Teaching parallel computing concepts with a desktop computer

Parallel computing is currently used in many engineering problems. However, because of limitations in curriculum design, it is not always possible to offer students specific formal teaching in this topic. Furthermore, parallel machines are still too expensive for many institutions. The latest microprocessors, such as Intel’s Pentium III and IV, embody single instruction multiple-data (SIMD) type parallel features, which makes them a viable solution for introducing parallel computing concepts to students. Final year projects have been initiated utilizing SSE (streaming SIMD extensions) features and it has been observed that students can easily learn parallel programming concepts after going through some programming exercises. They can now experiment with parallel algorithms on their own PCs at home. Keywords

Organ printing

Organ printing techniques offer the potential to produce living 3D tissue constructs to repair or replace damaged or diseased human tissues and organs. Using these techniques, spatial variations along multiple axes with high geometric complexity can be obtained.. The level of control offered by these technologies to develop printed tissues will allow tissue engineers to better study factors that modulate tissue formation and function, and provide a valuable tool to study the effect of anatomy on graft performance. In this chapter we discuss the history behind substrate patterning and cell and organ printing, and the rationale for developing organ printing techniques with respect to limitations of current clinical tissue engineering strategies to effectively repair damaged tissues. We discuss current 2-dimensional and 3-dimesional strategies for assembling cells as well as the necessary support materials such as hydrogels, bioinks and natural and synthetic polymers adopted for organ printing research. Furthermore, given the current state-of-the-art in organ printing technologies, we discuss some of their limitations and provide recommendations for future developments in this rapidly growing field.

Co-adaptive environments : investigation into computer and network enhanced adaptable, sustainable and participatory environments

This paper presents research in response to environmental concerns we face today. In a search for a better method to manage spaces and building resources consumed excessively through traditional top-down architectural solutions, the research began by speculating that the building spaces and resources can be managed by designing architectural systems that encourage a bottom-up approach. In other words, this research investigates how to design systems that encourage occupants and users of buildings to actively understand, manage and customise their own spaces. Specific attention is paid to the participation of building users because no matter how sophisticated the system is, the building will become as wasteful as conventional buildings if users cannot, or do not want to, utilise the system effectively. The research is still in its early stages. The intension of this paper is to provide a background to the issue, discuss researches and projects relevant to, but not necessarily about, architecture, and introduce a number of hypothesis and investigations to realise adaptable, participatory and sustainable environments for users.

V2V/V2I augmented maps : state-of-the-art and contribution to real-time crash risk assessment

A number of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are currently being released on the market, providing safety functions to the drivers such as collision avoidance, adaptive cruise control or enhanced night-vision. These systems however are inherently limited by their sensory range: they cannot gather information from outside this range, also called their “perceptive horizon”. Cooperative systems are a developing research avenue that aims at providing extended safety and comfort functionalities by introducing vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) wireless communications to the road actors. This paper presents the problematic of cooperative systems, their advantages and contributions to road safety and exposes some limitations related to market penetration, sensors accuracy and communications scalability. It explains the issues of how to implement extended perception, a central contribution of cooperative systems. The initial steps of an evaluation of data fusion architectures for extended perception are exposed.

Sustainable urban infrastructure management : integration of urban computer modelling

Purpose - This paper seeks to examine the complex relationships between urban planning, infrastructure management, sustainable urban development, and to illustrate why there is an urgent need for local governments to develop a robust planning support system which integrates with advance urban computer modelling tools to facilitate better infrastructure management and improve knowledge sharing between the community, urban planners, engineers and decision makers. Design/methodology/approach - The methods used in this paper includes literature review and practical project case observations. Originality/value - This paper provides an insight of how the Brisbane's planning support system established by Brisbane City Council has significantly improved the effectiveness of urban planning, infrastructure management and community engagement through better knowledge management processes. Practical implications - This paper presents a practical framework for setting up a functional planning support system within local government. The integration of the Brisbane Urban Growth model, Virtual Brisbane and the Brisbane Economic Activity Monitoring (BEAM) database have proven initially successful to provide a dynamic platform to assist elected officials, planners and engineers to understand the limitations of the local environment, its urban systems and the planning implications on a city. With the Brisbane's planning support system, planners and decision makers are able to provide better planning outcomes, policy and infrastructure that adequately address the local needs and achieve sustainable spatial forms.

Evaluation of spectral and texture features for object-based vegetation species classification using Support Vector Machines

The use of appropriate features to characterize an output class or object is critical for all classification problems. This paper evaluates the capability of several spectral and texture features for object-based vegetation classification at the species level using airborne high resolution multispectral imagery. Image-objects as the basic classification unit were generated through image segmentation. Statistical moments extracted from original spectral bands and vegetation index image are used as feature descriptors for image objects (i.e. tree crowns). Several state-of-art texture descriptors such as Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM), Local Binary Patterns (LBP) and its extensions are also extracted for comparison purpose. Support Vector Machine (SVM) is employed for classification in the object-feature space. The experimental results showed that incorporating spectral vegetation indices can improve the classification accuracy and obtained better results than in original spectral bands, and using moments of Ratio Vegetation Index obtained the highest average classification accuracy in our experiment. The experiments also indicate that the spectral moment features also outperform or can at least compare with the state-of-art texture descriptors in terms of classification accuracy.

Customers behaving badly : a state of the art review, research agenda and implications for practitioners

The purpose of this paper is to highlight important issues in the study of dysfunctional customer behavior and to provide a research agenda to inspire, guide, and enthuse. Through a critical evaluation of existing research, the aim is to highlight key issues and to present potentially worthy avenues for future study.

Lumia : art/light/motion

Lumia: art/light/motion is an exciting new media exhibition presented by State Library of Queensland in partnership with Queensland-based Kuuki collective artists Priscilla Bracks and Gavin Sade. The exhibition explored contemporary life and encourages thought about the future through an extraordinary collection of hand-crafted and interactive electronic creatures and installations. The beautifully crafted new media artworks in Lumia: art/light/motion combine the bespoke with art and technology to create strange but intriguing objects. Lumia invited audiences to play, learn and then ponder the way we live and the environmental and social implications of our choices.

Uncertainties that matter : risk, response-ability, ethics and the moment of exchange in Live Art

This article examines the moment of exchange between artist, audience and culture in Live Art. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, including examples from the Exist in 08 Live Art Event in Brisbane, Australia, in October 2008, it argues that Live Art - be it body art, activist art, site-specific performance, or other sorts of performative intervention in the public sphere - is characterised by a common set of claims about activating audiences, asking them to reflect on cultural norms challenged in the work. Live Art presents risky actions, in a context that blurs the boundaries between art and reality, to position audients as ‘witnesses’ who are personally implicated in, and responsible for, the actions unfolding before them. This article problematises assumptions about the way the uncertainties embedded in the Live Art encounter contribute to its deconstructive agenda. It uses the ethical theory of Emmanuel Levinas, Hans-Thies Lehmann and Dwight Conquergood to examine the mechanics of reductive, culturally-recuperative readings that can limit the efficacy of the Live Art encounter. It argues that, though ‘witnessing’ in Live Art depends on a relation to the real - real people, taking real risks, in real places - if it fails to foreground theatrical frame it is difficult for audients to develop the dual consciousness of the content, and their complicity in that content, that is the starting point for reflexivity, and response-ability, in the ethical encounter.

Contribution to the Pamela Croft Sandhills Studio Consultancy for the Yeppoon Public Art Project in 2000

A small collection of creative works developed to acompany some of the artistic images developed by visual artist Dr Pamela Croft for the Yeppoon Public Art Project in 2000.

Retracing the Roots and Ideals of Confucian Principles of Governance: the Art of Regulating Governance without Legal Rules in Chinese Societies

Confucius was and still is one of the most eminent Chinese philosophers. Such is the importance of Confucius’s teachings; it had influenced all aspects of social life in Chinese societies. In the post-Enron, post-Worldcom, and post-Global Financial Crisis era there are raising doubts in the mantra of the so-called conventional wisdom about law and economic order. Whilst many recent publications offered solutions to those problems like advocating for more laws, rules or reforms in regulatory institutions to enhance the regulation of corporate governance. What Confucius advocated was a non-legal, social mode of regulation based on moral ideals that should be embedded into the minds of every person. Whilst this is an ancient concept from primitive societies, its relevance and merits could be seen in modern Chinese societies like Hong Kong. In essence, Confucian principles of governance build on relational and paternalistic order based on moral ideals.

Matching cognitive styles to computer-based instruction : an approach for enhanced learning in electrical engineering

An approach aimed at enhancing learning by matching individual students' preferred cognitive styles to computer-based instructional (CBI) material is presented. This approach was used in teaching some components of a third-year unit in an electrical engineering course at the Queensland University of Technology. Cognitive style characteristics of perceiving and processing information were considered. The bimodal nature of cognitive styles (analytic/imager, analytic/verbalizer, wholist/imager and wholist/verbalizer) was examined in order to assess the full ramification of cognitive styles on learning. In a quasi-experimental format, students' cognitive styles were analysed by cognitive style analysis (CSA) software. On the basis of the CSA results the system defaulted students to either matched or mismatched CBI material. The consistently better performance by the matched group suggests potential for further investigations where the limitations cited in this paper are eliminated. Analysing the differences between cognitive styles on individual test tasks also suggests that certain test tasks may better suit certain cognitive styles.

Personalizing the design of computer-based instruction to enhance learning

This paper reports two studies designed to investigate the effect on learning outcomes of matching individuals' preferred cognitive styles to computer-based instructional (CBI) material. Study 1 considered the styles individually as Verbalizer, Imager, Wholist and Analytic. Study 2 considered the bi-dimensional nature of cognitive styles in order to assess the full ramification of cognitive styles on learning: Analytic/Imager, Analytic/ Verbalizer, Wholist/Imager and the Wholist/Verbalizer. The mix of images and text, the nature of the text material, use of advance organizers and proximity of information to facilitate meaningful connections between various pieces of information were some of the considerations in the design of the CBI material. In a quasi-experimental format, students' cognitive styles were analysed by Cognitive Style Analysis (CSA) software. On the basis of the CSA result, the system defaulted students to either matched or mismatched CBI material by alternating between the two formats. The instructional material had a learning and a test phase. Learning outcome was tested on recall, labelling, explanation and problem-solving tasks. Comparison of the matched and mismatched instruction did not indicate significant difference between the groups, but the consistently better performance by the matched group suggests potential for further investigations where the limitations cited in this paper are eliminated. The result did indicate a significant difference between the four cognitive styles with the Wholist/Verbalizer group performing better then all other cognitive styles. Analysing the difference between cognitive styles on individual test tasks indicated significant difference on recall, labelling and explanation, suggesting that certain test tasks may suit certain cognitive styles.

Segmentation of scenes of mobile objects and demonstrable backgrounds

In this paper we present a real-time foreground–background segmentation algorithm that exploits the following observation (very often satisfied by a static camera positioned high in its environment). If a blob moves on a pixel p that had not changed its colour significantly for a few frames, then p was probably part of the background when its colour was static. With this information we are able to update differentially pixels believed to be background. This work is relevant to autonomous minirobots, as they often navigate in buildings where smart surveillance cameras could communicate wirelessly with them. A by-product of the proposed system is a mask of the image regions which are demonstrably background. Statistically significant tests show that the proposed method has a better precision and recall rates than the state of the art foreground/background segmentation algorithm of the OpenCV computer vision library.

Workshop on HCI and game interfaces : a long romance

This full day workshop invites participants to consider the nexus where the interests of game design, the expectations of play and HCI meet: the game interface. Game interfaces seem different to the interface to other software and there have been a number of observations. Shneiderman famously noticed that while most software designers are intent on following the tenets of the “invisible computer” and making access easy for the user, games inter-faces are made for players: they embed challenge. Schell discusses a “strange” relationship between the player and the game enabled by the interface and user interface designers frequently opine that much can be learned from the design of game interfaces. So where does the game interface actually sit? Even more interesting is the question as to whether the history of the relationship and sub-sequent expectations are now limiting the potential of game design as an expressive form. Recent innovations in I/O design such as Nintendo’s Wii, Sony’s Move and Microsoft's Kinect seem to usher in an age of physical player-enabled interaction, experience and embodied, engaged design. This workshop intends to cast light on this often mentioned and sporadically examined area and to establish a platform for new and innovative design in the field.