Energy use, indoor temperature and possible adaptation strategies for air-conditioned office buildings in face of global warming

This paper discusses and summarises a recent systematic study on the implication of global warming on air conditioned office buildings in Australia. Four areas are covered, including analysis of historical weather data, generation of future weather data for the impact study of global warming, projection of building performance under various global warming scenarios, and evaluation of various adaptation strategies under 2070 high global warming conditions. Overall, it is found that depending on the assumed future climate scenarios and the location considered, the increase of total building energy use for the sample Australian office building may range from 0.4 to 15.1%. When the increase of annual average outdoor temperature exceeds 2 °C, the risk of overheating will increase significantly. However, the potential overheating problem could be completely eliminated if internal load density is significantly reduced.

National climate change adaptation research plan : freshwater biodiversity

Climate change will alter the basic physical and chemical environment underpinning all life. Species will be affected differentially by these alterations, resulting in changes to the structure and composition of present-day freshwater ecological communities, with the potential to change the ways in which these ecosystems function and the services they provide.

Semantics-based web service discovery using information retrieval techniques

This paper demonstrates an experimental study that examines the accuracy of various information retrieval techniques for Web service discovery. The main goal of this research is to evaluate algorithms for semantic web service discovery. The evaluation is comprehensively benchmarked using more than 1,700 real-world WSDL documents from INEX 2010 Web Service Discovery Track dataset. For automatic search, we successfully use Latent Semantic Analysis and BM25 to perform Web service discovery. Moreover, we provide linking analysis which automatically links possible atomic Web services to meet the complex requirements of users. Our fusion engine recommends a final result to users. Our experiments show that linking analysis can improve the overall performance of Web service discovery. We also find that keyword-based search can quickly return results but it has limitation of understanding users’ goals.

Some reflections about P2M : the place of the mirror

The purpose of this paper is to provide some insights about P2M, and more specifically, to develop some thoughts about Project Management seen as a Mirror, a place for reflection…, between the Mission of organisation and its actual creation of Values (with s: a source of value for people, organisations and society). This place is the realm of complexity, of interactions between multiple variables, each of them having a specific time horizon and occupying a specific place, playing a specific role. Before developing this paper I would like to borrow to my colleague and friend, Professor Ohara, the following, part of a paper going to be presented at IPMA World Congress, in New Delhi later this year in November 2005. “P2M is the Japanese version of project & program management, which is the first standard guide for education and certification developed in 2001. A specific finding of P2M is characterized by “mission driven management of projects” or a program which harness complexity of problem solving observed in the interface between technical system and business model.” (Ohara, 2005, IPMA Conference, New Delhi) “The term of “mission” is a key word in the field of corporate strategy, where it expresses raison d’être or “value of business”. It is more specifically used for expressing “the client needs” in terms of a strategic business unit. The concept of mission is deemed to be a useful tool to share essential content of value and needs in message for complex project.” (Ohara, 2005, IPMA Conference, New Delhi) “Mission is considered as a significant “metamodel representation” by several reasons. First, it represents multiple values for aspiration. The central objective of mission initiative is profiling of ideality in the future from reality, which all stakeholders are glad to accept and share. Second, it shall be within a stretch of efforts, and not beyond or outside of the realization. Though it looks like unique, it has to depict a solid foundation. The pragmatic sense of equilibrium between innovation and adaptation is required for the mission. Third, it shall imply a rough sketch for solution to critical issues for problems in reality.” (Ohara, 2005, IPMA Conference, New Delhi) “Project modeling” idea has been introduced in P2M program management. A package of three project models of “scheme”, “system” and “service” are given as a reference type program. (Ohara, 2005, IPMA Conference, New Delhi) If these quotes apply to P2M, they are fully congruent with the results of the research undertaken and the resulting meta-model & meta-method developed by the CIMAP, ESC Lille Research Centre in Project & Program Management, since the 80’s. The paper starts by questioning the common Project Management (PM) paradigm. Then discussing the concept of Project, it argues that an alternative epistemological position should be taken to capture Page 2 / 11 the very nature of the PM field. Based on this, a development about “the need of modelling to understand” is proposed grounded on two theoretical roots. This leads to the conclusion that, in order to enables this modelling, a standard approach is necessary, but should be understood under the perspective of the Theory of Convention in order to facilitate a situational and contextual application.

Occupational therapy students’ contribution to occasions of service during practice placements in health settings

Currently in the Australian higher education sector, the productivity benefits of occupational therapy clinical education placements are a contested issue. This article will report results of a study that developed a methodology for documenting time use during placements and investigated the productivity changes associated with occupational therapy clinical education placements in Queensland, Australia. Supervisors’ and students’ time use during placements and how this changed for supervisors compared to pre- and post-placement is also presented. Methods: Using a cohort survey design, participants were students from two Queensland universities, and their supervisors employed by Queensland Health. Time use was recorded in 30 minute blocks according to particular categories. Results: There was a significant increase in supervisors’ time spent in patient care activities (F = 94.0112,12.37 df, P < 0.001) between pre- and during placement (P < 0.001) and decrease between during and post-placement (P < 0.001). Supervisors’ time spent in all non-patient care activities was also significant (F = 4.5802,16 df, P = 0.027) increasing between pre- and during placement (P = 0.028). There was a significant decrease in supervisors’ time spent in placement activities (F = 5.1332,19.18 df, P = 0.016) from during to post-placement. Students spent more time than supervisors in patient care activities while on placement. Discussion: A novel method for reporting productivity and time-use changes during clinical education programs for occupational therapy has been applied. Supervisors spent considerable time in assessing and managing students and their clinical education role should be seen as core business in standard occupational therapy practice. This paper will contribute to future assessments of the economic.

SOA for business networks - service delivery framework

The next generation of SOA needs to scale for flexible service consumption, beyond organizational boundaries and current B2B applications, into communities, eco-systems, and business networks. In the wider and, ultimately, global settings, new capabilities are needed so that business partners can efficiently and reliably enable, adapt, and expose services where they can be discovered, ordered, consumed, metered, and paid for, through new applications and opportunities, driven by third parties in the global "village". This trend is already underway, in different ways, through various early adopter market segments. For the small medium enterprises segment, Google, Intuit-Microsoft, and others have launched appstores, through which an open-ended array of hosted applications are sourced from the development community and procured as maketplace commondities. In the corporate sector, the marketplace model and business network hubs are being put in place on top of connectivity and network orchestration investments for capitalizing services as tradable assets, seen in banking/finance (e.g. American Express Intelligent Marketplace), logistics (e.g., the E2open hub), and the public sector (e.g., UK DirectGov whole-of-government citizen services delivery).

Evaluation of the Type I child car restraints fitting service in WA

Child passenger injury remains a major road safety issue despite advances in biomechanical understanding and child restraint design. In Australia, one intervention with parents to encourage universal and consistent use of the most appropriate restraint as well as draw their attention to critical aspects of installation is the RoadWise Type 1 Child Car Restraints Fitting Service, WA. A mixed methods evaluation of this service was conducted in early 2010. Evaluation results suggest that it has been effective in ensuring good quality training of child restraint fitters. In addition, stakeholder and user satisfaction with the Service is high, with participants agreeing that the Service is valuable to the community, and fitters regarding the training course, materials and post-training support as effective. However, a continuing issue for interventions of this type is whether the parents who need them perceive this need. Evidence from the evaluation suggests that only about 25% of parents who could benefit from the Service actually use it. This may be partly due to parental perceptions that such services are not necessary or relevant to them, or to overconfidence about the ease of installing restraints correctly. Thus there is scope for improving awareness of the Service amongst groups most likely to benefit from it (e.g. new parents) and for alerting parents to the importance of correct installation and getting their self-installed restraints checked. Efforts to inform and influence parents should begin when their children are very young, preferably at or prior to birth and/or before the parent installs the first restraint.

ACE research vignette 002 : competing through service innovation - the case of project-oriented firms

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team of international Entrepreneurship researchers. In this vignette, Dr Sandeep Salunke shares insights from his research on project-oriented firms.

Questioning pedagogies : Hong Kong pre-service teachers' dialogic reflections on a transnational school experience

There are increasing opportunities in many countries for pre-service teachers to engage in a transnational school-based experience as part of study abroad programmes. The transformative potential of such transnational teaching experiences is recorded in research studies, often supported by data from participant surveys. However, there has been a lack of evidence investigating how shifts in professional understanding derive from such experiences. This qualitative study addresses this issue by exploring the perspectives of 16 pre-service teachers of English as a Second language from Hong Kong, who engaged in transnational teaching activities with primary school pupils in Australia, during their study abroad program. Discourse analysis of participants’ dialogues traces how they encountered conflicting Discourses of ‘student-centredness’ in the Australian classroom. Reflecting dialogically on their experiences led participants to negotiate and reframe their understandings of language teaching pedagogy and themselves as language teachers. The findings demonstrate the importance of both peer and lecturer feedback into the process of dialogic reflection and the need for more longitudinal research into the impact of transnational school-based experience in pre-service teacher education.

Challenges in the context-aware management of business processes : a multiple case study

Current conceptualizations of organizational processes consider them as internally optimized yet static systems. Still, turbulences in the contextual environment of a firm often lead to adaptation requirements that these processes are unable to fulfil. Based on a multiple case study of the core processes of two large organizations, we offer an extended conceptualisation of business processes as complex adaptive systems. This conceptualization can enable firms to optimise business processes by analysing operations in different contexts and by examining the complex interaction between external, contextual elements and internal agent schemata. From this analysis, we discuss how information technology can play a vital goal in achieving this goal by providing discovery, analysis, and automation support. We detail implications for research and practice.

ACE research briefing paper 002: learning and adaptation in the business creation process

This year marks the completion of data collection for year three (Wave 3) of the CAUSEE study. This report uses data from the first three years and focuses on the process of learning and adaptation in the business creation process. Most start-ups need to change their business model, their product, their marketing plan, their market or something else about the business to be successful. PayPal changed their product at least five times, moving from handheld security, to enterprise apps, to consumer apps, to a digital wallet, to payments between handhelds before finally stumbling on the model that made the a multi-billion dollar company revolving around email-based payments. PayPal is not alone and anecdotes abounds of start-ups changing direction: Sysmantec started as an artificial intelligence company, Apple started selling plans to build computers and Microsoft tried to peddle compilers before licensing an operating system out of New Mexico. To what extent do Australian new ventures change and adapt as their ideas and business develop? As a longitudinal study, CAUSEE was designed specifically to observe development in the venture creation process. In this research briefing paper, we compare development over time of randomly sampled Nascent Firms (NF) and Young Firms(YF), concentrating on the surviving cases. We also compare NFs with YFs at each yearly interval. The 'high potential' over sample is not used in this report.

Beyond broadcasting: customer service, community and information experience in the Twittersphere

What opportunities does a channel like Twitter offer to libraries, beyond the realm of marketing? We would like to highlight three roles for Twitter in the academic library environment: Twitter as a service delivery and service recovery channel; Twitter as a community builder; Twitter as a site for information experience.

New maps of learning for quality art education : what pre-service teachers should learn and be able to do

It would be a rare thing to visit an early years setting or classroom in Australia that does not display examples of young children’s artworks. This practice serves to give schools a particular ‘look’, but is no guarantee of quality art education. The Australian National Review of Visual Arts Education (NRVE) (2009) has called for changes to visual art education in schools. The planned new National Curriculum includes the arts (music, dance, drama, media and visual arts) as one of the five learning areas. Research shows that it is the classroom teacher that makes the difference, and teacher education has a large part to play in reforms to art education. This paper provides an account of one foundation unit of study (Unit 1) for first year university students enrolled in a 4-year Bachelor degree program who are preparing to teach in the early years (0–8 years). To prepare pre-service teachers to meet the needs of children in the 21st century, Unit 1 blends old and new ways of seeing art, child and pedagogy. Claims for the effectiveness of this model are supported with evidence-based research, conducted over the six years of iterations and ongoing development of Unit 1.

Assessing for work integrated learning experiences : a pre-service teacher perspective

A critical aspect of the debate about work integrated learning in the university context is the blurring of boundaries and responsibilities in terms of student learning. In an Australian pre-service teacher education program this blurring of boundaries is apparent in stakeholder tensions about the nature and role of assessment during the practicum. In the study reported in this paper, students responded positively to the content of assessment tasks but maintained that their efforts to implement the associated planning in the workplace were stymied because of disparate understandings between university and school staff about the purpose of the task.