The design and development of an integrated system for object-oriented finite element computing

Finite Element Method (FEM) is widely used in Science and Engineering since 1960’s. The vast majority of FEM software is procedure-oriented. However, this conventional style of designing FEM software encounters problems in maintenance, reuse, and expansion of the software. Recently the object-oriented finite element method attracts the attention of lots of researchers, and now there is a growing interest in this method. In this paper, the object-oriented finite element (OOFE) is briefly introduced. Then the design and development of an integrated OOFE system is described. A comparison of the integrated OOFE system and a procedure-oriented system shows that our OOFE system has many advantages.

Multiple-criteria decision analysis for integrated catchment management

Implementation of integrated catchment management (ICM) is hampered by the lack of a conceptual framework for explaining how landowners select farming systems for their properties. Benefit–cost analysis (a procedure that estimates the costs and benefits of alternative actions or policies) has limitations in this regard, which might be overcome by using multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). MCDA evaluates and ranks alternatives based on a landowner's preferences (weights) for multiple-criteria and the values of those criteria. A MCDA approach to ICM is superior to benefit–cost analysis which focuses only on the monetary benefits and costs, because it: 1) recognizes that human activities within a catchment are motivated by multiple and often competing criteria and/or constraints; 2) does not require monetary valuation of criteria; 3) allows trade-offs between criteria to be measured and evaluated; 4) explicitly considers how the spatial configuration of farming systems in a catchment influences the values of criteria; 5) is comprehensive, knowledge-based, and stakeholder oriented which greatly increases the likelihood of resolving catchment problems; and 6) allows consideration of the fairness and sustainability of land and water resource management decisions. A MCDA based on an additive, multiple-criteria utility function containing five economic and environmental criteria was used to score and rank five farming systems. The rankings were based on the average criteria weights for a sample of 20 farmers in a US catchment. The most profitable farming system was the lowest-ranked farming system. Three possible reasons for this result are evaluated. First, the MCDA method might cause respondents to express socially acceptable attitudes towards environmental criteria even when they are not important from a personal viewpoint. Second, the MCDA method could inflate the ranks of less profitable farming systems for the simple reason that it allows the respondent to assign non-zero weights to non-economic criteria. Third, the MCDA might provide a better framework for evaluating a landowner's selection of farming systems than the profit maximization model.

An integrated student support framework for a Malaysian university

This thesis reports on an investigation at the University Tun Abdul Razak (UNITAR), Malaysia focused on students’ needs for student support services. The research addressed a new problem in distance education concerning institutional practices and strategies for providing student support within blended learning contexts, such as at UNITAR. The thesis addresses important matters related to the use of forms of education to address Malaysia’s social, political and economic development.

The study had two main research purposes. The first purpose was to investigate what barriers UNITAR’s students had to completing their study successfully. The second was to investigate students’ support services needs. The latter was divided into six subsidiary purposes. The first subsidiary purpose was to identify and compare the students’ needs intensity for the four categories of support services: administrative, academic, welfare and post-study services. The second subsidiary purpose was to investigate whether there is any correlation between students’ attributes of age, gender, marital status, number of children, enrollment status, distance from learning centre, academic abilities, course satisfaction and academic achievement, with their support needs. The other subsidiary purposes were to compare needs intensity for the four categories of services between men and women, younger and mature-age students, and lower and higher academic achievers.

The research design employed mixed methods, involving both qualitative and quantitative techniques. A series of interviews was conducted with UNITAR staff members during an inventory study of the University. Then, the students were surveyed through a questionnaire that contained closed-ended and openended questions. After analysing and compiling the results of the survey, another cycle of surveys was conducted with selected staff members through email, to validate the findings and obtain their feedback to the students’ views and their suggestions for future improvement. The quantitative survey data were analysed using SPSS, whereas the qualitative data from interview, survey and email were analysed by using content analysis techniques.

The findings of the study demonstrated that UNITAR’s students have problems in their study, which are related to their demographic and institutional attributes, and these affect their needs for four categories of support services. Generally, students attached the highest priority to academic services, followed by post-study services, administrative services and, lastly, welfare services. Four patterns of associations between students’ attributes and support services needs were identified. In particular, support services needs differences were identified between men and women, younger and mature-age students, and lower achieving and higher achieving students.

Drawing the findings of this study, relevant past studies, contemporary practices and constructive views of scholars from the relevant literature, the thesis concludes by proposing an integrated student support framework for UNITAR and suggest how this may be considered and applied more broadly in similar blended learning contexts in Malaysia and beyond.

Using virtual meeting spaces for work integrated learning

Work integrated learning activities provide students with the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills they have developed through their tertiary education to authentic work place problems. This paper reports on the outcome of a virtual work integrated learning activity undertaken by third year IT students. Students used a synchronous communication tool to participate in meetings with their virtual teammates. They were required to produce minutes and a report of their meeting. The majority of students completed the exercise successfully with some student groups using the meeting facility for subsequent collaboration during the remainder of the unit.

Performance of building integrated solar hot water systems

The integration of solar energy systems into buildings has been the subject of considerable commercial and academic research, particularly building integrated photovoltaics. However, the integration of solar hot water systems into roofing systems has had far less attention. This paper presents the theoretical and experimental results of a novel building integrated solar hot water system developed using existing long run roofing materials.

This work shows that it is possible to achieve effective integration that maintains the aesthetics of the building and also provides useful thermal energy. The results of an unglazed 108m2 swimming pool heater and 8m2 glazed domestic hot water systems are presented.

The experimental results show that the glazed system performs close to the theoretical model and is an effective provider of hot water in certain climates. However it was also found that for larger scale building integrated solar water heating systems, special attention must be paid to the configuration and arrangement of the collectors in order to minimise problems with respect to flow distribution and its effect on collector and system efficiency.

Description and qualitative evaluation of Jigsaw, an integrated young persons' mental health program

Objective: The aim of this paper is to describe the establishment of an integrated young person’s mental health service and the findings of a qualitative evaluation conducted 2 years after its establishment.
Method: A qualitative evaluation of the service was undertaken using a semi-structured interview, a service satisfaction survey and partnership analysis tool.
Results: The major problems encountered in establishing the service were insufficient recognition of the cultural challenges in working together, difficulty in recruiting general practitioners, establishing a youth friendly environment and maintaining the quality of the relationship between partners.
Conclusion: Despite almost 3 years of preparation, many important aspects of change management were underestimated or inadequately attended to.

Targeting and measuring housing problems in developing countries through urban texture analysis

Latin-american countries passed from predominantely rural to predominantely urban within few decades. The level of urbanisation in Brazil progressed from 36% in 1950, 50% in 1970, and scalating to 85% in 2005. This rapid transformation resulted in many social problems, as cities were not able to provide appropriate housing and infrastructure for the growing population. As a response, the Brazilian Ministry for Cities, in 2005, created the National System for Social Housing, with the goal to establish guidelines in the Federal level, and build capacity and fund social housing projects in the State and Local levels. This paper presents a research developed in Gramado city, Brazil, as part of the Local Social Housing Plan process, with the goal to produce innovative tools to help social housing planning and management. It proposes and test a methodology to locate and characterise/rank housing defficiencies across the city combining GIS and fractal geometry analysis. Fractal measurements, such as fractal dimension and lacunarity, are able to differentiate urban morphology, and integrated to infrastructure and socio-economical spatial indicators, they can be used to estimate housing problems and help to target, classify and schedule actions to improve housing in cities and regions. Gramado city was divided in a grid with 1,000 cells. For each cell, the following indicators were measured: average income of households, % of roads length which are paved (as a proxy for availability of infrastructures as water and sewage), fractal dimension and lacunarity of the dwellings spatial distribution. A statistical model combining those measurements was produced using a sample of 10% of the cells divided in five housing standards (from high income/low density dwellings to slum's dwellings). The estimation of the location and level of social housing deficiencies in the whole region using the model, compared to the real situation, achived high correlations. Simple and based on easily accessible and inexpensive data, the method also helped to overcome limitations of lack of information and fragmented knowledge of the area related to housing conditions by local professionals.

Integrated modelling of cost-effective siting and operation of flow-control infrastructure for river ecosystem conservation

Wetland and floodplain ecosystems along many regulated rivers are highly stressed, primarily due to a lack of environmental flows of appropriate magnitude, frequency, duration, and timing to support ecological functions. In the absence of increased environmental flows, the ecological health of river ecosystems can be enhanced by the operation of existing and new flow-control infrastructure (weirs and regulators) to return more natural environmental flow regimes to specific areas. However, determining the optimal investment and operation strategies over time is a complex task due to several factors including the multiple environmental values attached to wetlands, spatial and temporal heterogeneity and dependencies, nonlinearity, and time-dependent decisions. This makes for a very large number of decision variables over a long planning horizon. The focus of this paper is the development of a nonlinear integer programming model that accommodates these complexities. The mathematical objective aims to return the natural flow regime of key components of river ecosystems in terms of flood timing, flood duration, and interflood period. We applied a 2-stage recursive heuristic using tabu search to solve the model and tested it on the entire South Australian River Murray floodplain. We conclude that modern meta-heuristics can be used to solve the very complex nonlinear problems with spatial and temporal dependencies typical of environmental flow allocation in regulated river ecosystems. The model has been used to inform the investment in, and operation of, flow-control infrastructure in the South Australian River Murray.

Viable approaches for increasing the efficiency of buiding integrated photovoltaic systems

Nowadays, there is growing interest towards the area of building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems and PV microgrids (MGs) in the field of power generation and distribution systems. This is mainly due to the higher adaptability and compatibility of these systems with preplanned sustainable development strategies in the most urban areas. The quiet operating process and movement free characteristic of photovoltaic systems brought them to the roof tops of the buildings in urban and rural areas and made them the most demanded means of renewable energy systems. This study highlights the problems affecting the performance and efficiency of BIPV systems and presents miscellaneous solutions and recommendations to solve these problems.

Bailouts, monitoring, and penalties: an integrated framework of government policies to manage the too-big-to-fail problem

This paper discusses optimal government bailout policy where the costs of systemic failures and moral hazard problems are considered. We find that a three-tiered bailout policy that includes an ex post monitoring and bailout scheme for financial institutions with large systemic impacts ('too big to fail') is optimal. The optimal policy also requires a randomized bailout for medium-impact institutions ('Constructive Ambiguity'), and no bailout for institutions that have only minimal systemic consequences ('too small to save'). However, in a volatile, innovative market environment where individual institutions may know more than the government regulator, monitoring error could contribute to risk taking, leaving the government regulator to always play a 'catch-up' role in revising policy. Moreover, the optimal bailout policy may not be time-consistent: institutions not deemed 'too big to fail' may still have an incentive to take excessive risks and expect to be bailed out in case of insolvency, primarily due to the short-term orientation of the government. Finally, because an institution's systemic cost affects the probability of a bailout, we show that the boundary of an institution may be extended by the government subsidy.

An integrated model of care for inflammatory bowel disease sufferers in Australia: development and the effects of its implementation.

BACKGROUND: Psychological comorbidities are associated with poor outcome and increased healthcare utilization in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, a model of care addressing the biopsychosocial dimension of disease is not routinely applied in IBD. This review describes the development of such a model and the effects of its implementation in a hospital-based cohort of patients with IBD. METHODS: Three different approaches were used: 1) collecting baseline epidemiological data on mental health comorbidities; 2) raising awareness of and targeting mental health problems; 3) examining the effects of the model implementation. RESULTS: High rates of anxiety and depressive symptoms (36% and 13%, respectively) that are maintained over time were identified in IBD patients presenting at a metropolitan teaching hospital. Patients with documented psychological comorbidities were more likely to be hospitalized than those without (odds ratio [OR] = 4.13, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.25, 13.61). Improvements in disease activity, anxiety, depression, quality of life, and coping have been noted when cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) was provided to patients. A drop in the use of opiates (P = 0.037) and hospitalization rates (from 48% to 30%) in IBD patients has been noted as a result of introduction of the changed model of care. In addition, the mean total cost of inpatient care was lower for IBD patients than controls (US$12,857.48 [US$15,236.79] vs. US$ 30,467.78 [US$ 53,760.20], P = 0.005). CONCLUSION: Our data to date suggest that an integrated model of care for patients with IBD may yield superior long-term outcomes in terms of medication use and hospitalization rates and reduce healthcare costs.