Using the Alliance Form for Operation and Maintenance of Privatized Infrastructures

A significant number of privatizations utilized to operate and maintain critical networked infrastructures have failed to meet contractual expectations and the expectations of the community. The author carried out empirical research ex-ploring four urban water systems. This research revealed that of the four forms of privatization the alliance form was particularly suited to the stewardship of an ur-ban water system. The question then is whether these findings from urban water can be generalised to O&M of infrastructure generally. The answer is increasingly important as governments seek financial sustainability through reapplying the contestability strategy and outsource and privatise further services and activities. This paper first examines the issues encountered with O & M privatisations. Second the findings as to the stewardship achieved by the four case study water systems are unpacked with particular focus upon the alliance form. Third the key variables which were found to have distinct causal links to the stewardship-like behaviour of the private participants in the Alliance case study are described. Fourth the variables which may be crucial to the successful application of the alliance form to the broader range of infrastructures are separated out. Fifth this paper then sets the path for research into these crucial features of the alliance form.

Weaknesses in the initialisation process of the Common Scrambling Algorithm Stream Cipher

The Common Scrambling Algorithm Stream Cipher (CSASC) is a shift register based stream cipher designed to encrypt digital video broadcast. CSA-SC produces a pseudo-random binary sequence that is used to mask the contents of the transmission. In this paper, we analyse the initialisation process of the CSA-SC keystream generator and demonstrate weaknesses which lead to state convergence, slid pairs and shifted keystreams. As a result, the cipher may be vulnerable to distinguishing attacks, time-memory-data trade-off attacks or slide attacks.

Enhanced stochastic mobility prediction with multi-output Gaussian processes

Outdoor robots such as planetary rovers must be able to navigate safely and reliably in order to successfully perform missions in remote or hostile environments. Mobility prediction is critical to achieving this goal due to the inherent control uncertainty faced by robots traversing natural terrain. We propose a novel algorithm for stochastic mobility prediction based on multi-output Gaussian process regression. Our algorithm considers the correlation between heading and distance uncertainty and provides a predictive model that can easily be exploited by motion planning algorithms. We evaluate our method experimentally and report results from over 30 trials in a Mars-analogue environment that demonstrate the effectiveness of our method and illustrate the importance of mobility prediction in navigating challenging terrain.

Global reconfiguration of a team of networked mobile robots among obstacles

This paper presents a full system demonstration of dynamic sensorbased reconfiguration of a networked robot team. Robots sense obstacles in their environment locally and dynamically adapt their global geometric configuration to conform to an abstract goal shape. We present a novel two-layer planning and control algorithm for team reconfiguration that is decentralised and assumes local (neighbour-to-neighbour) communication only. The approach is designed to be resource-efficient and we show experiments using a team of nine mobile robots with modest computation, communication, and sensing. The robots use acoustic beacons for localisation and can sense obstacles in their local neighbourhood using IR sensors. Our results demonstrate globally-specified reconfiguration from local information in a real robot network, and highlight limitations of standard mesh networks in implementing decentralised algorithms.

Modelling of the mechanical behaviour of heavily over-consolidated bagasse

A better understanding of the behaviour of prepared cane and bagasse, and the ability to model the mechanical behaviour of bagasse as it is squeezed in a milling unit to extract juice, would help identify how to improve the current process, for example to reduce final bagasse moisture. Previous investigations have proven that juice flow through bagasse obeys Darcy’s permeability law, that the grip of the rough surface of the grooves on the bagasse can be represented by the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion for soils, and that the internal mechanical behaviour of the bagasse is critical state behaviour similar to that for sand and clay. Current Finite Element Models (FEM) available in commercial software have adequate permeability models. However, no commercially available software seems to contain an adequate mechanical model for bagasse. The same software contains a few material models for soil and other materials, while the coding of hundreds of developed models for soil and other materials remains confidential at universities and government research centres. Progress has been made in the last ten years towards implementing a mechanical model for bagasse in finite element software code. This paper builds on that progress and carries out a further step towards obtaining an adequate material model. The fifth and final loading condition outlined previously, shearing of heavily over-consolidated bagasse, is outlined.

Asia Pacific Business Process Management

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Second Asia Pacific Conference on Business Process Management held in Brisbane, QLD, Australia, in July 2014. In all, 33 contributions from 12 countries were submitted. After each submission was reviewed by at least three Program Committee members, nine full papers were accepted for publication in this volume. These nine papers cover various topics that can be categorized under four main research focuses in BPM: process mining, process modeling and repositories, process model comparison, and process analysis.

Measuring patient flow variations : a cross-organisational process mining approach

Variations that exist in the treatment of patients (with similar symptoms) across different hospitals do substantially impact the quality and costs of healthcare. Consequently, it is important to understand the similarities and differences between the practices across different hospitals. This paper presents a case study on the application of process mining techniques to measure and quantify the differences in the treatment of patients presenting with chest pain symptoms across four South Australian hospitals. Our case study focuses on cross-organisational benchmarking of processes and their performance. Techniques such as clustering, process discovery, performance analysis, and scientific workflows were applied to facilitate such comparative analyses. Lessons learned in overcoming unique challenges in cross-organisational process mining, such as ensuring population comparability, data granularity comparability, and experimental repeatability are also presented.

Beyond Wearables : Experiences and Trends in Design of Portable Medical Devices

The use of Portable Medical Devices (PMDs) has become increasingly widespread over the last few years. A combination of factors; including advances in technology, the pressure to reduce public health costs and the desire to make health solutions accessible to a wider patient base are contributing to the growth in the PMD market. Design has a clear role to play in the current and future context of the PMD landscape. In this paper, we identify emerging trends in the design of PMDs; including changes in the form, purpose and mode of use, and explore how these trends are likely to fundamentally impact the nature of healthcare and the patient experience from an experience design perspective. We conclude by identifying a research opportunity for design within the healthcare and PMD context.

Refining a teaching pattern: Reflection around artefacts

This book is about understanding the nature and application of reflection in higher education. It provides a theoretical model to guide the implementation of reflective learning and reflective practice across multiple disciplines and international contexts in higher education. The book presents research into the ways in which reflection is both considered and implemented in different ways across different professional disciplines, while maintaining a common purpose to transform and improve learning and/or practice. Chapter 13 'Refining a Teaching Pattern: Reflection Around Artefacts' explores reflective practices of an artefact, in this case fashion design garment samples.

Overview of the ShARe/CLEF eHealth Evaluation Lab 2014

This paper reports on the 2nd ShARe/CLEFeHealth evaluation lab which continues our evaluation resource building activities for the medical domain. In this lab we focus on patients' information needs as opposed to the more common campaign focus of the specialised information needs of physicians and other healthcare workers. The usage scenario of the lab is to ease patients and next-of-kins' ease in understanding eHealth information, in particular clinical reports. The 1st ShARe/CLEFeHealth evaluation lab was held in 2013. This lab consisted of three tasks. Task 1 focused on named entity recognition and normalization of disorders; Task 2 on normalization of acronyms/abbreviations; and Task 3 on information retrieval to address questions patients may have when reading clinical reports. This year's lab introduces a new challenge in Task 1 on visual-interactive search and exploration of eHealth data. Its aim is to help patients (or their next-of-kin) in readability issues related to their hospital discharge documents and related information search on the Internet. Task 2 then continues the information extraction work of the 2013 lab, specifically focusing on disorder attribute identification and normalization from clinical text. Finally, this year's Task 3 further extends the 2013 information retrieval task, by cleaning the 2013 document collection and introducing a new query generation method and multilingual queries. De-identified clinical reports used by the three tasks were from US intensive care and originated from the MIMIC II database. Other text documents for Tasks 1 and 3 were from the Internet and originated from the Khresmoi project. Task 2 annotations originated from the ShARe annotations. For Tasks 1 and 3, new annotations, queries, and relevance assessments were created. 50, 79, and 91 people registered their interest in Tasks 1, 2, and 3, respectively. 24 unique teams participated with 1, 10, and 14 teams in Tasks 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The teams were from Africa, Asia, Canada, Europe, and North America. The Task 1 submission, reviewed by 5 expert peers, related to the task evaluation category of Effective use of interaction and targeted the needs of both expert and novice users. The best system had an Accuracy of 0.868 in Task 2a, an F1-score of 0.576 in Task 2b, and Precision at 10 (P@10) of 0.756 in Task 3. The results demonstrate the substantial community interest and capabilities of these systems in making clinical reports easier to understand for patients. The organisers have made data and tools available for future research and development.

Use of the biolistic particle delivery system to transform fungal genomes

Biolistic delivery of transforming DNA into fungal genomes, especially when performed on uninucleate haploid conidia, has proven successful in bypassing the time-consuming repetitive purification of protoplasts used for the widely applied polyethylene glycol-mediated method. Biolistic transformation is also relatively quick compared to other available methods and provides a high percentage of stable transformants.

A review selection method using product feature taxonomy

As of today, online reviews have become more and more important in decision making process. In recent years, the problem of identifying useful reviews for users has attracted significant attentions. For instance, in order to select reviews that focus on a particular feature, researchers proposed a method which extracts all associated words of this feature as the relevant information to evaluate and find appropriate reviews. However, the extraction of associated words is not that accurate due to the noise in free review text, and this affects the overall performance negatively. In this paper, we propose a method to select reviews according to a given feature by using a review model generated based upon a domain ontology called product feature taxonomy. The proposed review model provides relevant information about the hierarchical relationships of the features in the review which captures the review characteristics accurately. Our experiment results based on real world review dataset show that our approach is able to improve the review selection performance according to the given criteria effectively.

A random key genetic algorithm for live migration of multiple virtual machines in data centers

Live migration of multiple Virtual Machines (VMs) has become an integral management activity in data centers for power saving, load balancing and system maintenance. While state-of-the-art live migration techniques focus on the improvement of migration performance of an independent single VM, only a little has been investigated to the case of live migration of multiple interacting VMs. Live migration is mostly influenced by the network bandwidth and arbitrarily migrating a VM which has data inter-dependencies with other VMs may increase the bandwidth consumption and adversely affect the performances of subsequent migrations. In this paper, we propose a Random Key Genetic Algorithm (RKGA) that efficiently schedules the migration of a given set of VMs accounting both inter-VM dependency and data center communication network. The experimental results show that the RKGA can schedule the migration of multiple VMs with significantly shorter total migration time and total downtime compared to a heuristic algorithm.

Simulation study for analysis of online dielectric measurement problems on transformer insulation system

Determining the condition as well as the remaining life of an insulation system is essential for the reliable operation of large oil-filled power transformers. Frequency-domain spectroscopy (FDS) is one of the diagnostic techniques used to identify the dielectric status of a transformer. Currently, this technique can only be implemented on a de-energized transformer. This paper presents an initial investigation into a novel online monitoring method based on FDS dielectric measurements for transformers. The proposed technique specifically aims to address the real operational constraints of online testing. This is achieved by designing an online testing model extending the basic “extended Debye” linear dielectric model and taking unique noise issues only experienced during online measurements into account via simulations. Approaches to signal denoising and potential problems expected to be encountered during online measurements will also be discussed. Using fixed-frequency sinusoidal excitation waveforms will result in a long measurement times. The use of alternatives such as a chirp has been investigated using simulations. The results presented in the paper predict that reliable measurements should be possible during online testing.

Data mining the relationship between road crash and skid resistance

Road asset managers are seeking analysis of the whole road network to supplement statistical analyses of small subsets of homogeneous roadway. This study outlines the use of data mining capable of analyzing the wide range of situations found on the network, with a focus on the role of skid resistance in the cause of crashes. Results from the analyses show that on non-crash-prone roads with low crash rates, skid resistance contributes only in a minor way, whereas on high-crash roadways, skid resistance often contributes significantly in the calculation of the crash rate. The results provide evidence supporting a causal relationship between skid resistance and crashes and highlight the importance of the role of skid resistance in decision making in road asset management.