Structural optimization approach for specially shaped composite tank in spacecrafts

This study proposes an optimized approach of designing in which a model specially shaped composite tank for spacecrafts is built by applying finite element analysis. The composite layers are preliminarily designed by combining quasi-network design method with numerical simulation, which determines the ratio between the angle and the thickness of layers as the initial value of the optimized design. By adopting an adaptive simulated annealing algorithm, the angles and the numbers of layers at each angle are optimized to minimize the weight of structure. Based on this, the stacking sequence of composite layers is formulated according to the number of layers in the optimized structure by applying the enumeration method and combining the general design parameters. Numerical simulation is finally adopted to calculate the buckling limit of tanks in different designing methods. This study takes a composite tank with a cone-shaped cylinder body as example, in which ellipsoid head section and outer wall plate are selected as the object to validate this method. The result shows that the quasi-network design method can improve the design quality of composite material layer in tanks with complex preliminarily loading conditions. The adaptive simulated annealing algorithm can reduce the initial design weight by 30%, which effectively probes the global optimal solution and optimizes the weight of structure. It can be therefore proved that, this optimization method is capable of designing and optimizing specially shaped composite tanks with complex loading conditions.

Smoothed rank-based procedure for censored data

A smoothed rank-based procedure is developed for the accelerated failure time model to overcome computational issues. The proposed estimator is based on an EM-type procedure coupled with the induced smoothing. "The proposed iterative approach converges provided the initial value is based on a consistent estimator, and the limiting covariance matrix can be obtained from a sandwich-type formula. The consistency and asymptotic normality of the proposed estimator are also established. Extensive simulations show that the new estimator is not only computationally less demanding but also more reliable than the other existing estimators.

Conceptualising value creation for social change management

Australian and international governments are increasingly adopting social marketing as a social change management tool to deal with complex social problems. Government decision makers typically need to balance the use of business models and management theories whilst maintaining the integrity of government policy. In taking this approach, decision makers experience management tensions between a social mission to equitably deliver social services and the accountability and affordability of providing quality social and health services to citizens. This is a significant challenge as the nature of the ‘social product’ in government is often more service-oriented than goods-based. In this paper the authors examine value creation in government social marketing services. The contribution of this paper is a value creation process model, which considers the nature of governments to create social good. This is particularly important for governments where consumers still expect value and quality in the service delivered, despite that offering being ‘free’.

The use of income valuation methods to value rural property

Despite the advances that have been made in relation to the valuation of commercial, industrial and retail property, there has not been the same progress in relation to the valuation of rural property. Although the majority of rural property valuations also require the valuer to carry out a full analysis of the economic performance of the farming operations, this information is rarely used to assess the value of the property, nor is it even used for a secondary valuation method. Over the past 20 years the nature of rural valuation practice has required rural valuers to undertake studies in both agriculture (farm management) and valuation, especially if carrying out valuation work for financial institutions. The additional farm financial information obtained by rural valuers exceeds that level of information required to value commercial, retail and industrial by the capitalisation of net rent/profit valuation method and is very similar to the level of information required for the valuation of commercial and retail property by the Discounted Cash Flow valuation method. On this basis the valuers specialising in rural valuation practice should have the necessary skills and information to value rural properties by an income valuation method. Although the direct comparison method of valuation has been sufficient in the past to value rural properties the future use of the method as the main valuation method is limited and valuers need to adopt an income valuation method as at least a secondary valuation method to overcome the problems associated with the use of direct comparison as the only rural property valuation method. This paper will review the results of an extensive survey carried out by rural property valuers in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, in relation to the impact of farm management on rural property values and rural property income potential.

Teachers’ attitudes toward reporting child sexual abuse : problems with existing research leading to new scale development

This paper details a systematic literature review identifying problems in extant research relating to teachers’ attitudes towards reporting child sexual abuse, and offers a model for new attitude scale development and testing. Scale development comprised a five-phase process grounded in contemporary attitude theories including: a) developing the initial item pool; b) conducting a panel review; c) refining the scale via an expert focus group; d) building content validity through cognitive interviews; e) assessing internal consistency via field testing. The resulting 21-item scale displayed construct validity in preliminary testing. The scale may prove useful as a research tool, given the theoretical supposition that attitudes may be changed with time, context, experience, and education. Further investigation with a larger sample is warranted.

An initial technology roadmap for home automation : home and personal life management

Home Automation (HA) has emerged as a prominent ¯eld for researchers and in- vestors confronting the challenge of penetrating the average home user market with products and services emerging from technology based vision. In spite of many technology contri- butions, there is a latent demand for a®ordable and pragmatic assistive technologies for pro-active handling of complex lifestyle related problems faced by home users. This study has pioneered to develop an Initial Technology Roadmap for HA (ITRHA) that formulates a need based vision of 10-15 years, identifying market, product and technology investment opportunities, focusing on those aspects of HA contributing to e±cient management of home and personal life. The concept of Family Life Cycle is developed to understand the temporal needs of family. In order to formally describe a coherent set of family processes, their relationships, and interaction with external elements, a reference model named Fam- ily System is established that identi¯es External Entities, 7 major Family Processes, and 7 subsystems-Finance, Meals, Health, Education, Career, Housing, and Socialisation. Anal- ysis of these subsystems reveals Soft, Hard and Hybrid processes. Rectifying the lack of formal methods for eliciting future user requirements and reassessing evolving market needs, this study has developed a novel method called Requirement Elicitation of Future Users by Systems Scenario (REFUSS), integrating process modelling, and scenario technique within the framework of roadmapping. The REFUSS is used to systematically derive process au- tomation needs relating the process knowledge to future user characteristics identi¯ed from scenarios created to visualise di®erent futures with richly detailed information on lifestyle trends thus enabling learning about the future requirements. Revealing an addressable market size estimate of billions of dollars per annum this research has developed innovative ideas on software based products including Document Management Systems facilitating automated collection, easy retrieval of all documents, In- formation Management System automating information services and Ubiquitous Intelligent System empowering the highly mobile home users with ambient intelligence. Other product ideas include robotic devices of versatile Kitchen Hand and Cleaner Arm that can be time saving. Materialisation of these products require technology investment initiating further research in areas of data extraction, and information integration as well as manipulation and perception, sensor actuator system, tactile sensing, odour detection, and robotic controller. This study recommends new policies on electronic data delivery from service providers as well as new standards on XML based document structure and format.

Initial psychometric evaluation of the Wayfinding Effectiveness Scale

This study evaluates three versions of the Wayfinding Effectiveness Scale (WES), developed to differentiate problems of wayfinding and wandering behavior of community-residing elders with dementia (EWD), in 266 dyads (EWD and caregiver) recruited from Alzheimer's Association chapters. Factor analyses yield a five-factor solution (explained variance = 62.6%): complex wayfinding goals, analytic strategies, global strategies, simple wayfinding goals, and being stimulus bound. Overall, internal consistencies are high: WES (.94-.95), and subscales are stable across all versions. Testretest reliability is acceptable for the overall WES and two subscales (complex and simple wayfinding goals) for the care recipient current behavior version. Construct validity is supported by the pattern of correlations among subscales and analyses of variance (ANOVAs) showing significant differences among the care recipient (current vs. prior behavior) and caregiver versions overall and for all subscales. Results support the WES as a valid and reliable measure of wayfinding effectiveness in persons with dementia.

Free surface problems for static Coulomb-Mohr granular solids

This paper is concerned with some plane strain and axially symmetric free surface problems which arise in the study of static granular solids that satisfy the Coulomb-Mohr yield condition. Such problems are inherently nonlinear, and hence difficult to attack analytically. Given a Coulomb friction condition holds on a solid boundary, it is shown that the angle a free surface is allowed to attach to the boundary is dependent only on the angle of wall friction, assuming the stresses are all continuous at the attachment point, and assuming also that the coefficient of cohesion is nonzero. As a model problem, the formation of stable cohesive arches in hoppers is considered. This undesirable phenomena is an obstacle to flow, and occurs when the hopper outlet is too small. Typically, engineers are concerned with predicting the critical outlet size for a given hopper and granular solid, so that for hoppers with outlets larger than this critical value, arching cannot occur. This is a topic of considerable practical interest, with most accepted engineering methods being conservative in nature. Here, the governing equations in two limiting cases (small cohesion and high angle of internal friction) are considered directly. No information on the critical outlet size is found; however solutions for the shape of the free boundary (the arch) are presented, for both plane and axially symmetric geometries.

Sustainable fashion textiles design : value adding through technological enhancement

A key concern in the field of contemporary fashion/textiles design is the emergence of ‘fast fashion’: best explained as "buy it Friday, wear it Saturday and throw it away on Sunday" (O'Loughlin, 2007). In this contemporary retail atmosphere of “pile it high: sell it cheap” and “quick to market”, even designer goods have achieved a throwaway status. This modern culture of consumerism is the antithesis of sustainability and is proving a dilemma surrounding sustainable practice for designers and producers in the disciplines (de Blas, 2010). Design researchers including those in textiles/fashion have begun to explore what is a key question in the 21st century in order to create a vision and reason for their disciplines: Can products be designed to have added value to the consumer and hence contribute to a more sustainable industry? Fashion Textiles Design has much to answer for in contributing to the problems of unsustainable practices on a global scale in design, production and waste. However, designers within this field also have great potential to contribute to practical ‘real world’ solutions. ----- ----- This paper provides an overview of some of the design and technological developments from the fashion/textiles industry, endorsing a model where designers and technicians use their transferrable skills for wellbeing rather than desire. Smart materials in the form of responsive and adaptive fibres and fabrics combined with electro active devices, and ICT are increasingly shaping many aspects of society particularly in the leisure industry and interactive consumer products are ever more visible in healthcare. Combinations of biocompatible delivery devices with bio sensing elements can create analyse, sense and actuate early warning and monitoring systems which can be linked to data logging and patient records via intelligent networks. Patient sympathetic, ‘smart’ fashion/textiles applications based on interdisciplinary expertise utilising textiles design and technology is emerging. An analysis of a series of case studies demonstrates the potential of fashion textiles design practitioners to exploit the concept of value adding through technological garment and textiles applications and enhancement for health and wellbeing and in doing so contribute to a more sustainable future fashion/textiles design industry.

Non-invasive assessment of tear film surface quality

The tear film plays an important role preserving the health of the ocular surface and maintaining the optimal refractive power of the cornea. Moreover dry eye syndrome is one of the most commonly reported eye health problems. This syndrome is caused by abnormalities in the properties of the tear film. Current clinical tools to assess the tear film properties have shown certain limitations. The traditional invasive methods for the assessment of tear film quality, which are used by most clinicians, have been criticized for the lack of reliability and/or repeatability. A range of non-invasive methods of tear assessment have been investigated, but also present limitations. Hence no “gold standard” test is currently available to assess the tear film integrity. Therefore, improving techniques for the assessment of the tear film quality is of clinical significance and the main motivation for the work described in this thesis. In this study the tear film surface quality (TFSQ) changes were investigated by means of high-speed videokeratoscopy (HSV). In this technique, a set of concentric rings formed in an illuminated cone or a bowl is projected on the anterior cornea and their reflection from the ocular surface imaged on a charge-coupled device (CCD). The reflection of the light is produced in the outer most layer of the cornea, the tear film. Hence, when the tear film is smooth the reflected image presents a well structure pattern. In contrast, when the tear film surface presents irregularities, the pattern also becomes irregular due to the light scatter and deviation of the reflected light. The videokeratoscope provides an estimate of the corneal topography associated with each Placido disk image. Topographical estimates, which have been used in the past to quantify tear film changes, may not always be suitable for the evaluation of all the dynamic phases of the tear film. However the Placido disk image itself, which contains the reflected pattern, may be more appropriate to assess the tear film dynamics. A set of novel routines have been purposely developed to quantify the changes of the reflected pattern and to extract a time series estimate of the TFSQ from the video recording. The routine extracts from each frame of the video recording a maximized area of analysis. In this area a metric of the TFSQ is calculated. Initially two metrics based on the Gabor filter and Gaussian gradient-based techniques, were used to quantify the consistency of the pattern’s local orientation as a metric of TFSQ. These metrics have helped to demonstrate the applicability of HSV to assess the tear film, and the influence of contact lens wear on TFSQ. The results suggest that the dynamic-area analysis method of HSV was able to distinguish and quantify the subtle, but systematic degradation of tear film surface quality in the inter-blink interval in contact lens wear. It was also able to clearly show a difference between bare eye and contact lens wearing conditions. Thus, the HSV method appears to be a useful technique for quantitatively investigating the effects of contact lens wear on the TFSQ. Subsequently a larger clinical study was conducted to perform a comparison between HSV and two other non-invasive techniques, lateral shearing interferometry (LSI) and dynamic wavefront sensing (DWS). Of these non-invasive techniques, the HSV appeared to be the most precise method for measuring TFSQ, by virtue of its lower coefficient of variation. While the LSI appears to be the most sensitive method for analyzing the tear build-up time (TBUT). The capability of each of the non-invasive methods to discriminate dry eye from normal subjects was also investigated. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were calculated to assess the ability of each method to predict dry eye syndrome. The LSI technique gave the best results under both natural blinking conditions and in suppressed blinking conditions, which was closely followed by HSV. The DWS did not perform as well as LSI or HSV. The main limitation of the HSV technique, which was identified during the former clinical study, was the lack of the sensitivity to quantify the build-up/formation phase of the tear film cycle. For that reason an extra metric based on image transformation and block processing was proposed. In this metric, the area of analysis was transformed from Cartesian to Polar coordinates, converting the concentric circles pattern into a quasi-straight lines image in which a block statistics value was extracted. This metric has shown better sensitivity under low pattern disturbance as well as has improved the performance of the ROC curves. Additionally a theoretical study, based on ray-tracing techniques and topographical models of the tear film, was proposed to fully comprehend the HSV measurement and the instrument’s potential limitations. Of special interested was the assessment of the instrument’s sensitivity under subtle topographic changes. The theoretical simulations have helped to provide some understanding on the tear film dynamics, for instance the model extracted for the build-up phase has helped to provide some insight into the dynamics during this initial phase. Finally some aspects of the mathematical modeling of TFSQ time series have been reported in this thesis. Over the years, different functions have been used to model the time series as well as to extract the key clinical parameters (i.e., timing). Unfortunately those techniques to model the tear film time series do not simultaneously consider the underlying physiological mechanism and the parameter extraction methods. A set of guidelines are proposed to meet both criteria. Special attention was given to a commonly used fit, the polynomial function, and considerations to select the appropriate model order to ensure the true derivative of the signal is accurately represented. The work described in this thesis has shown the potential of using high-speed videokeratoscopy to assess tear film surface quality. A set of novel image and signal processing techniques have been proposed to quantify different aspects of the tear film assessment, analysis and modeling. The dynamic-area HSV has shown good performance in a broad range of conditions (i.e., contact lens, normal and dry eye subjects). As a result, this technique could be a useful clinical tool to assess tear film surface quality in the future.

Open problems in the security of learning

Machine learning has become a valuable tool for detecting and preventing malicious activity. However, as more applications employ machine learning techniques in adversarial decision-making situations, increasingly powerful attacks become possible against machine learning systems. In this paper, we present three broad research directions towards the end of developing truly secure learning. First, we suggest that finding bounds on adversarial influence is important to understand the limits of what an attacker can and cannot do to a learning system. Second, we investigate the value of adversarial capabilities-the success of an attack depends largely on what types of information and influence the attacker has. Finally, we propose directions in technologies for secure learning and suggest lines of investigation into secure techniques for learning in adversarial environments. We intend this paper to foster discussion about the security of machine learning, and we believe that the research directions we propose represent the most important directions to pursue in the quest for secure learning.

Impact of the Corporate Law Economic Reform Program Act 1999 on initial public offering prospectus earnings forecasts

Commencing 13 March 2000, the Corporate Law Economic Reform Program Act 1999 (Cth) introduced changes to the regulation of corporate fundraising in Australia. In particular, it effected a reduction in the litigation risk associated with initial public offering prospectus disclosure.We find that the change is associated with a reduction in forecast frequency and an increase in forecast value relevance, but not with forecast error or bias. These results confirm previous findings that changes in litigation risk affect the level but not the quality of disclosure. They also suggest that the reforms’ objectives of reducing fundraising costs while improving investor protection, have been achieved.

Diesel engine problems, acoustic emission signals and simulated misfire faults

This paper discusses commonly encountered diesel engine problems and the underlying combustion related faults. Also discussed are the methods used in previous studies to simulate diesel engine faults and the initial results of an experimental simulation of a common combustion related diesel engine fault, namely diesel engine misfire. This experimental fault simulation represents the first step towards a comprehensive investigation and analysis into the characteristics of acoustic emission signals arising from combustion related diesel engine faults. Data corresponding to different engine running conditions was captured using in-cylinder pressure, vibration and acoustic emission transducers along with both crank-angle encoder and top-dead centre signals. Using these signals, it was possible to characterise the diesel engine in-cylinder pressure profiles and the effect of different combustion conditions on both vibration and acoustic emission signals.

A ‘Value Ecology’ approach to the performing arts

In recent years, ecological thinking has been applied to a range of social, cultural and aesthetic systems, including performing arts as a living system of policy makers, producers, organisations, artists and audiences. Ecological thinking is systems-based thinking which allows us to see the performing arts as a complex and protean ecosystem; to explain how elements in this system act and interact; and to evaluate its effects on Australia’s social fabric over time. According to Gallasch, ecological thinking is “what we desperately need for the arts.” It enables us to “defeat the fragmentary and utilitarian view of the arts that dominates, to make connections, to establish overviews of the arts that can be shared and debated” (Gallasch NP). John Baylis took up these issues in "Mapping Queensland Theatre" (2009), an Arts Queensland-funded survey designed to map practices in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly, and to provide a platform to support future policy-making. In this paper, we propose a new approach to mapping Brisbane’s and Queensland’s theatre that extends Baylis’ ‘value chain’ into a ‘value ecology’ that provides a more textured picture of players, patterns, relationships and activity levels in local performing arts.