Programming with time : cyber-physical programming with Impromptu

The act of computer programming is generally considered to be temporally removed from a computer program's execution. In this paper we discuss the idea of programming as an activity that takes place within the temporal bounds of a real-time computational process and its interactions with the physical world. We ground these ideas within the con- text of livecoding -- a live audiovisual performance practice. We then describe how the development of the programming environment "Impromptu" has addressed our ideas of programming with time and the notion of the programmer as an agent in a cyber-physical system.

A taxonomy of model-based testing approaches

Model-based testing (MBT) relies on models of a system under test and/or its environment to derive test cases for the system. This paper discusses the process of MBT and defines a taxonomy that covers the key aspects of MBT approaches. It is intended to help with understanding the characteristics, similarities and differences of those approaches, and with classifying the approach used in a particular MBT tool. To illustrate the taxonomy, a description of how three different examples of MBT tools fit into the taxonomy is provided.

The nature and extent of policing alcohol related crime and reducing violence in and around late night entertainment areas

The misuse of alcohol is well documented in Australia and has been associated with disorders and harms that often require police attention. The extent of alcohol-related incidents requiring police attention has been recorded as substantial in some Australian cities (Arro, Crook, & Fenton, 1992; Davey & French, 1995; Ireland & Thommeny, 1993). A significant proportion of harmful drinking occurs in and around licensed premises (Jochelson, 1997; Stockwell, Masters, Phillips, Daly, Gahegan, Midford, & Philp, 1998; Borges, Cherpitel, & Rosovsky, 1998) and most of these incidents are not reported to police (Bryant & Williams, 2000; Lister, Hobbs, Hall, & Winlow, 2000). Alcohol-related incidents have also been found to be concentrated in certain places at certain times (Jochelson, 1997) and therefore manipulating the context in which these incidents occur may provide a means to prevent and reduce the harm associated with alcohol misuse. One of the major objectives of the present program of research was to investigate the occurrence and resource impact of alcohol-related incidents on operational (general duties) policing across a large geographical area. A second objective of the thesis was to examine the characteristics and temporal/spatial dynamics of police attended alcohol incidents in the context of Place Based theories of crime. It was envisaged that this approach would reveal the patterns of the most prevalent offences and demonstrate the relevance of Place Based theories of crime to understanding these patterns. In addition, the role of alcohol, time and place were also explored in order to examine the association between non criminal traffic offences and other types of criminal offences. A final objective of the thesis was to examine the impact of a situational crime prevention strategy that had been initiated to reduce the violence and disorder associated with late-night liquor trading premises. The program of research in this doctorate thesis has been undertaken through the presentation of published papers. The research was conducted in three stages which produced six manuscripts, five of which were submitted to peer reviewed journals and one that was published in a peer reviewed conference proceedings. Stage One included two studies (Studies 1 & 2) both of which involved a cross sectional approach to examine the prevalence and characteristics of alcohol-related incidents requiring police attendance across three large geographical areas that included metropolitan cities, provincial regions and rural areas. Stage Two of the program of research also comprised two cross sectional quantitative studies (Studies 3 & 4) that investigated the temporal and spatial dynamics of the major offence categories attended by operational police in a specific Police District (Gold Coast). Stage Three of the program of research involved two studies (Studies 5 & 6) that assessed the effectiveness of a situational crime prevention strategy. The studies employed a pre-post design to assess the impact on crime, disorder and violence by preventing patrons from entering late-night liquor trading premises between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. (lockout policy). Although Study Five was solely quantitative in nature, Study Six included both quantitative and qualitative aspects. The approach adopted in Study Six, therefore facilitated not only a quantative comparison of the impact of the lockout policy on different policing areas, but also enabled the processes related to the implementation of the lockout policy to be examined. The thesis reports a program of research involving a common data collection method which then involved a series of studies being conducted to explore different aspects of the data. The data was collected from three sources. Firstly a pilot phase was undertaken to provide participants with training. Secondly a main study period was undertaken immediately following the pilot phase. The first and second sources of data were collected between 29th March 2004 and 2nd May 2004. Thirdly, additional data was collected between the 1st April 2005 and 31st May 2005. Participants in the current program of research were first response operational police officers who completed a modified activity log over a 9 week period (4 week pilot phase & 5 week survey study phase), identifying the type, prevalence and characteristics of alcohol-related incidents that were attended. During the study period police officers attended 31,090 alcohol-related incidents. Studies One and Two revealed that a substantial proportion of current police work involves attendance at alcohol-related incidents (i.e., 25% largely involving young males aged between 17 and 24 years). The most common incidents police attended were vehicle and/or traffic matters, disturbances and offences against property. The major category of offences most likely to involve alcohol included vehicle/traffic matters, disturbances and offences against the person (e.g., common & serious assaults). These events were most likely to occur in the late evenings and early hours of the morning on the weekends, and importantly, usually took longer for police to complete than non alcohol-related incidents. The findings in Studies Three and Four suggest that serious traffic offences, disturbances and offences against the person share similar characteristics and occur in concentrated places at similar times. In addition, it was found that time, place and incident type all have an influence on whether an incident attended by a police officer is alcohol-related. Alcohol-related incidents are more likely to occur in particular locations in the late evenings and early mornings on the weekends. In particular, there was a strong association between the occurrence of alcohol-related disturbances and alcohol-related serious traffic offences in regards to place and time. In general, stealing and property offences were not alcohol-related and occurred in daylight hours during weekdays. The results of Studies Five and Six were mixed. A number of alcohol-related offences requiring police attention were significantly reduced for some policing areas and for some types of offences following the implementation of the lockout policy. However, in some locations the lockout policy appeared to have a negative or minimal impact. Interviews with licensees revealed that although all were initially opposed to the lockout policy as they believed it would have a negative impact on business, most perceived some benefits from its introduction. Some of the benefits included, improved patron safety and the development of better business strategies to increase patron numbers. In conclusion, the overall findings of the six studies highlight the pervasive nature of alcohol across a range of criminal incidents, demonstrating the tremendous impact alcohol-related incidents have on police. The findings also demonstrate the importance of time and place in predicting the occurrence of alcohol-related offences. Although this program of research did not set out to test Place Based theories of crime, these theories were used to inform the interpretation of findings. The findings in the current research program provide evidence for the relevance of Place Based theories of crime to understanding the factors contributing to violence and disorder, and designing relevant crime prevention strategies. For instance, the results in Studies Five and Six provide supportive evidence that this novel lockout initiative can be beneficial for public safety by reducing some types of offences in particular areas in and around late-night liquor trading premises. Finally, intelligent-led policing initiatives based on problem oriented policing, such as the lockout policy examined in this thesis, have potential as a major crime prevention technique to reduce specific types of alcohol-related offences.

Practical introduction to development of sage applications

Throughout this workshop session we have looked at various configurations of Sage as well as using the Sage UI to run Sage applications (e.g. the image viewer). More advanced usage of Sage has been demonstrated using a Sage compatible version of Paraview highlighting the potential of parallel rendering. The aim of this tutorial session is to give a practical introduction to developing visual content for a tiled display using the Sage libraries. After completing this tutorial you should have the basic tools required to develop your own custom Sage applications. This tutorial is designed for software developers and intermediate programming knowledge is assumed, along with some introductory OpenGL . You will be required to write small portions of C/C++ code to complete this worksheet. However if you do not feel comfortable writing code (or have never written in C or C++), we will be on hand throughout this session so feel free to ask for some help. We have a number of machines in this lab running a VNC client to a virtual machine running Fedora 12. You should all be able to log in with the username “escience”, and password “escience10”. Some of the commands in this worksheet require you to run them as the root user, so note the password as you may need to use it a few times. If you need to access the Internet, then use the username “qpsf01”, password “escience10”

Drug law enforcement : a review of the evaluation literature

This article describes the results of a systematic review of drug law enforcement evaluations. The authors describe the search procedures and document the results in five main categories: international/national interventions (e.g., interdiction and drug seizure), reactive/ directed interventions (e.g., crackdowns, raids, buy-busts, saturation patrol, etc.), proactive/ partnership interventions (e.g., third-party policing, problem-oriented policing, community policing, drug nuisance abatement, etc.), individualized interventions (e.g., arrest referral and diversion), or interventions that used a combination of reactive/directed and proactive/ partnership strategies. Results indicate that proactive interventions involving partnerships between the police and third parties and/or community entities appear to be more effective at reducing both drug and nondrug problems in drug problem places than are reactive/ directed approaches. But the general quality of research in drug law enforcement is poor, the range of interventions that have been evaluated is limited, and more high-quality research is needed across a greater variety of drug interventions.

Street-level drug law enforcement : a meta-analytical review

Our paper presents the results of a meta-analytical review of street level drug law enforcement. We conducted a series of meta-analyses to compare and contrast the effectiveness of four types of drug law enforcement approaches, including community-wide policing, problem-oriented/ partnership approaches that were geographically focused, hotspots policing and standard, unfocused law enforcement efforts. We examined the relative impact of these different crime control tactics on streetlevel drug problems as well as associated problems such as property crime, disorder and violent crime. The results of the meta-analyses, together with examination of forest plots, reveal that problem-oriented policing and geographically-focused interventions involving cooperative partnerships between police and third parties tend to be more effective at controlling drug problems than community-wide policing efforts that are unfocused and spread out across a community. But geographically focused and community-wide drug law enforcement interventions that leverage partnerships are more effective at dealing with drug problems than traditional, law enforcement-only interventions. Our results suggest that the key to successful drug law enforcement lies in the capacity of the police to forge productive partnerships with third parties rather than simply increasing police presence or intervention (e.g., arrests) at drug hotspots.

Simultaneous estimation of hunting pressure, harvest and hunter success rates using WinBUGS

The use of hierarchical Bayesian spatial models in the analysis of ecological data is increasingly prevalent. The implementation of these models has been heretofore limited to specifically written software that required extensive programming knowledge to create. The advent of WinBUGS provides access to Bayesian hierarchical models for those without the programming expertise to create their own models and allows for the more rapid implementation of new models and data analysis. This facility is demonstrated here using data collected by the Missouri Department of Conservation for the Missouri Turkey Hunting Survey of 1996. Three models are considered, the first uses the collected data to estimate the success rate for individual hunters at the county level and incorporates a conditional autoregressive (CAR) spatial effect. The second model builds upon the first by simultaneously estimating the success rate and harvest at the county level, while the third estimates the success rate and hunting pressure at the county level. These models are discussed in detail as well as their implementation in WinBUGS and the issues arising therein. Future areas of application for WinBUGS and the latest developments in WinBUGS are discussed as well.

Business and software service lifecycle management

Although the service-oriented paradigm has been well established in the technical domain for quite some time now, service governance is still considered a research gap. To ensure adequate governance, there is a necessity to manage services as first-class assets throughout the lifecycle. Now that the concept of ser-vice-orientation is also increasingly applied on the business level to structure an organisation’s capabili-ties, the problem has become an even bigger chal-lenge. This paper presents a generic business and software service lifecycle and aligns it with the com-mon management layers in organisations. Using ser-vice analysis as an example, it moreover illustrates how activities in the service lifecycle may vary on lower levels of granularity depending on the focus on business or software services.

Losing their marbles : syntax-free programming for assessing problem-solving skills

Novice programmers have difficulty developing an algorithmic solution while simultaneously obeying the syntactic constraints of the target programming language. To see how students fare in algorithmic problem solving when not burdened by syntax, we conducted an experiment in which a large class of beginning programmers were required to write a solution to a computational problem in structured English, as if instructing a child, without reference to program code at all. The students produced an unexpectedly wide range of correct, and attempted, solutions, some of which had not occurred to their teachers. We also found that many common programming errors were evident in the natural language algorithms, including failure to ensure loop termination, hardwiring of solutions, failure to properly initialise the computation, and use of unnecessary temporary variables, suggesting that these mistakes are caused by inexperience at thinking algorithmically, rather than difficulties in expressing solutions as program code.

Getting Excited About Software Programming

Invited one hour presentation at Microsoft Tech Ed 2009 about getting students interested in games programming at QUT.

Multidisciplinary design and flight testing of a remote gas/particle airborne sensor system

The main objective of this paper is to describe the development of a remote sensing airborne air sampling system for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and provide the capability for the detection of particle and gas concentrations in real time over remote locations. The design of the air sampling methodology started by defining system architecture, and then by selecting and integrating each subsystem. A multifunctional air sampling instrument, with capability for simultaneous measurement of particle and gas concentrations was modified and integrated with ARCAA’s Flamingo UAS platform and communications protocols. As result of the integration process, a system capable of both real time geo-location monitoring and indexed-link sampling was obtained. Wind tunnel tests were conducted in order to evaluate the performance of the air sampling instrument in controlled nonstationary conditions at the typical operational velocities of the UAS platform. Once the remote fully operative air sampling system was obtained, the problem of mission design was analyzed through the simulation of different scenarios. Furthermore, flight tests of the complete air sampling system were then conducted to check the dynamic characteristics of the UAS with the air sampling system and to prove its capability to perform an air sampling mission following a specific flight path.

Manifestations of preoperational reasoning on similar programming tasks

In this research paper, we study a simple programming problem that only requires knowledge of variables and assignment statements, and yet we found that some early novice programmers had difficulty solving the problem. We also present data from think aloud studies which demonstrate the nature of those difficulties. We interpret our data within a neo-Piagetian framework which describes cognitive developmental stages through which students pass as they learn to program. We describe in detail think aloud sessions with novices who reason at the neo-Piagetian preoperational level. Those students exhibit two problems. First, they focus on very small parts of the code and lose sight of the "big picture". Second, they are prone to focus on superficial aspects of the task that are not functionally central to the solution. It is not until the transition into the concrete operational stage that decentration of focus occurs, and they have the cognitive ability to reason about abstract quantities that are conserved, and are equipped to adapt skills to closely related tasks. Our results, and the neo-Piagetian framework on which they are based, suggest that changes are necessary in teaching practice to better support novices who have not reached the concrete operational stage.

Copyright Protection of object-oriented software

language (such as C++ and Java). The model used allows to insert watermarks on three “orthogonal” levels. For the first level, watermarks are injected into objects. The second level watermarking is used to select proper variants of the source code. The third level uses transition function that can be used to generate copies with different functionalities. Generic watermarking schemes were presented and their security discussed.