Biopsychosocial factors related to Australian and Fijian adolescent body image distortion

The thesis study was a cross-cultural comparison of the biopsychosocial predictors of body image perception and ideals among 294 Australian and 101 Fijian adolescents. The results demonstrated similarities across cultural groups, but parents, peers and the media were stronger influences for Fijians. These findings have implications for body image intervention programs.The portfolio presented a thorough review of the evidence for the cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) treatment option for adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD). Four case studies are presented.

Cracking and distortion of water jackets in engine blocks

This thesis investigated the cracking and distortion of water jackets in engine blocks. The Taguchi method was utilized to improve production process and in doing so, reducing the scrap of water jacket cores by over 60%. Further, by altering core material and pouring temperature, casting distortion was improved.

Wear in centrifugal slurry pumps

The project improves understanding of wear in slurry pumps. By measuring actual pump wear and microscopically examining worn surfaces, a clearer picture emerged of wear modes and mechanisms for different materials. This enables improved guidelines for material selection and modifications to hydraulic shape that increased pump wear life.

Implementation and applications of the distortion operator

The distortion operator transforms 2D images in a manner similar to image warping or morphing, allowing source pixels to be mapped to any destination pixel. This operator can be implemented on current hardware, allowing at least one distortion per frame at interactive frame rates. Potential applications are numerous, but those described include re-mapping images for correct projection onto curved screens, correcting camera distortion from multiple sources simultaneously, and allowing constant time dynamic texturing and lighting of a static scene which is independent of geometric complexity.

Alien alarm distortion SFX

A sound designed on a synth that evokes science fiction styles alarm or panic. A good sound for TV, Cinema styled projects.

Orbiting data: inciting centrifugal questions about embodied learning in science

In this paper we explore how reanimating a video data sequence with editing and creative software provided an opportunity for the data to speak and to demand new and surprising responses from us. Our data-ing brought new lines and spaces to the fore, through a process of refraction and re-animation which forced a focus on embodied inter-relationships and impeded precipitous analytical thought on the part of the researcher. We note how the aesthetic of the new images evoked awareness of our own part in the production of the object of our research. In particular, our own collegial interchange, punctuated by time and distance due to our respective locations on opposite sides of the globe, opened up a space for data-lingering in the intervening silences and pauses. Our choice of images engenders and reflects our sense of movement between the `I’ and the `we’ in their depiction of students’ learning about space.

The class/teacher effects distortion : a critique of purely positivist teacher effectiveness research and inquiry

The current educational context, with its emphasis upon outcomes and accountability, explicitly centralizes the work and role of the classroom teacher in the learning process. This paper argues that the teacher effectiveness debate increasingly represents an intensified incursion into the classroom in the belief that social and educational disadvantage may be overcome if improvements to the effectiveness of teachers and classroom instruction and practice occur. 

CCTV scene perspective distortion estimation from low-level motion features

Our aim is to estimate the perspective-effected geometric distortion of a scene from a video feed. In contrast to most related previous work, in this task we are constrained to use low-level spatiotemporally local motion features only. This particular challenge arises in many semiautomatic surveillance systems that alert a human operator to potential abnormalities in the scene. Low-level spatiotemporally local motion features are sparse (and thus require comparatively little storage space) and sufficiently powerful in the context of video abnormality detection to reduce the need for human intervention by more than 100-fold. This paper introduces three significant contributions. First, we describe a dense algorithm for perspective estimation, which uses motion features to estimate the perspective distortion at each image locus and then polls all such local estimates to arrive at the globally best estimate. Second, we also present an alternative coarse algorithm that subdivides the image frame into blocks and uses motion features to derive block-specific motion characteristics and constrain the relationships between these characteristics, with the perspective estimate emerging as a result of a global optimization scheme. Third, we report the results of an evaluation using nine large sets acquired using existing closed-circuit television cameras, not installed specifically for the purposes of this paper. Our findings demonstrate that both proposed methods are successful, their accuracy matching that of human labeling using complete visual data (by the constraints of the setup unavailable to our algorithms).