Journalism education dilemmas : career-focussed skill set, teamwork or critical thinking?

In Australian universities, journalism educators usually come to the academy from the journalism profession and consequently place a high priority on leading students to develop a career-focussed skill set. The changing nature of the technological, political and economic environments and the professional destinations of journalism graduates place demands on journalism curricula and educators alike. The profession is diverse, such that the better description is of many ‘journalisms’ rather than one ‘journalism’ with consequential pressures being placed on curricula to extend beyond the traditional skill set, where practical ‘writing’ and ‘editing’ skills dominate, to the incorporation of critical theory and the social construction of knowledge. A parallel set of challenges faces academic staff operating in a higher education environment where change is the only constant and research takes precedent over curriculum development. In this paper, three educators at separate universities report on their attempts to implement curriculum change to imbue graduates with better skills and attributes such as enhanced team work, problem solving and critical thinking, to operate in the divergent environment of 21st century journalism. The paper uses narrative case study to illustrate the different approaches. Data collected from formal university student evaluations inform the narratives along with rich but less formal qualitative data including anecdotal student comments and student reflective assessment presentations. Comparison of the three approaches illustrates the dilemmas academic staff face when teaching in disciplines that are impacted by rapid changes in technology requiring new pedagogical approaches. Recommendations for future directions are considered against the background or learning purpose.

Regulation of train service by coasting control in metro railway system

To maximise the capacity of the rail lineand provide a reliable service for pas-sengers throughout the day, regulation of train service to maintain steady service headway is es-sential. In most current metro systems, train usually starts coasting at a fixed distance from the departed station to achieve service regulation. However, this approach is only effective with re-spect to a nominal operational condition of train schedule but not necessarily the current service demand. Moreover, it is not simply to identify the necessary starting point for coasting under the run time constraints of current service conditions since train movement is attributed by a large number of factors, most of which are non-linear and inter-dependent. This paper presents an ap-plication of classical measures to search for the appropriate coasting point to meet a specified inter-station run time and they can be integrated in the on-board Automatic Train Operation (ATO) system and have the potential for on-line implementation in making a set of coasting command decisions.

Old Brisbane Botanic Gardens: Conservation Plan Review 2005, Report of Stage 1 Heritage Significance and Conservation Policies

Report for City Design, for Environment and Parks, within the Brisbane City Council. Context of this Project A Conservation Study for the Old Brisbane Botanic Gardens, formerly called the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, was finalised in 1995 and prepared by Jeannie Sim for the Landscape Section of Brisbane City Council, the same author of the present report. This unpublished report was the first conservation plan prepared for the place and it was recommended that it be reviewed in five years time. That time has arrived finally with the preparation of the 2005 Review. The present project was commissioned by City Design on behalf of Environment and Parks Section of Brisbane City Council. The author has purposely chosen to call the study site the 'Old Brisbane Botanic Gardens' (OBBG) to differentiate it from the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mt. Coot-tha (BBG-MC), and to maintain the claim for this original garden to remain as a botanic garden for Brisbane. This name immediately brings to mind an association with history, as in the precedent set by the naming of the nearby 'Old Government House' at Gardens Point.

Parallel solution for railway power network simulation

The Streaming SIMD extension (SSE) is a special feature that is available in the Intel Pentium III and P4 classes of microprocessors. As its name implies, SSE enables the execution of SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) operations upon 32-bit floating-point data therefore, performance of floating-point algorithms can be improved. In electrified railway system simulation, the computation involves the solving of a huge set of simultaneous linear equations, which represent the electrical characteristic of the railway network at a particular time-step and a fast solution for the equations is desirable in order to simulate the system in real-time. In this paper, we present how SSE is being applied to the railway network simulation.

Ownership structure and business evaluation practices in family SMEs : evidence from empirical research in Italy

This paper presents early results from a pilot project which aims to investigate the relationship between proprietary structure of small and medium- sized Italian family firms and their owners’ orientation towards a “business evaluation process”. Evidence from many studies point out the importance of family business in a worldwide economic environment: in Italy 93% of the businesses are represented by family firms; 98% of them have less than 50 employees (Italian Association of Family Firms, 2004) so we judged family SMEs as a relevant field of investigation. In this study we assume a broad definition of family business as “a firm whose control (50% of shares or voting rights) is closely held by the members of the same family” (Corbetta,1995). “Business evaluation process” is intended here both as “continuous evaluation process” (which is the expression of a well developed managerial attitude) or as an “immediate valuation” (i.e. in the case of new shareholder’s entrance, share exchange among siblings, etc). We set two hypotheses to be tested in this paper: the first is “quantitative” and aims to verify whether the number of owners (independent variable) in a family firm is positively correlated to the business evaluation process. If a family firm is led by only one subject, it is more likely that personal values, culture and feelings may affect his choices more than “purely economic opportunities”; so there is less concern about monitoring economic performance or about the economic value of the firm. As the shareholders’ number increases, economic aspects in managing the firm grow in importance over the personal values and "value orientation" acquires a central role. The second hypothesis investigates if and to what extent the presence of “non- family members” among the owners affects their orientation to the business evaluation process. The “Cramer’s V” test has been used to test the hypotheses; both were not confirmed from these early results; next steps will lead to make an inferential analysis on a representative sample of the population.

Genotyping of enterococcus faecalis and enterococcus faecium isolates using a set of eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)

A SNP genotyping method was developed for E. faecalis and E. faecium using the 'Minimum SNPs' program. SNP sets were interrogated using allele-specific real-time PCR. SNP-typing sub-divided clonal complexes 2 and 9 of E. faecalis and 17 of E. faecium, members of which cause the majority of nosocomial infections globally.

Smart Grid Test Bed Design and Implementation

Given there is currently a migration trend from traditional electrical supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems towards a smart grid based approach to critical infrastructure management. This project provides an evaluation of existing and proposed implementations for both traditional electrical SCADA and smart grid based architectures, and proposals a set of reference requirements which test bed implementations should implement. A high-level design for smart grid test beds is proposed and initial implementation performed, based on the proposed design, using open source and freely available software tools. The project examines the move towards smart grid based critical infrastructure management and illustrates the increased security requirements. The implemented test bed provides a basic framework for testing network requirements in a smart grid environment, as well as a platform for further research and development. Particularly to develop, implement and test network security related disturbances such as intrusion detection and network forensics. The project undertaken proposes and develops an architecture of the emulation of some smart grid functionality. The Common Open Research Emulator (CORE) platform was used to emulate the communication network of the smart grid. Specifically CORE was used to virtualise and emulate the TCP/IP networking stack. This is intended to be used for further evaluation and analysis, for example the analysis of application protocol messages, etc. As a proof of concept, software libraries were designed, developed and documented to enable and support the design and development of further smart grid emulated components, such as reclosers, switches, smart meters, etc. As part of the testing and evaluation a Modbus based smart meter emulator was developed to provide basic functionality of a smart meter. Further code was developed to send Modbus request messages to the emulated smart meter and receive Modbus responses from it. Although the functionality of the emulated components were limited, it does provide a starting point for further research and development. The design is extensible to enable the design and implementation of additional SCADA protocols. The project also defines an evaluation criteria for the evaluation of the implemented test bed, and experiments are designed to evaluate the test bed according to the defined criteria. The results of the experiments are collated and presented, and conclusions drawn from the results to facilitate discussion on the test bed implementation. The discussion undertaken also present possible future work.

Using a siphon to drain floodwaters

This article describes how to use a siphon to drain floodwaters. A siphon is a tube that conveys water to a lower level via point above the upper water level by gravity. A siphon can be set up to drain existing floodwaters more quickly than they would naturally and can also prevent flooding. Siphons are particularly useful in situations where no pump is available, and a drainage point exists lower than the level of the floodwaters. Some case studies are presented.

Genetic resources in wild and cultured stocks of the Asian mud crab, Scylla paramamosain

The mud crab (Scylla spp.) aquaculture industry has expanded rapidly in recent years in many countries in the Indo - West Pacific (IWP) region as an alternative to marine shrimp culture because of significant disease outbreaks and associated failures of many shrimp culture industries in the region. Currently, practices used to produce and manage breeding crabs in hatcheries may compromise levels of genetic diversity, ultimately compromising growth rates, disease resistance and stock productivity. Therefore, to avoid “genetic pollution” and its harmful effects and to promote further development of mud crab aquaculture and fisheries in a sustainable way, a greater understanding of the genetic attributes of wild and cultured mud crab stocks is required. Application of these results can provide benefits for managing wild and cultured Asian mud crab populations for multiple purposes including for commercial production, recreation and conservation and to increase profitability and sustainability of newly emerging crab culture industries. Phylogeographic patterns and the genetic structure of Asian mud crab populations across the IWP were assessed to determine if they were concordant with those of other widespread taxa possessing pelagic larvae of relatively long duration. A 597 bp fragment of the mitochondrial DNA COI gene was amplified and screened for variation in a total of 297 individuals of S. paramamosain from six sampling sites across the species’ natural geographical distribution in the IWP and 36 unique haplotypes were identified. Haplotype diversities per site ranged from 0.516 to 0.879. Nucleotide diversity estimates among haplotypes were 0.11% – 0.48%. Maximum divergence observed among S. paramamosain samples was 1.533% and samples formed essentially a single monophyletic group as no obvious clades were related to geographical location of sites. A weak positive relationship was observed however, between genetic distance and geographical distance among sites. Microsatellite markers were then used to assess contemporary gene flow and population structure in Asian mud crab populations sampled across their natural distribution in the IWP. Eight microsatellite loci were screened in sampled S. paramamosain populations and all showed high allelic diversity at all loci in sampled populations. In total, 344 individuals were analysed, and 304 microsatellite alleles were found across the 8 loci. The mean number of alleles per locus at each site ranged from 20.75 to 28.25. Mean allelic richness per site varied from 17.2 to 18.9. All sites showed high levels of heterozygosity as average expected heterozygosities for all loci ranged from 0.917 – 0.953 while mean observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.916 – 0.959. Allele diversities were similar at all sites and across all loci. The results did not show any evidence for major differences in allele frequencies among sites and patterns of allele frequencies were very similar in all populations across all loci. Estimates of population differentiation (FST) were relatively low and most probably largely reflect intra – individual variation for very highly variable loci. Results from nDNA analysis showed evidence for only very limited population genetic structure among sampled S. paramamosain, and a positive and significant association for genetic and geographical distance among sample sites. Microsatellite markers were then employed to determine if adequate levels of genetic diversity has been captured in crab hatcheries for the breeding cycle. The results showed that all microsatellite loci were polymorphic in hatchery samples. Culture populations were in general, highly genetically depauperate, compared with comparable wild populations, with only 3 to 8 alleles recorded for the same loci set per population. In contrast, very high numbers of alleles per locus were found in reference wild S. paramamosain populations, which ranged from 18 to 46 alleles per locus per population. In general, this translates into a 3 to 10 fold decline in mean allelic richness per locus in all culture stocks compared with wild reference counterparts. Furthermore, most loci in all cultured S. paramamosain samples showed departures from HWE equilibrium. Allele frequencies were very different in culture samples from that present in comparable wild reference samples and this in particular, was reflected in a large decline in allele diversity per locus. The pattern observed was best explained by significant impacts of breeding practices employed in hatcheries rather than natural differentiation among wild populations used as the source of brood stock. Recognition of current problems and management strategies for the species both for the medium and long-term development of the new culture industry are discussed. The priority research to be undertaken over the medium term for S. paramamosain should be to close the life cycle fully to allow individuals to be bred on demand and their offspring equalised to control broodstock reproductive contributions. Establishing a broodstock register and pedigree mating system will be required before any selection program is implemented. This will ensure that sufficient genetic variation will be available to allow genetic gains to be sustainably achieved in a future stock improvement program. A fundamental starting point to improve hatchery practices will be to encourage farmers and hatchery managers to spawn more females in their hatcheries as it will increase background genetic diversity in culture stocks. Combining crablet cohorts from multiple hatcheries into a single cohort for supply to farmers or rotation of breeding females regularly in hatcheries will help to address immediate genetic diversity problems in culture stocks. Application of these results can provide benefits for managing wild and cultured Asian mud crab populations more efficiently. Over the long-term, application of data on genetic diversity in wild and cultured stocks of Asian mud crab will contribute to development of sustainable and productive culture industries in Vietnam and other countries in the IWP and can contribute towards conservation of wild genetic resources.

Striving to realise the European idea : judging the news media’s accounts of how the Berlin Wall gave impetus to a new order across Europe

The 1990 European Community was taken by surprise, by the urgency of demands from the newly-elected Eastern European governments to become member countries. Those governments were honouring the mass social movement of the streets, the year before, demanding free elections and a liberal economic system associated with “Europe”. The mass movement had actually been accompanied by much activity within institutional politics, in Western Europe, the former “satellite” states, the Soviet Union and the United States, to set up new structures – with German reunification and an expanded EC as the centre-piece. This paper draws on the writer’s doctoral dissertation on mass media in the collapse of the Eastern bloc, focused on the Berlin Wall – documenting both public protests and institutional negotiations. For example the writer as a correspondent in Europe from that time, recounts interventions of the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, at a European summit in Paris nine days after the “Wall”, and separate negotiations with the French President, Francois Mitterrand -- on the reunification, and EU monetary union after 1992. Through such processes, the “European idea” would receive fresh impetus, though the EU which eventuated, came with many altered expectations. It is argued here that as a result of the shock of 1989, a “social” Europe can be seen emerging, as a shared experience of daily life -- especially among people born during the last two decades of European consolidation. The paper draws on the author’s major research, in four parts: (1) Field observation from the strategic vantage point of a news correspondent. This includes a treatment of evidence at the time, of the wishes and intentions of the mass public (including the unexpected drive to join the European Community), and those of governments, (e.g. thoughts of a “Tienanmen Square solution” in East Berlin, versus the non-intervention policies of the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev). (2) A review of coverage of the crisis of 1989 by major news media outlets, treated as a history of the process. (3) As a comparison, and a test of accuracy and analysis; a review of conventional histories of the crisis appearing a decade later.(4) A further review, and test, provided by journalists responsible for the coverage of the time, as reflection on practice – obtained from semi-structured interviews.

Participatory action research card set

These cards are designed as a resource for implementing participatory action research (PAR) in social programs. Each card covers one of the five key stages of PAR as outlined in the manual 'On PAR- Using participatory Action Research to Improve Early Intervention' (Crane and O'Regan 2010).

On a taxonomy of delegation

Delegation, from the technical point of view, is widely considered as a potential approach in addressing the problem of providing dynamic access control decisions in activities with a high level of collaboration, either within a single security domain or across multiple security domains. Although delegation continues to attract significant attention from the research community, presently, there is no published work that presents a taxonomy of delegation concepts and models. This paper intends to address this gap by presenting a set of taxonomic criteria relevant to the concept of delegation and applies the taxonomy to a selection of significant delegation models published in the literature.

On a taxonomy of delegation

Delegation, from a technical point of view, is widely considered as a potential approach in addressing the problem of providing dynamic access control decisions in activities with a high level of collaboration, either within a single security domain or across multiple security domains. Although delegation continues to attract significant attention from the research community, presently, there is no published work that presents a taxonomy of delegation concepts and models. This article intends to address this gap by presenting a set of taxonomic criteria relevant to the concept of delegation. This article also applies the taxonomy to a selection of significant delegation models published in the literature.

Improving the performance of model-order selection criteria by partial-model selection search

The traditional searching method for model-order selection in linear regression is a nested full-parameters-set searching procedure over the desired orders, which we call full-model order selection. On the other hand, a method for model-selection searches for the best sub-model within each order. In this paper, we propose using the model-selection searching method for model-order selection, which we call partial-model order selection. We show by simulations that the proposed searching method gives better accuracies than the traditional one, especially for low signal-to-noise ratios over a wide range of model-order selection criteria (both information theoretic based and bootstrap-based). Also, we show that for some models the performance of the bootstrap-based criterion improves significantly by using the proposed partial-model selection searching method. Index Terms— Model order estimation, model selection, information theoretic criteria, bootstrap 1. INTRODUCTION Several model-order selection criteria can be applied to find the optimal order. Some of the more commonly used information theoretic-based procedures include Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) [1], corrected Akaike (AICc) [2], minimum description length (MDL) [3], normalized maximum likelihood (NML) [4], Hannan-Quinn criterion (HQC) [5], conditional model-order estimation (CME) [6], and the efficient detection criterion (EDC) [7]. From a practical point of view, it is difficult to decide which model order selection criterion to use. Many of them perform reasonably well when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is high. The discrepancies in their performance, however, become more evident when the SNR is low. In those situations, the performance of the given technique is not only determined by the model structure (say a polynomial trend versus a Fourier series) but, more importantly, by the relative values of the parameters within the model. This makes the comparison between the model-order selection algorithms difficult as within the same model with a given order one could find an example for which one of the methods performs favourably well or fails [6, 8]. Our aim is to improve the performance of the model order selection criteria in cases where the SNR is low by considering a model-selection searching procedure that takes into account not only the full-model order search but also a partial model order search within the given model order. Understandably, the improvement in the performance of the model order estimation is at the expense of additional computational complexity.

An enriched radial point interpolation method (e-RPIM) for analysis of crack tip fields

In this paper, an enriched radial point interpolation method (e-RPIM) is developed the for the determination of crack tip fields. In e-RPIM, the conventional RBF interpolation is novelly augmented by the suitable trigonometric basis functions to reflect the properties of stresses for the crack tip fields. The performance of the enriched RBF meshfree shape functions is firstly investigated to fit different surfaces. The surface fitting results have proven that, comparing with the conventional RBF shape function, the enriched RBF shape function has: (1) a similar accuracy to fit a polynomial surface; (2) a much better accuracy to fit a trigonometric surface; and (3) a similar interpolation stability without increase of the condition number of the RBF interpolation matrix. Therefore, it has proven that the enriched RBF shape function will not only possess all advantages of the conventional RBF shape function, but also can accurately reflect the properties of stresses for the crack tip fields. The system of equations for the crack analysis is then derived based on the enriched RBF meshfree shape function and the meshfree weak-form. Several problems of linear fracture mechanics are simulated using this newlydeveloped e-RPIM method. It has demonstrated that the present e-RPIM is very accurate and stable, and it has a good potential to develop a practical simulation tool for fracture mechanics problems.