Cultivating the pedagogy of experience through international field trips : beyond the national context

Urban and regional planners, in the era of globalization, require being equipped with necessary skill sets to better deal with complex and rapidly changing economic, sociocultural, political, and environmental fabrics of cities and their regions. To provide such skill sets, urban and regional planning curriculum of Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, offers planning practice in the international context. This article, first, reports the findings of pedagogic analyses of the international field trips conducted to Malaysia, Korea, Turkey, and Taiwan. The article, then, discusses the opportunities and constraints of exposure of students to planning practice beyond the Australian context.

Simplified method for including spatial correlations in mean-field approximations

Biological systems involving proliferation, migration and death are observed across all scales. For example, they govern cellular processes such as wound-healing, as well as the population dynamics of groups of organisms. In this paper, we provide a simplified method for correcting mean-field approximations of volume-excluding birth-death-movement processes on a regular lattice. An initially uniform distribution of agents on the lattice may give rise to spatial heterogeneity, depending on the relative rates of proliferation, migration and death. Many frameworks chosen to model these systems neglect spatial correlations, which can lead to inaccurate predictions of their behaviour. For example, the logistic model is frequently chosen, which is the mean-field approximation in this case. This mean-field description can be corrected by including a system of ordinary differential equations for pair-wise correlations between lattice site occupancies at various lattice distances. In this work we discuss difficulties with this method and provide a simplication, in the form of a partial differential equation description for the evolution of pair-wise spatial correlations over time. We test our simplified model against the more complex corrected mean-field model, finding excellent agreement. We show how our model successfully predicts system behaviour in regions where the mean-field approximation shows large discrepancies. Additionally, we investigate regions of parameter space where migration is reduced relative to proliferation, which has not been examined in detail before, and our method is successful at correcting the deviations observed in the mean-field model in these parameter regimes.

The Stitchery collective : fashion in an expanded field

This practice-based presentation explores the role of fashion as an agent for social inclusion and ethical design practice in communities. The Stitchery Collective is an artist-run initiative based in Brisbane, Australia. Operating at the intersection of craft and design, the fashion-based initiative challenges the assumption that fashion is designed, produced and consumed exclusively in the commercial sector. As a not-for-profit cooperative, the stitchery collective is the first and only fashion organisation in Australia to attract funding under the national and state artist-run-initiative scheme. The collective approach extends to the stitchery design practice, facilitated by individual practitioners working within the organisation who devise programs in the context of collaborative and socially engaged design. Working under the banner of a question, Can fashion be more than pretty clothes for pretty people? the stitchery works to extend the cultural field of fashion practice in the 21st century. The premise of dress as a ‘significant creative or cultural expression’ has informed the expanded definition of fashion practice, as adopted by the stitchery. This alternative classification has fostered partnerships with numerous community groups, including those marginalised in the contemporary fashion context such as recent migrants and refugees. Community engagement programs span design, sewing and up-cycling workshops, sustainability lectures, clothing swaps and public education seminars, supported by partnerships with various cultural, government and educational institutions. In 2011, the stitchery travelled to the Venice Biennale’s 3rd International Children’s Carnival, hosting a workshop series and installation to promote design for sustainability. The proven potential for design to connect community members has motivated the stitchery to question the opportunity for fashion practice to, perhaps uncharacteristically, operate under the banner of ‘design for social good’. Acknowledging craft and design as relational fields, this presentation expands fashion as a tool for social innovation and sustainable practice. The stitchery dislocates the consumer status of fashion with small-scale, localised projects; moving beyond fashion as a dictum of social class to an alternative model that is accessible, conscious, flexible, connected and sustainable. As an undefined post-industrial future approaches, the non-commercial status of the stitchery practice might work to present an image of the active post-consumer. How can the stitchery propose a resilient model of design for the future?

Urban agriculture : a growing field of research workshop at INTERACT 2013

Growing food presents diverse challenges and opportunities within the urban environment. As cities develop, population density rises, land prices rise, and the opportunity to use land for traditional farming and gardening diminishes. Counter to this trend there are a growing number of both community gardens, city farms, guerrilla gardening, rooftop and vertical gardens, pot plants, windowsill herbs, and other balcony or backyard gardens cropping up in different cities, all with a purpose to produce food. This workshop brings to-gether practitioners and researchers in the field of urban agriculture and Hu-man-Computer Interaction to explore and opportunities for technology design to support the different forms of growing practice and foster local food production in cities. This 1-day workshop will serve as an active forum for researchers and practi-tioners across various fields including, but not limited to, agriculture and gar-dening, education, urban planning, human-computer interaction, and communi-ty engagement. This workshop has three distinct points of focus: i) Individual and small-scale gardening and food production, and how to connect like minded people who are involved in these practices to share their knowledge ii) Com-munities involved in urban agriculture, either through community gardens, city farms, or grassroots movements, often dependant on volunteer participation, providing the challenge of managing limited resources iii) Environmental and sociocultural sustainability through urban agriculture. The participants will have an opportunity to present their own work. This will be followed by a visit to a nearby city farm, which will provide a local context for a group design exercise. Finally the workshop will conclude with panel dis-cussions to review opportunities for further research and collaborations beyond the conference. For more information, please visit the workshop website, at http://www.urbaninformatics.net/resources/interact2013cfp/

Studies of the off-field behaviours of sportspeople : are sponsors' objectives at risk?

The research reported here addresses the problem of athlete off-field behaviours as they influence sports’ sponsors, particularly the achievement of sponsorship objectives. The question arises because of incidents of sponsorship contract cancellation following news-media reporting of athletes’ off-field behaviours. Two studies are used to investigate the research question; the first establishes the content of news-media reports, and the second tests the effects of news’ reports on athlete, team and sponsor evaluations using an experimental design. Key assumptions of the research are that sponsorship objectives are principally consumer-based and mediated. Models of sponsorship argue that sponsors aim to reach and influence consumers through sponsees. Assuming this pathway exists is central to sponsorship activities. A corollary is that other mediators, in this case the news-media, may also communicate (uncontrollable) messages such that a consumer audience may be told of negative news that may then be associated with the sponsor. When sponsors cancel contracts it is assumed that their goal is to control the links between their brand and a negative referent. Balance theory is used to discuss the potential effects of negative off-field behaviours of athletes on sponsor’s objectives. Heider’s balance theory (1958) explains that individuals prefer to evaluate linked individuals or entities consistently. In the sponsorship context this presents the possibility that a negative evaluation of the athlete’s behaviour will contribute to correspondingly negative evaluations of the athlete’s team and sponsors. A content analysis (Study 1) was used to survey the types of athlete off-field behaviours commonly reported in a newspaper. In order to provide a local context for the research, articles from the Courier Mail were sampled and teams in the National Rugby League (NRL) competition were the focus of the research. The study identified nearly 2000 articles referring to the NRL competition; 258 of those refer to off-field incidents involving athletes. The various types of behaviours reported include assault, sexual assault allegations, driving under the influence of alcohol, illicit drug use, breaches of club rules, and positive off-field activities (i.e., charitable activities). An experiment (Study 2) tested three news’ article stimuli developed from the behaviours identified in Study 1 in a between-subjects design. A measure of Identification with the Team was used as a covariate variable in the Multivariate Analysis of Covariance analysis. Social identity theory suggests that when an individual identifies with a group, their attitudes and behaviours towards both in- and out-group members are modified. Use of Identification with the Team as a covariate acknowledges that respondents will evaluate behaviours differently according to the attribution of those behaviours to an in- or out-group member. Findings of the research suggest that the news’ article stimuli have significant, large effects on evaluations of athlete off-field behaviour and athlete Likability. Consistent with pretest results, charitable fundraising is regarded as extremely positive; the athlete, correspondingly, is likable. Assault is evaluated as extremely negative, and the athlete as unlikable. DUI scores reveal that the athlete’s behaviour is very negative; however, the athlete’s likability was evaluated as neutral. Treatment group does not produce any significant effects on team or sponsor variables. This research also finds that Identification with the Team has significant, large effects on team variables (Attitude toward the Brand and Corporate Image). Identification also has a significant large effect on athlete Likability, but not on Attitude toward the Act. Identification with the Team does not produce any significant effects on sponsor variables. The results of this research suggest that sponsor’s consumer-based objectives are not threatened by newspaper reports linking athlete off-field behaviour with their brand. Evaluations of sponsor variables (Attitude toward the Sponsor’s Brand and Corporate Image) were consistently positive. Variance in that data, however, cannot be attributed to experimental stimuli or Identification with the Team. These results argue that respondents may regard sponsorships, in principle, as good. Although it is good news for sponsors that negative evaluations of athletes will not produce correspondingly negative evaluations of consumer-based sponsorship objectives, the results indicate problems for sponsorship managers. The failure of Identification with the Team to explain sponsor variable variance indicates that the sponsor has not been evaluated as a linked entity in a relationship with the sporting team and athlete in this research. This result argues that the sponsee-mediated affective communication path that sponsors aim use to communicate with desirable publics is not necessarily a path available to them.

Monte Carlo-based diode design for correction-less small field dosimetry

Due to their small collecting volume diodes are commonly used in small field dosimetry. However the relative sensitivity of a diode increases with decreasing small field size. Conversely, small air gaps have been shown to cause a significant decrease in the sensitivity of a detector as the field size is decreased. Therefore this study uses Monte Carlo simulations to look at introducing air upstream to diodes such that they measure with a constant sensitivity across all field sizes in small field dosimetry. Varying thicknesses of air were introduced onto the upstream end of two commercial diodes (PTW 60016 photon diode and PTW 60017 electron diode), as well as a theoretical unenclosed silicon chip using field sizes as small as 5 mm × 5 mm . The metric D_(w,Q)/D_(Det,Q) used in this study represents the ratio of the dose to a point of water to the dose to the diode active volume, for a particular field size and location. The optimal thickness of air required to provide a constant sensitivity across all small field sizes was found by plotting D_(w,Q)/D_(Det,Q) as a function of introduced air gap size for various field sizes, and finding the intersection point of these plots. That is, the point at which D_(w,Q)/D_(Det,Q) was constant for all field sizes was found. The optimal thickness of air was calculated to be 3.3 mm, 1.15 mm and 0.10 mm for the photon diode, electron diode and unenclosed silicon chip respectively. The variation in these results was due to the different design of each detector. When calculated with the new diode design incorporating the upstream air gap, k_(Q_clin 〖,Q〗_msr)^(f_clin 〖,f〗_msr ) was equal to unity to within statistical uncertainty (0.5 %) for all three diodes. Cross-axis profile measurements were also improved with the new detector design. The upstream air gap could be implanted on the commercial diodes via a cap consisting of the air cavity surrounded by water equivalent material. The results for the unclosed silicon chip show that an ideal small field dosimetry diode could be created by using a silicon chip with a small amount of air above it.

Qualitative criminology : Stories from the field

Qualitative researchers in the discipline of criminology perform a wide range of challenging tasks. They interview prisoners, police officers, magistrates and judges. They speak with survivors of domestic violence, and drink tea with the mothers of murdered children. They observe courts and communities, investigate the decision-making processes of juries and immerse themselves in the data they collect. They ask ‘big’ questions – ‘how do we criminalise the producers of toxic toys?’ – as well as ‘little’ questions – ‘what should I wear to conduct this interview?’ Qualitative Criminology: Stories from the Field brings to life the stories behind the research of both emerging and established scholars in Australian criminology. The book’s contributors provided honest, reflective, and decidedly unsanitised accounts of their qualitative research journeys - the lively tales of what really happens when conducting research of this nature, the stories that often make for parenthetical asides in conference papers but tend to be excised from journal articles. This book considers the gap between research methods and the realities of qualitative research. As such, it aims to help researchers and students who conduct qualitative criminological research reflect upon their role as researchers, and the practical, ideological and ethical issues which may arise in the course of their research. It is also a call to criminologists to make public the ‘failures’ and missteps of their research endeavours so that we can learn from one another and become better informed and more reflexive qualitative criminologists.

Partnerships to promote school to work transitions : evidence from the field

Internationally, vocational education and training (VET) is challenged by increasing skills shortages in certain industries and rapidly changing skill requirements. Rigid and centralised state bureaucracies have proven inadequate to adapt to these challenges. Increasingly, partnerships between schools and industry have been established as a potential strategy to address local labour market demand and to provide school to work transition programs. Drawing on experiences in Australia, this paper reports on a case study of government-let partnerships between schools and industry. The Queensland Gateway schools initiative currently involves over 120 schools. The study aimed to understand how partnerships were constructed in this initiative. Selected partnerships were analysed in terms of the following principles of public-private partnerships – efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, and beneficiaries. Although there are some benefits of partnership activities reported by both school and industry stakeholders, little evidence was found that the above underlying principles had been addressed to a significant extent in the Gateway school initiative. Further, these partnerships are often tenuously facilitated by individuals who have limited infrastructure or strategic support. Implications are that project stakeholders have not sufficiently accommodated theoretical perspectives on implementation and management of partnerships. Similar initiatives may be improved if stakeholders are cognisant of the underlying principles supporting successful public-private partnerships.

Segmentation of cone-beam CT using a hidden Markov random field with informative priors

Purpose: Flat-detector, cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) has enormous potential to improve the accuracy of treatment delivery in image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT). To assist radiotherapists in interpreting these images, we use a Bayesian statistical model to label each voxel according to its tissue type. Methods: The rich sources of prior information in IGRT are incorporated into a hidden Markov random field (MRF) model of the 3D image lattice. Tissue densities in the reference CT scan are estimated using inverse regression and then rescaled to approximate the corresponding CBCT intensity values. The treatment planning contours are combined with published studies of physiological variability to produce a spatial prior distribution for changes in the size, shape and position of the tumour volume and organs at risk (OAR). The voxel labels are estimated using the iterated conditional modes (ICM) algorithm. Results: The accuracy of the method has been evaluated using 27 CBCT scans of an electron density phantom (CIRS, Inc. model 062). The mean voxel-wise misclassification rate was 6.2%, with Dice similarity coefficient of 0.73 for liver, muscle, breast and adipose tissue. Conclusions: By incorporating prior information, we are able to successfully segment CBCT images. This could be a viable approach for automated, online image analysis in radiotherapy.

An interpretive field study of packaged software selection processes

Packaged software is pre-built with the intention of licensing it to users in domestic settings and work organisations. This thesis focuses upon the work organisation where packaged software has been characterised as one of the latest ‘solutions’ to the problems of information systems. The study investigates the packaged software selection process that has, to date, been largely viewed as objective and rational. In contrast, this interpretive study is based on a 21⁄2 year long field study of organisational experiences with packaged software selection at T.Co, a consultancy organisation based in the United Kingdom. Emerging from the iterative process of case study and action research is an alternative theory of packaged software selection. The research argues that packaged software selection is far from the rationalistic and linear process that previous studies suggest. Instead, the study finds that aspects of the traditional process of selection incorporating the activities of gathering requirements, evaluation and selection based on ‘best fit’ may or may not take place. Furthermore, even where these aspects occur they may not have equal weight or impact upon implementation and usage as may be expected. This is due to the influence of those multiple realities which originate from the organisational and market environments within which packages are created, selected and used, the lack of homogeneity in organisational contexts and the variously interpreted characteristics of the package in question.

Distinguishing between mean-field, moment dynamics and stochastic descriptions of birth-death-movement processes

Mathematical descriptions of birth–death–movement processes are often calibrated to measurements from cell biology experiments to quantify tissue growth rates. Here we describe and analyze a discrete model of a birth–death-movement process applied to a typical two–dimensional cell biology experiment. We present three different descriptions of the system: (i) a standard mean–field description which neglects correlation effects and clustering; (ii) a moment dynamics description which approximately incorporates correlation and clustering effects, and; (iii) averaged data from repeated discrete simulations which directly incorporates correlation and clustering effects. Comparing these three descriptions indicates that the mean–field and moment dynamics approaches are valid only for certain parameter regimes, and that both these descriptions fail to make accurate predictions of the system for sufficiently fast birth and death rates where the effects of spatial correlations and clustering are sufficiently strong. Without any method to distinguish between the parameter regimes where these three descriptions are valid, it is possible that either the mean–field or moment dynamics model could be calibrated to experimental data under inappropriate conditions, leading to errors in parameter estimation. In this work we demonstrate that a simple measurement of agent clustering and correlation, based on coordination number data, provides an indirect measure of agent correlation and clustering effects, and can therefore be used to make a distinction between the validity of the different descriptions of the birth–death–movement process.

Segmentation of cone-beam CT using a hidden Markov random field with informative priors

Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) has enormous potential to improve the accuracy of treatment delivery in image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT). To assist radiotherapists in interpreting these images, we use a Bayesian statistical model to label each voxel according to its tissue type. The rich sources of prior information in IGRT are incorporated into a hidden Markov random field model of the 3D image lattice. Tissue densities in the reference CT scan are estimated using inverse regression and then rescaled to approximate the corresponding CBCT intensity values. The treatment planning contours are combined with published studies of physiological variability to produce a spatial prior distribution for changes in the size, shape and position of the tumour volume and organs at risk. The voxel labels are estimated using iterated conditional modes. The accuracy of the method has been evaluated using 27 CBCT scans of an electron density phantom. The mean voxel-wise misclassification rate was 6.2\%, with Dice similarity coefficient of 0.73 for liver, muscle, breast and adipose tissue. By incorporating prior information, we are able to successfully segment CBCT images. This could be a viable approach for automated, online image analysis in radiotherapy.

A novel representation of bioacoustic events for content-based search in field audio data

Bioacoustic data can provide an important base for environmental monitoring. To explore a large amount of field recordings collected, an automated similarity search algorithm is presented in this paper. A region of an audio defined by frequency and time bounds is provided by a user; the content of the region is used to construct a query. In the retrieving process, our algorithm will automatically scan through recordings to search for similar regions. In detail, we present a feature extraction approach based on the visual content of vocalisations – in this case ridges, and develop a generic regional representation of vocalisations for indexing. Our feature extraction method works best for bird vocalisations showing ridge characteristics. The regional representation method allows the content of an arbitrary region of a continuous recording to be described in a compressed format.

Dependence of residual amplitude noise in electro-optic phase modulators on the intensity distribution of the incident field

Our results demonstrate that photorefractive residual amplitude modulation (RAM) noise in electro-optic modulators (EOMs) can be reduced by modifying the incident beam intensity distribution. Here we report an order of magnitude reduction in RAM when beams with uniform intensity (flat-top) profiles, generated with an LCOS-SLM, are used instead of the usual fundamental Gaussian mode (TEM00). RAM arises from the photorefractive amplified scatter noise off the defects and impurities within the crystal. A reduction in RAM is observed with increasing intensity uniformity (flatness), which is attributed to a reduction in space charge field on the beam axis. The level of RAM reduction that can be achieved is physically limited by clipping at EOM apertures, with the observed results agreeing well with a simple model. These results are particularly important in applications where the reduction of residual amplitude modulation to 10^-6 is essential.