Input and output analysis of complex conveyor networks

Material transfer networks are at the heart of critical infrastructure in many modern service and manufacturing industries. This research identified key performance measures, while deriving generalised analysis methodologies, for simulation models. The technology was validated for international airports, and used to determine operational capacity constraints under varied demand conditions.

Optimal actuator fault tolerance for static nonlinear systems based on minimum output velocity jump

Fault tolerance for a class of non linear systems is addressed based on the velocity of their output variables. This paper presents a mapping to minimize the possible jump of the velocity of the output, due to the actuator failure. The failure of the actuator is assumed as actuator lock. The mapping is derived and it provides the proper input commands for the healthy actuators of the system to tolerate the effect of the faulty actuator on the output of the system. The introduced mapping works as an optimal input reconfiguration for fault recovery, which provides a minimum velocity jump suitable for static nonlinear systems. The proposed mapping is validated through different case studies and a complementary simulation. In the case studies and the simulation, the mapping provides the commands to compensate the effect of different faults within the joints of a robotic manipulator. The new commands and the compare between the velocity of the output variables for the health and faulty system are presented.

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.

Electronic commerce publications and the implications for research quality output in Australia

Australian universities and academics will soon see a major change in the way research is reported and funded. It is expected that by 2008, according to the most recent timetable (Bishop 2006), the Research Quality Framework (RQF) will be implemented. The result of the announcement has been an increased activity within universities focusing on the proposed criteria. The proposed RQF will seek to have research assessed according to quality and impact. Part of both quality and impact relates to where research is published. For academics it will be increasingly important to target high quality journals if the research is to be rated as high quality. The question this raises for Information Systems academics is where do we publish for maximum impact? The Information Systems (IS) field is diverse with researchers working in many areas and a publication outlet for one area may not be relevant for another. One area where many Australian IS researchers have focused their research interest is the field of electronic commerce (e-commerce). The research reported in this paper identified the publication outlets that would be regarded as amongst the highest quality for researchers wishing to publish e-commerce research. The authors analysed e-commerce research papers by Australian researchers published in the period 2000 to 2005. The results describe where Australian researchers are publishing in this field. The paper also provides guidance to those working in the e-commerce field on which journals and conferences to target to ensure their work rates highly in terms of the RQF.

Are shocks to real output permanent or transitory? Evidence from a panel of Pacific Island countries

Panel unit root and stationarity tests without structural breaks suggest that for eight Pacific island economies real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita contains a unit root. The panel stationarity test that accommodates structural change in the trend function, however, finds evidence in favour of regimewise trend stationarity. This result points to the importance of taking structural breaks into account. The finding implies that, for the period considered, the permanent secular component of output is dominated by transitory fluctuations accompanied by infrequent changes in the trend function. The only exceptions are Fiji and Kiribati, for which individual stationarity tests with multiple structural breaks suggest that real GDP per capita contains a unit root.

Blockbusters for the youtube generation : a new product of convergence culture

While scholars have paid much attention to YouTube in a Web 2.0 environment, the YouTube blockbuster is yet to be discussed as part of this convergence culture. It differs from transmedia storytelling in that no single company owns or controls the characters or concepts. Once users have elevated videos with rich narrative qualities to the heights of fame within YouTube and other virtual social networks, they are taken from the YouTube archive by global commercial media and given new exchange values in traditional media forms such as books, films, television shows and ancillary products, using fragmented classical narrative techniques to do so. This paper traces the history of the blockbuster as a way of large commercial media adapting to social and technological change after World War II, to its refinements in the 1970s to cater for younger audiences and changes in the media landscape, to its most recent incarnation in YouTube. We argue that the economic and cultural values of the blockbuster are being transformed and refigured by the new form it has begun to take within convergence culture.

Positive and negative effects of phoretic mites on the reproductive output of an invasive bark beetle

When multiple species coexist upon a single host, their combined effect on the host can be unpredictable. We explored the effect of phoretic mites on the reproductive output of the five-spined bark beetle, Ips grandicollis. Using correlative approaches and experimental manipulation of mite numbers we examined how mite load affected the number, size and condition of bark beetle offspring produced. We found that mites have both negative and positive consequences on different aspects of bark beetle reproduction. Females from which mites were removed were more fecund and produced larger offspring than females with mites, implying a cost of mite loads. However, when mites were present on females, those bearing the highest mite loads produced offspring that were larger and in better condition, indicating a beneficial effect of mites. These data suggest that phoretic interactions between mites and bark beetles differ over the course of the host’s lifespan, with either the mites interacting in different ways with different life stages of the host (parasitic on adult, mutualistic with larvae), and/or the beetles being host to different mite assemblages over their lifetime.

Gender differences in publication output: towards an unbiased metric of research performance

We examined the publication records of a cohort of 168 life scientists in the field of ecology and evolutionary biology to assess gender differences in research performance. Clear discrepancies in publication rate between men and women appear very early in their careers and this has consequences for the subsequent citation of their work. We show that a recently proposed index designed to rank scientists fairly is in fact strongly biased against female researchers, and advocate a modified index to assess men and women on a more equitable basis.

Doubling and convergence : novel models of vision and sense of space

Re-photography is considered in this paper as a synthesis of the processes of seeing, to develop an aesthetic of space.

This practice deals with being (noun and verb) in space and the perception of space and depiction of space; space at the intersection of landscape and human. A key to the conundrum of the figure and the ground arises out of practical photographic investigations to convey the very human sensations of being on the ground, in the confounding landscape of the Central Victorian (Australian) ironbark forests and goldfields.

What is revealed is that what we see, what we attend to, actually appears concentrated at the nodes of a series of vortices. Each vortex is a moiré interference of converging views of the same scene. Attention is a convergence on particulars. Like a magnetic field, the vortex remains invisible in our everyday vision, but it appears in these images. It is imprinted from individual perspectives at particular places; a new perspective with a point of apparition rather than of vanishing.