Voltammetric monitoring of gold nanoparticle formation facilitated by glycyl-L-tyrosine : relation to electronic spectra and transmission electron microscopy images

Voltammetric techniques have been introduced to monitor the formation of gold nanoparticles produced via the reaction of the amino acid glycyl-L-tyrosine with Au(III) (bromoaurate) in 0.05 M KOH conditions. The alkaline conditions facilitate amino acid binding to Au(III), inhibit the rate of reduction to Au(0), and provide an excellent supporting electrolyte for voltammetric studies. Data obtained revealed that a range of time-dependent gold solution species are involved in gold nanoparticle formation and that the order in which reagents are mixed is critical to the outcome. Concomitantly with voltammetric measurements, the properties of gold nanoparticles formed are probed by examination of electronic spectra in order to understand how the solution environment present during nanoparticle growth affects the final distribution of the nanoparticles. Images obtained by the ex situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) technique enable the physical properties of the nanoparticles isolated in the solid state to be assessed. Use of this combination of in situ and ex situ techniques provides a versatile framework for elucidating the details of nanoparticle formation.

Gambling revenues as a public administration issue : electronic gaming machines in Victoria

Gambling activities and the revenues derived have been seen as a way to increase economic development in deprived areas. There are also, however, concerns about the effects of gambling in general and electronic gaming machines (EGMs) in particular, on the resources available to the localities in which they are situated. This paper focuses on the factors that determine the extent and spending of community benefit-related EGM-generated resources within Victoria, Australia, focusing in particular on the relationships between EGM activity and socio-economic and social capital indicators, and how this relates to the community benefit resources generated by gaming.

A framework of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in competitive multiplayer video games

The balance between player competence and the challenge presented by a task has been acknowledged as a major factor in providing optimal experience in video games. While Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) presents methods for adjusting difficulty in real-time during singleplayer games, little research has explored its application in competitive multiplayer games where challenge is dictated by the competence of human opponents. By conducting a formal review of 180 existing competitive multiplayer games, it was found that a large number of modern games are utilizing DDA techniques to balance challenge between human opponents. From this data, we propose a preliminary framework for classifying Multiplayer Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (mDDA) instances.

Swimmer localization from a moving camera

At the highest level of competitive sport, nearly all performances of athletes (both training and competitive) are chronicled using video. Video is then often viewed by expert coaches/analysts who then manually label important performance indicators to gauge performance. Stroke-rate and pacing are important performance measures in swimming, and these are previously digitised manually by a human. This is problematic as annotating large volumes of video can be costly, and time-consuming. Further, since it is difficult to accurately estimate the position of the swimmer at each frame, measures such as stroke rate are generally aggregated over an entire swimming lap. Vision-based techniques which can automatically, objectively and reliably track the swimmer and their location can potentially solve these issues and allow for large-scale analysis of a swimmer across many videos. However, the aquatic environment is challenging due to fluctuations in scene from splashes, reflections and because swimmers are frequently submerged at different points in a race. In this paper, we temporally segment races into distinct and sequential states, and propose a multimodal approach which employs individual detectors tuned to each race state. Our approach allows the swimmer to be located and tracked smoothly in each frame despite a diverse range of constraints. We test our approach on a video dataset compiled at the 2012 Australian Short Course Swimming Championships.

The competing-complementarity of social media

This study presents the unique benevolent and malevolent nature of social media, intertwined to its capabilities, which influences its role as a benefactor and a competitor. We conceptualize this phenomenon as the competing-complementarity of social media. We explain competing-complementarity using Teece’s (1986) concept of complementary assets and Porter’s (2001) work on competitive forces shaping strategy and business on the Internet. We observe this phenomenon of competing-complementarity of social media on news firms and offer its evidence through opinionated data analysis.

Capturing complex, non-linear team behaviours during competitive football performance

This study investigated changes in the complexity (magnitude and structure of variability) of the collective behaviours of association football teams during competitive performance. Raw positional data from an entire competitive match between two professional teams were obtained with the ProZone® tracking system. Five compound positional variables were used to investigate the collective patterns of performance of each team including: surface area, stretch index, team length, team width, and geometrical centre. Analyses involve the coefficient of variation (%CV) and approximate entropy (ApEn), as well as the linear association between both parameters. Collective measures successfully captured the idiosyncratic behaviours of each team and their variations across the six time periods of the match. Key events such as goals scored and game breaks (such as half time and full time) seemed to influence the collective patterns of performance. While ApEn values significantly decreased during each half, the %CV increased. Teams seem to become more regular and predictable, but with increased magnitudes of variation in their organisational shape over the natural course of a match.

Conceptualizing the interplay of knowledge accumulation and integration capabilities in service innovation-based competitive strategy : a project-oriented firm context

While past knowledge-based approaches to service innovation have emphasized the role of integration of knowledge in the provisioning of solutions, these approaches fail to address complexities involved with knowledge integration in project-oriented context, specifically, how the firm’s capability to acquire new knowledge from clients and past project episodes influence the development of new service solutions. Adopting a dynamic capability framework and building on knowledge-based approaches to innovation, this paper presents a conceptual model that captures the interplay of learning capabilities and the knowledge integration capability in the service innovation-based competitive strategy. Implications to theory and directions for future research are discussed.

Automatic de-identification of electronic health records : an Australian perspective

We present an approach to automatically de-identify health records. In our approach, personal health information is identified using a Conditional Random Fields machine learning classifier, a large set of linguistic and lexical features, and pattern matching techniques. Identified personal information is then removed from the reports. The de-identification of personal health information is fundamental for the sharing and secondary use of electronic health records, for example for data mining and disease monitoring. The effectiveness of our approach is first evaluated on the 2007 i2b2 Shared Task dataset, a widely adopted dataset for evaluating de-identification techniques. Subsequently, we investigate the robustness of the approach to limited training data; we study its effectiveness on different type and quality of data by evaluating the approach on scanned pathology reports from an Australian institution. This data contains optical character recognition errors, as well as linguistic conventions that differ from those contained in the i2b2 dataset, for example different date formats. The findings suggest that our approach compares to the best approach from the 2007 i2b2 Shared Task; in addition, the approach is found to be robust to variations of training size, data type and quality in presence of sufficient training data.

Coping strategies used by ballet dancers : effects of individual differences in competitive trait anxiety

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine relationships between coping strategies and competitive trait anxiety among ballet dancers. Participants were 104 classical ballet dancers from three professional ballet companies, two private dance schools, and two full-time, university dance courses in Australia. Coping strategies were assessed using the Modified COPE scale (MCOPE: Crocker & Graham, 1995), while competitive trait anxiety was assessed using the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS: Smith, Smoll, & Schutz, 1990). Standard multiple regression analyses showed that trait anxiety scores were significant predictors of seven of the 12 coping strategies, with moderate to large effect sizes. High trait anxious dancers reported more frequent use of all categories of coping strategies. A two-way MANOVA showed no main effects for gender nor status (professional versus students) and no significant interaction effect. The present results emphasize the need for the effectiveness of specific coping strategies to be considered during the process of preparing young classical dancers for a career in professional ballet.

Teaching pharmacy students how to manage effectively in a highly competitive environment

Aims To evaluate if a revamped business management course for 4th year undergraduate pharmacy students had achieved the course aims of not only improving pharmacy students’ perceived understanding of pharmacy business management topics but also increasing their confidence in their business management knowledge and skills. Background Student feedback from previous years had indicated that the cohort had struggled to translate theoretical business management concepts learned in the classroom into practice in the workplace. To address this problem the course has been changed to a ‘flipped classroom’ format with face-to-face time focusing on case-based scenarios and interactive classroom discussion with some role plays. Method Both course assessment throughout the semester and a student survey informed the evaluation process. Results After completing the course, students felt they had increased their knowledge of business management concepts but many indicated that they lacked the confidence to undertake basic management functions. Conclusions Further course restructuring is required with a greater focus on skills development.

Using the internet to assist court processes : delivery of justice in an electronic age

This article presents an overview of two aspects of the role the internet now plays in the court system - first, the extent to which judges, administrators and court officials at the different levels in the court hierarchy are using the internet to deliver enhanced access to the Australian justice system for the community as a whole, and second, how they have embraced that same technology as an aid for accessing information for better judgment delivery and administration.

Competitive charge-remote and anion-induced fragmentations of the non-8-enoate anion. A charge-remote reaction which co-occurs with hydrogen scrambling

The non-8-enoate anion undergoes losses of the elements of C3H6, C4H8 and C6H12 on collisional activation, The mechanisms of these processes have been elucidated by a combination of product ion and labelling (H-2 and C-13) studies, together with a neutralisation reionisation mass spectrometric study. These studies allow the following conclusions to be made. (i) The loss of C3H6 involves cyclisation of the enolate anion of non-8-enoic acid to yield the cyclopentyl carboxylate anion and propene. (ii) The loss of 'C4H8' is a charge-remote process (one which proceeds remote from the charged centre) which yields the pent-4-enoate anion, butadiene and dihydrogen. This process co-occurs and competes with complex H scrambling. (iii) The major loss of 'C6H12' occurs primarily by a charge-remote process yielding the acrylate anion, hexa-1,5-diene and dihydrogen, but in this case no H scrambling accompanies the process. (iv) It is argued that the major reason why the two charge-remote processes occur in preference to anion-induced losses of but-l-ene and hex-l-ene from the respective 4- and 2-anions is that although these anions are formed, they have alternative and lower energy fragmentation pathways than those involving the losses of but-l-ene and hex-l-ene; viz. the transient 4-anion undergoes facile proton transfer to yield a more stable anion, whereas the 2-(enolate) anion undergoes preferential cyclisation followed by elimination of propene [see (i) above].

Reactions of the hydroperoxide anion with dimethyl methylphosphonate in an ion trap mass spectrometer : evidence for a gas phase alpha-effect

The gas phase degradation reactions of the chemical warfare agent (CWA) simulant, dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP), with the hydroperoxide anion (HOO(-)) were investigated using a modified quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer. The HOO(-) anion reacts readily with neutral DMMP forming two significant product ions at m/z 109 and m/z 123. The major reaction pathways correspond to (i) the nucleophilic substitution at carbon to form \[CH(3)P(O)(OCH(3))O](-) (m/z 109) in a highly exothermic process and (ii) exothermic proton transfer. The branching ratios of the two reaction pathways, 89% and 11% respectively, indicate that the former reaction is significantly faster than the latter. This is in contrast to the trend for the methoxide anion with DMMP, where proton transfer dominates. The difference in the observed reactivities of the HOO(-) and CH(3)O(-) anions can be considered as evidence for an a-effect in the gas phase and is supported by electronic structure calculations at the B3LYP/aug-cc-pVTZ//B3LYP/6-31+G(d) level of theory that indicate the S(N)2(carbon) process has an activation energy 7.8 kJ mol(-1) lower for HOO(-) as compared to CH(3)O(-). A similar alpha-effect was calculated for nucleophilic addition-elimination at phosphorus, but this process an important step in the perhydrolysis degradation of CWAs in solution - was not observed to occur with DMMP in the gas phase. A theoretical investigation revealed that all processes are energetically accessible with negative activation energies. However, comparison of the relative Arrhenius pre-exponential factors indicate that substitution at phosphorus is not kinetically competitive with respect to the S(N)2(carbon) and deprotonation processes.

Design-led innovation : Overcoming challenges to designing competitiveness to succeed in high cost environments

This chapter focuses on demonstrating the role of Design-Led Innovation (DLI) as an enabler for the success of Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) within high growth environments. This chapter is targeted toward businesses that may have been exposed to the concept of design previously at a product level and now seek to better understand its value through implementation at a strategic level offering. The decision to engage in the DLI process is made by firms who want to remain competitive as they struggle to compete in high cost environments, such as the state of the Australian economy at present. The results presented in this chapter outline the challenges in the adoption of the DLI process and the implications it can have. An understanding of the value of DLI in practice—as an enabler of business transformation in Australia—is of benefit to government and the broader design community.