Technology : new horizons in teaching law

17.1 Up until the 1990s the methods used to teach the law had evolved little since the first law schools were established in Australia. As Keyes and Johnstone observed: In the traditional model, most teachers uncritically replicate the learning experiences that they had when students, which usually means that the dominant mode of instruction is reading lecture notes to large classes in which students are largely passive. Traditional legal education has been described in the following terms: Traditionally law is taught through a series of lectures, with little or no student involvement, and a tutorial programme. Sometimes tutorials are referred to as seminars but the terminology used is often insignificant: both terms refer to probably the only form of student participation that takes place throughout these students‘ academic legal education. The tutorial consists of analysing the answers, prepared in advanced (sic), to artificial Janet and John Doe problems or esoteric essay questions. The primary focus of traditional legal education is the transmission of content knowledge, more particularly the teaching of legal rules, especially those drawn from case law. This approach has a long pedigree. Writing in 1883, Dicey proposed that nothing can be taught to students of greater value, either intellectually or for the purposes of legal practice, than the habit of looking on the law as a series of rules‘.

Performance evaluation of eight contemporary passive solar homes in subtropical Australia

Subtropical south-east Queensland’s expanding population is expected to lead to a demand for an additional 754,000 dwellings by 2031. A legacy of poor housing design, minimal building regulations, an absence of building performance evaluation and various social and market factors has lead to a high and growing penetration of, and reliance on, air conditioners to provide comfort in this relatively benign climate. This reliance impacts on policy goals to adapt to and mitigate against global warming, electricity infrastructure investment and household resilience. Based on the concept of bioclimatic design, this field study scrutinizes eight non-air conditioned homes to develop a deeper understanding of the role of contemporary passive solar architecture in the delivery of thermally comfortable and resilient homes in the subtropics. These homes were found to provide inhabitants with an acceptable level of thermal comfort (18-28oC) for 77 – 97% of the year. Family expectations and experiences of comfort, and the various design strategies utilized were compared against the measured performance outcomes. This comparison revealed issues that limited quantification and implementation of design intent and highlighted factors that constrained system optimisation.

Diffusion determinants for passive building technologies

This summary is based on an international review of leading peer reviewed journals, in both technical and management fields. It draws on highly cited articles published between 2000 and 2009 to investigate the research question, "What are the diffusion determinants for passive building technologies in Australia?". Using a conceptual framework drawn from the innovation systems literature, this paper synthesises and interprets the literature to map the current state of passive building technologies in Australia and to analyse the drivers for, and obstacles to, their optimal diffusion. The paper concludes that the government has a key role to play through its influence over the specification of building codes.

Prediction of pull-out force of multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) in sword-in-sheath mode

The pull-out force of some outer walls against other inner walls in multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) was systematically studied by molecular mechanics simulations. The obtained results reveal that the pull-out force is proportional to the square of the diameter of the immediate outer wall on the sliding interface, which highlights the primary contribution of the capped section of MWCNT to the pull-out force. A simple empirical formula was proposed based on the numerical results to predict the pull-out force for an arbitrary pull-out in a given MWCNT directly from the diameter of the immediate outer wall on the sliding interface. Moreover, tensile tests for MWCNTs with and without acid-treatment were performed with a nanomanipulator inside a vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to validate the present empirical formula. It was found that the theoretical pull-out forces agree with the present and some previous experimental results very well.

Coupling of energy from quantum emitters to the plasmonic mode of V groove waveguides: A numerical study

This work is a theoretical investigation into the coupling of a single excited quantum emitter to the plasmon mode of a V groove waveguide. The V groove waveguide consists of a triangular channel milled in gold and the emitter is modeled as a dipole emitter, and could represent a quantum dot, nitrogen vacancy in diamond, or similar. In this work the dependence of coupling efficiency of emitter to plasmon mode is determined for various geometrical parameters of the emitter-waveguide system. Using the finite element method, the effect on coupling efficiency of the emitter position and orientation, groove angle, groove depth, and tip radius, is studied in detail. We demonstrate that all parameters, with the exception of groove depth, have a significant impact on the attainable coupling efficiency. Understanding the effect of various geometrical parameters on the coupling between emitters and the plasmonic mode of the waveguide is essential for the design and optimization of quantum dot–V groove devices.

Evaluation of an inactivated Ross River virus vaccine in active and passive mouse immunization models and establishment of a correlate of protection

Ross River Virus has caused reported outbreaks of epidemic polyarthritis, a chronic debilitating disease associated with significant long-term morbidity in Australia and the Pacific region since the 1920s. To address this public health concern, a formalin- and UV-inactivated whole virus vaccine grown in animal protein-free cell culture was developed and tested in preclinical studies to evaluate immunogenicity and efficacy in animal models. After active immunizations, the vaccine dose-dependently induced antibodies and protected adult mice from viremia and interferon α/β receptor knock-out (IFN-α/βR(-/-)) mice from death and disease. In passive transfer studies, administration of human vaccinee sera followed by RRV challenge protected adult mice from viremia and young mice from development of arthritic signs similar to human RRV-induced disease. Based on the good correlation between antibody titers in human sera and protection of animals, a correlate of protection was defined. This is of particular importance for the evaluation of the vaccine because of the comparatively low annual incidence of RRV disease, which renders a classical efficacy trial impractical. Antibody-dependent enhancement of infection, did not occur in mice even at low to undetectable concentrations of vaccine-induced antibodies. Also, RRV vaccine-induced antibodies were partially cross-protective against infection with a related alphavirus, Chikungunya virus, and did not enhance infection. Based on these findings, the inactivated RRV vaccine is expected to be efficacious and protect humans from RRV disease

Design and fabrication of tubular scaffolds via direct writing in a melt electrospinning mode

Flexible tubular structures fabricated from solution electrospun fibers are finding increasing use in tissue engineering applications. However it is difficult to control the deposition of fibers due to the chaotic nature of the solution electrospinning jet. By using non-conductive polymer melts instead of polymer solutions the path and collection of the fiber becomes predictable. In this work we demonstrate the melt electrospinning of polycaprolactone in a direct writing mode onto a rotating cylinder. This allows the design and fabrication of tubes using 20 μm diameter fibers with controllable micropatterns and mechanical properties. A key design parameter is the fiber winding angle, where it allows control over scaffold pore morphology (e.g. size, shape, number and porosity). Furthermore, the establishment of a finite element model as a predictive design tool is validated against mechanical testing results of melt electrospun tubes to show that a lesser winding angle provides improved mechanical response to uniaxial tension and compression. In addition, we show that melt electrospun tubes support the growth of three different cell types in vitro and are therefore promising scaffolds for tissue engineering applications.

Low cost railway level crossings

The Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Rail Innovation is conducting a tranche of industry-led research projects looking into safer rail level crossings. This paper will provide an overview of the Affordable Level Crossings project, a project that is performing research in both engineering and human factors aspects of low-cost level crossing warning devices (LCLCWDs), and is facilitating a comparative trial of these devices over a period of 12 months in several jurisdictions. Low-cost level crossing warning devices (LCLCWDs) are characterised by the use of alternative technologies for high cost components including train detection and connectivity (e.g. radar, acoustic, magnetic induction train detection systems and wireless connectivity replacing traditional track circuits and wiring). These devices often make use of solar power where mains power is not available, and aim to make substantial savings in lifecycle costs. The project involves trialling low-cost level crossing warning devices in shadow-mode, where devices are installed without the road-user interface at a number of existing level crossing sites that are already equipped with conventional active warning systems. It may be possible that the deployment of lower-cost devices can provide a significantly larger safety benefit over the network than a deployment of expensive conventional devices, as the lower cost would allow more passive level crossing sites to be upgraded with the same capital investment. The project will investigate reliability and safety integrity issues of the low-cost devices, as well as evaluate lifecycle costs and investigate human factors issues related to warning reliability. This paper will focus on the requirements and safety issues of LCLCWDs, and will provide an overview of the Rail CRC projects.

Could BFFB mode breath aerosol play a role in H5N1 transmission?

Recent findings concerning exhaled aerosol size distributions and the regions in the respiratory tract in which they are generated could have significant implications for human to human spread of lower respiratory tract-specific infections. Even in healthy people, measurable quantities of aerosol are routinely generated from the Lower Respiratory Tract (LRT) during breathing(1-3). We have found that there at least three modes in the exhaled aerosol size distribution of healthy adults(4) (see Figure 1). These modes each have a characteristic size and arise from different parts of the respiratory tract. The respiratory bronchioles produce aerosol during breathing, the larynx during speech and the oral cavity also during speech. The model of the resulting droplet size distribution is therefore called the Bronchial Laryngeal Oral (B.L.O.) tri-modal model of expired aerosol.

Surface effects on the dual-mode vibration of <110> silver nanowires with different cross-sections

Dual-mode vibration of nanowires has been reported experimentally through actuation of the nanowire at its resonance frequency, which is expected to open up a variety of new modalities for the NEMS that could operate in the nonlinear regime. In the present work, we utilize large scale molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the dual-mode vibration of <110> Ag nanowires with triangular, rhombic and truncated rhombic cross-sections. By incorporating the generalized Young-Laplace equation into Euler-Bernoulli beam theory, the influence of surface effects on the dual-mode vibration is studied. Due to the different lattice spacing in principal axes of inertia of the {110} atomic layers, the NW is also modeled as a discrete system to reveal the influence from such specific atomic arrangement. It is found that the <110> Ag NW will under a dual-mode vibration if the actuation direction is deviated from the two principal axes of inertia. The predictions of the two first mode natural frequencies by the classical beam model appear underestimated comparing with the MD results, which are found to be enhanced by the discrete model. Particularly, the predictions by the beam theory with the contribution of surface effects are uniformly larger than the classical beam model, which exhibit better agreement with MD results for larger cross-sectional size. However, for ultrathin NWs, current consideration of surface effects is still experiencing certain inaccuracy. In all, for all different cross-sections, the inclusion of surface effects is found to reduce the difference between the two first mode natural frequencies. This trend is observed consistent with MD results. This study provides a first comprehensive investigation on the dual-mode vibration of <110> oriented Ag NWs, which is supposed to benefit the applications of NWs that acting as a resonating beam.

Active versus passive screen time for young children

In this paper, we report some initial findings from our investigations into the Australian Government’s Longitudinal Study of Australian Children dataset. It is revealed that the majority of Australian children are exceeding the government’s Screen Time recommendations and that most of their screen time is spent as TV viewing, as opposed to video game play or computer use. In light of this finding,we review the body of research surrounding children’s engagement in Screen Time activities and the associated positive and negative effects. Based on existing evidence,we define two categories of Screen Time—Active Screen Time and Passive Screen Time. It is proposed that this distinction provides a more accurate classification of Screen Time and a more informative lens through which to consider the associated benefits and detrimental effects for young children.

Small signal stability analysis of a DFIG based wind power system with tuned damping controller under super/sub-synchronous mode of operation

This paper focuses on the super/sub-synchronous operation of the doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) system. The impact of a damping controller on the different modes of operation for the DFIG based wind generation system is investigated. The co-ordinated tuning of the damping controller to enhance the damping of the oscillatory modes using bacteria foraging (BF) technique is presented. The results from eigenvalue analysis are presented to elucidate the effectiveness of the tuned damping controller in the DFIG system. The robustness issue of the damping controller is also investigated

Challenging Educational Underdevelopment: The Cuban Solidarity Approach as a Mode of South-South Cooperation

The Capacity to Share is the first book to document how Cubans share their highly developed educational services with other low-income states, especially those in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. A variety of international and Cuban authors break new ground in presenting this research. They investigate the experiences of people who have studied in Cuba on scholarships from the Cuban government, the implications for their home countries, and the work of Cuban teachers and administrators to support education in other countries. The authors discuss how the Cuban "solidarity" approach prioritizes global educational cooperation for mutual support, rather than imposing conditional aid. The book offers original and unusual insights into issues of culture, education, aid, development, and change as they relate to low-income states.

An entry mode decision-making model for the international expansion of construction enterprises

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a new type of entry mode decision-making model for construction enterprises involved in international business. Design/methodology/approach – A hybrid method combining analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) is used to aid entry mode decisions. The AHP is used to decompose the entry mode problem into several dimensions and determine the weight of each criterion. In addition, PROMETHEE method is used to rank candidate entry modes and carry out sensitivity analyses. Findings – The proposed decision-making method is demonstrated to be a suitable approach to resolve the entry mode selection decision problem. Practical implications – The research provides practitioners with a more systematic decision framework and a more precise decision method. Originality/value – The paper sheds light on the further development of entry strategies for international construction markets. It not only introduces a new decision-making model for entry mode decision making, but also provides a conceptual framework with five determinants for a construction company entry mode selection based on the unique properties of the construction industry.