Off-site Manufacture in Australia : Current State and Future Directions

Off-site manufacture (OSM) offers numerous benefits to all parties in the construction process. The uptake of OSM in Australia has, however, been limited. This limited uptake corresponds to similar trends in the UK and US, although the level of OSM there appears to be increasing. This project undertook three workshops — one each in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia — and 18 interviews with key stakeholders to assist in identifying the general benefits and barriers to OSM uptake in the Australian construction industry. Seven case studies were also undertaken, involving construction projects that used OSM, ranging from civil projects through to residential. Each of these case studies has been analysed to identify what worked and what didn’t, and suggest the lessons to be learned from each project.

Source location of acoustic emission waves for structural health monitoring of bridges

The process of structural health monitoring (SHM) involves monitoring a structure over a period of time using appropriate sensors, extracting damage sensitive features from the measurements made by the sensors and analysing these features to determine the current state of the structure. Various techniques are available for structural health monitoring of structures and acoustic emission (AE) is one technique that is finding an increasing use. Acoustic emission waves are the stress waves generated by the mechanical deformation of materials. AE waves produced inside a structure can be recorded by means of sensors attached on the surface. Analysis of these recorded signals can locate and assess the extent of damage. This paper describes preliminary studies on the application of AE technique for health monitoring of bridge structures. Crack initiation or structural damage will result in wave propagation in solid and this can take place in various forms. Propagation of these waves is likely to be affected by the dimensions, surface properties and shape of the specimen. This, in turn, will affect source localization. Various laboratory test results will be presented on source localization, using pencil lead break tests. The results from the tests can be expected to aid in enhancement of knowledge of acoustic emission process and development of effective bridge structure diagnostics system.

Responding to an ageing workforce in an Australian state

Many industrialised nations have changing demographic profiles, as increased longevity and decreased birth rates lead to an ageing population. This presents significant challenges for workforces, as older employees retire and there are insufficient numbers of younger employees to take their place. This leads to skills shortages, and strong competition for those who are available. This paper considers these issues in the context of Queensland, the third largest state of Australia. The Queensland Government is addressing the issues for all industries in the state, primarily through a Skills Plan and an Experience Pays Awareness Strategy. As the largest employer in the state, the Queensland Government has commenced implementing the Experience Pays Awareness Strategy within its own workforce. The approach touches on many facets of HRM. The HRM policy framework and tools are examined for their potential to support increased participation of older employees. A range of issues are addressed for older workers, including their competence and health and safety issues. Issues for managers include addressing myths and subtle discrimination against older workers, as well as managing cross-generational workforce. Other strategies and methods are targeted at cultural factors, such as the expectations of older workers, and the myths and discrimination against older workers. Yet other strategies are aimed at organisational issues such retention of knowledge and succession planning.

Prognosis of bearing failure based on health state estimation

This paper proposes a new prognosis model based on the technique for health state estimation of machines for accurate assessment of the remnant life. For the evaluation of health stages of machines, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier was employed to obtain the probability of each health state. Two case studies involving bearing failures were used to validate the proposed model. Simulated bearing failure data and experimental data from an accelerated bearing test rig were used to train and test the model. The result obtained is very encouraging and shows that the proposed prognostic model produces promising results and has the potential to be used as an estimation tool for machine remnant life prediction.

Teachers reporting suspected child sexual abuse : results of a three-state study

Over 3000 cases of child sexual abuse are identified every year in Australia, but the real incidence is higher still. As a strategy to identify child sexual abuse, Australian States and Territories have enacted legislation requiring members of selected professions, including teachers, to report suspected cases. In addition, policy-based reporting obligations have been developed by professions, including the teaching profession. These legislative and industry-based developments have occurred in a context of growing awareness of the incidence and consequences of child sexual abuse. Teachers have frequent contact and close relationships with children, and possess expertise in monitoring changes in children’s behaviour. Accordingly, teachers are seen as being well-placed to detect and report suspected child sexual abuse. To date, however, there has been little empirical research into the operation of these reporting duties. The extent of teachers’ awareness of their duties to report child sexual abuse is unknown. Further, there is little evidence about teachers’ past reporting practice. Teachers’ duties to report sexual abuse, especially those in legislation, differ between States, and it is not known whether or how these differences affect reporting practice. This article presents results from the first large-scale Australian survey of teachers in three States with different reporting laws: New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia. The results indicate levels of teacher knowledge of reporting duties, reveal evidence about past reporting practice, and provide insights into anticipated future reporting practice and legal compliance. The findings have implications for reform of legislation and policy, training of teachers about the reporting of child sexual abuse, and enhancement of child protection.

Osteryoung square wave voltammetric determination of lactose in food samples by a derivative procedure

A method for determination of lactose in food samples by Osteryoung square wave voltammetry (OSWV) was developed. It was based on the nucleophilic addition reaction between lactose and aqua ammonia. The carbonyl group of lactose can be changed into imido group, and this increases the electrochemical activity in reduction and the sensitivity. The optimal condition for the nucleophilic addition reaction was investigated and it was found that in NH4Cl–NH3 buffer of pH 10.1, the linear range between the peak current and the concentration of lactose was 0.6–8.4 mg L−1, and the detection limits was 0.44 mg L−1. The proposed method was applied to the determination of lactose in food samples and satisfactory results were obtained.

neXus2. An investigation into the library and information services workforce in Australia: The institutional perspective. Final report prepared for the Australian Library and Information Association and National and State Libraries Australia

The neXus2 research project has sought to investigate the library and information services (LIS) workforce in Australia, from the institutional or employer perspective. The study builds on the neXus1 study, which collected data from individuals in the LIS workforce in order to present a snapshot of the profession in 2006, highlighting the demographics, educational background and career details of library and information professionals in Australia. To counterbalance this individual perspective, library institutions were invited to participate in a survey to contribute further data as employers. This final report on the neXus2 project compares the findings from the different library sectors, ie academic libraries, TAFE libraries, the National and State libraries, public libraries, special libraries and school libraries.

State-of-the-Art Review on Opinion Mining from Online Customers’ Feedback

Dealing with the ever-growing information overload in the Internet, Recommender Systems are widely used online to suggest potential customers item they may like or find useful. Collaborative Filtering is the most popular techniques for Recommender Systems which collects opinions from customers in the form of ratings on items, services or service providers. In addition to the customer rating about a service provider, there is also a good number of online customer feedback information available over the Internet as customer reviews, comments, newsgroups post, discussion forums or blogs which is collectively called user generated contents. This information can be used to generate the public reputation of the service providers’. To do this, data mining techniques, specially recently emerged opinion mining could be a useful tool. In this paper we present a state of the art review of Opinion Mining from online customer feedback. We critically evaluate the existing work and expose cutting edge area of interest in opinion mining. We also classify the approaches taken by different researchers into several categories and sub-categories. Each of those steps is analyzed with their strength and limitations in this paper.

Stakeholder impact analysis of infrastructure project management in developing countries : a study of perception of project managers in state-owned engineering firms in Vietnam

Construction projects can involve a diverse range of stakeholders and the success of the project depends very much on fulfilling their needs and expectations. It is important, therefore, to identify and recognize project stakeholders and develop a rigorous stakeholder management process. However, limited research has investigated the impact of stakeholders on construction projects in developing countries. A stakeholder impact analysis (SIA), based on an approach developed by Olander (2007), was adopted to investigate the stakeholders' impact on state-owned civil engineering projects in Vietnam. This involved the analysis of a questionnaire survey of 57 project managers to determine the relative importance of different stakeholders. The results show the client to have the highest level of impact on the projects, followed by project managers and the senior management of state-owned engineering firms. The SIA also provides suggestions to project managers in developing and evaluating the stakeholder management process.

Sunglasses, traffic signals, and color vision deficiencies

Purpose: To determine (a) the effect of different sunglass tint colorations on traffic signal detection and recognition for color normal and color deficient observers, and (b) the adequacy of coloration requirements in current sunglass standards. Methods: Twenty color-normals and 49 color-deficient males performed a tracking task while wearing sunglasses of different colorations (clear, gray, green, yellow-green, yellow-brown, red-brown). At random intervals, simulated traffic light signals were presented against a white background at 5° to the right or left and observers were instructed to identify signal color (red/yellow/green) by pressing a response button as quickly as possible; response times and response errors were recorded. Results: Signal color and sunglass tint had significant effects on response times and error rates (p < 0.05), with significant between-color group differences and interaction effects. Response times for color deficient people were considerably slower than color normals for both red and yellow signals for all sunglass tints, but for green signals they were only noticeably slower with the green and yellow-green lenses. For most of the color deficient groups, there were recognition errors for yellow signals combined with the yellow-green and green tints. In addition, deuteranopes had problems for red signals combined with red-brown and yellow-brown tints, and protanopes had problems for green signals combined with the green tint and for red signals combined with the red-brown tint. Conclusions: Many sunglass tints currently permitted for drivers and riders cause a measurable decrement in the ability of color deficient observers to detect and recognize traffic signals. In general, combinations of signals and sunglasses of similar colors are of particular concern. This is prima facie evidence of a risk in the use of these tints for driving and cautions against the relaxation of coloration limits in sunglasses beyond those represented in the study.

Power sharing and stability enhancement of an autonomous microgrid with inertial and non-inertial DGs with DSTATCOM

This paper proposes a method of enhancing system stability with a distribution static compensator (DSTATCOM) in an autonomous microgrid with multiple distributed generators (DG). It is assumed that there are both inertial and non-inertial DGs connected to the microgrid. The inertial DG can be a synchronous machine of smaller rating while inertia less DGs (solar) are assumed as DC sources. The inertia less DGs are connected through Voltage Source Converter (VSC) to the microgrid. The VSCs are controlled by either state feedback or current feedback mode to achieve desired voltage-current or power outputs respectively. The power sharing among the DGs is achieved by drooping voltage angle. Once the reference for the output voltage magnitude and angle is calculated from the droop, state feedback controllers are used to track the reference. The angle reference for the synchronous machine is compared with the output voltage angle of the machine and the error is fed to a PI controller. The controller output is used to set the power reference of the synchronous machine. The rate of change in the angle in a synchronous machine is restricted by the machine inertia and to mimic this nature, the rate of change in the VSCs angles are restricted by a derivative feedback in the droop control. The connected distribution static compensator (DSTATCOM) provides ride through capability during power imbalance in the microgrid, especially when the stored energy of the inertial DG is not sufficient to maintain stability. The inclusion of the DSATCOM in such cases ensures the system stability. The efficacies of the controllers are established through extensive simulation studies using PSCAD.

Numerical investigations of linear least squares methods for derivative estimation

The results of a numerical investigation into the errors for least squares estimates of function gradients are presented. The underlying algorithm is obtained by constructing a least squares problem using a truncated Taylor expansion. An error bound associated with this method contains in its numerator terms related to the Taylor series remainder, while its denominator contains the smallest singular value of the least squares matrix. Perhaps for this reason the error bounds are often found to be pessimistic by several orders of magnitude. The circumstance under which these poor estimates arise is elucidated and an empirical correction of the theoretical error bounds is conjectured and investigated numerically. This is followed by an indication of how the conjecture is supported by a rigorous argument.

Cosmopolitanism, the nation-state and imaginative realism

Contemporary writing on cosmopolitanism has asserted the need for a new sociological toolkit to deal with an emergent post-national social order. At the heart of this agenda is a misunderstanding about the role of the nation-state, which has led to some rather unhelpful theorizations. The state is assumed to be a dead hand in the development of post-national sentiments or an increasingly irrelevant social structure. We argue that the superseding of the nation-state is not necessary for the development of cosmopolitan sentiments of solidarity. In addition to classical sociology, it is work surrounding the concepts of cosmopolitan democracy and constitutional patriotism and the public sphere that can assist us in theorizing cosmopolitanism. What distinguishes this tradition is the utilization of social science concepts such as democracy, state, public sphere and law in an attempt to ground the idea of cosmopolitanism within the context of existing social structures.