Waking up with friends : breakfast news, Sunrise and the "televisual sphere"

This paper examines the Australian breakfast news program Sunrise. By drawing on interviews with both viewers and producers, as well as selected textual analysis, it examines the show, how it is "used" as a news source, and explores its role within the audience’s morning routines. By viewing the show as a part of what Baym has termed the "Televisual Sphere", it will argue against the common discourse that the program has simply followed a populist style in pursuit of higher ratings. Because of its success in communicating and connecting with viewers, it may be more constructive to consider Sunrise a very effective form of journalism which has been at the forefront of the recent trend towards increased levels of viewer input in television journalism.

Sensing and control on the sphere

The advantages of a spherical imaging model are increasingly well recognized within the robotics community. Perhaps less well known is the use of the sphere for attitude estimation, control and scene structure estimation. This paper proposes the sphere as a unifying concept, not just for cameras, but for sensor fusion, estimation and control. We review and summarize relevant work in these areas and illustrate this with relevant simulation examples for spherical visual servoing and scene structure estimation.

Cost-effectiveness of a central venous catheter care bundle

Background: A bundled approach to central venous catheter care is currently being promoted as an effective way of preventing catheter-related bloodstream infection (CR-BSI). Consumables used in the bundled approach are relatively inexpensive which may lead to the conclusion that the bundle is cost-effective. However, this fails to consider the nontrivial costs of the monitoring and education activities required to implement the bundle, or that alternative strategies are available to prevent CR-BSI. We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of a bundle to prevent CR-BSI in Australian intensive care patients. ---------- Methods and Findings: A Markov decision model was used to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the bundle relative to remaining with current practice (a non-bundled approach to catheter care and uncoated catheters), or use of antimicrobial catheters. We assumed the bundle reduced relative risk of CR-BSI to 0.34. Given uncertainty about the cost of the bundle, threshold analyses were used to determine the maximum cost at which the bundle remained cost-effective relative to the other approaches to infection control. Sensitivity analyses explored how this threshold alters under different assumptions about the economic value placed on bed-days and health benefits gained by preventing infection. If clinicians are prepared to use antimicrobial catheters, the bundle is cost-effective if national 18-month implementation costs are below $1.1 million. If antimicrobial catheters are not an option the bundle must cost less than $4.3 million. If decision makers are only interested in obtaining cash-savings for the unit, and place no economic value on either the bed-days or the health benefits gained through preventing infection, these cost thresholds are reduced by two-thirds.---------- Conclusions: A catheter care bundle has the potential to be cost-effective in the Australian intensive care setting. Rather than anticipating cash-savings from this intervention, decision makers must be prepared to invest resources in infection control to see efficiency improvements.

Mapping the Australian networked public sphere

This article reports on a research program that has developed new methodologies for mapping the Australian blogosphere and tracking how information is disseminated across it. The authors improve on conventional web crawling methodologies in a number of significant ways: First, the authors track blogging activity as it occurs, by scraping new blog posts when such posts are announced through Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Second, the authors use custom-made tools that distinguish between the different types of content and thus allow us to analyze only the salient discursive content provided by bloggers. Finally, the authors are able to examine these better quality data using both link network mapping and textual analysis tools, to produce both cumulative longer term maps of interlinkages and themes, and specific shorter term snapshots of current activity that indicate current clusters of heavy interlinkage and highlight their key themes. In this article, the authors discuss findings from a yearlong observation of the Australian political blogosphere, suggesting that Australian political bloggers consistently address current affairs, but interpret them differently from mainstream news outlets. The article also discusses the next stage of the project, which extends this approach to an examination of other social networks used by Australians, including Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. This adaptation of our methodology moves away from narrow models of political communication, and toward an investigation of everyday and popular communication, providing a more inclusive and detailed picture of the Australian networked public sphere.

A robust structure and motion replacement for bundle adjustment

This paper demonstrates the application of a robust form of pose estimation and scene reconstruction using data from camera images. We demonstrate results that suggest the ability of the algorithm to rival methods of RANSAC based pose estimation polished by bundle adjustment in terms of solution robustness, speed and accuracy, even when given poor initialisations. Our simulated results show the behaviour of the algorithm in a number of novel simulated scenarios reflective of real world cases that show the ability of the algorithm to handle large observation noise and difficult reconstruction scenes. These results have a number of implications for the vision and robotics community, and show that the application of visual motion estimation on robotic platforms in an online fashion is approaching real-world feasibility.

The effect of temperature dependent viscosity on MHD natural convection flow from an isothermal sphere

Laminar magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) natural convection flow from an isothermal sphere immersed in a fluid with viscosity proportional to linear function of temperature has been studied. The governing boundary layer equations are transformed into a non-dimensional form and the resulting nonlinear system of partial differential equations are reduced to convenient form which are solved numerically by two very efficient methods, namely, (i) Implicit finite difference method together with Keller box scheme and (ii) Direct numerical scheme. Numerical results are presented by velocity and temperature distribution, streamlines and isotherms of the fluid as well as heat transfer characteristics, namely the local skin-friction coefficients and the local heat transfer rate for a wide range of magnetohydrodynamic paramagnet and viscosity-variation parameter.

Using digital storytelling as a change agent for women’s participation in the Turkish public sphere

This thesis builds on the scholarship and practical know-how that have emerged from digital storytelling projects around the world with diverse groups of participants in a range of institutions. I have used the results of these projects to explore the opportunities Digital Storytelling workshop practice may hold for women’s participation in the public sphere in Turkey. Through theoretical discussion and practical experimentation, I examine the potential of Digital Storytelling workshop practice as a means to promote agency and self-expression in a feminist activist organisation, focusing in particular on whether Digital Storytelling can be used as a change agent – as a tool for challenging the idea of public sphere in ways that make it more inclusive of women’s participation. The thesis engages with feminist scholarship’s critiques of the public/private dichotomy, as well as the concept of gender, to seek connections with narrative identity in the light of the analysis of the Digital Storytelling workshops and the digital stories that were created in a feminist context. The study on which this thesis is based saw the introduction of Digital Storytelling to Turkey for the first time through workshops in Istanbul and Antakya, conducted in partnership with the feminist activist organisation Amargi Women’s Academy. Applying the principles of feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis as used by Judith Baxter (2003), I examine two sets of data collected in this project. First, I analyse the interactions during the Digital Storytelling workshops, where women from Amargi created their digital stories in a collaborative setting. This is done through participatory observation notes and in-depth interviews with the workshop participants and facilitators. Second, I seek to uncover the strategies that these women used to ‘speak back to power’ in their digital stories, reading these as texts. I conclude that women from the Amargi network used the workshops to create digital content in order to communicate their concerns about issues that can be classified as gender-specific matters. During this process, they also cooperated, established new connections, and at the end of the process even defined new ways of using, circulating and repurposing their digital stories for feminist activism in Turkey. My research thereby contributes equally to feminist discourse analysis, the study of new-media usage and uptake among non-professionals, and the study of media–public sphere interactions in a particular national setting: Turkey. My conclusion indicates that the process of production is as important as the product itself, and from that I am able to draw out some strategies for developing digitally equipped women’s activism in Turkey.

Bi-objective bundle adjustment: towards large-scale visual sea-floor mapping with a minimal sensor suite

Visual sea-floor mapping is a rapidly growing application for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). AUVs are well-suited to the task as they remove humans from a potentially dangerous environment, can reach depths human divers cannot, and are capable of long-term operation in adverse conditions. The output of sea-floor maps generated by AUVs has a number of applications in scientific monitoring: from classifying coral in high biological value sites to surveying sea sponges to evaluate marine environment health.

Visual sea-floor mapping from low overlap imagery using bi-objective bundle adjustment and constrained motion

In most visual mapping applications suited to Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), stereo visual odometry (VO) is rarely utilised as a pose estimator as imagery is typically of very low framerate due to energy conservation and data storage requirements. This adversely affects the robustness of a vision-based pose estimator and its ability to generate a smooth trajectory. This paper presents a novel VO pipeline for low-overlap imagery from an AUV that utilises constrained motion and integrates magnetometer data in a bi-objective bundle adjustment stage to achieve low-drift pose estimates over large trajectories. We analyse the performance of a standard stereo VO algorithm and compare the results to the modified vo algorithm. Results are demonstrated in a virtual environment in addition to low-overlap imagery gathered from an AUV. The modified VO algorithm shows significantly improved pose accuracy and performance over trajectories of more than 300m. In addition, dense 3D meshes generated from the visual odometry pipeline are presented as a qualitative output of the solution.

Conflict and seduction in the public sphere

In a critical but sympathetic reading of Habermas’s work (1984, 1987a, 1987b, 2003), Luke Goode (2005) recently sought to rework his theory of deliberative democracy in an age of mediated and increasingly digital public spheres. Taking a different approach, Alan McKee (2005) challenged the culture- and class-bound strictures of Habermasian rationalism, instead pursuing a more radically pluralist account of postmodern public spheres. The editors of this special section of Media, Culture & Society invited us to discuss our differing approaches to the public sphere. Goode holds that the institutional bases of contemporary public spheres (political parties, educational institutions or public media) remain of critical importance, albeit in the context of a kaleidoscopic array of unofficial and informal micro-publics, both localized and de-territorialized. In contrast, McKee sustains a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ toward the official, hegemonic institutions of the public sphere since they tend to exclude and delegitimize discourses and practices that challenge their polite middle-class norms. McKee’s recent research has focused on sexual cultures, particularly among youth (McKee, 2011). Goode’s recent work has examined new social media spaces, particularly in relation to news and public debate (e.g. Goode, 2009; Goode et al., 2011). Consequently, our discussion turned to a domain which links our interests: after Goode discussed some of his recent research on (in)civility on YouTube as a new media public sphere, McKee challenged him to consider the case of pornographic websites modelled on social media sites.1 He identifies a greater degree of ‘civility’ in these pornographic sibling sites than on YouTube, requiring careful consideration of what constitutes a ‘public sphere’ in contemporary digital culture. Such sites represent an environment that shatters the opposition of public and private interest, affording public engagement on matters of the body, of intimacy, of gender politics, of pleasure and desire – said by many critics to be ruled out of court in Habermasian theory. Such environments also trouble traditional binaries between the cognitive and the affective, and between the performative and the deliberative. In what follows we explore the differences between our approaches in the form of a dialogue. As is often the case, our approaches seemed less at odds after engaging in conversation than may have initially appeared. But important differences of emphasis remain.

Integration-segregation decisions under general value functions: "create your own bundle - choose 1, 2, or all 3!",

Whether to keep products segregated (e.g., unbundled) or integrate some or all of them (e.g., bundle) has been a problem of profound interest in areas such as portfolio theory in finance, risk capital allocations in insurance and marketing of consumer products. Such decisions are inherently complex and depend on factors such as the underlying product values and consumer preferences, the latter being frequently described using value functions, also known as utility functions in economics. In this paper, we develop decision rules for multiple products, which we generally call ‘exposure units’ to naturally cover manifold scenarios spanning well beyond ‘products’. Our findings show, e.g. that the celebrated Thaler's principles of mental accounting hold as originally postulated when the values of all exposure units are positive (i.e. all are gains) or all negative (i.e. all are losses). In the case of exposure units with mixed-sign values, decision rules are much more complex and rely on cataloging the Bell number of cases that grow very fast depending on the number of exposure units. Consequently, in the present paper, we provide detailed rules for the integration and segregation decisions in the case up to three exposure units, and partial rules for the arbitrary number of units.

Resection-intersection bundle adjustment revisited

Bundle adjustment is one of the essential components of the computer vision toolbox. This paper revisits the resection-intersection approach, which has previously been shown to have inferior convergence properties. Modifications are proposed that greatly improve the performance of this method, resulting in a fast and accurate approach. Firstly, a linear triangulation step is added to the intersection stage, yielding higher accuracy and improved convergence rate. Secondly, the effect of parameter updates is tracked in order to reduce wasteful computation; only variables coupled to significantly changing variables are updated. This leads to significant improvements in computation time, at the cost of a small, controllable increase in error. Loop closures are handled effectively without the need for additional network modelling. The proposed approach is shown experimentally to yield comparable accuracy to a full sparse bundle adjustment (20% error increase) while computation time scales much better with the number of variables. Experiments on a progressive reconstruction system show the proposed method to be more efficient by a factor of 65 to 177, and 4.5 times more accurate (increasing over time) than a localised sparse bundle adjustment approach.

Particle size distribution effects on preferential deposition areas in metal foam wrapped tube bundle

This paper presents a numerical model for understanding particle transport and deposition in metal foam heat exchangers. Two-dimensional steady and unsteady numerical simulations of a standard single row metal foam-wrapped tube bundle are performed for different particle size distributions, i.e. uniform and normal distributions. Effects of different particle sizes and fluid inlet velocities on the overall particle transport inside and outside the foam layer are also investigated. It was noted that the simplification made in the previously-published numerical works in the literature, e.g. uniform particle deposition in the foam, is not necessarily accurate at least for the cases considered here. The results highlight the preferential particle deposition areas both along the tube walls and inside the foam using a developed particle deposition likelihood matrix. This likelihood matrix is developed based on three criteria being particle local velocity, time spent in the foam, and volume fraction. It was noted that the particles tend to deposit near both front and rear stagnation points. The former is explained by the higher momentum and direct exposure of the particles to the foam while the latter only accommodate small particles which can be entrained in the recirculation region formed behind the foam-wrapped tubes.