Strategic knowledge for the identification and construction of goal states

There is widespread recognition that goal recognition strategies, in the context of structural analysis and cognitive (user) models, represent a major field of contemporary research into discourse understanding. This thesis reports a goal interpretation paradigm that embraces both a novel goal structure formalism and strategic knowledge. The goal interpretation processes involve the identification of goal primitives and the construction of goal states. The mechanisms developed for goal interpretation rely on explicit goal recognition (selection) and confirmation of feasibility. A goal state contains all the information required by the planner. By constructing a goal state, the chance of failure in planning is greatly reduced and the efficiency of the planning system is vastly improved. These mechanisms are not limited to inference. Other mechanisms are reported include goal structure processing, goal primitives identification and searching strategies, extended heuristic classification method and a new conceptual graph operation (i.e. SPLIT).

On representation and construction in a tectonic design studio

The study compares the roles of representation and construction in enhancing students' learning in a tectonic design studio by investigating issues of representational media use in the conception, development and communication of design processes and relating these to real-scale construction as a means of understanding tectonic design.

Making a finding : guardianship and construction of substituted decisions about women's health and fertility

Substituted decisions about health and fertility of women deemed incompetent, because of a disability, expose the constitutive power of knowledge about the female, disabled body and its stereotypical place in social relations. This study addresses issues about the self of modern citizenship and feminist politics in a changing policy climate.

Design and construction of a micropump for drug delivery applications

This paper presents design, construction, and evaluation of a micropump for drug delivery applications. The proposed micropump consists of three components: fluidics, electronics, and software. The fluidics component includes a silicone elastic diaphragm, a microservo, housing and two check valves. The diaphragm is modeled and simulated to establish its geometrical specifications. The housing is built using a rapid prototype machine. The electronics component consists of a microcontroller, a microswitch array, a simple display and a power unit. The software component is written in C and receives inputs from user, controls the microservo speed and displays the programmed speed. A number of experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance and capabilities of the micropump. The experiments focus on measurement of flow rate, dosage and duration of operation. A discussion of the performance and capabilities of the developed micropump is also given.

Practice nurses' role and knowledge about diabetes management within rural and remote Australian general practices

Background: The increasing prevalence of diabetes and obesity represents a significant disease burden in Australia. Practice nurses (PNs) play an important role in diabetes education and management.

Aim: To explore PNs' roles, knowledge and beliefs about diabetes education and management in rural and remote general practice in Australia.

Method: Exploratory study undertaken in three phases: 1) Pilot study to test the performance of the questionnaire; 2) One-shot cross-sectional survey using self-complete questionnaires; 3) Individual interviews.

Results: Ten PNs completed the pilot test; the draft questionnaire was deemed appropriate to the study purpose. Then, 65 questionnaires were distributed to PNs and 21 responded. Fourteen respondents had worked in the role <5 years, and most PNs attended diabetes education programmes in their workplace. A minority (40%) used diabetes management guidelines regularly. Most knew obesity to be the most common risk factor for diabetes but only 50% knew that glycosylated haemoglobin indicates blood glucose levels over the preceding three months. Self-reported competency to assess patients' self-care practices and medication management practices varied.

Conclusion: PNs' diabetes management was self-reported; their knowledge varied and their perceived benefits of diabetes education differed from those of patients.

Minimal force jump within human and assistive robot cooperation

When an assistant robotic manipulator cooperatively performs a task with a human and the task is required to be highly reliable, then fault tolerance is essential. To achieve the fault tolerance force within the human robot cooperation, it is required to map the effects of the faulty joint of the robot into the manipulator’s healthy joints’ torque space and the human force. The objective is to optimally maintain the cooperative force within the human robot cooperation. This paper aims to analyze the fault tolerant force within the cooperation and two frameworks are proposed. Then they have been validated through a fault scenario. Finally, the minimum force jump which is the optimal fault tolerance has been achieved.

On representation and construction in a tectonic design studio

This study investigates the roles of representationand construction in enhancing students' learning in a tectonic design studio.  Students of architecture use 3D CAD, physical models and drawings, either alone or in hybrid combinations in the the design, development and communication of their design process.  Each of these media has intrinsic attributes that limit or enhance students' ability to engage in issues of architecture.  This can have a significant influence on students' learning of conceptual and tectonic design, in particularly in their early years of study.  Tectonic design, as an element of the architectural design process that involves the designerly consideration of issues of construction, is an important skill that is integral to architectural practice.  The unique problem based learning environment of the design studio offers opportunities for the development of deep learning approaches to tectonic design, however these are limited by the way students engage in representational media.  This research is based on an ethnographis case study of a cohort of second year architecture students at Deakin University, Geelong, in 2002.

Convergence among the sub-markets in Australian regional building and construction sector

Studies on market convergence are well considered in the literature. However, the majority of the previous research focused on housing markets and few studies have concentrated on construction markets. Owing to a simultaneously dramatic increase in the construction prices of the sub-markets in the building construction sector in Australia, this paper aims to identify the convergence among these markets, involving house construction market, other-residential building construction market, and non-residential building construction market. To achieve it the Granger causality test and generalized response function depending on the vector error correction model with the quarterly data of Australia’s eight states from 1998 to 2010 will be applied. Based upon the econometric tests, the price diffusion patterns among these construction markets have been identified. Research on the convergences of construction markets not only helps construction firms perform well in business operations and arbitrage activities, but also provides policy makers with useful information for enacting effective construction policies for national perspectives and approaches to infrastructure planning.

Height and construction costs of residential high-rise buildings in Shanghai

A widely recognized theme of construction economics suggests that the cost of construction per square meter increases as building height rises. However, over a number of years, research conducted regarding the height and cost issue has established a classic relationship between the two factors which can be represented by a U-shaped curve. This paper describes the study of the height-cost relationship of high-rise residential buildings in Shanghai in terms of the total construction cost and elemental costs while considering the context and commonality of buildings. This research was developed as an extension of the previous work, which examined data for buildings in Hong Kong. Initial findings indicate that the curves illustrating the relationships between height and cost of residential buildings in Shanghai and Hong Kong exhibit different profiles. The dissimilarities indicate that different sets of criteria should be applied in the judgment of height that affects cost in different locations. In terms of elemental costs, the findings suggest that there are differences in the way these costs react to changes in the building height.