Islands in the stream : Australia and Japan face globalisation

A major study of how Australia and Japan, two island nations, face the currents of globalisation. Fascinating chapters by distinguished students of Australia and Japan, and they explore the impact of globalisation.

Utility of real-time decision-making in commercial data stream mining domains

The objective is to measure utility of real-time commercial decision making. It is important due to a higher possibility of mistakes in real-time decisions, problems with recording actual occurrences, and significant costs associated with predictions produced by algorithms. The first contribution is to use overall utility and represent individual utility with a monetary value instead of a prediction. The second is to calculate the benefit from predictions using the utility-based decision threshold. The third is to incorporate cost of predictions. For experiments, overall utility is used to evaluate communal and spike detection, and their adaptive versions. The overall utility results show that with fewer alerts, communal detection is better than spike detection. With more alerts, adaptive communal and spike detection are better than their static versions. To maximise overall utility with all algorithms, only 1% to 4% in the highest predictions should be alerts.

Utilising solar energy within conventional coal fired power stations

Although the thermodynamic advantages of using solar energy to replace the bled off steam in the regeneration system of Rankine cycle coal fired power stations has been proven theoretically, the practical techno/economic feasibility of the concept has yet to be confirmed relative to real power station applications. To investigate this concept further, computer modelling software “THERMSOLV” was specifically developed for this project at Deakin University, together with the support of the Victorian power industry and Australian Research Council (ARC). This newly developed software simulates the steam cycle to assess the techno/economic merit of the solar aided concept for various power station structures, locations and local electricity market conditions. Two case studies, one in Victoria Australia and one in Yunnan Province, China, have been carried out with the software. Chapter one of this thesis defines the aims and scope of this study. Chapter two details the literature search in the related areas for this study. The thermodynamic concept of solar aid power generation technology has been described in chapter three. In addition, thermodynamic analysis i.e. exergy/availability has been described in this chapter. The “Thermosolv” software developed in this study is detailed in chapter four with its structure, functions and operation manual included. In chapter five the outcomes of two case studies using the “Thermosolv” software are presented, with discussions and conclusions about the study in chapters 6 and 7 respectfully. The relevant recommendations are then made in chapter eight.

Resource heterogeneity for stream detritivores

Invertebrate animals in headwater streams depend upon leaves, wood and bark for both food and living space. This project demonstrated the strength of that dependence where the patchiness in habitat is influenced at the smallest spatial scales by the movement of sediments, and at the largest by agricultural clearing.

Stream bryophytes of Victorian temperate rainforests

Cool Temperate, Warm Temperate and Gallery Rainforests of Victoria were examined and found to heave distinct suites of stream bryophytes, although a ubiquitous group occurred. Bryophytes represented seven biogeographic elements; most were Australasian. Species reproducing sexually did so synchronously but most species reproduced asexually.

Incremental and adaptive clustering stream data over sliding window

Cluster analysis has played a key role in data stream understanding. The problem is difficult when the clustering task is considered in a sliding window model in which the requirement of outdated data elimination must be dealt with properly. We propose SWEM algorithm that is designed based on the Expectation Maximization technique to address these challenges. Equipped in SWEM is the capability to compute clusters incrementally using a small number of statistics summarized over the stream and the capability to adapt to the stream distribution’s changes. The feasibility of SWEM has been verified via a number of experiments and we show that it is superior than Clustream algorithm, for both synthetic and real datasets.

Incorporation of a hybrid cooling system in water cooled power stations to reduce water and energy consumptions

Water shortage is a major problem facing the power industry in many nations around the world. The largest consumer of water in most power plants is the wet cooling tower. To assist water and energy saving for thermal power stations using conventional evaporative wet cooling towers, a hybrid cooling system is proposed in this paper. The hybrid cooling system may consists of all or some of an air pre-cooler, heat pump, heat exchangers, and adsorption chillers together with the existing cooling tower. The hybrid cooling system described in the paper, consisting of a metal hydride heat pump operating in conjunction with the existing wet cooling tower, is capable of achieving water saving by reducing the temperature of warm water entering the cooling tower. Cooler inlet water temperatures effectively reduce the cooling load on existing towers. This will ultimately reduce the amount of water lost to the air by evaporation whilst still achieving the same cooling output. At the same time, the low grade waste energy upgraded by the metal hydride heat pump, in the process of cooling the water, can be used to replace the bleed of steam for the lower stage feed heaters which will increase overall cycle efficiency.