A survey on six sigma implementation in Singapore service industries

The concept of Six Sigma was initiated in the 1980s by Motorola. Since then it has been implemented in several manufacturing and service organizations. In case of services, health care and finance were major beneficiaries till now. The application of Six Sigma is gradually picking up in other services like; call centers, utilities and public services. This paper provides empirical evidence on Six Sigma implementation in service industries in Singapore. By using a sample size of 50 service organizations (10 responses are from organizations which have implemented Six Sigma), the paper helps in understanding the status of Six Sigma in service organizations in Singapore. The findings confirm the inclusion of critical success factors, critical to quality characteristics, tools and key performance indicators as observed from the literature. The revelation of “not relevant” as a reason for not implementing Six Sigma shows the need for understanding specific requirements of service organizations before its application.

Human-specific E. coli single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotypes detected in a South-East Queensland waterway, Australia

The World Health Organization recommends that the majority of water monitoring laboratories in the world should test for E. coli daily since thermotolerant coliforms and E. coli are key indicators for risk assessment of recreational waters. Recently, we developed a new SNP method for typing E. coli strains, by which human-specific genotypes were identified. Here, we report the presence of these previously described specific SNP profiles in environmental water, sourced from the Coomera River, located on South East Queensland, Australia, over a period of two years. This study tested for the presence of human-specific E. coli to ascertain whether hydrologic and anthropogenic activity plays a key role in the pollution of the investigated watershed or whether the pollution is from other sources. We found six human-specific SNP profiles and one animal-specific SNP profile consistently across sampling sites and times. We have demonstrated that our SNP genotyping method is able to rapidly identify and characterise human- and animal-specific E. coli isolates in water sources.

SNP diversity of Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium in a South East Queensland waterway, Australia, and associated antibiotic resistance gene profiles

BACKGROUND: Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium are associated with faecal pollution of water, linked to swimmer-associated gastroenteritis and demonstrate a wide range of antibiotic resistance. The Coomera River is a main water source for the Pimpama-Coomera watershed and is located in South East Queensland, Australia, which is used intensively for agriculture and recreational purposes. This study investigated the diversity of E. faecalis and E. faecium using Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and associated antibiotic resistance profiles. RESULTS: Total enterococcal counts (cfu/ml) for three/six sampling sites were above the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) recommended level during rainfall periods and fall into categories B and C of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines (with a 1-10% gastrointestinal illness risk). E. faecalis and E. faecium isolates were grouped into 29 and 23 SNP profiles (validated by MLST analysis) respectively. This study showed the high diversity of E. faecalis and E. faecium over a period of two years and both human-related and human-specific SNP profiles were identified. 81.8% of E. faecalis and 70.21% of E. faecium SNP profiles were associated with genotypic and phenotypic antibiotic resistance. Gentamicin resistance was higher in E. faecalis (47% resistant) and harboured the aac(6')-aph(2') gene. Ciprofloxacin resistance was more common in E. faecium (12.7% resistant) and gyrA gene mutations were detected in these isolates. Tetracycline resistance was less common in both species while tet(L) and tet(M) genes were more prevalent. Ampicillin resistance was only found in E. faecium isolates with mutations in the pbp5 gene. Vancomycin resistance was not detected in any of the isolates. We found that antibiotic resistance profiles further sub-divided the SNP profiles of both E. faecalis and E. faecium. CONCLUSIONS: The distribution of E. faecalis and E. faecium genotypes is highly diverse in the Coomera River. The SNP genotyping method is rapid and robust and can be applied to study the diversity of E. faecalis and E. faecium in waterways. It can also be used to test for human-related and human-specific enterococci in water. The resolving power can be increased by including antibiotic-resistant profiles which can be used as a possible source tracking tool. This warrants further investigation.

Influence of physical and chemical properties of solids on heavy metal adsorption

Partition of heavy metals between particulate and dissolve fraction of stormwater primarily depends on the adsorption characteristics of solids particles. Moreover, the bioavailability of heavy metals is also influenced by the adsorption behaviour of solids. However, due to the lack of fundamental knowledge in relation to the heavy metals adsorption processes of road deposited solids, the effectiveness of stormwater management strategies can be limited. The research study focused on the investigation of the physical and chemical parameters of solids on urban road surfaces and, more specifically, on heavy metal adsorption to solids. Due to the complex nature of heavy metal interaction with solids, a substantial database was generated through a series of field investigations and laboratory experiments. The study sites for the build-up pollutant sample collection were selected from four urbanised suburbs located in a major river catchment. Sixteen road sites were selected from these suburbs and represented typical industrial, commercial and residential land uses. Build-up pollutants were collected using a wet and dry vacuum collection technique which was specially designed to improve fine particle collection. Roadside soil samples were also collected from each suburb for comparison with the road surface solids. The collected build-up solids samples were separated into four particle size ranges and tested for a range of physical and chemical parameters. The solids build-up on road surfaces contained a high fraction (70%) of particles smaller than 150ìm, which are favourable for heavy metal adsorption. These solids particles predominantly consist of soil derived minerals which included quartz, albite, microcline, muscovite and chlorite. Additionally, a high percentage of amorphous content was also identified in road deposited solids. In comparing the mineralogical data of surrounding soil and road deposited solids, it was found that about 30% of the solids consisted of particles generated from traffic related activities on road surfaces. Significant difference in mineralogical composition was noted in different particle sizes of build-up solids. Fine solids particles (<150ìm) consisted of a clayey matrix and high amorphous content (in the region of 40%) while coarse particles (>150ìm) consisted of a sandy matrix at all study sites, with about 60% quartz content. Due to these differences in mineralogical components, particles larger than and smaller than 150ìm had significant differences in their specific surface area (SSA) and effective cation exchange capacity (ECEC). These parameters, in turn, exert a significant influence on heavy metal adsorption. Consequently, heavy metal content in >150ìm particles was lower than in the case of fine particles. The particle size range <75ìm had the highest heavy metal content, corresponding with its high clay forming minerals, high organic matter and low quartz content which increased the SSA, ECEC and the presence of Fe, Al and Mn oxides. The clay forming minerals, high organic matter and Fe, Al and Mn oxides create distinct groups of charge sites on solids surfaces and exhibit different adsorption mechanisms and bond strength, between heavy metal elements and charge sites. Therefore, the predominance of these factors in different particle sizes leads to different heavy metal adsorption characteristics. Heavy metals show preference for association with clay forming minerals in fine solids particles, whilst in coarse particles heavy metals preferentially associate with organic matter. Although heavy metal adsorption to amorphous material is very low, the heavy metals embedded in traffic related materials have a potential impact on stormwater quality.Adsorption of heavy metals is not confined to an individual type of charge site in solids, whereas specific heavy metal elements show preference for adsorption to several different types of charge sites in solids. This is attributed to the dearth of preferred binding sites and the inability to reach the preferred binding sites due to competition between different heavy metal species. This confirms that heavy metal adsorption is significantly influenced by the physical and chemical parameters of solids that lead to a heterogeneity of surface charge sites. The research study highlighted the importance of removal of solids particles from stormwater runoff before they enter into receiving waters to reduce the potential risk posed by the bioavailability of heavy metals. The bioavailability of heavy metals not only results from the easily mobile fraction bound to the solids particles, but can also occur as a result of the dissolution of other forms of bonds by chemical changes in stormwater or microbial activity. Due to the diversity in the composition of the different particle sizes of solids and the characteristics and amount of charge sites on the particle surfaces, investigations using bulk solids are not adequate to gain an understanding of the heavy metal adsorption processes of solids particles. Therefore, the investigation of different particle size ranges is recommended for enhancing stormwater quality management practices.

Abduction : the writing of a historical novel

This is a practice-led project consisting of a historical novel Abduction and related exegesis. The novel is a third person intimate narrative set in the mid-nineteenth century and is based on actual events and persons caught up in, or furthering, the mass dispossession of small farmers in Scotland known as the ‘Clearances’. The narrative focuses on the situation in the Outer Hebrides and northern Scotland. It is based on documented facts leading up to a controversial trial in 1850 that arose because a twenty year old woman of the period (the central protagonist, Jess Mackenzie) eloped with a young farmer to escape her parent’s pressure to marry a rival suitor, himself a powerful lawyer and ‘factor’ at the centre of many of the Clearances. The young woman’s independent ideas were ahead of her time, and the decisions she made under great pressure were crucial in some dramatic events that unfolded in Scotland and later in the colony of Victoria, to which she and her new husband emigrated soon after the trial. The exegesis is composed of two unequal parts. It briefly considers the development of the literary historical fiction genre in the nineteenth century with Walter Scott in particular, a genre found useful in representing women’s issues of the Victorian era by Victorian and contemporary authors. The exegesis also briefly considers the appropriateness of the fiction genre (as opposed to creative nonfiction) in creating the lived experience in a fact-based work. The major part of the exegesis is a detailed, reflective analysis of the problem-solving process involved in writing the novel, structured by reference to Kate Grenville’s Searching for the Secret River – a work of metawriting that explains her creative process in researching and writing historical fiction based on fact.

Chongqing International Circus City

The design grows out of the rich culture of circus and the rugged dynamic topography of Chongqing. The site for this project is nestled on the banks of the mighty Yangzte, China's longest river: a vast sweeping watery ribbon carving its way through the mountainous terrain. This swirling sinuous environmental thread replicates in nature the tweisting ribbons circling the gyrating circus gymnast. The project grows from intertwining these swirling parallel conceptions of 'ribbon'. A multi-layered envelope of glass and steel ribbons creates a dome like enclosure that wraps itself around the dynamic performing heart of the circus. The main auditorium and stage area are accommodated in this space. Key public elements and facilities are located adjacent to the new riverfront boulevard maximising the positive relationship with this attractive landscape zone. Service and support areas are located along the southern boundary. Key Statistics; Client: Chongqing Broadcast Bureau Developer: Chongqing Real Estate Site: 3.3 Ha Development: Total G.F.A.: 36,800m2 Project Cost: Total Investment: RMB 300 Million (A$48 million) Other competition participants were BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group (Denmark)/arquitectonica (USA)/Beijing Architectural Design Institute/East China Architectural Design Institute/China Architectural Design Academy.

Section 64 of the Property Law Act 1974 (Qld) and the reluctant buyer

The decision of the Court of Appeal in Dunworth v Mirvac Qld Pty Ltd [2011] QCA 200 arose from unusual circumstances associated with the flood in Brisbane earlier this year. Maris Dunworth (‘the buyer’) agreed to purchase a ground floor residential apartment located beside the Brisbane River at Tennyson from Mirvac Queensland Pty Ltd (‘Mirvac’). The original date for completion was 12 May 2009. In earlier proceedings, the buyer had alleged that she had been induced to purchase the apartment by false, misleading and deceptive representations. This claim was dismissed and an order for specific performance was made with a new completion date of 8 February 2011...

The art of re-industrialisation in Shanghai

This paper deals with the development of ‘art clusters’ and their relocation in the city of Shanghai. It first looks at the revival of the city’s old inner city industrial area (along banks of Suzhou River) through ‘organic’ or ‘alternative’ artist-led cultural production; second, it describes the impact on these activities of the industrial restructuring of the wider city, reliant on large-scale real estate development, business services and global finance; and finally, outlines the relocation of these arts (and related) cultural industries to dispersed CBD locations as a result of those spatial, industrial and policy changes.

Environmental Awareness in Game Agents

Agents make up an important part of game worlds, ranging from the characters and monsters that live in the world to the armies the player controls. Despite their importance, agents in current games rarely display an awareness of their environment or react appropriately, which severely detracts from the believability of the game. Most games use agents that have a basic awareness of the player and other agents, but are still unaware of important game events or environmental conditions. This article describes an agent design that combines cellular automata for environmental modeling with influence maps for agent decision-making. The result is simple, flexible game agents that are able to respond to dynamic changes to the environment (e.g., rain or fire) while pursuing a goal.

Towards improving mission execution for autonomous gliders with an ocean model and Kalman filter

In this paper, we examine the use of a Kalman filter to aid in the mission planning process for autonomous gliders. Given a set of waypoints defining the planned mission and a prediction of the ocean currents from a regional ocean model, we present an approach to determine the best, constant, time interval at which the glider should surface to maintain a prescribed tracking error, and minimizing time on the ocean surface. We assume basic parameters for the execution of a given mission, and provide the results of the Kalman filter mission planning approach. These results are compared with previous executions of the given mission scenario.

A semi-local method for iterative depth-map refinement

We present an iterative hierarchical algorithm for multi-view stereo. The algorithm attempts to utilise as much contextual information as is available to compute highly accurate and robust depth maps. There are three novel aspects to the approach: 1) firstly we incrementally improve the depth fidelity as the algorithm progresses through the image pyramid; 2) secondly we show how to incorporate visual hull information (when available) to constrain depth searches; and 3) we show how to simultaneously enforce the consistency of the depth-map by continual comparison with neighbouring depth-maps. We show that this approach produces highly accurate depth-maps and, since it is essentially a local method, is both extremely fast and simple to implement.

The association between objectively measured neighborhood features and walking in middle-aged adults

Purpose: To explore the role of the neighborhood environment in supporting walking Design: Cross sectional study of 10,286 residents of 200 neighborhoods. Participants were selected using a stratified two-stage cluster design. Data were collected by mail survey (68.5% response rate). Setting: The Brisbane City Local Government Area, Australia, 2007. Subjects: Brisbane residents aged 40 to 65 years. Measures Environmental: street connectivity, residential density, hilliness, tree coverage, bikeways, and street lights within a one kilometer circular buffer from each resident’s home; and network distance to nearest river or coast, public transport, shop, and park. Walking: minutes in the previous week categorized as < 30 minutes, ≥ 30 < 90 minutes, ≥ 90 < 150 minutes, ≥ 150 < 300 minutes, and ≥ 300 minutes. Analysis: The association between each neighborhood characteristic and walking was examined using multilevel multinomial logistic regression and the model parameters were estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation. Results: After adjustment for individual factors, the likelihood of walking for more than 300 minutes (relative to <30 minutes) was highest in areas with the most connectivity (OR=1.93, 99% CI 1.32-2.80), the greatest residential density (OR=1.47, 99% CI 1.02-2.12), the least tree coverage (OR=1.69, 99% CI 1.13-2.51), the most bikeways (OR=1.60, 99% CI 1.16-2.21), and the most street lights (OR=1.50, 99% CI 1.07-2.11). The likelihood of walking for more than 300 minutes was also higher among those who lived closest to a river or the coast (OR=2.06, 99% CI 1.41-3.02). Conclusion: The likelihood of meeting (and exceeding) physical activity recommendations on the basis of walking was higher in neighborhoods with greater street connectivity and residential density, more street lights and bikeways, closer proximity to waterways, and less tree coverage. Interventions targeting these neighborhood characteristics may lead to improved environmental quality as well as lower rates of overweight and obesity and associated chromic disease.

'The war of Canudos: a Euclidean interpretation.' [Guerra de Canudos: uma leitura euclidiana]

The publication of the book The interior, in 1902, would change the course of thinking about the War of Canudos, who for many years, had been known simply as' the history of Euclid. President Getulio Vargas became interested in the backwoods bloodbath after reading the book avenger-Euclidean. Liked the work he visited the place of occurrence of war promising enjoy the river poured-Barris with the construction of the weir Cocorobo. Euclides da Cunha lived and produced his work in a time of great change in thought, politics and technology. Despite having worked in the press throughout his life, was best known as an engineer, for having exercised the office during the reconstruction of the bridge, in Sao Jose do Rio Pardo. This article aims to illuminate the event of war in light of the Euclidean work. We will examine the trajectory of Euclides da Cunha in journalism. Your learning process to execute the office newsreader and war correspondent, the newspaper O Estado de S. Paul, as well as their reports and work-monument the hinterlands. Resumo: A publicação da obra Os sertões, em 1902, mudaria os rumos do pensamento sobre a Guerra de Canudos, que, por muitos anos, ficara conhecida, simplesmente, como ‘história de Euclides’. O presidente Getúlio Vargas interessou-se pela hecatombe sertaneja após ter lido o livro-vingador euclidiano. Gostou tanto da obra que visitou o lugar de acontecimento da guerra prometendo aproveitar as águas do rio Vaza-Barris com a construção do açude de Cocorobó. Euclides da Cunha viveu e produziu a sua obra em um momento de grandes transformações no pensamento, na política e na tecnologia. Apesar de ter atuado na imprensa ao longo de toda a sua vida, ficou mais conhecido como engenheiro, por ter exercido o ofício, durante a reconstrução da ponte, em São José do Rio Pardo. O presente artigo visa iluminar o acontecimento da guerra à luz da obra euclidiana. Examinaremos a trajetória de Euclides da Cunha no jornalismo. O seu processo de aprendizagem para exercer o ofício de noticiarista e correspondente de guerra, pelo jornal O Estado de S. Paulo, bem como, as suas reportagens e obra-monumento Os sertões.

Exploring information experience using social media during the 2011 Queensland floods : a pilot study

Social media networks have emerged as a powerful tool in allowing collaboration and sharing of information during times of crisis (Bruns, The Centre for Creative Industries Blog, comment posted on January 19,2011). The 2011 Queensland floods provided a unique opportunity to explore social media use during an emergency. This paper presents the findings of a pilot study that explored the information experiences of people using social media during the flooding of the Brisbane River. Analysis of data from four interviews supported the emergence of four categories of information experience. Examination of the categories revealed variation between the way in which individuals experienced social media and the point of the flooding at which each category of experience occurred. Information regarding individual’s use of social media has the potential to inform the development of social media platforms that can provide relevant and accessible information for the general public in event of a natural disaster.

OpenFABMAP : an open source toolbox for appearance-based loop closure detection

Appearance-based loop closure techniques, which leverage the high information content of visual images and can be used independently of pose, are now widely used in robotic applications. The current state-of-the-art in the field is Fast Appearance-Based Mapping (FAB-MAP) having been demonstrated in several seminal robotic mapping experiments. In this paper, we describe OpenFABMAP, a fully open source implementation of the original FAB-MAP algorithm. Beyond the benefits of full user access to the source code, OpenFABMAP provides a number of configurable options including rapid codebook training and interest point feature tuning. We demonstrate the performance of OpenFABMAP on a number of published datasets and demonstrate the advantages of quick algorithm customisation. We present results from OpenFABMAP’s application in a highly varied range of robotics research scenarios.