Wireless telemedicine for the delivery of specialist paediatric services to the bedside

A mobile interactive online health system was used to conduct virtual ward rounds at a regional hospital which had no specialist paediatrician. The system was wireless, which allowed telepaediatric services to be delivered direct to the bedside. Between December 2004 and May 2005, 43 virtual ward rounds were coordinated between specialists based in Brisbane and local staff at the Gladstone Hospital. Eighty-six consultations were provided for 64 patients. The most common conditions included asthma (27%), chest infections (12%), gastroenteritis (10%) and urinary tract infections (10%). In the majority of cases, there were partial (67%) or complete changes (11%) in the clinical management of patients. Specialist services were offered by a team of 13 clinicians at the Royal Children's Hospital: 10 general paediatricians, two physiotherapists and one registered nurse. Feedback from all consultants involved in the service and local staff in Gladstone was extremely positive. In 43 videoconference calls there were three technical problems, probably due to an intermittent mains power supply at the regional hospital. There appears to be potential for other rural and regional hospitals to adopt this model of service delivery.

Superstring: A scalable service discovery protocol for the wide-area pervasive environment

Arguably, the world has become one large pervasive computing environment. Our planet is growing a digital skin of a wide array of sensors, hand-held computers, mobile phones, laptops, web services and publicly accessible web-cams. Often, these devices and services are deployed in groups, forming small communities of interacting devices. Service discovery protocols allow processes executing on each device to discover services offered by other devices within the community. These communities can be linked together to form a wide-area pervasive environment, allowing processes in one p u p tu interact with services in another. However, the costs of communication and the protocols by which this communication is mediated in the wide-area differ from those of intra-group, or local-area, communication. Communication is an expensive operation for small, battery powered devices, but it is less expensive for servem and workstations, which have a constant power supply and 81'e connected to high bandwidth networks. This paper introduces Superstring, a peer to-peer service discovery protocol optimised fur use in the wide-area. Its goals are to minimise computation and memory overhead in the face of large numbers of resources. It achieves this memory and computation scalability by distributing the storage cost of service descriptions and the computation cost of queries over multiple resolvers.

Optimal dispatch of spinning reserve in a competitive electricity market using genetic algorithms

Ancillary service plays a key role in maintaining operation security of the power system in a competitive electricity market. The spinning reserve is one of the most important ancillary services that should be provided effectively. This paper presents the design of an integrated market for energy and spinning reserve service with particular emphasis on coordinated dispatch of bulk power and spinning reserve services. A new market dispatching mechanism has been developed to minimize the cost of service while maintaining system security. Genetic algorithms (GA) are used for finding the global optimal solutions for this dispatch problem. Case studies and corresponding analyses have been carried out to demonstrate and discuss the efficiency and usefulness of the proposed method.

Optimal design of a regenerative dynamic dynamometer using genetic algorithms

This paper presents an approach for optimal design of a fully regenerative dynamic dynamometer using genetic algorithms. The proposed dynamometer system includes an energy storage mechanism to adaptively absorb the energy variations following the dynamometer transients. This allows the minimum power electronics requirement at the mains power supply grid to compensate for the losses. The overall dynamometer system is a dynamic complex system and design of the system is a multi-objective problem, which requires advanced optimisation techniques such as genetic algorithms. The case study of designing and simulation of the dynamometer system indicates that the genetic algorithm based approach is able to locate a best available solution in view of system performance and computational costs.

Supply chain management as beyond operational efficiency

The orthodoxy of supply chain management (SCM) emphasises competitive advantage through increased operational efficiency and market responsiveness from production and distribution processes into the hands of consumers. It anticipates that future competition will be between chains rather than between firms. While well established in other industry sectors, the SCM concept is newly developed in the Australian agri-food sector. Critical review of the concept has identified key issues of power among channel members, processes of chain initiation and innovation, and the inability of SCM to offer a viable business strategy for some firms. Building on those insights, this paper examines the supply chain concept for horticulture. Horticultural products are characterised by perishability, heterogeneity and lags in production response to market signals. Producers’ profits are vulnerable to quantity, timing of supply and product specification. Many supply chains in smaller industries are loose, fragmented, interwoven, unstable and unique! Firms operating within these environments need an astute understanding of the chains, the hierarchy of channel members and their relative position. Effective business strategies – for individual firms and supply chains - need to be developed and redeveloped to accommodate the dynamic nature of horticulture. Two case studies are discussed as contributions to this early stage of the theoretical development of supply chain management. The SCM concept also has implications for horticultural researchers, involving a wider range of industry stakeholders, technical problems and research skills. As for business management, the usefulness of the concept will depend on its capacity to increase responsiveness to customers’ preferences and customer value.

Outsourcing and inter-intra supply chain dynamics: Strategic management issues

This article analyzes the outsourcing of information technology services, using an action inquiry methodology. Research spanned the disengagement and beginning of IT service functions transferred from work groups in the parent company to outsource teams. Results identified the importance of addressing strategic issues and inter/intra relationships between parent company team members and their outsource-counterparts. Conclusions indicate that behavioral issues such as psychological contracts within inter/intra work groups, power and trust are highly significant managerial issues in the success or failure of an outsourcing strategy.

A power system control scheme based on security visualisation in parameter space

Power system real time security assessment is one of the fundamental modules of the electricity markets. Typically, when a contingency occurs, it is required that security assessment and enhancement module shall be ready for action within about 20 minutes’ time to meet the real time requirement. The recent California black out again highlighted the importance of system security. This paper proposed an approach for power system security assessment and enhancement based on the information provided from the pre-defined system parameter space. The proposed scheme opens up an efficient way for real time security assessment and enhancement in a competitive electricity market for single contingency case

Comparison of BR and QR Eigenvalue Algorithms for Power System Small Signal Stability Analysis

The BR algorithm is a novel and efficient method to find all eigenvalues of upper Hessenberg matrices and has never been applied to eigenanalysis for power system small signal stability. This paper analyzes differences between the BR and the QR algorithms with performance comparison in terms of CPU time based on stopping criteria and storage requirement. The BR algorithm utilizes accelerating strategies to improve its performance when computing eigenvalues of narrowly banded, nearly tridiagonal upper Hessenberg matrices. These strategies significantly reduce the computation time at a reasonable level of precision. Compared with the QR algorithm, the BR algorithm requires fewer iteration steps and less storage space without depriving of appropriate precision in solving eigenvalue problems of large-scale power systems. Numerical examples demonstrate the efficiency of the BR algorithm in pursuing eigenanalysis tasks of 39-, 68-, 115-, 300-, and 600-bus systems. Experiment results suggest that the BR algorithm is a more efficient algorithm for large-scale power system small signal stability eigenanalysis.

What are the economic prospects of developing aquaculture in Queensland to supply the low price white fillet market? Lessons from the US channel catfish industry

The farming of channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) is the largest (by volume and value) and most successful (in terms of market impact) aquaculture industry in the United States of America. Farmed channel catfish is the most consumed (in terms of volume per capita) fish fillet in the U.S. market. Within Australia, it has long been suggested by researchers and industry that silver perch (Bidyanus bidyanus) and possibly other endemic teraponid species possess similar biological attributes for aquaculture as channel catfish and may have the potential to generate a similar industry. The current teraponid industry in Australia, however, shows very little resemblance to the catfish industry, either in production style or market philosophy. A well established budget framework from the literature on U.S. channel catfish farming has been adapted for cost and climate conditions of the Burdekin region, Queensland, Australia. Breakeven prices for the hypothetical teraponid farms were found to be up to 50% higher than those published for catfish farms however were much lower than those reported for silver perch production in Australia using current, endemic styles of production. The breakeven prices for the hypothetical teraponid farms were most sensitive (in order of significance) to feed prices, production rates, interest rates, fingerling prices and electricity prices. At equivalent feed costs the costs of production between the hypothetical catfish farms in the Mississippi, U.S. and the hypothetical teraponid farms in the Burdekin, Australia were remarkably similar. The cost of feeds suitable for teraponid production in Australia are currently around double that of catfish feeds in the U.S. Issues currently hindering the development of a large scale teraponid industry in Australia are discussed.

The critical power function is dependent on the duration of the predictive exercise tests chosen

The linear relationship between work accomplished (W-lim) and time to exhaustion (t(lim)) can be described by the equation: W-lim = a + CP.t(lim). Critical power (CP) is the slope of this line and is thought to represent a maximum rate of ATP synthesis without exhaustion, presumably an inherent characteristic of the aerobic energy system. The present investigation determined whether the choice of predictive tests would elicit significant differences in the estimated CP. Ten female physical education students completed, in random order and on consecutive days, five art-out predictive tests at preselected constant-power outputs. Predictive tests were performed on an electrically-braked cycle ergometer and power loadings were individually chosen so as to induce fatigue within approximately 1-10 mins. CP was derived by fitting the linear W-lim-t(lim) regression and calculated three ways: 1) using the first, third and fifth W-lim-t(lim) coordinates (I-135), 2) using coordinates from the three highest power outputs (I-123; mean t(lim) = 68-193 s) and 3) using coordinates from the lowest power outputs (I-345; mean t(lim) = 193-485 s). Repeated measures ANOVA revealed that CPI123 (201.0 +/- 37.9W) > CPI135 (176.1 +/- 27.6W) > CPI345 (164.0 +/- 22.8W) (P < 0.05). When the three sets of data were used to fit the hyperbolic Power-t(lim) regression, statistically significant differences between each CP were also found (P < 0.05). The shorter the predictive trials, the greater the slope of the W-lim-t(lim) regression; possibly because of the greater influence of 'aerobic inertia' on these trials. This may explain why CP has failed to represent a maximal, sustainable work rate. The present findings suggest that if CP is to represent the highest power output that an individual can maintain for a very long time without fatigue then CP should be calculated over a range of predictive tests in which the influence of aerobic inertia is minimised.