Subjective wellbeing and families : issues of measurement and data interpretation

Since April 2001 we have been monitoring the Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) of the Australian population using the Personal Wellbeing Index. Our aims are to establish normative values and to identify people with abnormally low SWB. Each of 18 surveys has involved a new sample of 2,000 people, randomly chosen but representing the geographical distribution of the population. The data are remarkable for their stability, with the variation in population mean scores being just 3.2 percentage points. The cause of such high reliability is Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis. Here, in a manner analogous to the management of body temperature, the SWB for each person is normally held positive and within a narrow set-point range. However, all homeostatic systems have a limited capacity to absorb challenge and when aversive experiences are both strong and sustained, homeostasis fails. If this occurs, people lose their normal positive view of themselves and become depressed. Therefore, the second aim of these studies is to reveal the demographic character of families in distress, who are in need of additional resources. Our data reveal the extent to which family structure and responsibilities impact on wellbeing. They also yield important diagnostic information about individuals, and point to SWB as a crucial measure of intervention outcome. In sum, the Personal Wellbeing Index is a simple, reliable and valid measure of SWB. The measures it yields are theoretically embedded, they can be compared against solid normative data, and their interpretation is enhanced through an understanding of SWB homeostasis.

Reading indigeneity : the ethics of interpretation and representation

The transmission of indigenous stories is a fraught enterprise. In contrast to Western practices of the free circulation of ideas, many indigenous cultures view their stories as sacred, and have strict rules about who may tell certain tales, and in what settings and with whom they may be shared. Indigenous storytellers and novelists who want to tell contemporary stories also face the minefields of a history of (mis)representation of their cultures' values and practices. Australian literary scholar Clare Bradford picks her way carefully through this minefield, identifying its perils and proposing a self-reflexive practice that enables scholars to approach these works with sensitivity; Abenaki children's author Joseph Bruchac adds his own impressions and frustrations as an author to Clare's frank assessment of the possibilities of criticism, cross-talk, and mutual understanding in the fìeld.

Electrostatic spinning assembly

A spinneret for producing nanofibres from a viscous liquid using electrostatic spinning in an electric field is described. The spinneret includes one or more narrow annular bodies radially centred about and axially spaced along a central axis. The annular bodies may be discs, rings, or coils.

Electrostatic spinning assembly

A spinneret for producing nanofibres from a viscous liquid using electrostatic spinning in an electric field is described. The spinneret includes one or more narrow annular bodies radially centred about and axially spaced along a central axis. The annular bodies may be discs, rings, or coils.

Interpretation — appropriation : (making) an example of labor process theory

In this article, the author explores ethically problematic relations that may be reproduced within a genre of interpretive organizational research: namely, (U.K.) labor process theory (LPT). Although the author endorses LPT’s critical and explicitly antioppressive values, he argues that interpretive practices employed by core authors contradict the genre’s value base and function to silence and appropriate challenging empirical elements to affirm LPT’s valued interpretive schema. The author draws out deeply problematic implications of such appropriation through highlighting parallels between interpretation, appropriation, and colonization. The author ends by considering the nature of, and possibility for, more ethical “critical” interpretive organizational research.

Electrophoretic deposition of YSZ thin-film electrolyte for SOFCs utilizing electrostatic-steric stabilized suspensions obtained via high energy ball milling

This manuscript describes a facile alternative route to make thin-film yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) electrolyte by liquid-phase assisted electrophoretic deposition utilizing electrostatic-steric stabilized YSZ suspension followed by sintering. Very fine YSZ particles in ball-milled suspension facilitate their sustained dispersion through electrostatic mechanism as evidenced by their higher zeta potentials. Binder addition into the ball-milled suspension is also demonstrated to contribute complementary steric hindrance effects on suspension stability. As the consequence, the film quality and sinterability improve in the sequence of film made from non ball-milled suspension, film made from ball-milled suspension and film made from ball-milled suspension with binder addition. The specific deposition mechanisms pertaining to each suspension are also postulated and discussed below. A very thin dense electrolyte layer of ∼10 μm can be achieved via electrophoretic deposition route utilizing ball-milled suspension and binder addition. This in turn, makes the electrolyte resistance a more negligible part of the overall cell resistance. Further on, we also tested the performance of SOFC utilizing as-formed 10 μm YSZ electrolyte i.e. YSZ-NiO|YSZ|LSM (La0.8Sr0.2MnO3-δ), whereby a maximum power density of ∼850 mW cm−2 at 850 °C was demonstrated.

On the automated interpretation and indexing of American football

This work combines natural language understanding and image processing with incremental learning to develop a system that can automatically interpret and index American Football. We have developed a model for representing spatio-temporal characteristics of multiple objects in dynamic scenes in this domain. Our representation combines expert knowledge, domain knowledge, spatial knowledge and temporal knowledge. We also present an incremental learning algorithm to improve the knowledge base as well as to keep previously developed concepts consistent with new data. The advantages of the incremental learning algorithm are that is that it does not split concepts and it generates a compact conceptual hierarchy which does not store instances.

Detecting indexical signs in film audio for scene interpretation

In this paper, we study the sound tracks in films and their indexical semiotic usage by developing a classification system that detects complex sound scenes and their constituent sound events in cinema. We investigate two main issues in this paper: Determination of what constitutes the presence of a high level sound scene and inferences about the thematic content of the scene that can be drawn from this presence, and classification of environmental sounds in the audio track of the scene, to assist in the automatic detection of the high level scene. Experiments with our classification system on pure sounds resulted in a correct event classification rate of 88.9%. When the audio content of a number of film scenes was examined, though a lower accuracy resulted with sound event detection due to the presence of mixed sounds, the film audio samples were generally classified with the correct high-level sound scene label, enabling correct inferences about the story content of the scenes.