Building Large Scale Traversability Maps Using Vehicle Experience

Traversability maps are a global spatial representation of the relative difficulty in driving through a local region. These maps support simple optimisation of robot paths and have been very popular in path planning techniques. Despite the popularity of these maps, the methods for generating global traversability maps have been limited to using a-priori information. This paper explores the construction of large scale traversability maps for a vehicle performing a repeated activity in a bounded working environment, such as a repeated delivery task.We evaluate the use of vehicle power consumption, longitudinal slip, lateral slip and vehicle orientation to classify the traversability and incorporate this into a map generated from sparse information.

APS grant enhances educational psychology’s impact in Bangladesh

The APS Grant for Intercultural and/or International Projects of up to $10,000 supports innovative projects that have an intercultural and/or international focus, particularly in countries where psychology is an emerging discipline. Associate Professors Linda Gilmore MAPS and Marilyn Campbell MAPS from Queensland University of Technology were awarded the APS Grant in 2010-11. Their project aimed to promote and advance the profession of psychology in Bangladesh by supporting the newly introduced specialisation of educational psychology. With a population of 159 million in a country only twice the size of Tasmania, Bangladesh is one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world. Yet at the time this project commenced, there was only one school psychologist in the entire country. Linda Gilmore shared her experiences and insights about the project with InPsych.

Physical and linkage maps for Drosophila serrata, a model species for studies of clinal adaptation and sexual selection

Drosophila serrata is a member of the montium group, which contains more than 98 species and until recently was considered a subgroup within the melanogaster group. This Drosophila species is an emerging model system for evolutionary quantitative genetics and has been used in studies of species borders, clinal variation and sexual selection. Despite the importance of D. serrata as a model for evolutionary research, our poor understanding of its genome remains a significant limitation. Here, we provide a first-generation gene-based linkage map and a physical map for this species. Consistent with previous studies of other drosophilids we observed strong conservation of genes within chromosome arms homologous with D. melanogaster but major differences in within-arm synteny. These resources will be a useful complement to ongoing genome sequencing efforts and QTL mapping studies in this species

One-year delayed effect of fog on malaria transmission : a time-series analysis in the rain forest area of Mengla County, south-west China

Background: Malaria is a major public health burden in the tropics with the potential to significantly increase in response to climate change. Analyses of data from the recent past can elucidate how short-term variations in weather factors affect malaria transmission. This study explored the impact of climate variability on the transmission of malaria in the tropical rain forest area of Mengla County, south-west China. Methods: Ecological time-series analysis was performed on data collected between 1971 and 1999. Auto-regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models were used to evaluate the relationship between weather factors and malaria incidence. Results: At the time scale of months, the predictors for malaria incidence included: minimum temperature, maximum temperature, and fog day frequency. The effect of minimum temperature on malaria incidence was greater in the cool months than in the hot months. The fog day frequency in October had a positive effect on malaria incidence in May of the following year. At the time scale of years, the annual fog day frequency was the only weather predictor of the annual incidence of malaria. Conclusion: Fog day frequency was for the first time found to be a predictor of malaria incidence in a rain forest area. The one-year delayed effect of fog on malaria transmission may involve providing water input and maintaining aquatic breeding sites for mosquitoes in vulnerable times when there is little rainfall in the 6-month dry seasons. These findings should be considered in the prediction of future patterns of malaria for similar tropical rain forest areas worldwide.

Compass points : the locations, landscapes and coordinates of identities in contemporary performance making : proceedings of the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama & Performance Studies (ADSA) Conference 2012

Compass Points: The Locations, Landscapes and Coordinates of Identities' the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies (ADSA) Conference 2012 was held at Queensland University of Technology, July 3-6 2012. The Conference was sponsored by the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies (ADSA), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Ian Potter Foundation, Arts Queensland, La Boite Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company. The papers selected for this collection represent a small sample of the scope, depth and diversity of scholarship presented at the conference - they cover a range of genres, cultures and contexts in contemporary performance making from autobiography, to playwrighting, to public space performance and beyond. The papers collected have been peer-reviewed to Australia’s Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) standards - each has been subject to two blind reviews, followed by acceptance, rejection or revision, and editing of accepted papers - by colleagues from Australasia and overseas. The review process for the conference publication was separate from the review process for acceptance of abstracts for the actual conference presentations. The conference convenors, Bree Hadley and Caroline Heim, edited the collection, and would like to thank all those who gave their time to advise on the peer review process and act as reviewers - Tom Burvill, Christine Comans, Sean Edgecomb, Angela Campbell, Natalie Lazaroo, Jo Loth, Meg Mumford, Ulrike Garde, Laura Ginters, Andre Bastian, Sam Trubridge, Delyse Ryan, Georgia Seffrin, Gillian Arrighi, Rand Hazou, Rob Pensalfini, Sue Fenty-Studham, Mark Radvan, Rob Conkie, Kris Plummer, Lisa Warrington, Kate Flaherty, Bryoni Tresize, Janys Hayes, Lisa Warrington, Teresa Izzard, Kim Durban, Veronica Kelly, Adrian Keirnander, James Davenport, Julie Robson and others. We, and the authors, appreciate the rigour and care with which peers have approached the scholarship presented here. This collection was published in final form on July 3rd 2012, the first day of the ADSA Conference 2012.

Uninav : a context-aware mobile application for university campus maps

The smart phones we carry with us are becoming ubiquitous with everyday life and the sensing capabilities of these devices allow us to provide context-aware services. In this paper, we discuss the development of UniNav, a context-aware mobile application that delivers personalised campus maps for universities. The application utilises university students’ details to provide information and services that are relevant and important to them. It helps students to navigate within the campus and become familiar with their university environment quickly. A study was undertaken to evaluate the acceptability and usefulness of the campus map, as well as the impact on a users’ navigation efficiency by utilising the personal and environmental contexts. The result indicates the integration of personal and environmental contexts on digital maps can improve its usefulness and navigation efficiency.

Context-aware device self-configuration using self-organizing maps

Modern mobile computing devices are versatile, but bring the burden of constant settings adjustment according to the current conditions of the environment. While until today, this task has to be accomplished by the human user, the variety of sensors usually deployed in such a handset provides enough data for autonomous self-configuration by a learning, adaptive system. However, this data is not fully available at certain points in time, or can contain false values. Handling potentially incomplete sensor data to detect context changes without a semantic layer represents a scientific challenge which we address with our approach. A novel machine learning technique is presented - the Missing-Values-SOM - which solves this problem by predicting setting adjustments based on context information. Our method is centered around a self-organizing map, extending it to provide a means of handling missing values. We demonstrate the performance of our approach on mobile context snapshots, as well as on classical machine learning datasets.

Compensation covenants for mining activities run with the land : a win for successive landowners

The Queensland Supreme Court case of Cape Flattery Silica Mines Pty Ltd v Hope Vale Aboriginal Shire Council [2012] QSC 381 provides guidance on the long-term ramifications of compensation agreements for mining activities. The central issue considered by the Court was whether compensation payments relate to land and run with the land pursuant to s 53(1) of the Property Law Act.

Use of concept maps in reforming teaching Family and Consumer Sciences in Kuwait

This paper addresses the professional development of Kuwaiti teachers in the use of concept maps to teach Family and Consumer Science. A key aim of the study was to evaluate the degree to which the use of concept maps would influence the way Kuwaiti teachers approach and teach Family and Consumer Studies (FCS) subjects and the degree to which concept maps empower students to critically identify and express their knowledge of the subject being taught. A case study methodology was adopted to follow the implementation of lessons using concept maps by four teachers of middle years. An analysis of the data revealed the positive impact that student-centred teaching tools can have on the reformation of traditional teaching environments. For all teachers, the primary strengths of using concept maps were the ability to generate student interest, to motivate student participation and to enhance student understanding of content. Although a case study design may limit the generalisation and comparative value of the study, the findings of this study remain important to the planning of future professional development programs and the use of concept maps within Kuwait’s FCS curriculum area.

Testing the accuracy of luminance maps acquired by smart phone cameras

This paper looks at the accuracy of using the built-in camera of smart phones and free software as an economical way to quantify and analyse light exposure by producing luminance maps from High Dynamic Range (HDR) images. HDR images were captured with an Apple iPhone 4S to capture a wide variation of luminance within an indoor and outdoor scene. The HDR images were then processed using Photosphere software (Ward, 2010.) to produce luminance maps, where individual pixel values were compared with calibrated luminance meter readings. This comparison has shown an average luminance error of ~8% between the HDR image pixel values and luminance meter readings, when the range of luminances in the image is limited to approximately 1,500cd/m2.

Flexibility, Technology and Academics' Practices : Tantalising Tales and Muddy Maps

The project investigated the relationships between diversification in modes ofdelivery, use of information and communication technologies, academics’ teaching practices, and the context in which those practices are employed, in two of the three large universities in Brisbane—Griffith University and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The project’s initial plan involved the investigation of two sites: Queensland University of Technology’s Faculty of Education (Kelvin Grove campus) and Griffith University’s Faculty of Humanities(Nathan campus). Interviews associated with the Faculty of Education led to a decision to include a third site—the School of Law within Queensland University of Technology’s Faculty of Law, which is based on the Gardens Point Campus. Here the investigation focused on the use of computer-based flexible learning practices, as distinct from the more text-based practices identified within the original two sites.

[Book Review] Urban Maps : Instruments of Narrative and Interpretation in the City by Richard Brook and Nick Dunn, Ashgate, Farham, United Kingdom, 2011, 250pp. ISBN 978-0-754676-5-77.

Urban maps discusses new ways and tools to read and navigate the contemporary city. Each chapter investigates a possible approach to unravel the complexity of contemporary urban forms. Each tool is first defined, introducing its philosophical background, and is then discussed with case studies, showing its relevance for the navigation of the built environment. Urbanism classics such as the work of Lynch, Jacobs, Venuti and Scott-Brown, Lefebrve and Walter Benjamin are fundamental in setting the framework of the volume. In the introduction cities and mapping are first discussed, the former are illustrated as ‘a composite of invisible networks devoid of landmarks and overrun by nodes’ (p. 3), and ‘a series of unbounded spaces where mass production and mass consumption reproduce a standardised quasi-global culture’ (p. 6).

Physical performance profile of sub-elite juvenile Gaelic Games players and the prevalence of a Relative Age Effect (RAE)

Gaelic Games are the indigenous sports played in Ireland, the most popular being Gaelic football and hurling. The games are contact sports and the physical demands are thought to be similar to those of Australian Rules football, rugby union, rugby league, field hockey, and lacrosse (Delahunt et al., 2011). The difference in chronological age between children in a single age group is known as relative age and its consequences as the RAE, whereby younger players are disadvantaged (Del Campo et al., 2010). The purpose of this study was to describe the physical and performance profile of sub-elite juvenile Gaelic Games players and to establish if a RAE is present in this cohort and any influence physiological moderator variables may have on this. Following receipt of ethical approval (EHSREC11-45), six sub-elite county development squads (Under-14/15/16 age groups, male, n=115) volunteered to partake in the study. Anthropometric data including skin folds and girths were collected. A number of field tests of physical performance including 5 and 20m speed, vertical and broad jump distance, and an estimate of VO2max were carried out. Descriptive data are presented as Mean SD. Juvenile sub-elite Gaelic Games players aged 14.53 0.82 y were 172.87 7.63 cm tall, had a mass of 64.74 11.06 kg, a BMI of 21.57 2.82 kg.m-2 and 9.22 4.78 % body fat. Flexibility, measured by sit and reach was 33.62 6.86 cm and lower limb power measured by vertical and broad jump were 42.19 5.73 and 191.16 25.26 cm, respectively. Participant time to complete 5m, 20m and an agility test (T-Test) was 1.12 0.07, 3.31 0.30 and 9.31 0.55 s respectively. Participant’s estimated VO2max was 48.23 5.05 ml.kg.min-1. Chi-Square analysis of birth month by quartile (Q1 = January-March) revealed that a RAE was present in this cohort, whereby an over-representation of players born in Q1 compared with Q2, Q3 and Q4 was evident (2 = 14.078, df = 3, p = 0.003). Kruskal-Wallis analysis of the data revealed no significant difference in any of the performance parameters based on quartile of birth (Alpha level = 0.05).This study provides a physical performance profile of juvenile sub-elite Gaelic Games players, comparable with those of other sports such as soccer and rugby. This novel data can inform us of the physical requirements of the sport. The evidence of a RAE is similar to that observed in other contact sports such as soccer and rugby league (Carling et al, 2009; Till et al, 2010). Although a RAE exists in this cohort, this cannot be explained by any physical/physiological moderator variables. Carling C et al. (2009). Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sport 19, 3-9. Delahunt E et al. (2011). Journal of Athletic Training 46, 241-5. Del Campo DG et al. (2010). Journal of Sport Science and Medicine 9, 190-198. Delorme N et al. (2010). European Journal of Sport Science 10, 91-96. Till K et al. (2010). Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 20, 320-329.

Automatic object segmentation of unstructured scenes using colour and depth maps

This study presents a segmentation pipeline that fuses colour and depth information to automatically separate objects of interest in video sequences captured from a quadcopter. Many approaches assume that cameras are static with known position, a condition which cannot be preserved in most outdoor robotic applications. In this study, the authors compute depth information and camera positions from a monocular video sequence using structure from motion and use this information as an additional cue to colour for accurate segmentation. The authors model the problem similarly to standard segmentation routines as a Markov random field and perform the segmentation using graph cuts optimisation. Manual intervention is minimised and is only required to determine pixel seeds in the first frame which are then automatically reprojected into the remaining frames of the sequence. The authors also describe an automated method to adjust the relative weights for colour and depth according to their discriminative properties in each frame. Experimental results are presented for two video sequences captured using a quadcopter. The quality of the segmentation is compared to a ground truth and other state-of-the-art methods with consistently accurate results.