Conversation, community and kids: blogging for youth at Gold Coast City Council libraries

In late 2007, Gold Coast City Council libraries embarked on an online library project, designed to ramp up libraries’ online services to customers. As part of this project, the Young People’s team identified a need to connect with youth aged 12 to 16 in the online environment, in order to create a direct channel of communication with this market segment and encourage them to engage with the library. Blogging was identified as an appropriate means of communicating with both current and potential library customers from this age group. The Young People’s team consequently prepared a concept plan for a youth blog for launch in Children’s Book Week 2008 and are working towards development of management and administrative models and documentation and implementation of the blog itself. While many libraries have been quick to take up Web 2.0-style services, there has been little formal publication about the successes (or failures) of this type of project. Likewise, few libraries have published about the planning, management, and administration of such services. The youth blog currently in development at Gold Coast City Council libraries will be supported by a robust planning phase and will be rigorously evaluated as part of the project. This paper will report on the project (its aims, objectives and outputs), the planning process, and the evaluation activities and outcomes.

Scaling analysis of natural convection boundary layers : Application to attic space

The natural convection thermal boundary layer adjacent to an inclined flat plate and inclined walls of an attic space subject to instantaneous and ramp heating and cooling is investigated. A scaling analysis has been performed to describe the flow behaviour and heat transfer. Major scales quantifying the flow velocity, flow development time, heat transfer and the thermal and viscous boundary layer thicknesses at different stages of the flow development are established. Scaling relations of heating-up and cooling-down times and heat transfer rates have also been reported for the case of attic space. The scaling relations have been verified by numerical simulations over a wide range of parameters. Further, a periodic temperature boundary condition is also considered to show the flow features in the attic space over diurnal cycles.

ACE research vignette 006 : why saving jobs and supporting failing firms can be detrimental

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team and other international Entrepreneurship researchers. In this vignette, we summarise the findings from a paper written by Avaid Pe'er and Ilan Vertinsky that examines "Why saving jobs and supporting failing firms can be detrimental".

Natural convection in the attic-shaped spaces

Heat transfer through an attic space into or out of buildings is an important issue for attic-shaped houses in both hot and cold climates. One of the important objectives for design and construction of houses is to provide thermal comfort for occupants. In the present energy-conscious society, it is also a requirement for houses to be energy efficient, i.e. the energy consumption for heating or air-conditioning houses must be minimized. Relevant to these objectives, research into heat transfer in attics has been conducted for about three decades. The transient behaviour of an attic space is directly relevant to our daily life. Certain periods of the day or night may be considered as having a constant ambient temperature (e.g. during 11am - 2pm or 11pm - 2am). However, at other times during the day or night the ambient temperature changes with time (e.g. between 5am - 9am or 5pm - 9pm). Therefore, the analysis of steady state solution is not sufficient to describe the fluid flow and heat transfer in the attic space. The discussion of the transient development of the boundary is required. A theoretical understanding of the transient behaviour of the flow in the enclosure is performed through scaling analysis for sudden and ramp heating conditions. A proper identification of the timescales, the velocity and the thickness relevant to the flow that develops inside the cavity makes it possible to predict theoretically the basic flow features that will survive once the thermal flow in the enclosure reaches a steady state. Those scaling predictions have been verified by a series of numerical simulations.

Mixing and drying mud and ash at Tully Mill

Disposal of mud and ash, particularly in wet weather conditions, is a significant expense for mills. This paper reports on part of a process to pelletise mud and ash, aimed at making mud and ash more attractive to growers across entire mill districts. The full process and the re-constituting and centrifuging rotary vacuum filter mud part of the process were described in two papers to the 2011 conference. The component described in this paper involves aspects of mixing mud and ash with subsequent drying using boiler exit gas. The mud material needs to mix easily with boiler ash and the mixture has to feed easily into and be pneumatically conveyed by a flue gas dryer. The performance of a pilot flue gas dryer for drying mud and ash was evaluated. The mud and ash mixture was found to dry much faster than final bagasse, provided the mud and ash material was broken up into individual particles. A previously developed computer model of bagasse drying was updated to take into account the smaller particle size of the mud and ash mixture. This upgraded model predicted the performance of the pilot flue gas dryer well.

Separation/Divorce Sexual Assault: The Current State of Social Scientific Knowledge

Many contend that the logical solution to woman abuse in marriage/cohabitation is for women to exit through legal separation, divorce, or other means. However, a growing body of empirical work shows that separation or divorce does not necessarily solve the problem of woman abuse. For example, in addition to experiencing lethal or nonlethal forms of physical violence and psychological abuse, many women who try to leave, or who have left their male partners, are sexually assaulted. The main objective of this paper is to critically review the extant empirical and theoretical work on separation/divorcesexual assault. Suggestions for future research and theorizing are also provided.

Preparing to teach : perceptions of graduate entry teacher education students

International reviews of teaching and teacher education have highlighted the importance of quality teachers in improving the outcomes of students. Teachers may enter the teaching profession through a variety of pathways. Currently in Australia, one pathway is through graduate entry teacher education programs in which people who already hold university degrees outside of education can undertake one-year formal teacher preparation programs. It may be argued that graduate entry teachers value add to the teaching profession as they bring with them a range of careers and wealth of experiences often beyond those of teachers who enter the profession through traditional four-year Bachelor of Education programs. This paper reports on a study that investigated the preparedness to teach of a group of graduate entry teacher education students as they prepared to exit from university and enter the teaching profession. The study concluded that this group of graduating teachers perceived that the field experience components in their formal teacher education programs contributed most to their beginning professional learning. The study revealed also that this group of graduating teachers sought further professional learning opportunities in the canonical skills of teaching. These findings may be used to inform the design of future teacher education programs.

Expression of PTRF in PC3 cells modulates cholesterol dynamics and the actin cytoskeleton impacting secretion pathways

Expression of caveolin-1 is up-regulated in prostate cancer metastasis and is associated with aggressive recurrence of the disease. Intriguingly, caveolin-1 is also secreted from prostate cancer cell lines and has been identified in secreted prostasomes. Caveolin-1 is the major structural component of the plasma membrane invaginations called caveolae. Co-expression of the coat protein Polymerase I and transcript release factor (PTRF) is required for caveolae formation. We recently found that expression of caveolin-1 in the aggressive prostate cancer cell line PC-3 is not accompanied by PTRF, leading to noncaveolar caveolin-1 lipid rafts. Moreover, ectopic expression of PTRF in PC-3 cells sequesters caveolin-1 into caveolae. Here we quantitatively analyzed the effect of PTRF expression on the PC-3 proteome using stable isotope labeling by amino acids in culture and subcellular proteomics. We show that PTRF reduced the secretion of a subset of proteins including secreted proteases, cytokines, and growth regulatory proteins, partly via a reduction in prostasome secretion. To determine the cellular mechanism accounting for the observed reduction in secreted proteins we analyzed total membrane and the detergent-resistant membrane fractions. Our data show that PTRF expression selectively impaired the recruitment of actin cytoskeletal proteins to the detergent-resistant membrane, which correlated with altered cholesterol distribution in PC-3 cells expressing PTRF. Consistent with this, modulating cellular cholesterol altered the actin cytoskeleton and protein secretion in PC-3 cells. Intriguingly, several proteins that function in ER to Golgi trafficking were reduced by PTRF expression. Taken together, these results suggest that the noncaveolar caveolin-1 found in prostate cancer cells generates a lipid raft microenvironment that accentuates secretion pathways, possibly at the step of ER sorting/exit. Importantly, these effects could be modulated by PTRF expression.

Influence of inflow turbulence in shock-wave/turbulent-boundary-layer interaction computations

The influence of inflow turbulence on the results of Favre–Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes computations of supersonic oblique-shock-wave/turbulent-boundary-layer interactions (shock-wave Mach-number MSW ∼2.9), using seven-equation Reynolds-stress model turbulence closures, is studied. The generation of inflow conditions (and the initialization of the flowfield) for mean flow, Reynolds stresses, and turbulence length scale, based on semi-analytic grid-independent boundary-layer profiles, is described in detail. Particular emphasis is given to freestream turbulence intensity and length scale. The influence of external-flow turbulence intensity is studied in detail both for flat-plate boundary-layer flow and for a compression-ramp interaction with large separation. It is concluded that the Reynolds-stress model correctly reproduces the effects of external flow turbulence.

Curriculum design and higher order skills : challenging assumptions

This paper is based on an Australian Learning & Teaching Council (ALTC) funded evaluation in 13 universities across Australia and New Zealand of the use of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) projects in first-year engineering courses. All of the partner institutions have implemented this innovation differently and comparison of these implementations affords us the opportunity to assemble "a body of carefully gathered data that provides evidence of which approaches work for which students in which learning environments". This study used a mixed-methods data collection approach and a realist analysis. Data was collected by program logic analysis with course co-ordinators, observation of classes, focus groups with students, exit survey of students and interviews with staff as well as scrutiny of relevant course and curriculum documents. Course designers and co-ordinators gave us a range of reasons for using the projects, most of which alluded to their presumed capacity to deliver experience in and learning of higher order thinking skills in areas such as sustainability, ethics, teamwork and communication. For some students, however, the nature of the projects decreased their interest in issues such as ethical development, sustainability and how to work in teams. We also found that the projects provoked different responses from students depending on the nature of the courses in which they were embedded (general introduction, design, communication, or problem-solving courses) and their mode of delivery (lecture, workshop or online).

Thermo-magnetic convection of paramagnetic fluids with non-instantaneous heating

The unsteady boundary-layer development for thermomagnetic convection of paramagnetic fluids inside a square cavity has been considered in this study. The cavity is placed in a microgravity condition (no gravitation acceleration) and under a uniform magnetic field which acts vertically. A ramp temperature boundary condition is applied on left vertical side wall of the cavity where the temperature initially increases with time up to some specific time and maintain constant thereafter. A distinct magnetic convection boundary layer is developed adjacent to the left vertical wall due to the effect of the magnetic body force generated on the paramagnetic fluid. An improved scaling analysis has been performed using triple-layer integral method and verified by numerical simulations. The Prandtl number has been chosen greater than unity varied over 5-100. Moreover, the effect of various values of the magnetic parameter and magnetic Rayleigh number on the fluid flow and heat transfer has been shown.

Variety matters

Countercyclical markups are a key transmission mechanism in many endogenous business cycle models. Yet, recent findings suggest that aggregate markups in the US are procyclical. The current model addresses this issue. It extends Galí's (1994) composition of aggregate demand model by endogenous entry and exit of firms and by product variety effects. Endogenous business cycles emerge with procyclical markups that are within empirically plausible ranges.

Traffic queue estimation for metered motorway on-ramps through use of loop detector time occupancies

The primary objective of this study is to develop a robust queue estimation algorithm for motorway on-ramps. Real-time queue information is a vital input for dynamic queue management on metered on-ramps. Accurate and reliable queue information enables the management of on-ramp queue in an adaptive manner to the actual traffic queue size and thus minimises the adverse impacts of queue flush while increasing the benefit of ramp metering. The proposed algorithm is developed based on the Kalman filter framework. The fundamental conservation model is used to estimate the system state (queue size) with the flow-in and flow-out measurements. This projection results are updated with the measurement equation using the time occupancies from mid-link and link-entrance loop detectors. This study also proposes a novel single point correction method. This method resets the estimated system state to eliminate the counting errors that accumulate over time. In the performance evaluation, the proposed algorithm demonstrated accurate and reliable performances and consistently outperformed the benchmarked Single Occupancy Kalman filter (SOKF) method. The improvements over SOKF are 62% and 63% in average in terms of the estimation accuracy (MAE) and reliability (RMSE), respectively. The benefit of the innovative concepts of the algorithm is well justified by the improved estimation performance in congested ramp traffic conditions where long queues may significantly compromise the benchmark algorithm’s performance.

A Kalman filter based queue estimation algorithm using time occupancies for motorway on-ramps

The primary objective of this study is to develop a robust queue estimation algorithm for motorway on-ramps. Real-time queue information is the most vital input for a dynamic queue management that can treat long queues on metered on-ramps more sophistically. The proposed algorithm is developed based on the Kalman filter framework. The fundamental conservation model is used to estimate the system state (queue size) with the flow-in and flow-out measurements. This projection results are updated with the measurement equation using the time occupancies from mid-link and link-entrance loop detectors. This study also proposes a novel single point correction method. This method resets the estimated system state to eliminate the counting errors that accumulate over time. In the performance evaluation, the proposed algorithm demonstrated accurate and reliable performances and consistently outperformed the benchmarked Single Occupancy Kalman filter (SOKF) method. The improvements over SOKF are 62% and 63% in average in terms of the estimation accuracy (MAE) and reliability (RMSE), respectively. The benefit of the innovative concepts of the algorithm is well justified by the improved estimation performance in the congested ramp traffic conditions where long queues may significantly compromise the benchmark algorithm’s performance.

Perceptions and expectations for learning and development for older workers within Queensland local government councils : a case study

Current literature warns organisations about a global ageing phenomenon. Workplace ageing is causing a diminishing work pool which has consequences for a sustainable workforce in the future. This phenomenon continues to impact on local government councils in Australia. Australia has one of the world’s most rapidly ageing populations, and there is evidence that Australian local government councils are already resulting in an unsustainable workforce. Consequently, this research program investigated the role of older workers in the Queensland local government workplace in enabling them to extend their working lives towards transitional employment and a sustainable workforce in the future. Transitional Employment is intended as a strategy for enabling individuals to have greater control over their employment options and their employability during the period leading to their final exit from the workforce. There was no evidence of corporate support for older workers in Queensland local government councils other than tokenistic government campaigns encouraging organisations to "better value their older workers". (Queensland Government, 2007d, p.6). TE is investigated as a possible intervention for older workers in the future. The international and national literature review reflected a range of matters impacting on current older workers in the workforce and barriers preventing them from accessing services towards extending their employment beyond the traditional retirement age (60 years) as defined by the Australian Government; an age when individuals can access their superannuation. Learning and development services were identified as one of those barriers. There was little evidence of investment in or consistent approaches to supporting older workers by organisations. Learning and development services appeared at best to be ad hoc, reactive to corporate productivity and outputs with little recognition of the ageing phenomenon (OECD, 2006, p.23) and looming skills and labour shortages (ALGA, 2006, p. 19). Themes from the literature review led to the establishment of three key research questions: 1. What are the current local government workforce issues impacting on skills and labour retention? 2. What are perceptions about the current workplace environment? And, 3. What are the expectations about learning and development towards extending employability of older workers within the local government sector? The research questions were explored by utilising three qualitative empirical studies, using some numerical data for reporting and comparative analysis. Empirical Study One investigated common themes for accessing transitional employment and comprised two phases. A literature review and Study One data analysis enabled the construction of an initial Transitional Employment Model which includes most frequent themes. Empirical Study Two comprised focus groups to further consider those themes. This led to identification of issues impacting the most on access to learning and development by older workers and towards a revised TEM. Findings presented majority support for transitional employment as a strategy for supporting older workers to work beyond their traditional retirement age. Those findings are presented as significant issues impacting on access to transitional employment within the final 3-dimensionsal TEM. The model is intended as a guide for responding to an ageing workforce by local government councils in the future. This study argued for increased and improved corporate support, particularly for learning and development services for older workers. Such support will enable older workers to maintain their employability and extend their working lives; a sustainable workforce in the future.