Identifying effective re-engagement practice : Brisbane North and West Youth Connections Consortium Action Research Project

This report summarises the participatory action research (PAR) undertaken by the Brisbane North and West (BNW) Youth Connections Consortium service during 2010 and 2011. The objective of the service, which is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), is to re-engage young people who have disengaged from education and are at risk of not achieving Year 12 attainment.The PAR element is facilitated by Queensland University of Technology, School of Public Health and Social Work (QUT). The PAR identifies key elements of the model of service as well as provides summary narratives of the PAR inquiries undertaken by Youth Connections staff and their co-participants during this period.

Outlook

This wall-mounted sculpture features eight photographic prints displayed on a computer monitor mounting system. The eight panels each swivel and articulate separately. Together, they combine to create an abstract landscape based on a desktop background image of an idyllic tropical setting. Recalling the workstation of a futures trader, logistics manager, or design guru, the screen armature draws out the simultaneously romantic and vacuous characteristics of the imagery. By combining the visual languages of both physical and on-screen desktop environments with the pictorial traditions of landscape and abstraction, this work questions how and where we deploy nature, desire and wonderment in our increasingly technologised lives.

Sequential Fusion Using Correlated Decisions for Controlled Verification Errors

Fusion techniques have received considerable attention for achieving lower error rates with biometrics. A fused classifier architecture based on sequential integration of multi-instance and multi-sample fusion schemes allows controlled trade-off between false alarms and false rejects. Expressions for each type of error for the fused system have previously been derived for the case of statistically independent classifier decisions. It is shown in this paper that the performance of this architecture can be improved by modelling the correlation between classifier decisions. Correlation modelling also enables better tuning of fusion model parameters, ‘N’, the number of classifiers and ‘M’, the number of attempts/samples, and facilitates the determination of error bounds for false rejects and false accepts for each specific user. Error trade-off performance of the architecture is evaluated using HMM based speaker verification on utterances of individual digits. Results show that performance is improved for the case of favourable correlated decisions. The architecture investigated here is directly applicable to speaker verification from spoken digit strings such as credit card numbers in telephone or voice over internet protocol based applications. It is also applicable to other biometric modalities such as finger prints and handwriting samples.

Sequential fusion of decisions from adaptive and random samples for controlled verification of errors

Fusion techniques have received considerable attention for achieving performance improvement with biometrics. While a multi-sample fusion architecture reduces false rejects, it also increases false accepts. This impact on performance also depends on the nature of subsequent attempts, i.e., random or adaptive. Expressions for error rates are presented and experimentally evaluated in this work by considering the multi-sample fusion architecture for text-dependent speaker verification using HMM based digit dependent speaker models. Analysis incorporating correlation modeling demonstrates that the use of adaptive samples improves overall fusion performance compared to randomly repeated samples. For a text dependent speaker verification system using digit strings, sequential decision fusion of seven instances with three random samples is shown to reduce the overall error of the verification system by 26% which can be further reduced by 6% for adaptive samples. This analysis novel in its treatment of random and adaptive multiple presentations within a sequential fused decision architecture, is also applicable to other biometric modalities such as finger prints and handwriting samples.

Sequential fusion of decisions with favorable dependence for controlled verification errors

Statistical dependence between classifier decisions is often shown to improve performance over statistically independent decisions. Though the solution for favourable dependence between two classifier decisions has been derived, the theoretical analysis for the general case of 'n' client and impostor decision fusion has not been presented before. This paper presents the expressions developed for favourable dependence of multi-instance and multi-sample fusion schemes that employ 'AND' and 'OR' rules. The expressions are experimentally evaluated by considering the proposed architecture for text-dependent speaker verification using HMM based digit dependent speaker models. The improvement in fusion performance is found to be higher when digit combinations with favourable client and impostor decisions are used for speaker verification. The total error rate of 20% for fusion of independent decisions is reduced to 2.1% for fusion of decisions that are favourable for both client and impostors. The expressions developed here are also applicable to other biometric modalities, such as finger prints and handwriting samples, for reliable identity verification.

Fashion, the body and technology : tracing early 20th century techno-utopian ideas, aesthetics and impulses in 21st century wearable technology

‘Wearable technology’, or the use of specialist technology in garments, is promoted by the electronics industry as the next frontier of fashion. However the story of wearable technology’s relationship with fashion begins neither with the development of miniaturised computers in the 1970s nor with sophisticated ‘smart textiles’ of the twenty-first century, despite what much of the rhetoric suggests. This study examines wearable technology against a longer history of fashion, highlighted by the influential techno-sartorial experiments of a group of early twentieth century avant-gardes including Italian Futurists Giacomo Balla and F.T. Marinetti, Russian Constructivists Varvara Stepanova and Liubov Popova, and Paris-based Cubist, Sonia Delaunay. Through the interdisciplinary framework of fashion studies, the thesis provides a fuller picture of wearable technology framed by the idea of utopia. Using comparative analysis, and applying the theoretical formulations of Fredric Jameson, Louis Marin and Michael Carter, the thesis traces the appearance of three techno-utopian themes from their origins in the machine age experiments of Balla, Marinetti, Stepanova, Popova and Delaunay to their twenty-first century reappearance in a dozen wearable technology projects. By exploring the central thesis that contemporary wearable technology resurrects the techno-utopian ideas and expressions of the early twentieth century, the study concludes that the abiding utopian impetus to embed technology in the aesthetics (prints, silhouettes, and fabrication) and functionality of fashion is to unify subject, society and environment under a totalising technological order.

Youth alcohol and drug practice guide 2: Legal and ethical dimensions of practice

This Guide is designed to assist workers better understand the and negotiate the complex interplay of ethical, legal and organisational considerations in their practice. The goal is to provide frontline workers and managers with information, questions and principles which promote good youth AOD practice. Legal information provided relates to Queensland, Australia.

ACE research briefing paper 005: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) - Australia 2011 National Report

This report maps the current state of entrepreneurship in Australia using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) for the year 2011. Entrepreneurship is regarded as a crucial driver for economic well-being. Entrepreneurial activity in new and established firms drives innovation and creates jobs. Entrepreneurs also fuel competition thereby contributing indirectly to market and productivity growth along with improving competitiveness of the national economy. Given the economic landscape that exists as a result of the global financial crisis (GFC), it is probably more important than ever for us to understand the effects and drivers of entrepreneurial activity and attitudes in Australia. The central finding of this report is that entrepreneurship is certainly alive and well in Australia. With 10.5 per cent of the adult population involved in setting up a new business or owning a newly founded business as measured by the total entrepreneurial activity rate (TEA) in 2011, Australia ranks second only to the United States among the innovation-driven (developed) economies. Compared with 2010 the TEA rate has increased by 2.7 percentage points. Furthermore, in regard to employee entrepreneurial activity (EEA) rate in established firms, Australia ranks above average. According to GEM data, 5 per cent of the adult population is engaged in developing or launching new products, a new business unit or subsidiary for their employer. Further analysis of the GEM data also clearly shows that Australia compares well with other major economies in terms of the ‘quality’ of entrepreneurial activities being pursued. Indeed, it is not only the quantity of entrepreneurs but also the level of their aspirations and business goals that are important drivers for economic growth. On average, for each business started in Australia driven by the lack of alternatives for the founder to generate income from any other source, there are five other businesses started where the founders specifically want to take advantage of a business opportunity that they believe will increase their personal income or independence. With respect to innovativeness, 31 per cent of Australian new businesses offer products or services which they consider to be new to customers or where very few, or in some cases no, other businesses offer the same product or service. Both these indicators are higher than the average for innovation-driven economies. Somewhat below average is the international orientation of Australian entrepreneurs whereby only 12 per cent aim at having a substantial share of customers from international markets. So what drives this high quantity and quality of entrepreneurship in Australia? The analysis of the data suggests it is a combination of both business opportunities and entrepreneurial skills. It seems that around 50 per cent of the Australian population identify opportunities for a start-up venture and believe that they have the necessary skills to start a business. Furthermore, a large majority of the Australian population report that high media attention for entrepreneurship provides successful role models for prospective entrepreneurs. As a result, 12 per cent of our respondents have expressed the intention to start a business within the next three years. These numbers are all well above average when compared to the other major economies. With regard to gender, the GEM survey shows a high proportion of female entrepreneurs. Approximately 8.4 per cent of adult females are actually involved in setting up a business or have recently done so. Although this female TEA rate is slightly down from 2010, Australia ranks second among the innovation-driven economies. This paints a healthy picture of access to entrepreneurial opportunities for Australian women.

The effect of screen size on mission commander's situation awareness

Situation awareness lost is a common factor leading to human error in the aviation industry. However, few studies have investigated the effect on situation awareness where the control interface is a touch-screen device that supports simultaneous multi-touch input and information output. This research aims to conduct an experiment to evaluate the difference in situation awareness on a large screen device, DiamondTouch (DT107), and a small screen device, iPad, both with multi-touch interactive functions. The Interface Operation and Situation Awareness Testing Simulator (IOSATS), is a simulator to test the three basis interface operations (Search Target, Information Reading, and Change Detection) by implementing a simplified search and rescue scenario. The result of this experiment will provide reliable data for future research for improving operator's situation awareness in the avionic domain.

Extracting deck trend to plan descent trajectory for safe landing of UAVs

This paper outlines a feasible scheme to extract deck trend when a rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (RUAV)approaches an oscillating deck. An extended Kalman filter (EKF) is de- veloped to fuse measurements from multiple sensors for effective estimation of the unknown deck heave motion. Also, a recursive Prony Analysis (PA) procedure is proposed to implement online curve-fitting of the estimated heave mo- tion. The proposed PA constructs an appropriate model with parameters identified using the forgetting factor recursive least square (FFRLS)method. The deck trend is then extracted by separating dominant modes. Performance of the proposed procedure is evaluated using real ship motion data, and simulation results justify the suitability of the proposed method into safe landing of RUAVs operating in a maritime environment.

Nourishing or polluting : redefining the role of waste in the fashion system

Waste is intrinsic to the fashion system. Fashion is predicated on built-in obsolescence, and as such outmoded garments are rapidly discarded to charity shops or landfill. However, the story of fashion is also one of abundance and extravagance in design ideas. Every season there are new design details – prints, embroidery, embellishments, shapes and textures. This excess of ideas is in itself another form of waste, albeit one that is culturally nourishing. The grave of a fashion garment may also be the grave of a season’s research and creativity. This paper compares the tangible waste of the industry with its intangible waste, namely fashion’s creativity and cultural excess. Fashion’s excess and abundance of trends and ideas makes any move to curb the environmental impact difficult. For all practitioners of fashion – whether designers or consumers – the waste and excess inherent in the fashion system is a difficult ethical terrain to negotiate. However, inverting the wasteful phases of the production cycle can help reframe waste from pollution to a source of nourishment for future practice. While creative excesses of designers may be ‘wasted’ after a season, fashion styles and tropes are recycled and reinvented, with the once passé styles and design ideas from previous years revalorized and returned into the fashion system. Similarly, material garments acquire new value through entering or re-entering the second hand or vintage markets. Design processes can utilise pre or post-consumer textile waste, or eliminate waste through design. In these processes, waste becomes the primary source of nourishment for future fashion cycles.

Akin Collection : curation of a collaboration between Indigenous artists and fashion designers to create a retail-ready luxury fashion label

The Akin collection is the outcome of a project to lead, guide and curate a luxury, retail-ready fashion collection from a collaboration between five emerging fashion designers and five established Indigenous artists. Research background There is a history of Indigenous artists in Australia being treated unethically; by misappropriation and misrepresentation of their work, inequity of payment for their creativity and little acknowledgement of their cultural contribution to collaborative fashion product sold globally. This has created an atmosphere of bad press for fashion, as well as a fear for emerging designers to include/collaborate with Indigenous artists for textile prints. This fear has been so intense that many emerging Australian designers are now seeking collaboration with other countries’ Indigenous communities, thus missing out on a rich cultural and diverse aesthetic that could brand a truly unique Australian label in the international marketplace. The fashion brands that have collaborated with Indigenous Australian artists have traditionally been a ONE designer label incorporating Indigenous prints, for collections that have little acknowledgement of the artist’s contribution and strong branding for the label and/or fashion designer. This collection seeks to create an equitable and profitable fashion collection under one brand where all artists and designers receive equal payment, equal promotion/credibility, as well as equal royalties for any garments ordered by retailers. Research question Is it possible to curate an ethical, luxury, retail-ready, international fashion brand with a collaboration of five (5) emerging designers and five (5) Indigenous artists? Research contribution In the fashion industry, existing collaborations for Australian Indigenous artists have been with ONE fashion designer or one existing fashion label. This is the first fashion collection created under one brand name with equal credibility and profits for both artists and designers. The process involved presenting workshops ranging from understanding the logistics and timing of the fashion supply chain, costing of garments, the process of ‘ranging’ fashion product for a collection and creating repeat prints from a specific artwork, ready for digital printing. A workshop was also facilitated so both designer and artist could work together to create (and co-own) unique t shirt prints. Lawyers were consulted and ethical contracts were drawn up to cover all participants in this innovative collaboration. While the collaboration of artist and designer was important, the collection required curation of all elements so that the final collection came together as a professional and cohesive, quality, retail- ready product. This could only be created by experienced practitioners. Research significance The Akin Collection is the first Australian fashion brand to be created as a collaboration between five equally recognised Indigenous artists and five emerging fashion designers. It has familiarized the Indigenous artists to the logistics and culture of the fashion industry and the emerging fashion designers have been familiarized to the logistics and culture of how to collaborate with the unique Indigenous artwork that exists in Australia. After only three months, this culminated in a fashion parade showcasing the Akin collection to over 400 members of the public, government, media and retail. Feedback has been strong from the media and the industry, and a lookbook and photoshoot has been organised to promote and sell the collection both nationally and internationally. These concepts plus the curation outlined, has created a successful, luxury, quality collection ready for the international runways. This project has devised an ethical template for other Indigenous artists and emerging designers to create fashion collections that offer a unique aesthetic that could position and brand Australian fashion in the international marketplace. Key Words Indigenous artists, emerging fashion designers, Australian fashion design, ethical fashion, luxury Australian brand

An extended theory of planned behavior intervention for older adults With Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease

A randomized controlled trial evaluated the effectiveness of a 4-wk extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) intervention to promote regular physical activity and healthy eating among older adults diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease (N = 183). Participants completed TPB measures of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and intention, as well as planning and behavior, at preintervention and 1 wk and 6 wk postintervention for each behavior. No significant time-by-condition effects emerged for healthy eating. For physical activity, significant time-by-condition effects were found for behavior, intention, planning, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norm. In particular, compared with control participants, the intervention group showed short-term improvements in physical activity and planning, with further analyses indicating that the effect of the intervention on behavior was mediated by planning. The results indicate that TPB-based interventions including planning strategies may encourage physical activity among older people with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Shift

Shift was an exhibition held in October 2008, and was the culmination of a 10 month artist in residence held at Metro Arts, Brisbane in 2008. A number of works were produced and exhibited, and were a response to the ambient urban landscape of inner city Brisbane. The research component contributes to the discussion of the form and display of digital animation, and builds upon strategies of presentation developed from series of works completed in 2005-2007 as part of an MA (research) at QUT, Brisbane. For the two week exhibition, one interactive kiosk and several large scale digital prints were produced, and also a site specific digital animation sequence was projected onto urban landscape features next to the gallery.

Tenofovir-associated proteinuria

Proteinuria was observed in 27% of 153 patients taking tenofovir for more than 1 year. Concomitant protease inhibitor therapy and cumulative tenofovir exposure were independently associated with proteinuria in this cohort. Proteinuria was reversible in 11 of 12 patients who ceased tenofovir because of proteinuria without altering other medications. Clinicians should be aware that tenofovir can cause reversible proteinuria in patients with HIV.