Integration of opinion into customer analysis model

As e-commerce is becoming more and more popular, the number of customer reviews that a product receives grows rapidly. In order to enhance customer satisfaction and their shopping experiences, it has become important to analysis customers reviews to extract opinions on the products that they buy. Thus, Opinion Mining is getting more important than before especially in doing analysis and forecasting about customers’ behavior for businesses purpose. The right decision in producing new products or services based on data about customers’ characteristics means profit for organization/company. This paper proposes a new architecture for Opinion Mining, which uses a multidimensional model to integrate customers’ characteristics and their comments about products (or services). The key step to achieve this objective is to transfer comments (opinions) to a fact table that includes several dimensions, such as, customers, products, time and locations. This research presents a comprehensive way to calculate customers’ orientation for all possible products’ attributes.

Nanoporous Graphitic-C3N4@Carbon Metal-Free Electrocatalysts for Highly Efficient Oxygen Reduction

Based on theoretical prediction, a g-C3N4@carbon metal-free oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalyst was designed and synthesized by uniform incorporation of g-C3N4 into a mesoporous carbon to enhance the electron transfer efficiency of g-C3N4. The resulting g-C3N4@carbon composite exhibited competitive catalytic activity (11.3 mA cm–2 kinetic-limiting current density at −0.6 V) and superior methanol tolerance compared to a commercial Pt/C catalyst. Furthermore, it demonstrated significantly higher catalytic efficiency (nearly 100% of four-electron ORR process selectivity) than a Pt/C catalyst. The proposed synthesis route is facile and low-cost, providing a feasible method for the development of highly efficient electrocatalysts.

Livestock production in a changing climate : adaptation and mitigation research in Australia

Climate change presents a range of challenges for animal agriculture in Australia. Livestock production will be affected by changes in temperature and water availability through impacts on pasture and forage crop quantity and quality, feed-grain production and price, and disease and pest distributions. This paper provides an overview of these impacts and the broader effects on landscape functionality, with a focus on recent research on effects of increasing temperature, changing rainfall patterns, and increased climate variability on animal health, growth, and reproduction, including through heat stress, and potential adaptation strategies. The rate of adoption of adaptation strategies by livestock producers will depend on perceptions of the uncertainty in projected climate and regional-scale impacts and associated risk. However, management changes adopted by farmers in parts of Australia during recent extended drought and associated heatwaves, trends consistent with long-term predicted climate patterns, provide some insights into the capacity for practical adaptation strategies. Animal production systems will also be significantly affected by climate change policy and national targets to address greenhouse gas emissions, since livestock are estimated to contribute ~10% of Australia’s total emissions and 8–11% of global emissions, with additional farm emissions associated with activities such as feed production. More than two-thirds of emissions are attributed to ruminant animals. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities facing livestock industries in Australia in adapting to and mitigating climate change. It examines the research needed to better define practical options to reduce the emissions intensity of livestock products, enhance adaptation opportunities, and support the continued contribution of animal agriculture to Australia’s economy, environment, and regional communities.

Integrated configuration of enterprise systems for interoperability : towards process model and business document specification alignment

Enterprise Systems (ES) can be understood as the de facto standard for holistic operational and managerial support within an organization. Most commonly ES are offered as commercial off-the-shelf packages, requiring customization in the user organization. This process is a complex and resource-intensive task, which often prevents small and midsize enterprises (SME) from undertaking configuration projects. Especially in the SME market independent software vendors provide pre-configured ES for a small customer base. The problem of ES configuration is shifted from the customer to the vendor, but remains critical. We argue that the yet unexplored link between process configuration and business document configuration must be closer examined as both types of configuration are closely tied to one another.

Vitamin D status and skin cancer risk independent of time outdoors : 11-year prospective study in and Australian community

Vitamin D may have anti-skin cancer effects, but population-based evidence is lacking. We therefore assessed associations between vitamin D status and skin cancer risk in an Australian subtropical community. We analyzed prospective skin cancer incidence for 11 years following baseline assessment of serum 25(OH)-vitamin D in 1,191 adults (average age 54 years) and used multivariable logistic regression analysis to adjust risk estimates for age, sex, detailed assessments of usual time spent outdoors, phenotypic characteristics, and other possible confounders. Participants with serum 25(OH)-vitamin D concentrations above 75 nmol  l(-1) versus those below 75 nmol  l(-1) more often developed basal cell carcinoma (odds ratio (OR)=1.51 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.10-2.07, P=0.01) and melanoma (OR=2.71 (95% CI: 0.98-7.48, P=0.05)). Squamous cell carcinoma incidence tended to be lower in persons with serum 25(OH)-vitamin D concentrations above 75 nmol  l(-1) compared with those below 75 nmol  l(-1) (OR=0.67 (95% CI: 0.44-1.03, P=0.07)). Vitamin D status was not associated with skin cancer incidence when participants were classified as above or below 50 nmol  l(-1) 25(OH)-vitamin D. Our findings do not indicate that the carcinogenicity of high sun exposure can be counteracted by high vitamin D status. High sun exposure is to be avoided as a means to achieve high vitamin D status.

The population dynamics of the Galapagos Flightless Cormorant Phalacrocorax harrisi in relation to sea temperature

The Flightless Cormorant Phalacrocorax harrisi is restricted to c. 400 km of the western coastline of the Galápagos archipelago coinciding with the local occurrence of seasonal upwelling of oceanic currents. Individuals frequently make more than one breeding attempt per year, usually change mates, and when juveniles are raised, females desert them to the further care of their mates who complete the rearing alone. Here we report data from a ten-year historical study of a colony stretching c.2 km along the coast-line and representing c. 12% of the total population of the species. The number of clutches laid and juveniles fledged were linked to the occurrence of cold water in off-shore foraging grounds. Most Flightless Cormorants have attachments to local stretches of coastline several hundred metres long. However, a few birds travelled many kilometres, including between colonies, sometimes over open sea. We show that males invest more in nest-building and feeding of the offspring than their mates, and we relate this to the (presumed) in-bred nature of the colony and to male and female reproductive strategies. Our data validate a published demographic model of the species (Valle 1995).

Legal regulation of corporate social responsibility : evidence from Bangladesh

The business corporations' internal strategies in weak economies merely respond to the public policy goals for social development. The role of corporate self-regulation in Bangladesh is not an exception. The extent to which legal regulations related to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of Bangladesh could contribute to including CSR notions at the core of self-regulated corporate responsibility is the focus of this paper. It explains that the major Bangladeshi laws related to corporate regulation and responsibility do not possess recurrent features to compel corporate self-regulators to contribute to developing a socially responsible corporate culture in Bangladesh. It suggests that, instead of relying on the prescriptive mode of regulation, Bangladesh could develop more business-friendly but strategic legal regulations.

Dermal fibroblast infiltration of poly(ε-caprolactone) scaffolds fabricated by melt electrospinning in a direct writing mode

Melt electrospinning in a direct writing mode is a recent additive manufacturing approach to fabricate porous scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. In this study, we describe porous and cell-invasive poly (ε-caprolactone) scaffolds fabricated by combining melt electrospinning and a programmable x–y stage. Fibers were 7.5 ± 1.6 µm in diameter and separated by interfiber distances ranging from 8 to 133 µm, with an average of 46 ± 22 µm. Micro-computed tomography revealed that the resulting scaffolds had a highly porous (87%), three-dimensional structure. Due to the high porosity and interconnectivity of the scaffolds, a top-seeding method was adequate to achieve fibroblast penetration, with cells present throughout and underneath the scaffold. This was confirmed histologically, whereby a 3D fibroblast-scaffold construct with full cellular penetration was produced after 14 days in vitro. Immunohistochemistry was used to confirm the presence and even distribution of the key dermal extracellular matrix proteins, collagen type I and fibronectin. These results show that melt electrospinning in a direct writing mode can produce cell invasive scaffolds, using simple top-seeding approaches.

A critical assessment of the Australian OHS accreditation system's "Body of Knowledge (BoK)"

In response to an increasing perception of poor OHS consultancy quality amongst the Australian public, regulator and OHS professionals, the Safety Institute Australia (SIA) was tasked by the Victorian government to establish an accreditation process for OHS professionals. The OHS accreditation board decided to base its accreditation on a core "body of knowledge" (BoK), against which applicants are assesssed. While the foundation and structure of the BoK is unclear, the BoK consists of a collection of essays from a variety of invited authors. The BoK comprises about 811 pages in 34 chapters, with significant redundancy and considerable subjective components. The SIA BoK is benchmarked against two international best-practices, the German "Core Definition, Object Catalog and Research Domains of Labour Science (Ergonomics)" (Luzcak, Volpert, Raeithel & Schwier, 1989)(100 pages) and the American "Core Competency Model" for the "Master's Degree in Public Health" (Association of Schools of Public Health, 2006) (21 pages). Both "core definition" and "core competency model" are on a comparative level to the BoK. While the German expert panel consisted of 14 eminent professors, the American panel consisted of 135 members, organized in 6 groups chaired by discipline leading academics. The Australian approach employed a broad approach, where 137 professionals, consultants, emerging academics and academics contributed to 8 workshops. Both the German and the American panels maintained an open communication amongst members and with the discipline community throughout the process, whereas SIA applied an open and directed peer-review process. Moreover, the German process involved an analysis of all congress content and journal publications in the scientific domain in a set timeframe, which were then systematically clustered. These results were further expanded by structured interviews with 38 professors in the discpline, grasping their research and teaching practice. The American workgroup however assumed core scientific areas, underlying the domain. Based upon the a-priori assumption, they then established well defined competencies across all areas using a modified Delphi process. Although the BoK attempts to explore the knowledge in the OHS domain without an imposed structure in a bottom-up approach, it does not result in a structured systematic of the science. We conclude that the outcome of the German, rigorous academic approach, and the US American democratic approach under unambiguous academic leadership both outperform the Australian advocacy group approach. This product was determined for both structure and content of the taxonomy delivered through the processes.

Speech interference and transmission on residential balconies with road traffic noise

Balcony acoustic treatments can mitigate the effects of community road traffic noise. To further investigate, a theoretical study into the effects of balcony acoustic treatment combinations on speech interference and transmission is conducted for various street geometries. Nine different balcony types are investigated using a combined specular and diffuse reflection computer model. Diffusion in the model is calculated using the radiosity technique. The balcony types include a standard balcony with or without a ceiling and with various combinations of parapet, ceiling absorption and ceiling shield. A total of 70 balcony and street geometrical configurations are analyzed with each balcony type, resulting in 630 scenarios. In each scenario the reverberation time, speech interference level (SIL) and speech transmission index (STI) are calculated. These indicators are compared to determine trends based on the effects of propagation path, inclusion of opposite buildings and difference with a reference position outside the balcony. The results demonstrate trends in SIL and STI with different balcony types. It is found that an acoustically treated balcony reduces speech interference. A parapet provides the largest improvement, followed by absorption on the ceiling. The largest reductions in speech interference arise when a combination of balcony acoustic treatments are applied.

Creative city index [Report]

The CCI Creative City Index (CCI-CCI) is a new approach to the measurement and ranking of creative global cities. It is constructed over eight principal dimensions, each with multiple distinct elements. Some of these dimensions are familiar from other global city indexes, such as the MORI or GaWC indexes, which account for the size of creative industries, the scale of cultural amenities, or the flows of creative people and global connectedness. In addition to these indicators, the CCI-CCI contributes several new dimensions. These measure the demand side of creative participation, the attention economy, user-created content, and the productivity of socially networked consumers. Global creative cities can often seem alike, in respect of per-capita measures of factors such as public spending on cultural amenities, or the number of hotels and restaurants. This is to be expected when people and capital are relatively free to move, and where economic and political institutions are broadly comparable. However, we find that different cities can register far larger differences at the level of consumer-co-creation and especially digital creative ‘microproductivity’. To explain this finding, we review the logic and rationale of creative and global city index construction and present a review of previous and contemporary indexes. We set out the case for our new model of a creative city index by showing why greater attention to consumer co-creation and microproductivity are important, as well as examining how these factors have been previously overlooked. We show how we have CCI-CCI Creative City Index measured these additional factors and indicate the effect they have on creative and global city indexes. We then present the findings from a pilot study of six cities, two Australian, two German and two from the UK, to indicate how the new index is calculated and applied. Our results indicate much greater variance arising from the new arguments between cities.

An objective measure of reactive behaviour in horses

Several tests have been devised in an attempt to detect behaviour modification due to training, supplements or diet in horses. These tests rely on subjective observations in combination with physiological measures, such as heart rate (HR) and plasma cortisol concentrations, but these measures do not definitively identify behavioural changes. The aim of the present studies was to develop an objective and relevant measure of horse reactivity. In Study 1, HR responses to auditory stimuli, delivered over 6 days, designed to safely startle six geldings confined to individual stalls was studied to determine if peak HR, unconfounded by physical exertion, was a reliable measure of reactivity. Both mean (±SEM) resting HR (39.5 ± 1.9 bpm) and peak HR (82 ± 5.5 bpm) in response to being startled in all horses were found to be consistent over the 6 days. In Study 2, HR, plasma cortisol concentrations and speed of departure from an enclosure (reaction speed (RS)) in response to a single stimulus of six mares were measured when presented daily over 6 days. Peak HR response (133 ± 4 bpm) was consistent over days for all horses, but RS increased (3.02 ± 0.72 m/s on Day 1 increasing to 4.45 ± 0.53 m/s on Day 6; P = 0.005). There was no effect on plasma cortisol, so this variable was not studied further. In Study 3, using the six geldings from Study 1, the RS test was refined and a different startle stimulus was used each day. Again, there was no change in peak HR (97.2 ± 5.8 bpm) or RS (2.9 ± 0.2 m/s on Day 1 versus 3.0 ± 0.7 m/s on Day 6) over time. In the final study, mild sedation using acepromazine maleate (0.04 mg/kg BW i.v.) decreased peak HR in response to a startle stimulus when the horses (n = 8) were confined to a stall (P = 0.006), but not in an outdoor environment when the RS test was performed. However, RS was reduced by the mild sedation (P = 0.02). In conclusion, RS may be used as a practical and objective test to measure both reactivity and changes in reactivity in horses.

Mesenchymal stem cells and nano-structured surfaces

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) represent multipotent stromal cells that can differentiate into a variety of cell types, including osteoblasts (bone cells), chondrocytes (cartilage cells), and adipocytes (fat cells). Their multi-potency provides a great promise as a cell source for tissue engineering and cell-based therapy for many diseases, particularly bone diseases and bone formation. To be able to direct and modulate the differentiation of MSCs into the desired cell types in situ in the tissue, nanotechnology is introduced and used to facilitate or promote cell growth and differentiation. These nano-materials can provide a fine structure and tuneable surface in nanoscales to help the cell adhesion and promote the cell growth and differentiation of MSCs. This could be a dominant direction in future for stem cells based therapy or tissue engineering for various diseases. Therefore, the isolation, manipulation, and differentiation of MSCs are very important steps to make meaningful use of MSCs for disease treatments. In this chapter, we have described a method of isolating MSC from human bone marrow, and how to culture and differentiate them in vitro. We have also provided research methods on how to use MSCs in an in vitro model and how to observe MSC biological response on the surface of nano-scaled materials.

Prison

The prison casts a long shadow over Australian cinema. This chapter discusses Australian films set in penal settlements and prisons in the past, present and future. Themes discussed include the fictional depiction of actual events and people, gender and the prison film, the outback as virtual prison, the cell, and stories of unjust imprisonment and systemic brutality.

Influence of oxidation and reduction conditions upon the morphology of silica-supported polycrystalline silver catalysts

The effect of oxidation and reduction conditions upon the morphology of polycrystalline silver catalysts has been investigated by means of in situ Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Characterization of the sample was achieved by inspection of the νas(COO) band profile of adsorbed formate, recorded after dosing with formic acid at ambient temperature. Evidence was obtained for the existence of a silver surface reconstructed by the presence of subsurface oxygen in addition to the conventional family of Ag(111) and Ag(110) crystal faces. Oxidation at 773 K facilitated the reconstruction of silver planes due to the formation of subsurface oxygen species. Prolonged oxygen treatment at 773 K also caused particle fragmentation as a consequence of excessive oxygen penetration of the silver catalyst at defect sites. It was also deduced that the presence of oxygen in the gas phase stabilized the growth of silver planes which could form stronger bonds with oxygen. In contrast, high-temperature thermal treatment in vacuum induced significant sintering of the silver catalyst. Reduction at 773 K resulted in substantial quantities of dissolved hydrogen (and probably hydroxy species) in the bulk silver structure. Furthermore, enhanced defect formation in the catalyst was also noted, as evidenced by the increased concentration of formate species associated with oxygen-reconstructed silver faces.