Funding squeeze will hurt

The design of Labor's student demand-driven system was likely to divide Australian universities into a binary system.

Towards a framework for implementing individual funding based on an Australian case study

Although individual funding is increasingly being used around the globe as a mechanism to fund social care, its implementation is proving to be problematic and implementation strategies are not well developed. This paper proposes a framework for the successful introduction and implementation of individual funding programs based on the analysis of data collected in a qualitative case study conducted in an Australian not-for-profit disability agency over a 4-year period from 2003 to 2007. Data were gathered through participant observation and interviews with program participants and managers, and the findings were validated with those involved. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory is used to analyze the findings from a micro, meso, exo, and macro perspective. The following factors were found to be important for successful implementation: the meaningful involvement of the person with disability in decision-making; adequate resources; access to information and appropriate supports; suitable activities being available; knowledge of policies and procedures; policies ensuring oversight and responsible accountability; employment conditions for workers being safeguarded; and support for staff and managers to adjust to their new roles. Knowledge of effective implementation strategies is important for disability agencies and for governments promoting individual funding because this radically different funding arrangement requires new implementation strategies.

Discriminating DDoS attack traffic from flash crowd through packet arrival patterns

Current DDoS attacks are carried out by attack tools, worms and botnets using different packet-transmission strategies and various forms of attack packets to beat defense systems. These problems lead to defense systems requiring various detection methods in order to identify attacks. Moreover, DDoS attacks can mix their traffics during flash crowds. By doing this, the complex defense system cannot detect the attack traffic in time. In this paper, we propose a behavior based detection that can discriminate DDoS attack traffic from traffic generated by real users. By using Pearson's correlation coefficient, our comparable detection methods can extract the repeatable features of the packet arrivals. The extensive simulations were tested for the accuracy of detection. We then performed experiments with several datasets and our results affirm that the proposed method can differentiate traffic of an attack source from legitimate traffic with a quick response. We also discuss approaches to improve our proposed methods at the conclusion of this paper.

The social work bursary in England : impact of funding arrangments upon social work education and the future workforce

The financial support available to students on social work qualifying programmes appears to be a neglected topic in published social work research. This article draws on a literature review and secondary data analysis of an existing dataset to discuss what is known about this topic and specifically considers the impact of a financial incentive to undertake social work qualifying education in England, the social work bursary. In the context of major changes to the funding of higher education in England, it suggests that the introduction of the social work bursary has helped increase the number of students enrolling on social work qualifying programmes in England and supported some students whose personal and financial circumstances might have prevented them from undertaking social work qualifying education. While students report their appreciation of financial assistance in the form of the bursary, many have additional needs in the form of support for children and other dependants, and for help in defraying the costs of travel while undertaking practice placements. The paper concludes that attention needs to be paid to the specific needs of social work students when considering the impact of changes to funding higher education.

Kinect crowd interaction

Most of the state-of-the-art commercial simulation software mainly focuses on providing realistic animations and convincing artificial intelligence to avatars in the scenario. However, works on how to trigger the events and avatar reactions in the scenario in a natural and intuitive way are less noticed and developed. Typical events are usually triggered by predefined timestamps. Once the events are set, there is no easy way to interactively generate new events while the scene is running and therefore difficult to dynamically affect the avatar reactions. Based on this situation, we propose a framework to use human gesture as input to trigger events within a DI-Guy simulation scenario in real-time, which could greatly help users to control events and avatar reactions in the scenario. By implementing such a framework, we will be able to identify user’s intentions interactively and ensure that the avatars make corresponding reactions.

School funding, public transport racism and the looming second-hand digital music battle

 SBS News radio interview with Amelia Johns about racism on public transport and the response of witnesses.

Crowd detection from still images

The analysis of human crowds has widespread uses from law enforcement to urban engineering and traffic management. All of these require a crowd to first be detected, which is the problem addressed in this paper. Given an image, the algorithm we propose segments it into crowd and non-crowd regions. The main idea is to capture two key properties of crowds: (i) on a narrow scale, its basic element should look like a human (only weakly so, due to low resolution, occlusion, clothing variation etc.), while (ii) on a larger scale, a crowd inherently contains repetitive appearance elements. Our method exploits this by building a pyramid of sliding windows and quantifying how “crowd-like” each level of the pyramid is using an underlying statistical model based on quantized SIFT features. The two aforementioned crowd properties are captured by the resulting feature vector of window responses, describing the degree of crowd-like appearance around an image location as the surrounding spatial extent is increased.

A map of community-based obesity prevention initiatives in Australia following obesity funding 2009-2013.

Obesity is the single biggest public health threat to developed and developing economies. In concert with healthy public policy, multi-strategy, multi-level community-based initiatives appear promising in preventing obesity, with several countries trialling this approach. In Australia, multiple levels of government have funded and facilitated a range of community-based obesity prevention initiatives (CBI), heterogeneous in their funding, timing, target audience and structure. This paper aims to present a central repository of CBI operating in Australia during 2013, to facilitate knowledge exchange and shared opportunities for learning, and to guide professional development towards best practice for CBI practitioners.

Addressing migration-related social and health inequalities in Australia: call for research funding priorities to recognise the needs of migrant populations

Objective Migrants constitute 26% of the total Australian population and, although disproportionately affected by chronic diseases, they are under-represented in health research. The aim of the present study was to describe trends in Australian Research Council (ARC)- and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)-funded initiatives from 2002 to 2011 with a key focus on migration-related research funding.Methods Data on all NHMRC- and ARC-funded initiatives between 2002 and 2011 were collected from the research funding statistics and national competitive grants program data systems, respectively. The research funding expenditures within these two schemes were categorised into two major groups: (1) people focused (migrant-related and mainstream-related); and (2) basic science focused. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise the data and report the trends in NHMRC and ARC funding over the 10-year period.Results Over 10 years, the ARC funded 15 354 initiatives worth A$5.5 billion, with 897 (5.8%) people-focused projects funded, worth A$254.4 million. Migrant-related research constituted 7.8% of all people-focused research. The NHMRC funded 12 399 initiatives worth A$5.6 billion, with 447 (3.6%) people-focused projects funded, worth A$207.2 million. Migrant-related research accounted for 6.2% of all people-focused initiatives.Conclusions Although migrant groups are disproportionately affected by social and health inequalities, the findings of the present study show that migrant-related research is inadequately funded compared with mainstream-related research. Unless equitable research funding is achieved, it will be impossible to build a strong evidence base for planning effective measures to reduce these inequalities among migrants.What is known about the topic? Immigration is on the rise in most developing countries, including Australia, and most migrants come from low- and middle-income countries. In Australia, migrants constitute 26% of the total Australian population and include refugee and asylum seeker population groups. Migrants are disproportionately affected by disease, yet they have been found to be under-represented in health research and public health interventions.What does this paper add? This paper highlights the disproportions in research funding for research among migrants. Despite migrants being disproportionately affected by disease burden, research into their health conditions and risk factors is grossly underfunded compared with the mainstream population.What are the implications for practitioners? Migrants represent a significant proportion of the Australian population and hence are capable of incurring high costs to the Australian health system. There are two major implications for practitioners. First, the migrant population is constantly growing, therefore integrating the needs of migrants into the development of health policy is important in ensuring equity across health service delivery and utilisation in Australia. Second, the health needs of migrants will only be uncovered when a clear picture of their true health status and other determinants of health, such as psychological, economic, social and cultural, are identified through empirical research studies. Unless equitable research funding is achieved, it will be impossible to build a strong evidence base for planning effective measures to reduce health and social inequalities among migrant communities.

Challenges to organizational spirituality as a consequence of State funding

Faith-based organizations are major providers of welfare services in Australia. Many of these services receive much, if not all, of their funding from the state, which brings expectations that services will be provided to all members of the community irrespective of their religious beliefs, rather than just to members of a particular religion. Furthermore, in order to deliver contracted services, faith-based organizations often need to employ staff who are of another or no religion. It is perhaps not surprising that the distinction between faith-based and secular organizations is sometimes questioned, and is a concern within some faith-based organizations. Drawing on interviews with 20 Australian social workers who were or had been employed in faith-based organizations, this paper examines a range of ways in which organizational spirituality manifests itself in the workings of faith-based welfare organizations that receive state funding. Expressions of organizational spirituality reported by research participants include strategic directions, processes associated with staff recruitment and induction, employment conditions and philosophies underpinning service provision. Nevertheless, in some organizations, expression of organizational spirituality seems to occur on an ad hoc basis, such that some staff were not sure if they were working in a faith-based organization. As to how faith-based organizations express their spirituality when receiving state funding that requires ostensibly secular service delivery is not just an issue for welfare agencies but also for many providers of a wide range of health, social care and education services in many countries. Hence, this paper addresses challenges that go beyond the boundaries of professional disciplines or national borders.