine how cutting-edge developments are impacting the IMC program of marketers. All vignettes, cases and boxes showcasing specific examples of how companies and their communications agencies are using integrated marketing communications are new or updated. They provide engaging insights into the most current and popular campaigns being used by marketers and the key current trends and developments taking place in the advertising world.

Integrated marketing communications

Organisations continually use integrated marketing communications to achieve a competitive advantage and meet their marketing objectives. This 4th edition of Integrated Marketing Communications emphasises digital and interactive marketing, the most dynamic and crucial components to a successful IMC campaign today. Incorporating the most up to date theories and practice, the text clearly explains and demonstrates how to best select and co-ordinate all of a brand’s marketing communications elements to effectively engage the target market. Chapters adopt an integrative approach to examine marketing communications from both a consumer’s and marketer’s perspective. A wide range of local and global examples include: Spotify, Pandora, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Woolworths, Nike, KFC, Victoria Bitter, Tigerair and Air New Zealand. Each new copy of the text also offers 12 month access to wealth of student on-line revision and learning tools: CourseMate Express + Search me! marketing. Unique to the text is a series of end of chapter local videos showing students how key objectives in IMC theory are applied by real businesses.

Preparing pre-service teachers to teach primary science : an integrated approach using the theme of sustainability

An integrated approach to assessment afforded pre-service teachers the opportunity to learn about a local sustainability issue through three learning areas: science and technology,the arts and studies of society and environment (SOSE). Three sustainability issues chosen by the pre-service teachers are presented in this paper highlighting the science concepts explored. Affordances and constraints of the integrated task are discussed in the conclusion.

Developing young students’ meta-representational competence through integrated mathematics and science investigations

This paper describes students’ developing meta-representational competence, drawn from the second phase of a longitudinal study, Transforming Children’s Mathematical and Scientific Development. A group of 21 highly able Grade 1 students was engaged in mathematics/science investigations as part of a data modelling program. A pedagogical approach focused on students’ interpretation of categorical and continuous data was implemented through researcher-directed weekly sessions over a 2-year period. Fine-grained analysis of the developmental features and explanations of their graphs showed that explicit pedagogical attention to conceptual differences between categorical and continuous data was critical to development of inferential reasoning.

The WIL (Work Integrated Learning) Report : A national scoping study [Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Final report]

This report provides an account of the first large-scale scoping study of work integrated learning (WIL) in contemporary Australian higher education. The explicit aim of the project was to identify issues and map a broad and growing picture of WIL across Australia and to identify ways of improving the student learning experience in relation to WIL. The project was undertaken in response to high levels of interest in WIL, which is seen by universities both as a valid pedagogy and as a means to respond to demands by employers for work-ready graduates, and demands by students for employable knowledge and skills. Over a period of eight months of rapid data collection, 35 universities and almost 600 participants contributed to the project. Participants consistently reported the positive benefits of WIL and provided evidence of commitment and innovative practice in relation to enhancing student learning experiences. Participants provided evidence of strong partnerships between stakeholders and highlighted the importance of these relationships in facilitating effective learning outcomes for students. They also identified a range of issues and challenges that face the sector in growing WIL opportunities; these issues and challenges will shape the quality of WIL experiences. While the majority of comments focused on issues involved in ensuring quality placements, it was recognised that placements are just one way to ensure the integration of work with learning. Also, the WIL experience is highly contextualised and impacted by the expectations of students, employers, the professions, the university and government policy.

FaceXpress : an integrated software suite for facial emotion stimulus manipulation and facial measurement

The characterisation of facial expression through landmark-based analysis methods such as FACEM (Pilowsky & Katsikitis, 1994) has a variety of uses in psychiatric and psychological research. In these systems, important structural relationships are extracted from images of facial expressions by the analysis of a pre-defined set of feature points. These relationship measures may then be used, for instance, to assess the degree of variability and similarity between different facial expressions of emotion. FaceXpress is a multimedia software suite that provides a generalised workbench for landmark-based facial emotion analysis and stimulus manipulation. It is a flexible tool that is designed to be specialised at runtime by the user. While FaceXpress has been used to implement the FACEM process, it can also be configured to support any other similar, arbitrary system for quantifying human facial emotion. FaceXpress also implements an integrated set of image processing tools and specialised tools for facial expression stimulus production including facial morphing routines and the generation of expression-representative line drawings from photographs.

Technoeconomic analysis of an integrated microalgae photobioreactor, biodiesel and biogas production facility

As fossil fuel prices increase and environmental concerns gain prominence, the development of alternative fuels from biomass has become more important. Biodiesel produced from microalgae is becoming an attractive alternative to share the role of petroleum. Currently it appears that the production of microalgal biodiesel is not economically viable in current environment because it costs more than conventional fuels. Therefore, a new concept is introduced in this article as an option to reduce the total production cost of microalgal biodiesel. The integration of biodiesel production system with methane production via anaerobic digestion is proved in improving the economics and sustainability of overall biodiesel stages. Anaerobic digestion of microalgae produces methane and further be converted to generate electricity. The generated electricity can surrogate the consumption of energy that require in microalgal cultivation, dewatering, extraction and transesterification process. From theoretical calculations, the electricity generated from methane is able to power all of the biodiesel production stages and will substantially reduce the cost of biodiesel production (33% reduction). The carbon emissions of biodiesel production systems are also reduced by approximately 75% when utilizing biogas electricity compared to when the electricity is otherwise purchased from the Victorian grid. The overall findings from this study indicate that the approach of digesting microalgal waste to produce biogas will make the production of biodiesel from algae more viable by reducing the overall cost of production per unit of biodiesel and hence enable biodiesel to be more competitive with existing fuels.