A knowledge-based system for liquid retaining structure design with blackboard architecture

Owing to the high degree of vulnerability of liquid retaining structures to corrosion problems, there are stringent requirements in its design against cracking. In this paper, a prototype knowledge-based system is developed and implemented for the design of liquid retaining structures based on the blackboard architecture. A commercially available expert system shell VISUAL RULE STUDIO working as an ActiveX Designer under the VISUAL BASIC programming environment is employed. Hybrid knowledge representation approach with production rules and procedural methods under object-oriented programming are used to represent the engineering heuristics and design knowledge of this domain. It is demonstrated that the blackboard architecture is capable of integrating different knowledge together in an effective manner. The system is tailored to give advice to users regarding preliminary design, loading specification and optimized configuration selection of this type of structure. An example of application is given to illustrate the capabilities of the prototype system in transferring knowledge on liquid retaining structure to novice engineers. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Angiostrongrylus cantonensis as a cause of cerebrospinal disease in a yellow-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus funereus) and two tawny frogmouths (Podargus strigoides)

A captive yellow-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus funereus) and 2 free-living tawny frogmouths (Podargus strigoides), both native Australian species, were presented with neurologic signs including depression and pelvic limb paresis and paralysis. Despite supportive treatment, all 3 birds died or were euthanatized. On histologic examination, sections of metastrongyloid nematode larvae were found in the central nervous system of all 3 birds, whereas intact larvae, identified as Angiostrongylus cantonensis, were recovered from the brain and spinal cord of 2 birds. Angiostrongylus cantonensis, the rat lungworm. has an obligatory migratory phase through the host's central nervous system, which can cause severe pathologic lesions. Natural infections in accidental hosts have been documented only in mammals, and to our knowledge, angiostrongyliasis in avian hosts has not been previously reported.

Evaluation of unsupervised semantic mapping of natural language with Leximancer concept mapping

The Leximancer system is a relatively new method for transforming lexical co-occurrence information from natural language into semantic patterns in an unsupervised manner. It employs two stages of co-occurrence information extraction-semantic and relational-using a different algorithm for each stage. The algorithms used are statistical, but they employ nonlinear dynamics and machine learning. This article is an attempt to validate the output of Leximancer, using a set of evaluation criteria taken from content analysis that are appropriate for knowledge discovery tasks.

Toxinology in Australia's colonial era: A chronology and perspective of human envenomation in 19th century Australia

The medical management of those envenomed by snakes, spiders and poisonous fish in Australia featured extensively in the writings 19th century doctors, expeditioners and anthropologists. Against the background of this introduced medical doctrine there already existed an extensive tradition of Aboriginal medical lore; techniques of heat treatment, suction, incision and the application of plant-derived pharmacological substances featured extensively in the management of envenomed victims. The application of a hair-string or grass-string ligature, suctioning of the bite-site and incision were practised in a variety of combinations. Such evolved independently of and pre-dated such practices, which were promoted extensively by immigrant European doctors in the late 19th century. Pacific scientific toxinology began in the 17th century with Don Diego de Prado y Tovar's 1606 account of ciguatera. By the end of the 19th century more than 30 papers and books had defined the natural history of Australian elapid poisoning. The medical management of snakebite in Australia was the focus of great controversy from 1860 to 1900. Dogmatic claims of the supposed antidote efficacy of intravenous ammonia by Professor G.B. Halford, and that of strychnine by Dr. Augustus Mueller, claimed mainstream medical attention. This era of potential iatrogenic disaster and dogma was brought to a conclusion by the objective experiments of Joseph Lauterer and Thomas Lane Bancroft in 1890 in Brisbane; and by those of C.J. Martin (from 1893) and Frank Tidswell (from 1898), both of Sydney. The modern era of Australian toxinology developed as a direct consequence of Calmette's discovery, in Paris in 1894, of immune serum, which was protective against snakebite. We review the key contributors and discoveries of toxinology in colonial Australia.

Knowledge management and tourism

The study and practice of knowledge management has grown rapidly since the 90s, driven by social, economic, and technological trends. Tourism has been slow in adopting this app oach due to not only a lack of gearing between researchers and tourism, but also to a 'hostile' knowledge adoption environment. Its acquisition would close the gap and also provide both insights and potential applications for tourism. Research in Australia supports the assertion that this field is a late adopter of knowledge management. In response, this paper provides a model for tourism. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Employment services in an age of e-government

The increasing use of information and communications technologies among government departments and non-government agencies has fundamentally changed the implementation of employment services policy in Australia. The administrative arrangements for governing unemployment and unemployed people are now constituted by a complex contractual interplay between government departments as ‘purchasers’ and a range of small and large private organizations as ‘providers’. Assessing, tracking and monitoring the activities of unemployed people through the various parts of the employment services system has been made possible by developments in information technology and tailored computer programs. Consequently, the discretionary capacity that is traditionally associated with ‘street-level bureaucracy’ has been partly transformed into more prescriptive forms of ‘screen-level bureaucracy’. The knowledge embedded in these new computer-based technologies is considered superior because it is based on ‘objective calculations’, rather than subjective assessments of individual employees. The relationship between the sociopolitical context of unemployment policy and emerging forms of e-government is explored using illustrative findings from a qualitative pilot study undertaken in two Australian sites. The findings suggest that some of the new technologies in the employment services system are welcomed, while other applications are experienced as contradictory to the aims of delivering a personalized and respectful service.

The graying of R&D workgroups: The effects of age diversity on developing publicly usable knowledge

Does the graying of scientific research teams matter? This study addresses how workgroup processes and external environmental factors contribute and inhibit the effect of age diversity in R&D project groups on the production of innovative publicly usable knowledge outcomes in the form of publication outputs. We examined the relationships between group age diversity (age cohort diversity, mean age, age dispersion), R&D workgroup member self-ratings of workgroup processes, their supervisor�s assessment of the external environmental factors the project groups faced, and their supervisor�s ratings of group performance, the number of scientific publicly available publications produced by the group and the use of multiple authorships on publications. Usable data was obtained from 32 R&D workgroups of a large Government Agricultural Research and Development Agency. Consistent with the literature, workgroup processes and external environmental factors were found to directly effect innovation outcomes. Contrary to expectation, but consistent with Social Identity theory, workgroup age diversity generally negatively impacted upon innovation outcomes. An exception was where multiple authorship on publications for project groups increased as the dispersion of age within groups increased. Importantly, workgroups that were both more age homogeneous and perceived to have optimally functioning work processes produced more R&D innovation outcomes than other groups. Generally, these differences appear to be related to the greater division of labor practices (and less multi-tasking) employed by the older and more homogeneous workgroups. Implications for R&D workgroup resource theory and practices are discussed.

Machine learning for matching astronomy catalogues

An emerging issue in the field of astronomy is the integration, management and utilization of databases from around the world to facilitate scientific discovery. In this paper, we investigate application of the machine learning techniques of support vector machines and neural networks to the problem of amalgamating catalogues of galaxies as objects from two disparate data sources: radio and optical. Formulating this as a classification problem presents several challenges, including dealing with a highly unbalanced data set. Unlike the conventional approach to the problem (which is based on a likelihood ratio) machine learning does not require density estimation and is shown here to provide a significant improvement in performance. We also report some experiments that explore the importance of the radio and optical data features for the matching problem.

A border-based approach for hiding sensitive frequent itemsets

Sharing data among organizations often leads to mutual benefit. Recent technology in data mining has enabled efficient extraction of knowledge from large databases. This, however, increases risks of disclosing the sensitive knowledge when the database is released to other parties. To address this privacy issue, one may sanitize the original database so that the sensitive knowledge is hidden. The challenge is to minimize the side effect on the quality of the sanitized database so that nonsensitive knowledge can still be mined. In this paper, we study such a problem in the context of hiding sensitive frequent itemsets by judiciously modifying the transactions in the database. To preserve the non-sensitive frequent itemsets, we propose a border-based approach to efficiently evaluate the impact of any modification to the database during the hiding process. The quality of database can be well maintained by greedily selecting the modifications with minimal side effect. Experiments results are also reported to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. © 2005 IEEE

Performing traditional knowledge using a game engine: Communicating and sharing Australian Aboriginal knowledge practices

This paper challenges current practices in the use of digital media to communicate Australian Aboriginal knowledge practices in a learning context. It proposes that any digital representation of Aboriginal knowledge practices needs to examine the epistemology and ontology of these practices in order to design digital environments that effectively support and enable existing Aboriginal knowledge practices in the real world. Central to this is the essential task of any new digital representation of Aboriginal knowledge to resolve the conflict between database and narrative views of knowledge (L. Manovich, 2001). This is in order to provide a tool that complements rather than supplants direct experience of traditional knowledge practices (V. Hart, 2001). This paper concludes by reporting on the recent development of an advanced learning technology that addresses this.