Processing Tomato Production in the Burdekin: Opportunities and Risks for Growers

The research undertaken here was in response to a decision by a major food producer in about 2009 to consider establishing processing tomato production in northern Australia. This was in response to a lack of water availability in the Goulburn Valley region following the extensive drought that continued until 2011. The high price of water and the uncertainty that went with it was important in making the decision to look at sites within Queensland. This presented an opportunity to develop a tomato production model for the varieties used in the processing industry and to use this as a case study along with rice and cotton production. Following some unsuccessful early trials and difficulties associated with the Global Financial Crisis, large scale studies by the food producer were abandoned. This report uses the data that was collected prior to this decision and contrasts the use of crop modelling with simpler climatic analyses that can be undertaken to investigate the impact of climate change on production systems. Crop modelling can make a significant contribution to our understanding of the impacts of climate variability and climate change because it harnesses the detailed understanding of physiology of the crop in a way that statistical or other analytical approaches cannot do. There is a high overhead, but given that trials are being conducted for a wide range of crops for a variety of purposes, breeding, fertiliser trials etc., it would appear to be profitable to link researchers with modelling expertise with those undertaking field trials. There are few more cost-effective approaches than modelling that can provide a pathway to understanding future climates and their impact on food production.

Statistical and stochastic description of microvoid evolution observed in dynamic failure of ductile materials

A brief review is presented of statistical approaches on microdamage evolution. An experimental study of statistical microdamage evolution in two ductile materials under dynamic loading is carried out. The observation indicates that there are large differences in size and distribution of microvoids between these two materials. With this phenomenon in mind, kinetic equations governing the nucleation and growth of microvoids in nonlinear rate-dependent materials are combined with the balance law of void number to establish statistical differential equations that describe the evolution of microvoids' number density. The theoretical solution provides a reasonable explanation of the experimentally observed phenomenon. The effects of stochastic fluctuation which is influenced by the inhomogeneous microscopic structure of materials are subsequently examined (i.e. stochastic growth model). Based on the stochastic differential equation, a Fokker-Planck equation which governs the evolution of the transition probability is derived. The analytical solution for the transition probability is then obtained and the effects of stochastic fluctuation is discussed. The statistical and stochastic analyses may provide effective approaches to reveal the physics of damage evolution and dynamic failure process in ductile materials.

Towards integrated island management: lessons from Lau, Malaita, for the implementation of a national approach to resource management in Solomon Islands: final report

Solomon Islands has recently developed substantial policy aiming to support inshore fisheries management, conservation, climate change adaptation and ecosystem approaches to resource management. A large body of experience in community based approaches to management has developed but “upscaling” and particularly the implementation of nation-wide approaches has received little attention so far. With the emerging challenges posed by climate change and the need for ecosystem wide and integrated approaches attracting serious donor attention, a national debate on the most effective approaches to implementation is urgently needed. This report discusses potential implementation of “a cost-effective and integrated approach to resource management that is consistent with national policy and needs” based on a review of current policy and institutional structures and examination of a recent case study from Lau, Malaita using stakeholder, transaction and financial cost analyses.

"O cérebro vai à escola": um estudo sobre a aproximação entre Neurociências e Educação no Brasil

Em todo o mundo se multiplicam centros de pesquisa, conferências, cursos, projetos de extensão, livros e revistas focados na interseção entre Neurociências e Educação. Em comum, estas iniciativas compartilham da crença de que os achados neurocientíficos podem contribuir para o aperfeiçoamento do processo educacional. Isto ocorreria de duas maneiras:fornecendo uma melhor compreensão da maneira como as pessoas aprendem e com isso,colaborando com a criação de políticas e práticas educacionais mais eficazes e; contribuindo com o entendimento das dificuldades ou transtornos de aprendizagem, de forma a fornecer subsídios para o desenvolvimento de abordagens e tratamentos mais efetivos para tais problemas. A neuroeducação, disciplina de interface entre os campos neurocientifico e educacional, compartilha dessa crença. Criada entre o final do século XX e o início do Século XXI, esta disciplina, por vezes chamada de Mente, Cérebro e Educação ou Ciência do Aprendizado, pretende simultaneamente construir um conhecimento sobre o aprendizado e desenvolver práticas pedagógicas. No presente trabalho pretendemos compreender especificamente como ocorre esta aproximação entre os campos neurocientífico e educacional no Brasil. Para tanto realizamos uma análise de diversos materiais (artigos, livros,revistas, vídeos) produzidos sobre o tema por neurocientistas, educadores e também por neuroeducadores, nova categoria profissional proposta pelo Instituto de Pesquisas em Neuroeducação. Constatamos que a neuroeducação vem se constituindo no país enquanto um campo extremamente multifacetado permeado por diversos discursos e práticas assim como por múltiplas versões do cérebro humano.

Collaborative Pacific Halibut, Hippoglossus stenolepis, Bycatch Control by Canada and the United States

ABSTRACT—Bycatch mortality of Pacific halibut, Hippoglossus stenolepis, in nontarget fisheries is composed primarily of immature fish, and substantial reductions in yield to directed halibut fisheries result from this bycatch. Distant-water bottomtrawl fleets operating off the North American coast, beginning in the mid 1960’s, experienced bycatch mortality of over 12,000 t annually. Substantial progress on reducing this bycatch was not achieved until the of extension fisheries jurisdictions by the United States and Canada in 1977. Bycatch began to increase again during the expansion of domestic catching capacity for groundfish, and by the early 1990’s it had returned to levels seen during the period of foreign fishing. Collaborative action by Canada and the United States through the International Pacific Halibut Commission has resulted in substantial reductions in bycatch mortality in some areas. Methods of control have operated at global, fleet, and individual vessel levels. We evaluate the hierarchy of effectiveness for these control measures and identify regulatory needs for optimum effects. New monitoring technologies offer the promise of more cost-effective approaches to bycatch reduction.

Metal nanomaterials and carbon nanotubes - synthesis, functionalization and potential applications towards electrochemistry

This review focuses on the synthesis, assembly, surface functionalization, as well as application of inorganic nanostructures. Electrochemical and wet- chemical methods are demonstrated to be effective approaches to make metal nanostructures under control without addition of a reducing agent or protecting agent. Owing to the unique physical and chemical properties of the nano-sized materials, novel applications are introduced using inorganic nanomaterials, such as electrocatalysis, photoelectricity, spectrochemistry, and analytical chemistry.

Entrepreneurship and rural economic development: a scenario analysis approach

Fuller-Love, N., Midmore, P., Thomas, D., Henley, A. (2006). Entrepreneurship and rural economic development: A scenario analysis approach. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, 12 (5), 289-305. RAE2008

Herbal supplements: Recent findings in exercise, health and weight loss

Natural herbs have been in use for weight loss purposes since history began. However, the current global obesity epidemic and the rise in obesity-related chronic diseases, including type-II diabetes and cancer, have highlighted the need for novel and effective approaches for herbal remedies. Whilst the popularity of several prescribed and non-prescribed slimming aids and herbal plant supplements have been marketed for their weight loss efficacy, single and multi-ingredient herbal supplements are still being investigated for their single or combined weight loss benefits. Limited research have highlighted an interesting efficacy for several popular herbal plant supplements including caffeine and capsaicin, Ayurvedic preparations and herbal teas, resulting in various degrees of effectiveness including thermogenic, appetite control and psychological benefits such as mood state. Recent research has suggested acute augmented weight-loss effects of combining herbal ingestion with exercise. For example, ingesting green tea, yerba mate and/or caffeine have been shown to increase metabolic rate, and augmented fatty acid metabolism and to increase energy expenditure from fatty acid sources during exercise with various intensities, particularly at low and moderate intensities. Other promising weight-loss effects have also been also reported for combining exercise with multi-ingredient herbal supplements, particularly those that are rich in phytochemicals and caffeoyl derivatives. Combining herbal ingestions with exercise still require further research in order to establish the supplementation most effective protocols in terms of dosage and timing, and to determine the long-term benefits, particularly those related to exercise protocols, and the long term adherence to sustain the weight loss outcomes.

Recruiting Participants for Randomized Controlled Trials of Music Therapy: A Practical Illustration

Background: Failure to recruit sufficient numbers of participants to randomized controlled trials is a common and serious problem. This problem may be additionally acute in music therapy research.

Objective: To use the experience of conducting a large randomized controlled trial of music therapy for young people with emotional and behavioral difficulties to illustrate the strategies that can be used to optimize recruitment; to report on the success or otherwise of those strategies; and to draw general conclusions about the most effective approaches.

Methods: Review of the methodological literature, and a narrative account and realist analysis of the recruitment process.

Results: The strategies adopted led to the achievement of the recruitment target of 250 subjects, but only with an extension to the recruitment period. In the pre-protocol stage of the research, these strategies included the engagement of non-music therapy clinical investigators, and extensive consultation with clinical stakeholders. In the protocol development and initial recruitment stages, they involved a search of systematic reviews of factors leading to under-recruitment and of interventions to promote recruitment, and the incorporation of their insights into the research protocol and practices. In the latter stages of recruitment, various stakeholders including clinicians, senior managers and participant representatives were consulted in an attempt to uncover the reasons for the low recruitment levels that the research was experiencing.

Conclusions: The primary mechanisms to promote recruitment are education, facilitation, audit and feedback, and time allowed. The primary contextual factors affecting the effectiveness of these mechanisms are professional culture and organizational support.

Sonification as Concurrent Augmented Feedback for Motor Skill Learning and the Importance of Mapping Design

In recent years, sonification of movement has emerged as a viable method for the provision of feedback in motor learning. Despite some experimental validation of its utility, controlled trials to test the usefulness of sonification in a motor learning context are still rare. As such, there are no accepted conventions for dealing with its implementation. This article addresses the question of how continuous movement information should be best presented as sound to be fed back to the learner. It is proposed that to establish effective approaches to using sonification in this context, consideration must be given to the processes that underlie motor learning, in particular the nature of the perceptual information available to the learner for performing the task at hand. Although sonification has much potential in movement performance enhancement, this potential is largely unrealised as of yet, in part due to the lack of a clear framework for sonification mapping: the relationship between movement and sound. By grounding mapping decisions in a firmer understanding of how perceptual information guides learning, and an embodied cognition stance in general, it is hoped that greater advances in use of sonification to enhance motor learning can be achieved.

Supporting social-cognitive development in the elementary years: The role of executive function and self-regulation

Every day we make decisions that have repercussions. Sometimes the effects are immediate and intended; other times the effects might be unintended or might not be apparent for years. As parents or educators, part of our role is to support the development of children’s decision-making skills, helping them to develop patterns of adaptive decision-making that will serve them well in their current lives and into the future. Part of successful decision-making involves self-control, a system served by the brain’s executive functions (EF). This involves the ability to put aside immediate reactions and base decisions on a variety of important considerations. Social-cognitive development, the ongoing improvement of the ability to get along with others and to understand others’ emotions, expressions, motivations, and intents, relies, to a large degree, on the same EF systems. The current paper explores the interaction of these two factors (the role of EF in social-cognitive development), explores the research to determine the most effective approaches to improving both factors, and develops a handbook providing activities for educators to use while supporting the growth of both EF and social-cognitive skills. Results of a needs assessment reveal that the majority (59%) of educators surveyed had never used a social skills improvement program in their classrooms, while a full 95% believed that social skills are important or very important for a student’s academic success.

Désambiguisation de sens par modèles de contextes et son application à la Recherche d’Information

Il est connu que les problèmes d'ambiguïté de la langue ont un effet néfaste sur les résultats des systèmes de Recherche d'Information (RI). Toutefois, les efforts de recherche visant à intégrer des techniques de Désambiguisation de Sens (DS) à la RI n'ont pas porté fruit. La plupart des études sur le sujet obtiennent effectivement des résultats négatifs ou peu convaincants. De plus, des investigations basées sur l'ajout d'ambiguïté artificielle concluent qu'il faudrait une très haute précision de désambiguation pour arriver à un effet positif. Ce mémoire vise à développer de nouvelles approches plus performantes et efficaces, se concentrant sur l'utilisation de statistiques de cooccurrence afin de construire des modèles de contexte. Ces modèles pourront ensuite servir à effectuer une discrimination de sens entre une requête et les documents d'une collection. Dans ce mémoire à deux parties, nous ferons tout d'abord une investigation de la force de la relation entre un mot et les mots présents dans son contexte, proposant une méthode d'apprentissage du poids d'un mot de contexte en fonction de sa distance du mot modélisé dans le document. Cette méthode repose sur l'idée que des modèles de contextes faits à partir d'échantillons aléatoires de mots en contexte devraient être similaires. Des expériences en anglais et en japonais montrent que la force de relation en fonction de la distance suit généralement une loi de puissance négative. Les poids résultant des expériences sont ensuite utilisés dans la construction de systèmes de DS Bayes Naïfs. Des évaluations de ces systèmes sur les données de l'atelier Semeval en anglais pour la tâche Semeval-2007 English Lexical Sample, puis en japonais pour la tâche Semeval-2010 Japanese WSD, montrent que les systèmes ont des résultats comparables à l'état de l'art, bien qu'ils soient bien plus légers, et ne dépendent pas d'outils ou de ressources linguistiques. La deuxième partie de ce mémoire vise à adapter les méthodes développées à des applications de Recherche d'Information. Ces applications ont la difficulté additionnelle de ne pas pouvoir dépendre de données créées manuellement. Nous proposons donc des modèles de contextes à variables latentes basés sur l'Allocation Dirichlet Latente (LDA). Ceux-ci seront combinés à la méthodes de vraisemblance de requête par modèles de langue. En évaluant le système résultant sur trois collections de la conférence TREC (Text REtrieval Conference), nous observons une amélioration proportionnelle moyenne de 12% du MAP et 23% du GMAP. Les gains se font surtout sur les requêtes difficiles, augmentant la stabilité des résultats. Ces expériences seraient la première application positive de techniques de DS sur des tâches de RI standard.

Designing contemporary e-supported professional development environments to enhance tertiary teaching and learning

National and organsational imperatives in Australian higher education are demanding systematic and cost-effective approaches to the professional development of staff in their teaching in order to enhance the quality of student learning. Many universities are geographically distributed, multi- campus, multi-city and multi-modal in nature, and highly dependent for their effective operation on information and communications technologies (ICT). Deakin University is one such university operating in Australian higher education. Consistent with the progressive principles and practices of the learning organisation, new approaches and environments are required to support the professional development of staff for enhanced teaching and learning in higher education. These environments now require substantial use of e-learning for both learning about teaching online and the development of teaching capacities in the world of the modern-day, technologically-supported physical classroom. This article outlines the imperatives to establish and operate cost-effective e-supported environments for professional development for excellence in teaching and learning. The key principles underlying these emergent environments are outlined, along with the major tools, resources and features of such environments. A contemporary online teaching case site is highlighted as indicative of new approaches to supporting professional development of staff for excellence in online teaching and learning.

Supermarket Healthy Eating for Life (SHELf): protocol of a randomised controlled trial promoting healthy food and beverage consumption through price reduction and skill-building strategies

Background: In the context of rising food prices, there is a need for evidence on the most effective approaches for promoting healthy eating. Individually-targeted behavioural interventions for increasing food-related skills show promise, but are unlikely to be effective in the absence of structural supports. Fiscal policies have been advocated as a means of promoting healthy eating and reducing obesity and nutrition-related disease, but there is little empirical evidence of their effectiveness. This paper describes the Supermarket Healthy Eating for LiFe (SHELf) study, a randomised controlled trial to investigate effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a tailored skill-building intervention and a price reduction intervention, separately and in combination, against a control condition for promoting purchase and consumption of healthy foods and beverages in women from high and low socioeconomic groups.
Methods/design: SHELf comprises a randomised controlled trial design, with participants randomised to receive either (1) a skill-building intervention; (2) price reductions on fruits, vegetables and low-joule soft drink beverages and water; (3) a combination of skill-building and price reductions; or (4) a control condition. Five hundred women from high and low socioeconomic areas will be recruited through a store loyalty card program and local media. Randomisation will occur on receipt of informed consent and baseline questionnaire. An economic evaluation from a societal perspective using a cost-consequences approach will compare the costs and outcomes between intervention and control groups.
Discussion: This study will build on a pivotal partnership with a major national supermarket chain and the Heart Foundation to investigate the effectiveness of intervention strategies aimed at increasing women’s purchasing and consumption of fruits and vegetables and decreased purchasing and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. It will be among the first internationally to examine the effects of two promising approaches - skill-building and price reductions - on diet amongst women.

A matrix factorization framework for jointly analyzing multiple nonnegative data source

Nonnegative matrix factorization based methods provide one of the simplest and most effective approaches to text mining. However, their applicability is mainly limited to analyzing a single data source. In this paper, we propose a novel joint matrix factorization framework which can jointly analyze multiple data sources by exploiting their shared and individual structures. The proposed framework is flexible to handle any arbitrary sharing configurations encountered in real world data. We derive an efficient algorithm for learning the factorization and show that its convergence is theoretically guaranteed. We demonstrate the utility and effectiveness of the proposed framework in two real-world applications–improving social media retrieval using auxiliary sources and cross-social media retrieval. Representing each social media source using their textual tags, for both applications, we show that retrieval performance exceeds the existing state-of-the-art techniques. The proposed solution provides a generic framework and can be applicable to a wider context in data mining wherever one needs to exploit mutual and individual knowledge present across multiple data sources.