Towards more integrated and participatory coastal management : insights from Victoria’s Estuary Entrance Management Support System.

Participation and integration are core elements of coastal management. A key argument is that involving stakeholders from the broader community in collaborative coastal management allows for a more reflexive approach to consideration of ecological science outputs. However the role of stakeholder participation is still problematic especially when the involvement is short term and limited in its knowledge co-production. We argue for the development of a participatory logic that includes five key elements: the institutionalization of the processes that derive from stakeholder co-production and co-management; the ability and capacity to make meaningful decisions about issues of importance in an on-going way; the inclusion of all stakeholders in the process; the flexibility of central policies that enable participation by stakeholders at local level; the allowance for pathways for the uptake of all knowledge systems. Using this approach we report in this paper on the Estuary Entrance Management Support System (EEMSS) and ask whether this is a model system for answering the following questions as part of participatory logic: What types of collaborative activities can be used to improve the management of coastal zones? Are these activities a sufficient pathway for integrating different knowledge forms including science into coastal management? How important is stakeholder participation to science uptake? How can stakeholder participation be institutionalized in coastal management?

Using strategic philanthropy to improve heritage tourist sites on the Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey : community perceptions of changing quality of life and of the sponsoring organization

This paper examines the “Respect for History” project on Turkey's Gallipoli Peninsula sponsored by a Turkish oil company, OPET. The project sought to enhance and protect the cultural and historical experiences of tourists visiting Gallipoli, and to bring direct and indirect benefits to local communities through enhancing tourism-related business opportunities and improving community infrastructure. This research investigates the project's impact on residents’ perceived social and economic wellbeing, using a quality of life framework, and also ascertains residents’ views of the sponsoring firm. The context illustrates key differences between pure philanthropy and strategic philanthropy; the latter defined as doing good by purposefully achieving corporate and civic benefits. The role of strategic philanthropy as a sustainable tourism development tool, and its impact on tourism governance, are considered. Data were collected from 674 residents on the Turkish Gallipoli Peninsula in areas impacted by OPET's investment program. The results, using structural equation modelling (SEM), identify that respondents generally believe that both their economic and social quality of life have improved. This, in turn, has positively influenced respondents’ views of the sponsoring organization. The concept of strategic philanthropy appears valuable as a private sector, non-tourism, sustainable tourism development tool in some circumstances.

Stakeholder participation in estuary management: the development of Victoria's Estuary Entrance Management Support System

Stakeholder involvement in the management of estuaries is a necessary element of good environmental governance. In Victoria, Australia, a key challenge for estuary managers is whether or not estuaries should be artificially opened since many river mouths close ‘naturally’ from time to time. Estuary closure resulting in raised estuarine water levels leads to economic and social impacts on local communities. In the past these effects have been addressed by artificial river mouth openings, often without reference to associated environmental impacts. This article discusses the development and features of an Estuary Entrance Management Support System and considers its performance against principles of effective environmental management. It concludes that, in bringing together technical information with stakeholder input through a structured process, such a system makes a useful contribution to improving estuary entrance management.

Integrating kinect and haptics for interactive STEM education in local and distributed environments

Skill shortage is a realistic social problem that Australia is currently facing, especially in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Various approaches have been proposed to soften this issue. By now the most successful approach is to attract pre-university youth and university freshmen into those fields before they make a decision on future subjects by introducing them with interactive, modifiable and inspiring virtual environments, which incorporates most essential knowledge of STEM. We propose to design a comprehensive virtual reality platform with immersive interactions, pluggable components and flexible configurations. It also involves haptics, motion capture and gesture recognition, and could be deployed in both local and distributed environments. The platform utilizes off the shelf low cost haptics and motion capture products, however the fidelity can be maintained at a good level. The proposed platform has been implemented with different configurations and has been tested on a group of users. Preliminary test results show that the interactivity, flexibility and fidelity of the platform are highly appreciated by users. User surveys also indicate that the proposed platform could help pre-university students and university freshmen build an overview of various aspects of STEM education. Besides, users are also positive on the fact that the platform enabled them to identify the challenges for higher education in STEM by providing them opportunities to interactively modify system configurations and instantly experience the corresponding results both visually and haptically.

Interval-based and fuzzy set-based approaches to modeling of fuzzy inference systems with the local monotonicity property

Even though the importance of the local monotonicity property for function approximation problems is well established, there are relative few investigations addressing issues related to the fulfillment of the local monotonicity property in Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) modeling. We have previously conducted a preliminary study on the local monotonicity property of FIS models, with the assumption that the extrema point(s) (i.e., the maximum and/or minimum point(s)) is either known precisely or totally unknown. However, in some practical situations, the extrema point(s) can be known imprecisely (as an interval or a fuzzy set). In this paper, the imprecise information is exploited to construct an FIS model that fulfills the local monotonicity property. A procedure to estimate the extrema point(s) of a function is devised. Applicability of the findings to a datadriven modeling problem is further demonstrated.

Knowledge translation strategies to improve the use of evidence in public health decision making in local government: intervention design and implementation plan

Background: 

An ant colony system based on the physarum network

The Physarum Network model exhibits the feature of important pipelines being reserved with the evolution of network during the process of solving a maze problem. Drawing on this feature, an Ant Colony System (ACS), denoted as PNACS, is proposed based on the Physarum Network (PN). When updating pheromone matrix, we should update both pheromone trails released by ants and the pheromones flowing in a network. This hybrid algorithm can overcome the low convergence rate and local optimal solution of ACS when solving the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). Some experiments in synthetic and benchmark networks show that the efficiency of PNACS is higher than that of ACS. More important, PNACS has strong robustness that is very useful for solving a higher dimension TSP.

Structural classification of proteins through amino acid sequence using interval type-2 fuzzy logic system

This paper introduces a new multi-output interval type-2 fuzzy logic system (MOIT2FLS) that is automatically constructed from unsupervised data clustering method and trained using heuristic genetic algorithm for a protein secondary structure classification. Three structure classes are distinguished including helix, strand (sheet) and coil which correspond to three outputs of the MOIT2FLS. Quantitative properties of amino acids are used to characterize the twenty amino acids rather than the widely used computationally expensive binary encoding scheme. Amino acid sequences are parsed into learnable patterns using a local moving window strategy. Three clustering tasks are performed using the adaptive vector quantization method to derive an equal number of initial rules for each type of secondary structure. Genetic algorithm is applied to optimally adjust parameters of the MOIT2FLS with the purpose of maximizing the Q3 measure. Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate the strong superiority of the proposed approach over the traditional methods including Chou-Fasman method, Garnier-Osguthorpe-Robson method, and artificial neural network models.

Probing ion exchange in the triflic acid-guanidinium triflate system: a solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance study

Knowledge of ion exchange and transport behavior in electrolyte materials is crucial for designing and developing novel electrolytes for electrochemical device applications such as fuel cells or batteries. In the present study, we show that, upon the addition of triflic acid (HTf) to the guanidinium triflate (GTf) solid-state matrix, several orders of magnitude enhancement in the proton conductivity can be achieved. The static 1H and 19F solid-state NMR results show that the addition of HTf has no apparent effect on local molecular mobility of the GTf matrix at room temperature. At higher temperatures, however, the HTf exhibits fast ion exchange with the GTf matrix. The exchange rate, as quantified by our continuum T2 fitting analysis, increases with increasing temperature. The activation energy for the chemical exchange process was estimated to be 58.4 kJ/mol. It is anticipated that the solid-state NMR techniques used in this study may be also applied to other organic solid-state electrolyte systems to investigate their ion-exchange processes.

The orexinergic system in rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss and its regulation by dietary lipids

In this study, we report the distribution of orexin A (OXA), orexin B (OXB), and orexin receptor (OX2R) immunoreactive (ir) cells in the hypothalamus and gastrointestinal tract of Oncorhynchus mykiss fed diets with different dietary fatty acid compositions. Trout were fed five iso-energetic experimental diets containing fish oil, or one of four different vegetable oils (olive, sunflower, linseed, and palm oils) as the added dietary lipid source for 12 weeks. OXA, OXB, and OX2R immunoreactive neurons and nervous fibers were identified in the lateral and ventro-medial hypothalamus. OXA, OXB, and OX2R ir cells were found in the mucosa and glands of the stomach and in the mucosa of both the pyloric cecae and intestine. OX2R ir cells were localized in the mucosa layer of both the pyloric cecae and intestine. These immunohistochemical (IHC) results were confirmed via Western blotting. Antibodies against preproorexin (PPO) crossreacted with a band of ∼16 kDa in the hypothalamus, stomach, pyloric cecae, and intestine. Antibodies against OX2R crossreacted with a band of ∼38 kDa in the hypothalamus, pyloric cecae, and intestine. The presence and distribution of OXA, OXB, and OX2R ir cells in the hypothalamus and gastrointestinal tract did not appear to be affected by dietary oils. The presence of orexin system immunoreactive cells in the stomach, pyloric cecae, and intestine of rainbow trout, but not in the enteric nervous system, could suggest a possible role of these peptides as signaling of gastric emptying or endocrine modulation, implying a main local action played by orexins.

Well-known trade marks, foreign investment and local industry : a comparison of China and Indonesia

Strengthened protection for well-known trade marks in accordance with the TRIPS Agreement is an important issue for developing countries, which has led to trade pressures from industrialised nations in the past. ‘Trade mark squatting’, referring to the registration in bad faith of foreign well-known marks in order to sell them back to their original owners, is a much discussed phenomenon in this context. This article outlines the history and development of well-known trade marks and the applicable law in China and Indonesia. It looks not just at foreign and international brands subjected to ‘trade mark squatting’, but also at how local enterprises are using the system. Rather remarkably in view of the countries’ turbulent histories, local well-known marks have a long history and are well respected for their range of products. They are not normally affected by the ‘trade mark squatting’ phenomenon and are rarely the subject of disputes. Enhanced protection under the TRIPS Agreement is especially relevant for international brands and the article shows the approaches in the two countries. In China, government incentives assist the proliferation of nationally well-known and locally ‘famous’ marks. In Indonesia, lack of implementing legislation has left the matter of recognition to the discretion of the courts.

Consensus building in a local context for the AHP-GDM with the individual numerical scale and prioritization method

The methodology for selecting the individual numerical scale and prioritization method has recently been presented and justified in the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). In this study, we further propose a novel AHP-group decision making (GDM) model in a local context (a unique criterion), based on the individual selection of the numerical scale and prioritization method. The resolution framework of the AHP-GDM with the individual numerical scale and prioritization method is first proposed. Then, based on linguistic Euclidean distance (LED) and linguistic minimum violations (LMV), the novel consensus measure is defined so that the consensus degree among decision makers who use different numerical scales and prioritization methods can be analyzed. Next, a consensus reaching model is proposed to help decision makers improve the consensus degree. In this consensus reaching model, the LED-based and LMV-based consensus rules are proposed and used. Finally, a new individual consistency index and its properties are proposed for the use of the individual numerical scale and prioritization method in the AHP-GDM. Simulation experiments and numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed model.

A mobile health network disaster management system

A common occurrence in almost all full-scale natural disasters is the rapid destruction of the telecommunication infrastructure as the inevitable unfolds, which tends to halt the necessary communications between the humanitarian operators and the people in need. In such scenarios, the deployment of wireless networks would provide fast and temporary remedies, however these networks normally do not provide services to the end-users and ordinary people, instead they provide connectivity between groups of end-users administered by a local service provider. From a range of services provided to the end-users by the humanitarian operators, healthcare is by far the top priority. This is considered through the utilization of smartphones in a Mobile Health (mHealth) perspective, which is an emerging concept for monitoring and tracking end-user health conditions. This article considers an mHealth system used in a tsunami-stricken disaster scenario, including a discussion on the most recent advances of Device to Device (D2D) and LTE-Direct technologies.

Building a local design and entrepreneurship ecosystem

Design and creativity are becoming greatly sought out skills in leading industries around the world, big businesses are developing the “Chief Design Officer” to engage with strategic and company shaping discussions. Design as an economic driver is now abundantly clear with companies such as Nike and Apple leading this way of thinking, but how do we as Australian industry capture this and how do we instil “creativity” into our secondary school and university level education to drive the next level of innovation and development. The local region where Deakin University is situated has undergone significant changes in the last 10 years, what was once an economy dominated by oil, automotive and metal production industries has been wound down to a local economy dominated by health, services and education. However, manufacturing and design being the front end of manufacturing is still a key economic driver this study is looking at the embryonic initiatives undertaken to build an ecosystem of design and entrepreneurship in a regional area. Several aspects will be looked at, high school and university student engagement in the process, established SME's and start-up culture. With the establishment of an ecosystem it is believed that success will breed success. With student engagement showing that being creative and playing can yield tangible results, it also gets students comfortable with the element of risk. The efforts of Deakin University is about providing the framework and scaffolding for students to pursue a start-up idea and test it validity. The final part of the ecosystem is for SME's and recent start-ups to share their success stories and acting as mentors as future start-ups emerge. By creating an ecosystem that is driven by design, manufacturing and entrepreneurship key economic outcomes will be generated; a regional area will be more resilient to economic uncertainty and ultimately a cohort of innovative thinkers that will generate value for their community.