The new wave : a Brisbane perspective : La Boite Theatre Company's distinctive contribution

In 1967 Brisbane Repertory Theatre made a decision that was to change the city's cultural landscape in a significant and lasting way. Faced with crippling theatre rental costs, Brisbane Rep. found a realistic solution by converting one of its properties - an old Queenslander - into a unique theatre space. The theatre-in-the box that emerged, aptly called La Boite, opened on 23 June 1967 with a production of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. This experimental space excited the imagination of a new, younger audience not previously interested in Brisbane Rep's essentially conservative fare. It attracted a new group of directors and actors keen to be part of a changing repertoire that embraced more radical, non-mainstream productions, some of which were of Australian plays. The decade after 1967 was a period of change and development unprecedented in La Boite's history. Since then the company has sustained and grown its commitment to Australian plays and the commissioning of new works. To what extent was this most significance moment in La Boite's transformational journey influenced by southern 'new waves' of change? With the benefit of hindsight, it is now time for a re-consideration of Brisbane's distinctive contribution to the New Wave.

Power system stability analysis based on descriptive study of electrical indices

In a power network, when a propagation energy wave caused by a disturbance hits a weak link, a reflection is appeared and some of energy is transferred across the link. In this work, an analytical descriptive methodology is proposed to study the dynamical stability of a large scale power system. For this purpose, the measured electrical indices (angle, or voltage/frequency) following a fault in different points among the network are used, and the behaviors of the propagated waves through the lines, nodes and buses are studied. This work addresses a new tool for power system stability analysis based on a descriptive study of electrical measurements. The proposed methodology is also useful to detect the contingency condition and synthesis of an effective emergency control scheme.

Adiabatic compression testing - part I : historical development and evaluation of fluid dynamic processes including shock-wave considerations

Adiabatic compression testing of components in gaseous oxygen is a test method that is utilized worldwide and is commonly required to qualify a component for ignition tolerance under its intended service. This testing is required by many industry standards organizations and government agencies. This paper traces the background of adiabatic compression testing in the oxygen community and discusses the thermodynamic and fluid dynamic processes that occur during rapid pressure surges. This paper is the first of several papers by the authors on the subject of adiabatic compression testing and is presented as a non-comprehensive background and introduction.

Truth, obligation and ethics in the propagation of democracy

In this paper I present an analysis of the language used by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) on its website (NED, 2008). The specific focus of the analysis is on the NED's high usage of the word “should” revealed in computer assisted corpus analysis using Leximancer. Typically we use the word “should” as a term to propose specific courses of action for ourselves and others. It is a marker of obligation and “oughtness”. In other words, its systematic institutional use can be read as a statement of ethics, of how the NED thinks the world ought to behave. As an ostensibly democracy-promoting institution, and one with a clear agenda of implementing American foreign policy, the ethics of NED are worth understanding. Analysis reveals a pattern of grammatical metaphor in which “should” is often deployed counter intuitively, and sometimes ambiguously, as a truth-making tool rather than one for proposing action. The effect is to present NED's imperatives for action as matters of fact rather than ethical or obligatory claims.

Identification of acoustic emission wave modes for accurate source location in plate-like structures

Acoustic emission (AE) technique is a popular tool used for structural health monitoring of civil, mechanical and aerospace structures. It is a non-destructive method based on rapid release of energy within a material by crack initiation or growth in the form of stress waves. Recording of these waves by means of sensors and subsequent analysis of the recorded signals convey information about the nature of the source. Ability to locate the source of stress waves is an important advantage of AE technique; but as AE waves travel in various modes and may undergo mode conversions, understanding of the modes (‘modal analysis’) is often necessary in order to determine source location accurately. This paper presents results of experiments aimed at finding locations of artificial AE sources on a thin plate and identifying wave modes in the recorded signal waveforms. Different source locating techniques will be investigated and importance of wave mode identification will be explored.

Freeway traffic oscillations : microscopic analysis of formations and propagations using Wavelet Transform

In this paper we identify the origins of stop-and-go (or slow-and-go) driving and measure microscopic features of their propagations by analyzing vehicle trajectories via Wavelet Transform. Based on 53 oscillation cases analyzed, we find that oscillations can be originated by either lane-changing maneuvers (LCMs) or car-following behavior (CF). LCMs were predominantly responsible for oscillation formations in the absence of considerable horizontal or vertical curves, whereas oscillations formed spontaneously near roadside work on an uphill segment. Regardless of the trigger, the features of oscillation propagations were similar in terms of propagation speed, oscillation duration, and amplitude. All observed cases initially exhibited a precursor phase, in which slow-and-go motions were localized. Some of them eventually transitioned into a well developed phase, in which oscillations propagated upstream in queue. LCMs were primarily responsible for the transition, although some transitions occurred without LCMs. Our findings also suggest that an oscillation has a regressive effect on car following behavior: a deceleration wave of an oscillation affects a timid driver (with larger response time and minimum spacing) to become less timid and an aggressive driver less aggressive, although this change may be short-lived. An extended framework of Newell’s CF is able to describe the regressive effects with two additional parameters with reasonable accuracy, as verified using vehicle trajectory data.

Minimising wave drag for free surface flow past a two-dimensional stern

Free surface flow past a two-dimensional semi-infinite curved plate is considered, with emphasis given to solving for the shape of the resulting wave train that appears downstream on the surface of the fluid. This flow configuration can be interpreted as applying near the stern of a wide blunt ship. For steady flow in a fluid of finite depth, we apply the Wiener-Hopf technique to solve a linearised problem, valid for small perturbations of the uniform stream. Weakly nonlinear results found using a forced KdV equation are also presented, as are numerical solutions to the fully nonlinear problem, computed using a conformal mapping and a boundary integral technique. By considering different families of shapes for the semi-infinite plate, it is shown how the amplitude of the waves can be minimised. For plates that increase in height as a function of the direction of flow, reach a local maximum, and then point slightly downwards at the point at which the free surface detaches, it appears the downstream wavetrain can be eliminated entirely.

A cell migration device that maintains a defined surface with no cellular damage during wound edge generation

Studying the rate of cell migration provides insight into fundamental cell biology as well as a tool to assess the functionality of synthetic surfaces and soluble environments used in tissue engineering. The traditional tools used to study cell migration include the fence and wound healing assays. In this paper we describe the development of a microchannel based device for the study of cell migration on defined surfaces. We demonstrate that this device provides a superior tool, relative to the previously mentioned assays, for assessing the propagation rate of cell wave fronts. The significant advantage provided by this technology is the ability to maintain a virgin surface prior to the commencement of the cell migration assay. Here, the device is used to assess rates of mouse fibroblasts (NIH 3T3) and human osteosarcoma (SaOS2) cell migration on surfaces functionalized with various extracellular matrix proteins as a demonstration that confining cell migration within a microchannel produces consistent and robust data. The device design enables rapid and simplistic assessment of multiple repeats on a single chip, where surfaces have not been previously exposed to cells or cellular secretions.

A hybrid approach for resolving the electromagnetic fields inside a waveguide loaded with a lossy medium

In this work a novel hybrid approach is presented that uses a combination of both time domain and frequency domain solution strategies to predict the power distribution within a lossy medium loaded within a waveguide. The problem of determining the electromagnetic fields evolving within the waveguide and the lossy medium is decoupled into two components, one for computing the fields in the waveguide including a coarse representation of the medium (the exterior problem) and one for a detailed resolution of the lossy medium (the interior problem). A previously documented cell-centred Maxwell’s equations numerical solver can be used to resolve the exterior problem accurately in the time domain. Thereafter the discrete Fourier transform can be applied to the computed field data around the interface of the medium to estimate the frequency domain boundary condition in-formation that is needed for closure of the interior problem. Since only the electric fields are required to compute the power distribution generated within the lossy medium, the interior problem can be resolved efficiently using the Helmholtz equation. A consistent cell-centred finite-volume method is then used to discretise this equation on a fine mesh and the underlying large, sparse, complex matrix system is solved for the required electric field using the iterative Krylov subspace based GMRES iterative solver. It will be shown that the hybrid solution methodology works well when a single frequency is considered in the evaluation of the Helmholtz equation in a single mode waveguide. A restriction of the scheme is that the material needs to be sufficiently lossy, so that any penetrating waves in the material are absorbed.