Towards airport passenger experience models

This paper reports on the study of passenger experiences and how passengers interact with services, technology and processes at an airport. As part of our research, we have followed people through the airport from check-in to security and from security to boarding. Data was collected by approaching passengers in the departures concourse of the airport and asking for their consent to be videotaped. Data was collected and coded and the analysis focused on both discretionary and process related passenger activities. Our findings show the interdependence between activities and passenger experiences. Within all activities, passengers interact with processes, domain dependent technology, services, personnel and artifacts. These levels of interaction impact on passenger experiences and are interdependent. The emerging taxonomy of activities consists of (i) ownership related activities, (ii) group activities, (iii) individual activities (such as activities at the domain interfaces) and (iv) concurrent activities. This classification is contributing to the development of descriptive models of passenger experiences and how these activities affect the facilitation and design of future airports.

Dealing with the problem of cybercrime

Lack of a universally accepted and comprehensive taxonomy of cybercrime seriously impedes international efforts to accurately identify, report and monitor cybercrime trends. There is, not surprisingly, a corresponding disconnect internationally on the cybercrime legislation front, a much more serious problem and one which the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) says requires „the urgent attention of all nations‟. Yet, and despite the existence of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, a proposal for a global cybercrime treaty was rejected by the United Nations (UN) as recently as April 2010. This paper presents a refined and comprehensive taxonomy of cybercrime and demonstrates its utility for widespread use. It analyses how the USA, the UK, Australia and the UAE align with the CoE Convention and finds that more needs to be done to achieve conformance. We conclude with an analysis of the approaches used in Australia, in Queensland, and in the UAE, in Abu Dhabi, to fight cybercrime and identify a number of shared problems.

Fusing curricula : science, technology and ICT

Curriculum demands continue to increase on school education systems with teachers at the forefront of implementing syllabus requirements. Education is reported frequently as a solution to most societal problems and, as a result of the world’s information explosion, teachers are expected to cover more and more within teaching programs. How can teachers combine subjects in order to capitalise on the competing educational agendas within school timeframes? Fusing curricula requires the bonding of standards from two or more syllabuses. Both technology and ICT complement the learning of science. This study analyses selected examples of preservice teachers’ overviews for fusing science, technology and ICT. These program overviews focused on primary students and the achievement of two standards (one from science and one from either technology or ICT). These primary preservice teachers’ fused-curricula overviews included scientific concepts and related technology and/or ICT skills and knowledge. Findings indicated a range of innovative curriculum plans for teaching primary science through technology and ICT, demonstrating that these subjects can form cohesive links towards achieving the respective learning standards. Teachers can work more astutely by fusing curricula; however further professional development may be required to advance thinking about these processes. Bonding subjects through their learning standards can extend beyond previous integration or thematic work where standards may not have been assessed. Education systems need to articulate through syllabus documents how effective fusing of curricula can be achieved. It appears that education is a key avenue for addressing societal needs, problems and issues. Education is promoted as a universal solution, which has resulted in curriculum overload (Dare, Durand, Moeller, & Washington, 1997; Vinson, 2001). Societal and curriculum demands have placed added pressure on teachers with many extenuating education issues increasing teachers’ workloads (Mobilise for Public Education, 2002). For example, as Australia has weather conducive for outdoor activities, social problems and issues arise that are reported through the media calling for action; consequently schools have been involved in swimming programs, road and bicycle safety programs, and a wide range of activities that had been considered a parental responsibility in the past. Teachers are expected to plan, implement and assess these extra-curricula activities within their already overcrowded timetables. At the same stage, key learning areas (KLAs) such as science and technology are mandatory requirements within all Australian education systems. These systems have syllabuses outlining levels of content and the anticipated learning outcomes (also known as standards, essential learnings, and frameworks). Time allocated for teaching science in obviously an issue. In 2001, it was estimated that on average the time spent in teaching science in Australian Primary Schools was almost an hour per week (Goodrum, Hackling, & Rennie, 2001). More recently, a study undertaken in the U.S. reported a similar finding. More than 80% of the teachers in K-5 classrooms spent less than an hour teaching science (Dorph, Goldstein, Lee, et al., 2007). More importantly, 16% did not spend teaching science in their classrooms. Teachers need to learn to work smarter by optimising the use of their in-class time. Integration is proposed as one of the ways to address the issue of curriculum overload (Venville & Dawson, 2005; Vogler, 2003). Even though there may be a lack of definition for integration (Hurley, 2001), curriculum integration aims at covering key concepts in two or more subject areas within the same lesson (Buxton & Whatley, 2002). This implies covering the curriculum in less time than if the subjects were taught separately; therefore teachers should have more time to cover other educational issues. Expectedly, the reality can be decidedly different (e.g., Brophy & Alleman, 1991; Venville & Dawson, 2005). Nevertheless, teachers report that students expand their knowledge and skills as a result of subject integration (James, Lamb, Householder, & Bailey, 2000). There seems to be considerable value for integrating science with other KLAs besides aiming to address teaching workloads. Over two decades ago, Cohen and Staley (1982) claimed that integration can bring a subject into the primary curriculum that may be otherwise left out. Integrating science education aims to develop a more holistic perspective. Indeed, life is not neat components of stand-alone subjects; life integrates subject content in numerous ways, and curriculum integration can assist students to make these real-life connections (Burnett & Wichman, 1997). Science integration can provide the scope for real-life learning and the possibility of targeting students’ learning styles more effectively by providing more than one perspective (Hudson & Hudson, 2001). To illustrate, technology is essential to science education (Blueford & Rosenbloom, 2003; Board of Studies, 1999; Penick, 2002), and constructing technology immediately evokes a social purpose for such construction (Marker, 1992). For example, building a model windmill requires science and technology (Zubrowski, 2002) but has a key focus on sustainability and the social sciences. Science has the potential to be integrated with all KLAs (e.g., Cohen & Staley, 1982; Dobbs, 1995; James et al., 2000). Yet, “integration” appears to be a confusing term. Integration has an educational meaning focused on special education students being assimilated into mainstream classrooms. The word integration was used in the late seventies and generally focused around thematic approaches for teaching. For instance, a science theme about flight only has to have a student drawing a picture of plane to show integration; it did not connect the anticipated outcomes from science and art. The term “fusing curricula” presents a seamless bonding between two subjects; hence standards (or outcomes) need to be linked from both subjects. This also goes beyond just embedding one subject within another. Embedding implies that one subject is dominant, while fusing curricula proposes an equal mix of learning within both subject areas. Primary education in Queensland has eight KLAs, each with its established content and each with a proposed structure for levels of learning. Primary teachers attempt to cover these syllabus requirements across the eight KLAs in less than five hours a day, and between many of the extra-curricula activities occurring throughout a school year (e.g., Easter activities, Education Week, concerts, excursions, performances). In Australia, education systems have developed standards for all KLAs (e.g., Education Queensland, NSW Department of Education and Training, Victorian Education) usually designated by a code. In the late 1990’s (in Queensland), “core learning outcomes” for strands across all KLA’s. For example, LL2.1 for the Queensland Education science syllabus means Life and Living at Level 2 standard number 1. Thus, a teacher’s planning requires the inclusion of standards as indicated by the presiding syllabus. More recently, the core learning outcomes were replaced by “essential learnings”. They specify “what students should be taught and what is important for students to have opportunities to know, understand and be able to do” (Queensland Studies Authority, 2009, para. 1). Fusing science education with other KLAs may facilitate more efficient use of time and resources; however this type of planning needs to combine standards from two syllabuses. To further assist in facilitating sound pedagogical practices, there are models proposed for learning science, technology and other KLAs such as Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956), Productive Pedagogies (Education Queensland, 2004), de Bono’s Six Hats (de Bono, 1985), and Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1999) that imply, warrant, or necessitate fused curricula. Bybee’s 5 Es, for example, has five levels of learning (engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate; Bybee, 1997) can have the potential for fusing science and ICT standards.

A Two-stage information filtering based on rough decision rule and pattern mining

Information Overload and Mismatch are two fundamental problems affecting the effectiveness of information filtering systems. Even though both term-based and patternbased approaches have been proposed to address the problems of overload and mismatch, neither of these approaches alone can provide a satisfactory solution to address these problems. This paper presents a novel two-stage information filtering model which combines the merits of term-based and pattern-based approaches to effectively filter sheer volume of information. In particular, the first filtering stage is supported by a novel rough analysis model which efficiently removes a large number of irrelevant documents, thereby addressing the overload problem. The second filtering stage is empowered by a semantically rich pattern taxonomy mining model which effectively fetches incoming documents according to the specific information needs of a user, thereby addressing the mismatch problem. The experimental results based on the RCV1 corpus show that the proposed twostage filtering model significantly outperforms the both termbased and pattern-based information filtering models.

Examining the covert nature of product placement : implications for public policy

As consumers become better educated and more skeptical of traditional advertising, alternate forms of marketing communication have emerged that aim to influence audiences unobtrusively. One such example is product placement. Product placement has attracted ongoing debate as to whether it is covert, unethical, and influences consumption. The current article examines the nature and practice of product placement in this light. This taxonomy of product placement attributes is based on current marketing practice and examines whether this is, indeed, a covert marketing strategy. Further, it presents a conceptualization of the influence of product placement on consumer welfare. We highlight that the many forms of product placement necessitate independent evaluation to determine ethical and regulatory standards. Operational solutions for developing public policy are offered.

Palaeoecology of the Mount Etna bat fauna, coastal Eastern Queensland

Global warming is already threatening many animal and plant communities worldwide, however, the effect of climate change on bat populations is poorly known. Understanding the factors influencing the survival of bats is crucial to their conservation, and this cannot be achieved solely by modern ecological studies. Palaeoecological investigations provide a perspective over a much longer temporal scale, allowing the understanding of the dynamic patterns that shaped the distribution of modern taxa. In this study twelve microchiropteran fossil assemblages from Mount Etna, central-eastern Queensland, ranging in age from more than 500,000 years to the present day, were investigated. The aim was to assess the responses of insectivorous bats to Quaternary environmental changes, including climatic fluctuations and recent anthropogenic impacts. In particular, this investigation focussed on the effects of increasing late Pleistocene aridity, the subsequent retraction of rainforest habitat, and the impact of cave mining following European settlement at Mount Etna. A thorough examination of the dental morphology of all available extant Australian bat taxa was conducted in order to identify the fossil taxa prior to their analysis in term of species richness and composition. This detailed odontological work provided new diagnostic dental characters for eighteen species and one genus. It also provided additional useful dental characters for three species and seven genera. This odontological analysis allowed the identification of fifteen fossil bat taxa from the Mount Etna deposits, all being representatives of extant bats, and included ten taxa identified to the species level (i.e., Macroderma gigas, Hipposideros semoni, Rhinolophus megaphyllus, Miniopterus schreibersii, Miniopterus australis, Scoteanax rueppellii, Chalinolobus gouldii, Chalinolobus dwyeri, Chalinolobus nigrogriseus and Vespadelus troughtoni) and five taxa identified to the generic level (i.e., Mormopterus, Taphozous, Nyctophilus, Scotorepens and Vespadelus). Palaeoecological analysis of the fossil taxa revealed that, unlike the non-volant mammal taxa, bats have remained essentially stable in terms of species diversity and community membership between the mid-Pleistocene rainforest habitat and the mesic habitat that occurs today in the region. The single major exception is Hipposideros semoni, which went locally extinct at Mount Etna. Additionally, while intensive mining operations resulted in the abandonment of at least one cave that served as a maternity roost in the recent past, the diversity of the Mount Etna bat fauna has not declined since European colonisation. The overall resilience through time of the bat species discussed herein is perhaps due to their unique ecological, behavioural, and physiological characteristics as well as their ability to fly, which have allowed them to successfully adapt to their changing environment. This study highlights the importance of palaeoecological analyses as a tool to gain an understanding of how bats have responded to environmental change in the past and provides valuable information for the conservation of threatened modern species, such as H. semoni.

Integrating information literacy into higher education curricula : an IL curricular integration model

This study investigates a way to systematically integrate information literacy (IL) into an undergraduate academic programme and develops a model for integrating information literacy across higher education curricula. Curricular integration of information literacy in this study means weaving information literacy into an academic curriculum. In the associated literature, it is also referred to as the information literacy embedding approach or the intra-curricular approach. The key findings identified from this study are presented in 4 categories: the characteristics of IL integration; the key stakeholders in IL integration; IL curricular design strategies; and the process of IL curricular integration. Three key characteristics of the curricular integration of IL are identified: collaboration and negotiation, contextualisation and ongoing interaction with information. The key stakeholders in the curricular integration of IL are recognised as the librarians, the course coordinators and lecturers, the heads of faculties or departments, and the students. Some strategies for IL curricular design include: the use of IL policies and standards in IL curricular design; the combination of face to face and online teaching as an emerging trend; the use of IL assessment tools which play an important role in IL integration. IL can be integrated into the intended curriculum (what an institution expects its students to learn), the offered curriculum (what the teachers teach) and the received curriculum (what students actually learn). IL integration is a process of negotiation, collaboration and the implementation of the intended curriculum. IL can be integrated at different levels of curricula such as: institutional, faculty, departmental, course and class curriculum levels. Based on these key findings, an IL curricular integration model is developed. The model integrates curriculum, pedagogy and learning theories, IL theories, IL guidelines and the collaboration of multiple partners. The model provides a practical approach to integrating IL into multiple courses across an academic degree. The development of the model was based on the IL integration experiences of various disciplines in three universities and the implementation experience of an engineering programme at another university; thus it may be of interest to other disciplines. The model has the potential to enhance IL teaching and learning, curricular development and to implement graduate attributes in higher education. Sociocultural theories are applied to the research process and IL curricular design of this study. Sociocultural theories describe learning as being embedded within social events and occurring as learners interact with other people, objects, and events in a collaborative environment. Sociocultural theories are applied to explore how academic staff and librarians experience the curricular integration of IL; they also support collaboration in the curricular integration of IL and the development of an IL integration model. This study consists of two phases. Phase I (2007) was the interview phase where both academic staff and librarians at three IL active universities were interviewed. During this phase, attention was paid specifically to the practical process of curricular integration of IL and IL activity design. Phase II, the development phase (2007-2008), was conducted at a fourth university. This phase explores the systematic integration of IL into an engineering degree from Year 1 to Year 4. Learning theories such as sociocultural theories, Bloom’s Taxonomy and IL theories are used in IL curricular development. Based on the findings from both phases, an IL integration model was developed. The findings and the model contribute to IL education, research and curricular development in higher education. The sociocultural approach adopted in this study also extends the application of sociocultural theories to the IL integration process and curricular design in higher education.

The life-history and relationships of ‘Orthocladius’ pictipennis Freeman (Diptera: Chironomidae)

The previously unknown larva and pupa of ‘Orthocladius’ pictipennis Freeman have been found, and associated by molecular means. Pharate pupae (males within pupae) allow the link to the described adult. We describe the larva and pupa, and provide short notes on the adult. The taxon is unrelated to Orthocladius – no members of this Holarctic genus are present in New Zealand – and therefore we provide a new generic name, Paulfreemania Cranston and Krosch gen. n. as well as a short discussion of relationships amongst austral Orthocladiinae.

User profiling based on folksonomy information in Web 2.0 for personalized recommender systems

Information overload has become a serious issue for web users. Personalisation can provide effective solutions to overcome this problem. Recommender systems are one popular personalisation tool to help users deal with this issue. As the base of personalisation, the accuracy and efficiency of web user profiling affects the performances of recommender systems and other personalisation systems greatly. In Web 2.0, the emerging user information provides new possible solutions to profile users. Folksonomy or tag information is a kind of typical Web 2.0 information. Folksonomy implies the users‘ topic interests and opinion information. It becomes another source of important user information to profile users and to make recommendations. However, since tags are arbitrary words given by users, folksonomy contains a lot of noise such as tag synonyms, semantic ambiguities and personal tags. Such noise makes it difficult to profile users accurately or to make quality recommendations. This thesis investigates the distinctive features and multiple relationships of folksonomy and explores novel approaches to solve the tag quality problem and profile users accurately. Harvesting the wisdom of crowds and experts, three new user profiling approaches are proposed: folksonomy based user profiling approach, taxonomy based user profiling approach, hybrid user profiling approach based on folksonomy and taxonomy. The proposed user profiling approaches are applied to recommender systems to improve their performances. Based on the generated user profiles, the user and item based collaborative filtering approaches, combined with the content filtering methods, are proposed to make recommendations. The proposed new user profiling and recommendation approaches have been evaluated through extensive experiments. The effectiveness evaluation experiments were conducted on two real world datasets collected from Amazon.com and CiteULike websites. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed user profiling and recommendation approaches outperform those related state-of-the-art approaches. In addition, this thesis proposes a parallel, scalable user profiling implementation approach based on advanced cloud computing techniques such as Hadoop, MapReduce and Cascading. The scalability evaluation experiments were conducted on a large scaled dataset collected from Del.icio.us website. This thesis contributes to effectively use the wisdom of crowds and expert to help users solve information overload issues through providing more accurate, effective and efficient user profiling and recommendation approaches. It also contributes to better usages of taxonomy information given by experts and folksonomy information contributed by users in Web 2.0.

Rough sets based reasoning and pattern mining for a two-stage information filtering system

This paper presents a novel two-stage information filtering model which combines the merits of term-based and pattern- based approaches to effectively filter sheer volume of information. In particular, the first filtering stage is supported by a novel rough analysis model which efficiently removes a large number of irrelevant documents, thereby addressing the overload problem. The second filtering stage is empowered by a semantically rich pattern taxonomy mining model which effectively fetches incoming documents according to the specific information needs of a user, thereby addressing the mismatch problem. The experiments have been conducted to compare the proposed two-stage filtering (T-SM) model with other possible "term-based + pattern-based" or "term-based + term-based" IF models. The results based on the RCV1 corpus show that the T-SM model significantly outperforms other types of "two-stage" IF models.

Sustainable assessment for large science classes : non-multiple choice, randomised assignments through a Learning Management System

This paper reports on the development of a tool that generates randomised, non-multiple choice assessment within the BlackBoard Learning Management System interface. An accepted weakness of multiple-choice assessment is that it cannot elicit learning outcomes from upper levels of Biggs’ SOLO taxonomy. However, written assessment items require extensive resources for marking, and are susceptible to copying as well as marking inconsistencies for large classes. This project developed an assessment tool which is valid, reliable and sustainable and that addresses the issues identified above. The tool provides each student with an assignment assessing the same learning outcomes, but containing different questions, with responses in the form of words or numbers. Practice questions are available, enabling students to obtain feedback on their approach before submitting their assignment. Thus, the tool incorporates automatic marking (essential for large classes), randomised tasks to each student (reducing copying), the capacity to give credit for working (feedback on the application of theory), and the capacity to target higher order learning outcomes by requiring students to derive their answers rather than choosing them. Results and feedback from students are presented, along with technical implementation details.

Whole-proteome phylogeny of large dsDNA viruses and parvoviruses through a composition vector method related to dynamical language model

Background The vast sequence divergence among different virus groups has presented a great challenge to alignment-based analysis of virus phylogeny. Due to the problems caused by the uncertainty in alignment, existing tools for phylogenetic analysis based on multiple alignment could not be directly applied to the whole-genome comparison and phylogenomic studies of viruses. There has been a growing interest in alignment-free methods for phylogenetic analysis using complete genome data. Among the alignment-free methods, a dynamical language (DL) method proposed by our group has successfully been applied to the phylogenetic analysis of bacteria and chloroplast genomes. Results In this paper, the DL method is used to analyze the whole-proteome phylogeny of 124 large dsDNA viruses and 30 parvoviruses, two data sets with large difference in genome size. The trees from our analyses are in good agreement to the latest classification of large dsDNA viruses and parvoviruses by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). Conclusions The present method provides a new way for recovering the phylogeny of large dsDNA viruses and parvoviruses, and also some insights on the affiliation of a number of unclassified viruses. In comparison, some alignment-free methods such as the CV Tree method can be used for recovering the phylogeny of large dsDNA viruses, but they are not suitable for resolving the phylogeny of parvoviruses with a much smaller genome size.

Combating computer crime : an international perspective

Given the serious nature of computer crime, and its global nature and implications, it is clear that there is a crucial need for a common understanding of such criminal activity internationally in order to deal with it effectively. Research into the extent to which legislation, international initiatives, and policy and procedures to combat and investigate computer crime are consistent globally is therefore of enormous importance. The challenge is to study, analyse, and compare the policies and practices of combating computer crime under different jurisdictions in order to identify the extent to which they are consistent with each other and with international guidelines; and the extent of their successes and limitations. The purpose ultimately is to identify areas where improvements are needed and what those improvements should be. This thesis examines approaches used for combating computer crime, including money laundering, in Australia, the UAE, the UK and the USA, four countries which represent a spectrum of economic development and culture. It does so in the context of the guidelines of international organizations such as the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). In the case of the UAE, we examine also the cultural influences which differentiate it from the other three countries and which has necessarily been a factor in shaping its approaches for countering money laundering in particular. The thesis concludes that because of the transnational nature of computer crime there is a need internationally for further harmonisation of approaches for combating computer crime. The specific contributions of the thesis are as follows: „h Developing a new unified comprehensive taxonomy of computer crime based upon the dual characteristics of the role of the computer and the contextual nature of the crime „h Revealing differences in computer crime legislation in Australia, the UAE, the UK and the USA, and how they correspond to the CoE Convention on Cybercrime and identifying a new framework to develop harmonised computer crime or cybercrime legislation globally „h Identifying some important issues that continue to create problems for law enforcement agencies such as insufficient resources, coping internationally with computer crime legislation that differs between countries, having comprehensive documented procedures and guidelines for combating computer crime, and reporting and recording of computer crime offences as distinct from other forms of crime „h Completing the most comprehensive study currently available regarding the extent of money laundered in four such developed or fast developing countries „h Identifying that the UK and the USA are the most advanced with regard to anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) systems among the four countries based on compliance with the FATF recommendations. In addition, the thesis has identified that local factors have affected how the UAE has implemented its financial and AML/CFT systems and reveals that such local and cultural factors should be taken into account when implementing or evaluating any country¡¦s AML/CFT system.

Public sector strategy classification system for shared service identification

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to address the lack of consistent means through which strategies are identified and discussed across theoretical perspectives in the field of business strategy. A standardised referencing system is offered to codify the means by which strategies can be identified, from which new business services and information systems may be derived. This taxonomy was developed using qualitative content analysis study of government agencies’ strategic plans. This taxonomy is useful for identifying strategy formation and determining gaps and opportunities. Managers will benefit from a more transparent strategic design process that reduces ambiguity, aids in identifying and correcting gaps in strategy formulation, and fosters enhanced strategic analysis. Key benefits to academics are the improved dialogue in strategic management field and suggest that progress in the field requires that fundamentals of strategy formulation and classification be considered more carefully. Finally, the formalization of strategy can lead to the clear identification of new business services, which inform ICT investment decisions and shared service prioritisation.