An effective approach to verbose queries using a limited dependencies language model

Intuitively, any ‘bag of words’ approach in IR should benefit from taking term dependencies into account. Unfortunately, for years the results of exploiting such dependencies have been mixed or inconclusive. To improve the situation, this paper shows how the natural language properties of the target documents can be used to transform and enrich the term dependencies to more useful statistics. This is done in three steps. The term co-occurrence statistics of queries and documents are each represented by a Markov chain. The paper proves that such a chain is ergodic, and therefore its asymptotic behavior is unique, stationary, and independent of the initial state. Next, the stationary distribution is taken to model queries and documents, rather than their initial distributions. Finally, ranking is achieved following the customary language modeling paradigm. The main contribution of this paper is to argue why the asymptotic behavior of the document model is a better representation then just the document’s initial distribution. A secondary contribution is to investigate the practical application of this representation in case the queries become increasingly verbose. In the experiments (based on Lemur’s search engine substrate) the default query model was replaced by the stable distribution of the query. Just modeling the query this way already resulted in significant improvements over a standard language model baseline. The results were on a par or better than more sophisticated algorithms that use fine-tuned parameters or extensive training. Moreover, the more verbose the query, the more effective the approach seems to become.

A suspicious behaviour detection using a context space model for smart surveillance systems

Video surveillance systems using Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras, is one of the fastest growing areas in the field of security technologies. However, the existing video surveillance systems are still not at a stage where they can be used for crime prevention. The systems rely heavily on human observers and are therefore limited by factors such as fatigue and monitoring capabilities over long periods of time. This work attempts to address these problems by proposing an automatic suspicious behaviour detection which utilises contextual information. The utilisation of contextual information is done via three main components: a context space model, a data stream clustering algorithm, and an inference algorithm. The utilisation of contextual information is still limited in the domain of suspicious behaviour detection. Furthermore, it is nearly impossible to correctly understand human behaviour without considering the context where it is observed. This work presents experiments using video feeds taken from CAVIAR dataset and a camera mounted on one of the buildings Z-Block) at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. From these experiments, it is shown that by exploiting contextual information, the proposed system is able to make more accurate detections, especially of those behaviours which are only suspicious in some contexts while being normal in the others. Moreover, this information gives critical feedback to the system designers to refine the system.

Review: "Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2003" edited by Frew, A.J., Hitz, M., & O’Connor, P.

"This volume represents the proceedings of the 10th ENTER conference, held in Helsinki, Finland during January 2003. The conference theme was ‘technology on the move’, and the 476pp. proceedings offer 50 papers by 108 authors. The editors advise all papers were subject to a double blind peer review. The research has been categorised into 18 broad headings, which reflects the diversity of topics addressed. This reviewer has adopted the approach of succinctly summarising each of the papers, in the order they appear, to assist readers of Tourism Management in judging the potential value of the content for their own work..." -- publisher website

The case for ICT work-integrated learning from graduates in the workplace

An online survey of recent ICT graduates in the workplace was carried out as part of a recent project funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. The survey was concerned with the ICT curriculum in relation to workplace job requirements and university preparation for these requirements. The survey contained quantitative and qualitative components and findings from the former have been published (Koppi et al., 2009). This paper reports on a quantitative comparison of responses from graduates who had workplace experience and those who did not, and a qualitative analysis of text responses from all ICT graduates to open-ended questions concerning the curriculum and their perceived university preparation for the workplace. The overwhelming response from ICT graduates in the workplace was for more industry related learning. These industry relationships included industry involvement, workplace learning and business experience, up-to-date teaching and technologies, practical applications, and real-world activities. A closer relationship of academia and industry was strongly advocated by ICT graduates in the workplace.

Profiling and characterisation of key weather variables and their implication on building design

Local climate is a critical element in the design of buildings. In this paper, ten years of historical weather data in Australia's all eight capital cities are analyzed to characterize the variation profiles of climatic variables. The method of descriptive statistics is employed. Either the pattern of cumulative distribution and/or the profile of percentage distribution are used to graphically illustrate the similarity and difference between different study locations. It is found that although the weather variables vary with different locations, except for the extreme parts, there is often a good, nearly linear relation between weather variable and its cumulative percentage for the majority of middle part. The implication of these extreme parts and the slopes of the middle parts on building design is also discussed.

The allocation of taxing rights of ship and aircraft leasing profits under Australia's tax treaties

The Australian Federal Commissioner of Taxation recently released Draft Taxation Ruling TR 2008/D3 with the stated purpose of clarifying ‘what profits derived from the leasing of ships or aircraft fall within the ship and aircraft articles of each of Australia’s tax treaties’. In particular, TR 2008/D3 explains the taxing rights over different types of leasing profits, such as a full basis lease in respect of any transport by a ship operated in international traffic and bareboat leases which are ancillary to the lessor transport operations of ships in international traffic. This article outlines the Commissioner’s views on the application of the standard ships and aircraft articles in the tax treaties to which it is a party as well as considering the major variations on the standard adoption. In doing so, guidance is provided as to the allocation of taxing rights of ship and aircraft leasing profits under Australia’s tax treaties.

A transition pedagogy for student engagement and first-year learning, success and retention

This chapter argues that higher education institutions (HEIs) must direct coordinated, whole-of-institution attention to changing, both culturally and structurally, the fundamental and prevailing character of the first-year experience (FYE). It leverages evidence from the sector(Nelson, Kift and Clarke, 2011), from research-led practice in our institution (for example, Kift, Nelson and Clarke, 2010; Nelson et al.,in press) and from research conducted under an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Senior Fellowship (Kift, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c) to assert that student engagement and success should not be left to chance, particularly those aspects such as curriculum design and enactment that are within our institutional control.

Isolation and characterisation of novel microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA markers for the Eastern Water Dragon (Physignathus lesueurii)

Habitat fragmentation as a result of urbanisation is a growing problem for native lizard species. The Eastern Water Dragon (Physignathus lesueurii) is a social arboreal agamid lizard, native to Australia. This species represents an ideal model species to investigate the effect of urbanisation because of their prominent abundance in the urban landscape. Here we describe the isolation and characterisation of a novel set of 74 di-, tri-, and tetramicrosatellites from which 18 were selected and optimised into two multiplexes. The 18 microsatellites generated a total 148 alleles across the two populations. The number of alleles per locus varied from 2 to 18 alleles and measures of Ho and He varied from 0.395 to 0.877 and from 0.441 to 0.880, respectively. We also present primers for four novel mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers. The combined length of the four mtDNA marker pairs was 2,528 bp which included 15 nucleotides changes. In comparison to threatened species, which are generally characterised by small population sizes, the Eastern Water Dragon represents an ideal model species to investigate the effect of urbanisation on their behavioural ecology and connectivity patterns among populations.

Stigmergy in Web 2.0 : a model for site dynamics

Building Web 2.0 sites does not necessarily ensure the success of the site. We aim to better understand what improves the success of a site by drawing insight from biologically inspired design patterns. Web 2.0 sites provide a mechanism for human interaction enabling powerful intercommunication between massive volumes of users. Early Web 2.0 site providers that were previously dominant are being succeeded by newer sites providing innovative social interaction mechanisms. Understanding what site traits contribute to this success drives research into Web sites mechanics using models to describe the associated social networking behaviour. Some of these models attempt to show how the volume of users provides a self-organising and self-contextualisation of content. One model describing coordinated environments is called stigmergy, a term originally describing coordinated insect behavior. This paper explores how exploiting stigmergy can provide a valuable mechanism for identifying and analysing online user behavior specifically when considering that user freedom of choice is restricted by the provided web site functionality. This will aid our building better collaborative Web sites improving the collaborative processes.

Self-calibration of wireless cameras with restricted degrees of freedom

This paper presents an approach for the automatic calibration of low-cost cameras which are assumed to be restricted in their freedom of movement to either pan or tilt movements. Camera parameters, including focal length, principal point, lens distortion parameter and the angle and axis of rotation, can be recovered from a minimum set of two images of the camera, provided that the axis of rotation between the two images goes through the camera’s optical center and is parallel to either the vertical (panning) or horizontal (tilting) axis of the image. Previous methods for auto-calibration of cameras based on pure rotations fail to work in these two degenerate cases. In addition, our approach includes a modified RANdom SAmple Consensus (RANSAC) algorithm, as well as improved integration of the radial distortion coefficient in the computation of inter-image homographies. We show that these modifications are able to increase the overall efficiency, reliability and accuracy of the homography computation and calibration procedure using both synthetic and real image sequences

Performance analysis of PTP components for IEC 61850 process bus applications

New substation automation applications, such as sampled value process buses and synchrophasors, require sampling accuracy of 1 µs or better. The Precision Time Protocol (PTP), IEEE Std 1588, achieves this level of performance and integrates well into Ethernet based substation networks. This paper takes a systematic approach to the performance evaluation of commercially available PTP devices (grandmaster, slave, transparent and boundary clocks) from a variety of manufacturers. The ``error budget'' is set by the performance requirements of each application. The ``expenditure'' of this error budget by each component is valuable information for a system designer. The component information is used to design a synchronization system that meets the overall functional requirements. The quantitative performance data presented shows that this testing is effective and informative. Results from testing PTP performance in the presence of sampled value process bus traffic demonstrate the benefit of a ``bottom up'' component testing approach combined with ``top down'' system verification tests. A test method that uses a precision Ethernet capture card, rather than dedicated PTP test sets, to determine the Correction Field Error of transparent clocks is presented. This test is particularly relevant for highly loaded Ethernet networks with stringent timing requirements. The methods presented can be used for development purposes by manufacturers, or by system integrators for acceptance testing. A sampled value process bus was used as the test application for the systematic approach described in this paper. The test approach was applied, components were selected, and the system performance verified to meet the application's requirements. Systematic testing, as presented in this paper, is applicable to a range of industries that use, rather than develop, PTP for time transfer.

Integrating driving and traffic simulators to study railway level crossing safety interventions : a methodology

Safety at Railway Level Crossings (RLXs) is an important issue within the Australian transport system. Crashes at RLXs involving road vehicles in Australia are estimated to cost $10 million each year. Such crashes are mainly due to human factors; unintentional errors contribute to 46% of all fatal collisions and are far more common than deliberate violations. This suggests that innovative intervention targeting drivers are particularly promising to improve RLX safety. In recent years there has been a rapid development of a variety of affordable technologies which can be used to increase driver’s risk awareness around crossings. To date, no research has evaluated the potential effects of such technologies at RLXs in terms of safety, traffic and acceptance of the technology. Integrating driving and traffic simulations is a safe and affordable approach for evaluating these effects. This methodology will be implemented in a driving simulator, where we recreated realistic driving scenario with typical road environments and realistic traffic. This paper presents a methodology for evaluating comprehensively potential benefits and negative effects of such interventions: this methodology evaluates driver awareness at RLXs , driver distraction and workload when using the technology . Subjective assessment on perceived usefulness and ease of use of the technology is obtained from standard questionnaires. Driving simulation will provide a model of driving behaviour at RLXs which will be used to estimate the effects of such new technology on a road network featuring RLX for different market penetrations using a traffic simulation. This methodology can assist in evaluating future safety interventions at RLXs.

Factors influencing health behaviours of younger women after menopause-inducing cancer treatment

Objective To investigate the health promotion and risk reduction behaviors of younger women previously treated for cancer. Design and Sample Guided by the Precede-Proceed framework, a mixed-method descriptive investigation of the health behaviors of younger women with cancer treatment-induced menopause in one health jurisdiction in Australia was undertaken. Measures This article reports the results of the qualitative interview component of the study. Results Of the 85 women who responded to surveys that quantified their health behaviors, 22 consented to interviews that explored how and why these behaviors might occur. Conclusions Several predisposing, enabling and reinforcing factors that influenced participants will or ability to engage with health-promoting behaviors after cancer treatment were identified in the interviews. These include entrenched precancer diagnosis health behaviors, the disabilities resulting from cancer treatments, perceptions of risk, focused intervention by health professionals and the nature of participants social support. The results indicate a need for flexibility when planning public health initiatives to prepare this cohort for a healthy life after cancer, which accounts for their developmental, knowledge and posttreatment needs.