Lignocellulosics as a renewable feedstock for chemical industry : chemical hydrolysis and pretreatment processes

Lignocellulosic materials including agricultural, municipal and forestry residues, and dedicated bioenergy crops offer significant potential as a renewable feedstock for the production of fuels and chemicals. These products can be chemically or functionally equivalent to existing products that are produced from fossil-based feedstocks. To unlock the potential of lignocellulosic materials, it is necessary to pretreat or fractionate the biomass to make it amenable to downstream processing. This chapter explores current and developing technologies for the pretreatment and fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass for the production of chemicals and fuels.

Queer theory, media studies and editorial processes in queer student media

Australian queer (GLBTIQ) university student activist media is an important site of self-representation. Community media is a significant site for the development of queer identity, community and a key part of queer politics. This paper reviews my research into queer student media, which is grounded in a queer theoretical perspective. Rob Cover argues that queer theoretical approaches that study media products fail to consider the material contexts that contribute to their construction. I use an ethnographic approach to examine how editors construct queer identity and community in queer student media. My research contributes to queer media scholarship by addressing the gap that Cover identifies, and to the rich scholarship on negotiations of queer community.

Efficient route update and maintenance processes for multipath routing in large-scale industrial wireless sensor networks

Reliable communications is one of the major concerns in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Multipath routing is an effective way to improve communication reliability in WSNs. However, most of existing multipath routing protocols for sensor networks are reactive and require dynamic route discovery. If there are many sensor nodes from a source to a destination, the route discovery process will create a long end-to-end transmission delay, which causes difficulties in some time-critical applications. To overcome this difficulty, the efficient route update and maintenance processes are proposed in this paper. It aims to limit the amount of routing overhead with two-tier routing architecture and introduce the combination of piggyback and trigger update to replace the periodic update process, which is the main source of unnecessary routing overhead. Simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed processes in improvement of total amount of routing overhead over existing popular routing protocols.

Silver Gelatin Print: A group exhibition curated by Karen Milder that investigates and captures the traditional processes using photograms, liquid emulsion, toning, hand-colouring and film. Part of the Queensland Festival of Photography 4 (QFP4).

Pillar of salt: (3 hand-applied silver gelatin photographs) Statement: For women moving into new experiences and spaces, loss and hardship is often a price to be paid. These courageous women look back to things they have overcome in order to continue to grow.

Automated risk mitigation in business processes

This paper proposes a concrete approach for the automatic mitigation of risks that are detected during process enactment. Given a process model exposed to risks, e.g. a financial process exposed to the risk of approval fraud, we enact this process and as soon as the likelihood of the associated risk(s) is no longer tolerable, we generate a set of possible mitigation actions to reduce the risks' likelihood, ideally annulling the risks altogether. A mitigation action is a sequence of controlled changes applied to the running process instance, taking into account a snapshot of the process resources and data, and the current status of the system in which the process is executed. These actions are proposed as recommendations to help process administrators mitigate process-related risks as soon as they arise. The approach has been implemented in the YAWL environment and its performance evaluated. The results show that it is possible to mitigate process-related risks within a few minutes.

Procuring OSM : base-line models of off-site manufacture business processes in Australia

A pressing cost issue facing construction is the procurement of off-site pre-manufactured assemblies. In order to encourage Australian adoption of off-site manufacture (OSM), a new approach to underlying processes is required. The advent of object oriented digital models for construction design assumes intelligent use of data. However, the construction production system relies on traditional methods and data sources and is expected to benefit from the application of well-established business process management techniques. The integration of the old and new data sources allows for the development of business process models which, by capturing typical construction processes involving OSM, provides insights into such processes. This integrative approach is the foundation of research into the use of OSM to increase construction productivity in Australia. The purpose of this study is to develop business process models capturing the procurement, resources and information flow of construction projects. For each stage of the construction value chain, a number of sub-processes are identified. Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN), a mainstream business process modelling standard, is used to create base-line generic construction process models. These models identify OSM decision-making points that could provide cost reductions in procurement workflow and management systems. This paper reports on phase one of an on-going research aiming to develop a proto-type workflow application that can provide semi-automated support to construction processes involving OSM and assist in decision-making in the adoption of OSM thus contributing to a sustainable built environment.

Real-time risk monitoring in business processes : a sensor-based approach

This article proposes an approach for real-time monitoring of risks in executable business process models. The approach considers risks in all phases of the business process management lifecycle, from process design, where risks are defined on top of process models, through to process diagnosis, where risks are detected during process execution. The approach has been realized via a distributed, sensor-based architecture. At design-time, sensors are defined to specify risk conditions which when fulfilled, are a likely indicator of negative process states (faults) to eventuate. Both historical and current process execution data can be used to compose such conditions. At run-time, each sensor independently notifies a sensor manager when a risk is detected. In turn, the sensor manager interacts with the monitoring component of a business process management system to prompt the results to process administrators who may take remedial actions. The proposed architecture has been implemented on top of the YAWL system, and evaluated through performance measurements and usability tests with students. The results show that risk conditions can be computed efficiently and that the approach is perceived as useful by the participants in the tests.

Implementing green business processes : the importance of functional affordances of information systems

An environmentally sustainable and thus green business process is one that delivers organizational value whilst also exerting a minimal impact on the natural environment. Recent works from the field of Information Systems (IS) have argued that information systems can contribute to the design and implementation of sustainable business processes. While prior research has investigated how information systems can be used in order to support sustainable business practices, there is still a void as to the actual changes that business processes have to undergo in order to become environmentally sustainable, and the specific role that information systems play in enabling this change. In this paper, we provide a conceptualization of environmentally sustainable business processes, and discuss the role of functional affordances of information systems in enabling both incremental and radical changes in order to make processes environmentally sustainable. Our conceptualization is based on (a) a fundamental definition of the concept of environmental sustainability, grounded in two basic components:the environmental source and sink functions of any project or activity, and (b) the concept of functional affordances, which describe the potential uses originating in the material properties of information systems in relation to their use context. In order to illustrate the application of our framework and provide a first evaluation, we analyse two examples from prior research where information systems impacted on the sustainability of business processes.

Configuring processes and business documents : an integrated approach to enterprise systems collaboration

Enterprise Systems (ES) provide standardized, off-theshelf support for operations and management within organizations. With the advent of ES based on a serviceoriented architecture (SOA) and an increasing demand of IT-supported interorganizational collaboration, implementation projects face paradigmatically new challenges. The configuration of ES is costly and error-prone. Dependencies between business processes and business documents are hardly explicit and foster component proliferation instead of reuse. Configurative modeling can support the problem in two ways: First, conceptual modeling abstracts from technical details and provides more intuitive access and overview. Second, configuration allows the projection of variants from master models providing manageable variants with controlled flexibility. We aim at tackling the problem by proposing an integrated model-based framework for configuring both, processes and business documents, on an equal basis; as together, they constitute the core business components of an ES.

The rise of birds and mammals: are microevolutionary processes sufficient for macroevolution?

It is a basis of darwinian evolution that the microevolutionary mechanisms that can be studied in the present are sufficient to account for macroevolution. However, this idea needs to be tested explicitly, as highlighted here by the example of the superceding of dinosaurs and pterosaurs by birds and placental mammals that occurred near the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary approximately 65 million years ago. A major problem for testing the sufficiency of microevolutionary processes is that independent ideas (such as the existence of an extraterrestrial impact, and the extinction of dinosaurs) were linked without the evidence for each idea being evaluated separately. Here, we suggest and discuss five testable models for the times and divergences of modern mammals and birds. Determination of the model that best represents these events will enable the role of microevolutionary mechanisms to be evaluated. The question of the sufficiency of microevolutionary processes for macroevolution is solvable, and available evidence supports an important role for biological processes in the initial decline of dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

How collaborative technology supports cognitive processes in collaborative process modeling : a capabilities-gains-outcome model

We examine which capabilities technologies provide to support collaborative process modeling. We develop a model that explains how technology capabilities impact cognitive group processes, and how they lead to improved modeling outcomes and positive technology beliefs. We test this model through a free simulation experiment of collaborative process modelers structured around a set of modeling tasks. With our study, we provide an understanding of the process of collaborative process modeling, and detail implications for research and guidelines for the practical design of collaborative process modeling.

3D BPMN airport processes

Video presented as part of ACIS 2009 conference in Melbourne Australia. This movie is a demonstration of the use of 3D Virtual Environments to visualise 3D BPMN Process Models, and in particular, to highlight any issues with the process model that are spatial in nature. This work is part of a paper accepted for the Asia-Pacific Conference on Conceptual Modelling (APCCM 2010) to be held in Brisbane - http://2010.apccm.org/

Personal processes interface mock up

Situated on Youtube, and shown in various locations. In this video we show a 3D mock up of a personal house purchasing process. A path traversal metaphor is used to give a sense of progression along the process stages. The intention is to be able to use console devices like an Xbox to consume business processes. This is so businesses can expose their internal processes to consumers using sophisticated user interfaces. The demonstrator was developed using Microsoft XNA, with assistance from the Suncorp Bank and the Smart Services CRC. More information at: www.bpmve.org

A comprehensive dual-scale wood torrefaction model : application to the analysis of thermal run-away in industrial heat treatment processes

A dual-scale model of the torrefaction of wood was developed and used to study industrial configurations. At the local scale, the computational code solves the coupled heat and mass transfer and the thermal degradation mechanisms of the wood components. At the global scale, the two-way coupling between the boards and the stack channels is treated as an integral component of the process. This model is used to investigate the effect of the stack configuration on the heat treatment of the boards. The simulations highlight that the exothermic reactions occurring in each single board can be accumulated along the stack. This phenomenon may result in a dramatic eterogeneity of the process and poses a serious risk of thermal runaway, which is often observed in industrial plants. The model is used to explain how thermal runaway can be lowered by increasing the airflow velocity, the sticker thickness or by gas flow reversal.

Board monitoring and judgement as processes of sensemaking

When organizational scandals occur, the common refrain among commentators is: 'Where was the board in all this?' 'How could the directors not have known what was going on?''Why didn't the board intervene?' The scandals demonstrate that board monitoring or oganizational performance is a matter of great importance. By monitoring, we mean the act of keeping the organization under review. In many English-speaking countries, directors have a legal duty of care, which includes duties to monitor the performance of their organizations (Hopt and von Hippel 2010). However, statutory law typically merely states the duty, while providing little guidance on how that duty can be met.