Managing process model collections with AProMoRe

As organizations reach higher levels of Business Process Management maturity, they tend to collect numerous business process models. Such models may be linked with each other or mutually overlap, supersede one another and evolve over time. Moreover, they may be represented at different abstraction levels depending on the target audience and modeling purpose, and may be available in multiple languages (e.g. due to company mergers). Thus, it is common that organizations struggle with keeping track of their process models. This demonstration introduces AProMoRe (Advanced Process Model Repository) which aims to facilitate the management of (large) process model collections.

The social work & human services workforce : report from a national study of education, training and workforce needs

This report analyses the national curriculum and workforce needs of the social work and human services workforce. Australia’s community and health services are among the fastest growing sectors of employment in the nation but the sustainability of an appropriately qualified workforce is threatened. Yet there is little integration of education and workforce planning for the community services sector. This contrasts markedly with the health services sector, where key stakeholders are collaboratively addressing workforce challenges. Our research confirmed rapid growth in the social work and human services workforce and it also identified: • an undersupply of professionally qualified social work and human service practitioners to meet workforce demand; • the rapid ageing of the workforce with many workers approaching retirement; • limited career and salary structures creating disincentives to retention; • a highly diverse qualification base across the workforce. This diversity is inconsistent with the specialist knowledge and skills required of practitioners in many domains of community service provision. Our study revealed a lack of co-ordination across VET and higher education to meet the educational needs of the social work and human services workforce. Our analysis identified: • strong representation of equity groups in social work and related human service programs, although further participation of these groups is still needed; • the absence of clear articulation pathways between VET and higher education programs due the absence of co-ordination and planning between these sectors; • substantial variation in the content of the diverse range of social work and human service programs, with accredited programs conforming to national standards and some others in social and behavioural sciences lacking any external validation; • financial obstacles and disincentives to social work and human service practitioners in achieving postgraduate level qualifications. We recommend that: • DEEWR identify accredited social work and human services courses as a national education priority (similar to education and nursing). This will help ensure the supply of professional workers to this sector; • VET and higher education providers are encouraged to collaboratively develop clear and accessible educational pathways across the educational sectors; • DEEWR undertake a national workforce analysis and planning processes in collaboration with CSDMAC, and all social and community services stakeholders, to ensure workforce sustainability; and • COAG develop a national regulation framework for the social and community services workforce. This would provide sound accountability systems, and rigorous practice and educational standards necessary for quality service provision. It will also ensure much needed public confidence in this workforce.

Stronger difficulty notions for client puzzles and denial-of-service-resistant protocols

Client puzzles are meant to act as a defense against denial of service (DoS) attacks by requiring a client to solve some moderately hard problem before being granted access to a resource. However, recent client puzzle difficulty definitions (Stebila and Ustaoglu, 2009; Chen et al., 2009) do not ensure that solving n puzzles is n times harder than solving one puzzle. Motivated by examples of puzzles where this is the case, we present stronger definitions of difficulty for client puzzles that are meaningful in the context of adversaries with more computational power than required to solve a single puzzle. A protocol using strong client puzzles may still not be secure against DoS attacks if the puzzles are not used in a secure manner. We describe a security model for analyzing the DoS resistance of any protocol in the context of client puzzles and give a generic technique for combining any protocol with a strong client puzzle to obtain a DoS-resistant protocol.

Codes of conduct for mobile device use in meetings : an exploratory analysis

The present paper addresses the findings of a preliminary investigation into policy and codes of conduct pertaining to the use of laptops and PDA’s in business meetings. The purpose of this study was to conduct a review of policies or codes of conduct pertaining to the use of laptops and PDAs in meetings. The investigation included academic literature, policy searches in the public domain of the Internet, as well as personal contact with target industries (large corporations – N=1000 + employees). The results highlight the dearth of policy and codes of conducts pertaining to the use of laptops and PDA’s in business meetings. Consequently, given the growing interdependence between mobile technologies and the contemporary workplace, there exists an opportunity for communication professionals to further research and develop policy and codes of conduct in this area. Implications for corporate communication policies and practices are also discussed.

Adding a receding horizon to Locally Weighted Regression for learning robot control

There have been notable advances in learning to control complex robotic systems using methods such as Locally Weighted Regression (LWR). In this paper we explore some potential limits of LWR for robotic applications, particularly investigating its application to systems with a long horizon of temporal dependence. We define the horizon of temporal dependence as the delay from a control input to a desired change in output. LWR alone cannot be used in a temporally dependent system to find meaningful control values from only the current state variables and output, as the relationship between the input and the current state is under-constrained. By introducing a receding horizon of the future output states of the system, we show that sufficient constraint is applied to learn good solutions through LWR. The new method, Receding Horizon Locally Weighted Regression (RH-LWR), is demonstrated through one-shot learning on a real Series Elastic Actuator controlling a pendulum.

Pseudoseeds : investigating long-distance, ocean seed dispersal with wireless sensors

Recent theoretical research has shown that ocean currents and wind interact to disperse seeds over long distances among isolated landmasses. Dispersal of seeds among isolated oceanic islands, by birds, oceans and man, is a well-known phenomenon, and many widespread island plants have traits that facilitate this process. Crucially, however, there have been no mechanistic vector-based models of long-distance dispersal for seeds among isolated oceanic islands based on empirical data. Here, we propose a plan to develop seed analogues, or pseudoseeds, fitted with wireless sensor technology that will enable high-fidelity tracking as they disperse across the ocean. The pseudoseeds will be precisely designed to mimic actual seed buoyancy and morphology enabling realistic and accurate, vector-based dispersal models of ocean seed dispersal over vast geographic scales.

Position, rotation, and scale invariant recognition of images using higher-order spectra

A new approach to recognition of images using invariant features based on higher-order spectra is presented. Higher-order spectra are translation invariant because translation produces linear phase shifts which cancel. Scale and amplification invariance are satisfied by the phase of the integral of a higher-order spectrum along a radial line in higher-order frequency space because the contour of integration maps onto itself and both the real and imaginary parts are affected equally by the transformation. Rotation invariance is introduced by deriving invariants from the Radon transform of the image and using the cyclic-shift invariance property of the discrete Fourier transform magnitude. Results on synthetic and actual images show isolated, compact clusters in feature space and high classification accuracies

Emergent task-specific object semantics through distributed experience networks

Autonomous development of sensorimotor coordination enables a robot to adapt and change its action choices to interact with the world throughout its lifetime. The Experience Network is a structure that rapidly learns coordination between visual and haptic inputs and motor action. This paper presents methods which handle the high dimensionality of the network state-space which occurs due to the simultaneous detection of multiple sensory features. The methods provide no significant increase in the complexity of the underlying representations and also allow emergent, task-specific, semantic information to inform action selection. Experimental results show rapid learning in a real robot, beginning with no sensorimotor mappings, to a mobile robot capable of wall avoidance and target acquisition.

Ocular characteristics in myopic anisometropia

PURPOSE: To investigate the interocular symmetry of ocular optical, biometric and biomechanical characteristics between the more and less ametropic eyes of myopic anisometropes. METHODS: Thirty-four young, healthy myopic anisometropic adults (≥ 1 D spherical equivalent difference between eyes) without amblyopia or strabismus were recruited. A range of biometric and optical parameters were measured in the more and less ametropic eye of each subject including; axial length, ocular aberrations, intraocular pressure and corneal topography, thickness and biomechanics. Morphology of the anterior eye in primary and downward gaze was examined using custom software analysis of high resolution digital images. Ocular sighting dominance was assessed using the hole-in-the-card test. RESULTS: Mean absolute spherical equivalent anisometropia was 1.74 ± 0.74 D. There was a strong correlation between the degree of anisometropia and the interocular difference in axial length (r = 0.81, p < 0.001). The more and less ametropic fellow eyes displayed a high degree of interocular symmetry for the majority of biometric, biomechanical and optical parameters measured. When the level of anisometropia exceeded 1.75 D (n = 10), the more myopic eye was the dominant sighting eye in nine of these ten subjects. Subjects with greater levels of anisometropia (> 1.75 D) also showed high levels of correlation between the dominant and non-dominant eyes in their biometric, biomechanical and optical characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: Although significantly different in axial length, anisometropic eyes display a high degree of interocular symmetry for a range of anterior eye biometrics and optical parameters. For higher levels of anisometropia, the more myopic eye tends to be the dominant sighting eye.

Choosing landmarks for risky planning

This work examines the effect of landmark placement on the efficiency and accuracy of risk-bounded searches over probabilistic costmaps for mobile robot path planning. In previous work, risk-bounded searches were shown to offer in excess of 70% efficiency increases over normal heuristic search methods. The technique relies on precomputing distance estimates to landmarks which are then used to produce probability distributions over exact heuristics for use in heuristic searches such as A* and D*. The location and number of these landmarks therefore influence greatly the efficiency of the search and the quality of the risk bounds. Here four new methods of selecting landmarks for risk based search are evaluated. Results are shown which demonstrate that landmark selection needs to take into account the centrality of the landmark, and that diminishing rewards are obtained from using large numbers of landmarks.

From the margin to the centre : towards an art strategy for the ethnic enclaves in the city

Sunnybank represents a distinctly Australian take on the classic ‘Chinatown’ – or indeed other ethic community enclaves such as ‘little Italy’, ‘little Bombay’, ‘little Athens’ and so on. In the Northern Hemisphere these tended to grow up in the dense working class neighbourhoods of industrial cities, especially in port cities like Liverpool, London, New York and San Francisco. The existing Chinatowns of Sydney and Melbourne, and to some extent Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, are of this variety. In the late 1970s, with the growth of suburbanisation and the de-industrialisation and consequent dereliction of the ‘inner city’, these ethnic communities were one of the few signs of life in the city. Apart from the daily commute into the CBD, business with the city council or a trip to the big shopping streets these areas were one of the few reasons for visiting city centres stigmatised by urban decay and petty crime.

Using cost-effective multimedia to create engaging learning experiences in law and other disciplines

This is the final report of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Teaching Fellowship which addressed the needs of two separate groups of learners: (1) final year law students studying ethics and (2) law academics and other interested educators in higher education wishing to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to create engaging learning environments for their students but lacking the capacity to do so. The Fellowship resulted in final year law students being infused with an improved appreciation of ethical practice than they receive from traditional lecture/tutorial means by the development of an integrated program of blended learning including an online program entitled "Entry into Valhalla". This "ethics capstone‟ utilises multimedia produced using cost effective resources (including the "Second Life" virtual environment) to create engaging, contextualised learning experiences. The Fellowship also constructed the knowledge of producing cost-effective multimedia projects in other law academics and other educators in higher education by staff development activities comprising workshops, conference presentations and an interactive website using the "Entry into Valhalla" program as a case study exemplar.

Performance recordivity : studio music in a live context

A broad range of positions is articulated in the academic literature around the relationship between recordings and live performance. Auslander (2008) argues that “live performance ceased long ago to be the primary experience of popular music, with the result that most live performances of popular music now seek to replicate the music on the recording”. Elliott (1995) suggests that “hit songs are often conceived and produced as unambiguous and meticulously recorded performances that their originators often duplicate exactly in live performances”. Wurtzler (1992) argues that “as socially and historically produced, the categories of the live and the recorded are defined in a mutually exclusive relationship, in that the notion of the live is premised on the absence of recording and the defining fact of the recorded is the absence of the live”. Yet many artists perform in ways that fundamentally challenge such positions. Whilst it is common practice for musicians across many musical genres to compose and construct their musical works in the studio such that the recording is, in Auslander’s words, the ‘original performance’, the live version is not simply an attempt to replicate the recorded version. Indeed in some cases, such replication is impossible. There are well known historical examples. Queen, for example, never performed the a cappella sections of Bohemian Rhapsody because it they were too complex to perform live. A 1966 recording of the Beach Boys studio creation Good Vibrations shows them struggling through the song prior to its release. This paper argues that as technology develops, the lines between the recording studio and live performance change and become more blurred. New models for performance emerge. In a 2010 live performance given by Grammy Award winning artist Imogen Heap in New York, the artist undertakes a live, improvised construction of a piece as a performative act. She invites the audience to choose the key for the track and proceeds to layer up the various parts in front of the audience as a live performance act. Her recording process is thus revealed on stage in real time and she performs a process that what would have once been confined to the recording studio. So how do artists bring studio production processes into the live context? What aspects of studio production are now performable and what consistent models can be identified amongst the various approaches now seen? This paper will present an overview of approaches to performative realisations of studio produced tracks and will illuminate some emerging relationships between recorded music and performance across a range of contexts.

A simulation to describe the effects of in-shoe orthoses

The subtalar joint has been presumed to account for most of the pathologic motion in the foot and ankle, but research has shown that motion at other foot joints is greater than traditionally expected. Although recent research demonstrates the complexity of the kinematic variables in the foot and ankle, it still fails to expand our knowledge of the role of the musculotendinous structures in the biomechanics of the foot and ankle and how this is affected by in-shoe orthoses. The aim of this study was to simulate the effect of in-shoe foot orthoses by manipulation of the ground reaction force (GRF) components and centre of pressure (CoP) to demonstrate the resultant effect on muscle force in selected muscles during both the rearfoot loading response and stance phase of the gait cycle. We found that any medial wedge increases ankle joint load during gait cycle, while a lateral wedge decreases the joint load during the stance phase.

Program your city : designing an urban integrated open data API

Cities accumulate and distribute vast sets of digital information. Many decision-making and planning processes in councils, local governments and organisations are based on both real-time and historical data. Until recently, only a small, carefully selected subset of this information has been released to the public – usually for specific purposes (e.g. train timetables, release of planning application through websites to name just a few). This situation is however changing rapidly. Regulatory frameworks, such as the Freedom of Information Legislation in the US, the UK, the European Union and many other countries guarantee public access to data held by the state. One of the results of this legislation and changing attitudes towards open data has been the widespread release of public information as part of recent Government 2.0 initiatives. This includes the creation of public data catalogues such as data.gov.au (U.S.), data.gov.uk (U.K.), data.gov.au (Australia) at federal government levels, and datasf.org (San Francisco) and data.london.gov.uk (London) at municipal levels. The release of this data has opened up the possibility of a wide range of future applications and services which are now the subject of intensified research efforts. Previous research endeavours have explored the creation of specialised tools to aid decision-making by urban citizens, councils and other stakeholders (Calabrese, Kloeckl & Ratti, 2008; Paulos, Honicky & Hooker, 2009). While these initiatives represent an important step towards open data, they too often result in mere collections of data repositories. Proprietary database formats and the lack of an open application programming interface (API) limit the full potential achievable by allowing these data sets to be cross-queried. Our research, presented in this paper, looks beyond the pure release of data. It is concerned with three essential questions: First, how can data from different sources be integrated into a consistent framework and made accessible? Second, how can ordinary citizens be supported in easily composing data from different sources in order to address their specific problems? Third, what are interfaces that make it easy for citizens to interact with data in an urban environment? How can data be accessed and collected?