BODY FOR PNEUMATIC VEHICLE

A pneumatic vehicle is provided with a first and second sub-assembly. The first sub-assembly has a chassis supporting an air tank. The second sub-assembly has part of the vehicle body and is bonded to the first-sub-assembly using a structural adhesive. Another pneumatic vehicle is provided with a first and second sub-assembly. The first sub-assembly has a chassis, air tank, part of the vehicle body, a pair of B-pillars, and a pair of rear rails. The second sub-assembly has a part of the vehicle body, a pair of A-pillars, and a pair of roof rails. A vehicle seat is provided with a seat base and upright seat back providing a seating area. A bladder located in the central region of the seating area inflates to provide two bucket seats, and deflates to provide a bench seat. The vehicle seat also has inflatable inserts to provide cushioning.

Body for pneumatic vehicle

A pneumatic vehicle is provided with a first and second sub-assembly. The first sub-assembly has a chassis supporting an air tank. The second sub-assembly has part of the vehicle body and is bonded to the first-sub-assembly using a structural adhesive. Another pneumatic vehicle is provided with a first and second sub-assembly. The first sub-assembly has a chassis, air tank, part of the vehicle body, a pair of B-pillars, and a pair of rear rails. The second sub-assembly has a part of the vehicle body, a pair of A-pillars, and a pair of roof rails. A vehicle seat is provided with a seat base and upright seat back providing a seating area. A bladder located in the central region of the seating area inflates to provide two bucket seats, and deflates to provide a bench seat. The vehicle seat also has inflatable inserts to provide cushioning.

Moving beyond a ‘bums-on-seats’ analysis of progress towards widening participation: reflections on the context, design and evaluation of an Australian government-funded mentoring programme

In 2010 the Australian Government established the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships programme – a funding agenda to promote programmes that respond to the underrepresentation in higher education of people from what is often denoted low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Many government-funded programmes and projects have since emerged that respond to the problem of low SES underrepresentation, based on partnerships between higher education providers and other organisations. The arguments made in this paper draw on one such project: a mentoring programme implemented from 2011 to 2013 that targeted the aspirations of Year 9 regional secondary students. We discuss data and documentation that provide insights into the conception and design of the mentoring programme, and the strategies used to evaluate it, in order to discuss how funding and policy contexts influences the possible solutions that might be implemented in response to the underrepresentation in higher education of people from low SES backgrounds.

Community valuations of historic pocket parks: a Melbourne study

The internal reserve, an historic form of planned open space creating semi-private parks at the rear of residential allotments and without street frontages, can be found in Australian suburban areas of diverse socio-economic status. Internal reserves commonly express the idealism of the early town planning movement, which envisaged the internal reserve as an embedded community-building mechanism with multiple potential uses. En vogue from 1910-1930, the internal reserve concept proved problematical from the outset. Even today, while many residents agree that their reserves are responsible for the special nature of their domestic environment, others are apprehensive about safety, maintenance and custodianship. Two surveys of residents living around internal reserves in four Melbourne suburbs, conducted in 1979 and 2002, reveal a variety of opinions on the potential and importance of these spaces. Local communities were found for the most part to have negative and ambiguous perceptions of these reserves. With one exception, residents did not value the parks highly as community spaces and alternative uses may need to be explored. The results suggest that a more innovative set of tools and incentives may be needed to reinvigorate the internal reserve as a significant recreation resource for local communities.

Modeling a just-in-time plant using sequencing algorithms

An Australian automotive component company plans to assemble and deliver seats to customer on just-in-time basis. The company management has decided to model operations of the seat plant to help them make decisions on capital investment and labour requirements. There are four different areas in seat assembly and delivery areas. Each area is modeled independently to optimise its operations. All four areas are then combined into one model called the plant model to model operations of seat plant from assembly to delivery. Discrete event simulation software is used to model the assembly operations of seat plant.

Intelligent headrest

In this paper we discuss the design and development of a novel intelligent headrest system. Developed to reduce neck injuries resulting from up to 63% of rear end accidents, this system uses inductive sensing technology to establish the position of a driver or passenger's skull in a vehicle. Once detected, the system autonomously places the vehicle's headrest in a position that best support an occupant's head in the case of an accident. Sensor construction, mechatronic design and controller selection and real world tests of the system under various conditions are covered.

'Particularly happy' arrangement?: Idealism, pragmatism and the enclosed open spaces of Perth garden suburbs

One of the hallmarks of many planned garden suburbs of the early twentieth century is the internal reserve: open space at the rear of residences, without street frontage. An idealistic conception with direct links to overseas planning theory, these spaces were not always well received by either local councils or residents; despite this, many survive today as legacies of early suburban reformism. Perth’s highest-profile planning advocates of the interwar years, most notably town clerk William Bold and the progressive surveying  partnership of Hope and Klem, embraced and encouraged the idea and a number of middle-ring suburbs in Perth feature internal reserves which have survived both encroachment and resubdivision. Some have been given heritage status in recognition of their importance to the history and fabric of particular suburban communities; others remain neglected and essentially unacknowledged. All raise ongoing usage, maintenance and management issues for the councils that have inherited them.

Preliminary investigation of the costs of incubation in the Australasian Gannet (Morus serrator) breeding in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria

To optimise lifetime reproductive success, individuals must balance current reproductive effort against future reproductive prospects. In birds, incubation and chick-rearing must involve costs, and manipulation of the length of incubation offers an insight into some costs affecting adults. An experiment was conducted at a colony of Australasian Gannets in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, in which length of incubation was manipulated so that some adults experienced short (10–20 days duration), long (70–80 days) or normal (~45 days) incubation periods. Adults with a manipulated incubation period did not show significant differences in weight change (taken here to reflect cost) during incubation or chick-rearing compared with controls. Manipulation of length of incubation did not significantly affect the hatching success or the growth rate of chicks involved and is not, therefore considered to impose an increased reproductive cost. This suggests that the Australasian Gannet has the capacity to maintain body condition and successfully rear young despite modified duration of incubation.

What is a presentational media regime? The contemporary breakdown in systems of representation

Foundational to both the operation and legitimation of our traditional media is the idea of representation: in some sense the images of television, the sounds of radio, the narratives of film, and the various public personalities stand in or in place of ourselves. Likewise our contemporary political system function as an elaborate representational system, where regions, "seats", electorates, the nation, and the nationstate are represented by individuals, parties and symbols. Although, there are differences between and among modern nation-states as clearly different political and cultural agendas are at play, the interplay of contemporary media, culture and politics has produced what can be called a 'representational regime' that more or less operates globally, albeit fragmented into national and regional groupings.

This paper explores the initial stages in the breakdown of this system of representation that has allowed a certain organization of culture and politics to expand and develop over the last two centuries. It acknowledges that central to this regime is something Nick Couldry has identified as "the myth of the mediated centre" (Couldry, 2003). What the paper argues, and therefore differs from Couldry's conclusion, is that there are cracks in the glue that holds the system together and they are emerging in the uses of new media. Through an exploration of presentational media - that is, media that is more involved with the presentation of the self for public/private and networked consumption than traditional media's effort to embody their audience in its narratives - the paper reaches for conclusions that identify a more elaborate legitimation crisis looming in our political and cultural worlds.

Convection suppression in an attic shaped enclosure

In recent times there has been growing interest in the integration of solar collectors, for water heating, into the façade of buildings. However, the design methodology of these devices remains largely the same as typical “stand-alone” collectors. As such it is still common for materials with a high thermal resistance to be used for insulating the rear surface of these collectors.

Unlike a “stand-alone” solar collector that is exposed to the atmosphere at all faces; a building integrated system allows the opportunity for air to act as an insulator at the rear surface of the solar collector. The use of convection suppression devices has been widely discussed in the literature as a means of reducing natural convection heat loss from the front surface of glazed solar collectors. However in this study the use of baffles in an attic was examined as a means of suppressing heat loss by natural convection from the rear surface of a roof-integrated solar collector. The aim of the study was to examine whether the use of baffles would allow the cost of building integrated collectors to be reduced by removing the cost of insulating material.

To determine the effect of baffles in the attic space at the rear surface of the collector, a 3-dimensional triangular cross sectioned enclosure with a vertical aspect ratio of 0.5 and a horizontal aspect ratio of 3.3 was modelled. The flow patterns and heat transfer in the enclosure were determined for Grashof Numbers in the range of 106 to 107 using a commercially available finite volume CFD solver.
It was found that the use of a single adiabatic baffle mounted vertically downwards from the apex, and extending the length of the enclosure, would alter the flow such that the heat transfer due to natural convection was reduced with respect to the length of the baffle.

Furthermore, it was observed that a series of convection cells, not previously reported in the literature, appeared to exist along the length of the enclosure. As such, it may be possible to derive additional benefit in reducing the heat transfer by adding lateral baffles in addition to the single longitudinal baffle modelled in this study.

The 1859 election on the Ovens

The Victorian general election of 1859 occurred during a time of social transition and electoral reformation, which extended the vote to previously unrepresented adult males. Gold discoveries, including those on the Ovens, triggered the miners’ insistent demands for access to land and participation in the political process. The thesis identifies issues, which emerged during the election campaign on the Ovens goldfields, surrounding Beechworth. The struggle centred on the two Legislative Assembly seats for the Ovens and the one Legislative Council seat for the Murray District. Though the declared election issue was land reform, it concealed a range of underlying tensions, which divided the electorate along lines of nationality and religion. Complicating these tensions within the European community was the Chinese presence throughout the Ovens. The thesis suggests the historical memory of the French Revolution, the European Revolutions of 1848 and the Catholic versus Protestant revivals divided the Ovens goldfield community. The competing groups formed alliances; a Beechworth-centred grouping of traders, merchants and the Constitution’s editor, ensured the existing conservative agenda triumphed over those perceived radicals who sought reform. In the process the land hungry miners did not gain any political representation in the Legislative Assembly, while a prominent Catholic squatter who advocated limited land reform was defeated for the Legislative Council seat. Two daily Beechworth papers, Ovens and Murray Advertiser and its fierce competitor, the Constitution and Ovens Mining Intelligencer are the major primary sources for the thesis.

Biomechanics of gait determination in older adults

The majority of falls occur during routine ambulation and transfer tasks required for basic mobility such as rapid stopping. The study found that in comparison with young adults older adults more frequently used two steps to terminate walking. This is due to increased onset times in the rear leg muscles and a lower frequency of ankle and hip extensor recruitment in the front leg.

Modelling and optimising operations of a plant using JIT philosophy

An Australian automotive component company plans to assemble and deliver seats to a car manufacturer on a "just-in-time" basis at its new plant. The research objective was to model seat assembly operations and apply Toyota goal chasing algorithm and user defined algorithm to balance workload among all the assembly workstations and areas.