The relationship between early and intermediate level spatial vision during typical development and in autism spectrum disorder

Certaines recherches ont investigué le traitement visuel de bas et de plus hauts niveaux chez des personnes neurotypiques et chez des personnes ayant un trouble du spectre de l’autisme (TSA). Cependant, l’interaction développementale entre chacun de ces niveaux du traitement visuel n’est toujours pas bien comprise. La présente thèse a donc deux objectifs principaux. Le premier objectif (Étude 1) est d’évaluer l’interaction développementale entre l’analyse visuelle de bas niveaux et de niveaux intermédiaires à travers différentes périodes développementales (âge scolaire, adolescence et âge adulte). Le second objectif (Étude 2) est d’évaluer la relation fonctionnelle entre le traitement visuel de bas niveaux et de niveaux intermédiaires chez des adolescents et des adultes ayant un TSA. Ces deux objectifs ont été évalué en utilisant les mêmes stimuli et procédures. Plus précisément, la sensibilité de formes circulaires complexes (Formes de Fréquences Radiales ou FFR), définies par de la luminance ou par de la texture, a été mesurée avec une procédure à choix forcés à deux alternatives. Les résultats de la première étude ont illustré que l’information locale des FFR sous-jacents aux processus visuels de niveaux intermédiaires, affecte différemment la sensibilité à travers des périodes développementales distinctes. Plus précisément, lorsque le contour est défini par de la luminance, la performance des enfants est plus faible comparativement à celle des adolescents et des adultes pour les FFR sollicitant la perception globale. Lorsque les FFR sont définies par la texture, la sensibilité des enfants est plus faible comparativement à celle des adolescents et des adultes pour les conditions locales et globales. Par conséquent, le type d’information locale, qui définit les éléments locaux de la forme globale, influence la période à laquelle la sensibilité visuelle atteint un niveau développemental similaire à celle identifiée chez les adultes. Il est possible qu’une faible intégration visuelle entre les mécanismes de bas et de niveaux intermédiaires explique la sensibilité réduite des FFR chez les enfants. Ceci peut être attribué à des connexions descendantes et horizontales immatures ainsi qu’au sous-développement de certaines aires cérébrales du système visuel. Les résultats de la deuxième étude ont démontré que la sensibilité visuelle en autisme est influencée par la manipulation de l’information locale. Plus précisément, en présence de luminance, la sensibilité est seulement affectée pour les conditions sollicitant un traitement local chez les personnes avec un TSA. Cependant, en présence de texture, la sensibilité est réduite pour le traitement visuel global et local. Ces résultats suggèrent que la perception de formes en autisme est reliée à l’efficacité à laquelle les éléments locaux (luminance versus texture) sont traités. Les connexions latérales et ascendantes / descendantes des aires visuelles primaires sont possiblement tributaires d’un déséquilibre entre les signaux excitateurs et inhibiteurs, influençant ainsi l’efficacité à laquelle l’information visuelle de luminance et de texture est traitée en autisme. Ces résultats supportent l’hypothèse selon laquelle les altérations de la perception visuelle de bas niveaux (local) sont à l’origine des atypies de plus hauts niveaux chez les personnes avec un TSA.

Measurement of Training Intensity and Work During Submaximal Isokinetic Progressive Resistance Training Protocols

Physical exercise programmes are routinely prescribed in clinical practice to treat impairments, improve activity and participation in daily life because of their known physiological, health and psychological benefits (RCP, 2009). Progressive resistance exercise is a type of exercise prescribed specifically to improve skeletal muscle strength (Latham et al., 2004). The effectiveness of progressive resistance exercise varies considerably between studies and populations. This thesis focuses on how training parameters influence the delivery of progressive resistance exercise. In order to appropriately evaluate the influence of training parameters, this thesis argues the need to record training performance and the total work completed by participants as prescribed by training protocols. In the first study, participants were taken through a series of protocols differentiated by the intensity and volume of training. Training intensity was defined as a proportion of the mean peak torque achieved during maximal voluntary contractions and was set at 80% and 40% respectively of the MVC mean peak torque. Training volume was defined as the total external work achieved over the training period. Measures of training performance were developed to accurately report the intensity, repetitions and work completed during the training period. A second study evaluated training performance of the training protocols over repeated sessions. These protocols were then applied to 3 stroke survivors. Study 1 found sedentary participants could achieve a differentiated training intensity. Participants completing the high and low intensity protocols trained at 80% and 40% respectively of the MVC mean peak torque. The total work achieved in the high intensity low repetition protocol was lower than the total work achieved in the low intensity high repetition protocol. With repeated practice, study 2 found participants were able to improve in their ability to perform manoeuvres as shown by a reduction in the variation of the mean training intensity achieving total work as specified by the protocol to a lower margin of error. When these protocols were applied to 3 stroke survivors, they were able to achieve the specified training intensity but they were not able to achieve the total work as expected for the protocol. This is likely to be due to an inability in achieving a consistent force throughout the contraction. These results demonstrate evaluation of training characteristics and support the need to record and report training performance characteristics during progressive resistance exercise, including the total work achieved, in order to elucidate the influence of training parameters on progressive resistance exercise. The lack of accurate training performance may partly explain the inconsistencies between studies on optimal training parameters for progressive resistance exercise.

Multi-purpose adaptable business tier components based on Call Level Interfaces

Call Level Interfaces (CLI) play a key role in business tiers of relational and on some NoSQL database applications whenever a fine tune control between application tiers and the host databases is a key requirement. Unfortunately, in spite of this significant advantage, CLI are low level API, this way not addressing high level architectural requirements. Among the examples we emphasize two situations: a) the need to decouple or not to decouple the development process of business tiers from the development process of application tiers and b) the need to automatically adapt business tiers to new business and/or security needs at runtime. To tackle these CLI drawbacks, and simultaneously keep their advantages, this paper proposes an architecture relying on CLI from which multi-purpose business tiers components are built, herein referred to as Adaptable Business Tier Components (ABTC). Beyond the reference architecture, this paper presents a proof of concept based on Java and Java Database Connectivity (an example of CLI).

ABTC: multi-purpose adaptable business tier components based on Call Level Interfaces

Call Level Interfaces (CLI) are low level API that play a key role in database applications whenever a fine tune control between application tiers and the host databases is a key requirement. Unfortunately, in spite of this significant advantage, CLI were not designed to address organizational requirements and contextual runtime requirements. Among the examples we emphasize the need to decouple or not to decouple the development process of business tiers from the development process of application tiers and also the need to automatically adapt to new business and/or security needs at runtime. To tackle these CLI drawbacks, and simultaneously keep their advantages, this paper proposes an architecture relying on CLI from which multi-purpose business tiers components are built, herein referred to as Adaptable Business Tier Components (ABTC). This paper presents the reference architecture for those components and a proof of concept based on Java and Java Database Connectivity (an example of CLI).

Is the activity level of HD 80606 influenced by its eccentric planet?

Aims: Several studies suggest that the activity level of a planet-host star can be influenced by the presence of a close-by orbiting planet. Moreover, the interaction mechanisms that have been proposed, magnetic interaction and tidal interaction, exhibit a very different dependence on the orbital separation between the star and the planet. A detection of activity enhancement and characterization of its dependence on planetary orbital distance can, in principle, allow us to characterize the physical mechanism behind the activity enhancement. Methods: We used the HARPS-N spectrograph to measure the stellar activity level of HD 80606 during the planetary periastron passage and compared the activity measured to that close to apastron. Being characterized by an eccentricity of 0.93 and an orbital period of 111 days, the system's extreme variation in orbital separation makes it a perfect target to test our hypothesis. Results: We find no evidence for a variation in the activity level of the star as a function of planetary orbital distance, as measured by all activity indicators employed: log(R'HK), Hα, NaI, and HeI. None of the models employed, whether magnetic interaction or tidal interaction, provides a good description of the data. The photometry revealed no variation either, but it was strongly affected by poor weather conditions. Conclusions: We find no evidence for star-planet interaction in HD 80606 at the moment of the periastron passage of its very eccentric planet. The straightforward explanation for the non-detection is the absence of interaction as a result of a low magnetic field strength on either the planet or the star and of the low level of tidal interaction between the two. However, we cannot exclude two scenarios: i) the interaction can be instantaneous and of magnetic origin, being concentrated on the substellar point and its surrounding area; and ii) the interaction can lead to a delayed activity enhancement. In either scenario, a star-planet interaction would not be detectable with the dataset described in this paper.

Language-based Techniques for Practical and Trustworthy Secure Multi-party Computations

Secure Multi-party Computation (MPC) enables a set of parties to collaboratively compute, using cryptographic protocols, a function over their private data in a way that the participants do not see each other's data, they only see the final output. Typical MPC examples include statistical computations over joint private data, private set intersection, and auctions. While these applications are examples of monolithic MPC, richer MPC applications move between "normal" (i.e., per-party local) and "secure" (i.e., joint, multi-party secure) modes repeatedly, resulting overall in mixed-mode computations. For example, we might use MPC to implement the role of the dealer in a game of mental poker -- the game will be divided into rounds of local decision-making (e.g. bidding) and joint interaction (e.g. dealing). Mixed-mode computations are also used to improve performance over monolithic secure computations. Starting with the Fairplay project, several MPC frameworks have been proposed in the last decade to help programmers write MPC applications in a high-level language, while the toolchain manages the low-level details. However, these frameworks are either not expressive enough to allow writing mixed-mode applications or lack formal specification, and reasoning capabilities, thereby diminishing the parties' trust in such tools, and the programs written using them. Furthermore, none of the frameworks provides a verified toolchain to run the MPC programs, leaving the potential of security holes that can compromise the privacy of parties' data. This dissertation presents language-based techniques to make MPC more practical and trustworthy. First, it presents the design and implementation of a new MPC Domain Specific Language, called Wysteria, for writing rich mixed-mode MPC applications. Wysteria provides several benefits over previous languages, including a conceptual single thread of control, generic support for more than two parties, high-level abstractions for secret shares, and a fully formalized type system and operational semantics. Using Wysteria, we have implemented several MPC applications, including, for the first time, a card dealing application. The dissertation next presents Wys*, an embedding of Wysteria in F*, a full-featured verification oriented programming language. Wys* improves on Wysteria along three lines: (a) It enables programmers to formally verify the correctness and security properties of their programs. As far as we know, Wys* is the first language to provide verification capabilities for MPC programs. (b) It provides a partially verified toolchain to run MPC programs, and finally (c) It enables the MPC programs to use, with no extra effort, standard language constructs from the host language F*, thereby making it more usable and scalable. Finally, the dissertation develops static analyses that help optimize monolithic MPC programs into mixed-mode MPC programs, while providing similar privacy guarantees as the monolithic versions.

The relationship between early and intermediate level spatial vision during typical development and in autism spectrum disorder

Certaines recherches ont investigué le traitement visuel de bas et de plus hauts niveaux chez des personnes neurotypiques et chez des personnes ayant un trouble du spectre de l’autisme (TSA). Cependant, l’interaction développementale entre chacun de ces niveaux du traitement visuel n’est toujours pas bien comprise. La présente thèse a donc deux objectifs principaux. Le premier objectif (Étude 1) est d’évaluer l’interaction développementale entre l’analyse visuelle de bas niveaux et de niveaux intermédiaires à travers différentes périodes développementales (âge scolaire, adolescence et âge adulte). Le second objectif (Étude 2) est d’évaluer la relation fonctionnelle entre le traitement visuel de bas niveaux et de niveaux intermédiaires chez des adolescents et des adultes ayant un TSA. Ces deux objectifs ont été évalué en utilisant les mêmes stimuli et procédures. Plus précisément, la sensibilité de formes circulaires complexes (Formes de Fréquences Radiales ou FFR), définies par de la luminance ou par de la texture, a été mesurée avec une procédure à choix forcés à deux alternatives. Les résultats de la première étude ont illustré que l’information locale des FFR sous-jacents aux processus visuels de niveaux intermédiaires, affecte différemment la sensibilité à travers des périodes développementales distinctes. Plus précisément, lorsque le contour est défini par de la luminance, la performance des enfants est plus faible comparativement à celle des adolescents et des adultes pour les FFR sollicitant la perception globale. Lorsque les FFR sont définies par la texture, la sensibilité des enfants est plus faible comparativement à celle des adolescents et des adultes pour les conditions locales et globales. Par conséquent, le type d’information locale, qui définit les éléments locaux de la forme globale, influence la période à laquelle la sensibilité visuelle atteint un niveau développemental similaire à celle identifiée chez les adultes. Il est possible qu’une faible intégration visuelle entre les mécanismes de bas et de niveaux intermédiaires explique la sensibilité réduite des FFR chez les enfants. Ceci peut être attribué à des connexions descendantes et horizontales immatures ainsi qu’au sous-développement de certaines aires cérébrales du système visuel. Les résultats de la deuxième étude ont démontré que la sensibilité visuelle en autisme est influencée par la manipulation de l’information locale. Plus précisément, en présence de luminance, la sensibilité est seulement affectée pour les conditions sollicitant un traitement local chez les personnes avec un TSA. Cependant, en présence de texture, la sensibilité est réduite pour le traitement visuel global et local. Ces résultats suggèrent que la perception de formes en autisme est reliée à l’efficacité à laquelle les éléments locaux (luminance versus texture) sont traités. Les connexions latérales et ascendantes / descendantes des aires visuelles primaires sont possiblement tributaires d’un déséquilibre entre les signaux excitateurs et inhibiteurs, influençant ainsi l’efficacité à laquelle l’information visuelle de luminance et de texture est traitée en autisme. Ces résultats supportent l’hypothèse selon laquelle les altérations de la perception visuelle de bas niveaux (local) sont à l’origine des atypies de plus hauts niveaux chez les personnes avec un TSA.

Testing the level of interactivity of institutional websites: From museums 1.0 to museums 2.0

The Internet has changed the way in which organizations communicate with their publics, and museums are not an exception. The consolidation of Web 2.0 has not only given museums access to a powerful new tool for disseminating information, but has involved significant changes in the relationship between institutions and their publics, facilitating and enhancing the interaction between them. The overall objective of this paper is to analyze the degree of interactivity implemented in the websites of major international art museums, in order to assess if museums are evolving towards more dialogic systems with relation to their publics. The results indicate that museums still have a low level of interactivity on their websites, both in the tools used to present information and the resources available for interaction with virtual visitors. But it has also observed that museums are progressively implementing interactive and dialogic sources, suggesting a clear trend towards new ways of managing these platforms in order to establish more participatory and collaborative communication systems with virtual users.

Investigating the links between muscle strength, sun exposure, dietary vitamin D intake and the vitamin D status of ambulatory older adults in South East Queensland

Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency are now seen as a contemporary health problem in Australia with possible widespread health effects not limited to bone health1. Despite this, the Vitamin D status (measured as serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D)) of ambulatory adults has been overlooked in this country. Serum 25(OH)D status is especially important among this group as studies have shown a link between Vitamin D and fall risk in older adults2. Limited data also exists on the contributions of sun exposure via ultraviolet radiation and dietary intake to serum 25(OH)D status in this population. The aims of this project were to assess the serum 25(OH)D status of a group of older ambulatory adults in South East Queensland, to assess the association between their serum 25(OH)D status and functional measures as possible indicators of fall risk, obtain data on the sources of Vitamin D in this population and assess whether this intake was related to serum 25(OH)D status and describe sun protection and exposure behaviors in this group and investigate whether a relationship existed between these and serum 25(OH)D status. The collection of this data assists in addressing key gaps identified in the literature with regard to this population group and their Vitamin D status in Australia. A representative convenience sample of participants (N=47) over 55 years of age was recruited for this cross-sectional, exploratory study which was undertaken in December 2007 in south-east Queensland (Brisbane and Sunshine coast). Participants were required to complete a sun exposure questionnaire in addition to a Calcium and Vitamin D food frequency questionnaire. Timed up and go and handgrip dynamometry tests were used to examine functional capacity. Serum 25(OH)D status and blood measures of Calcium, Phosphorus and Albumin were determined through blood tests. The Mean and Median serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) for all participants in this study was 85.8nmol/L (Standard Deviation 29.7nmol/L) and 81.0nmol/L (Range 22-158nmol/L), respectively. Analysis at the bivariate level revealed a statistically significant relationship between serum 25(OH)D status and location, with participants living on the Sunshine Coast having a mean serum 25(OH)D status 21.3nmol/L higher than participants living in Brisbane (p=0.014). While at the descriptive level there was an apparent trend towards higher outdoor exposure and increasing levels of serum 25(OH)D, no statistically significant associations between the sun measures of outdoor exposure, sun protection behaviors and phenotypic characteristics and serum 25(OH)D status were observed. Intake of both Calcium and Vitamin D was low in this sample with sixty-eight (68%) of participants not meeting the Estimated Average Requirements (EAR) for Calcium (Median=771.0mg; Range=218.0-2616.0mg), while eighty-seven (87%) did not meet the Adequate Intake for Vitamin D (Median=4.46ug; Range=0.13-30.0ug). This raises the question of how realistic meeting the new Adequate Intakes for Vitamin D is, when there is such a low level of Vitamin D fortification in this country. However, participants meeting the Adequate Intake (AI) for Vitamin D were observed to have a significantly higher serum 25(OH)D status compared to those not meeting the AI for Vitamin D (p=0.036), showing that meeting the AI for Vitamin D may play a significant role in determining Vitamin D status in this population. By stratifying our data by categories of outdoor exposure time, a trend was observed between increased importance of Vitamin D dietary intake as a possible determinant of serum 25(OH)D status in participants with lower outdoor exposures. While a trend towards higher Timed Up and Go scores in participants with higher 25(OH) D status was seen, this was only significant for females (p=0.014). Handgrip strength showed statistically significant association with serum 25(OH)D status. The high serum 25(OH)D status in our sample almost certainly explains the limited relationship between functional measures and serum 25(OH)D. However, the observation of an association between slower Time Up and Go speeds, and lower serum 25(OH)D levels, even with a small sample size, is significant as slower Timed Up and Go speeds have been associated with increased fall risk in older adults3. Multivariable regression analysis revealed Location as the only significant determinant of serum 25(OH)D status at p=0.014, with trends (p=>0.1) for higher serum 25(OH)D being shown for participants that met the AI for Vitamin D and rated themselves as having a higher health status. The results of this exploratory study show that 93.6% of participants had adequate 25(OH)D status-possibly due to measurement being taken in the summer season and the convenience nature of the sample. However, many participants do not meet their dietary Calcium and Vitamin D requirements, which may indicate inadequate intake of these nutrients in older Australians and a higher risk of osteoporosis. The relationship between serum 25(OH)D and functional measures in this population also requires further study, especially in older adults displaying Vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency.

Effectuation & newness : an intertwined relationship?

Principal topic: Effectuation theory suggests that entrepreneurs develop their new ventures in an iterative way by selecting possibilities through flexibility and interactions with the market; a focus on affordability of loss rather than maximal return on the capital invested, and the development of pre-commitments and alliances from stakeholders (Sarasvathy, 2001, 2008; Sarasvathy et al., 2005, 2006). In contrast, causation may be described as a rationalistic reasoning method to create a company. After a comprehensive market analysis to discover opportunities, the entrepreneur will select the alternative with the higher expected return and implement it through the use of a business plan. However, little is known about the consequences of following either of these two processes. One aspect that remains unclear is the relationship between newness and effectuation. On one hand it can be argued that the combination of a means-centered, interactive (through pre-commitments and alliances with stakeholders from the early phases of the venture creation) and open-minded process (through flexibility of exploiting contingencies) should encourage and facilitate the development of innovative solutions. On the other hand, having a close relationship with their “future first customers” and focussing too much on the resources and knowledge already within the firm may be a constraint that is not conducive to innovation, or at least not to a radical innovation. While it has been suggested that effectuation strategy is more likely to be used by innovative entrepreneurs (Sarasvathy, 2001), this hypothesis has not been demonstrated yet (Sarasvathy, 2001). Method: In our attempt to capture newness in its different aspects we have considered the following four domains where newness may happen: new product/service; new method for promotion and sales; new production methods/sourcing; market creation. We identified how effectuation may be differently associated with these four domains of newness. To test our four sets of hypotheses a dataset of 1329 firms (702 nascent and 627 young firms) randomly selected in Australia was examined through ANOVA Tukey HSD Test. Results and Implications: Results indicate the existence of a curvilinear relationship between effectuation and newness where low and high levels of newness are associated with low level of effectuation while medium level of newness is associated with high level of effectuation. Implications for academia, practitioners and policy makers are also discussed.

Abstracting and correlating heterogeneous events to detect complex scenarios

The research presented in this thesis addresses inherent problems in signaturebased intrusion detection systems (IDSs) operating in heterogeneous environments. The research proposes a solution to address the difficulties associated with multistep attack scenario specification and detection for such environments. The research has focused on two distinct problems: the representation of events derived from heterogeneous sources and multi-step attack specification and detection. The first part of the research investigates the application of an event abstraction model to event logs collected from a heterogeneous environment. The event abstraction model comprises a hierarchy of events derived from different log sources such as system audit data, application logs, captured network traffic, and intrusion detection system alerts. Unlike existing event abstraction models where low-level information may be discarded during the abstraction process, the event abstraction model presented in this work preserves all low-level information as well as providing high-level information in the form of abstract events. The event abstraction model presented in this work was designed independently of any particular IDS and thus may be used by any IDS, intrusion forensic tools, or monitoring tools. The second part of the research investigates the use of unification for multi-step attack scenario specification and detection. Multi-step attack scenarios are hard to specify and detect as they often involve the correlation of events from multiple sources which may be affected by time uncertainty. The unification algorithm provides a simple and straightforward scenario matching mechanism by using variable instantiation where variables represent events as defined in the event abstraction model. The third part of the research looks into the solution to address time uncertainty. Clock synchronisation is crucial for detecting multi-step attack scenarios which involve logs from multiple hosts. Issues involving time uncertainty have been largely neglected by intrusion detection research. The system presented in this research introduces two techniques for addressing time uncertainty issues: clock skew compensation and clock drift modelling using linear regression. An off-line IDS prototype for detecting multi-step attacks has been implemented. The prototype comprises two modules: implementation of the abstract event system architecture (AESA) and of the scenario detection module. The scenario detection module implements our signature language developed based on the Python programming language syntax and the unification-based scenario detection engine. The prototype has been evaluated using a publicly available dataset of real attack traffic and event logs and a synthetic dataset. The distinct features of the public dataset are the fact that it contains multi-step attacks which involve multiple hosts with clock skew and clock drift. These features allow us to demonstrate the application and the advantages of the contributions of this research. All instances of multi-step attacks in the dataset have been correctly identified even though there exists a significant clock skew and drift in the dataset. Future work identified by this research would be to develop a refined unification algorithm suitable for processing streams of events to enable an on-line detection. In terms of time uncertainty, identified future work would be to develop mechanisms which allows automatic clock skew and clock drift identification and correction. The immediate application of the research presented in this thesis is the framework of an off-line IDS which processes events from heterogeneous sources using abstraction and which can detect multi-step attack scenarios which may involve time uncertainty.

Damage propagation in reinforced concrete frames under external blast loading

Iconic and significant buildings are the common target of bombings by terrorists causing large numbers of casualties and extensive property damage. Recent incidents were external bomb attacks on multi-storey buildings with reinforced concrete frames. Under a blast load circumstance, crucial damage initiates at low level storeys in a building and may then lead to a progressive collapse of whole or part of the structure. It is therefore important to identify the critical initial influence regions along the height, width and depth of the building exposed to blast effects and the structure response in order to assess the vulnerability of the structure to disproportionate and progressive collapse. This paper discusses the blast response and the propagation of its effects on a two dimensional reinforced concrete (RC) frame, designed to withstand normal gravity loads. The explicit finite element code, LS DYNA is used for the analysis. A complete RC portal frame seven storeys by six bays is modelled with reinforcement details and appropriate materials to simulate strain rate effects. Explosion loads derived from standard manuals are applied as idealized triangular pressures on the column faces of the numerical models. The analysis reports the influence of blast propagation as displacements and material yielding of the structural elements in the RC frame. The effected regions are identified and classified according to the load cases. This information can be used to determine the vulnerability of multi-storey RC buildings to various external explosion scenarios and designing buildings to resist blast loads.

Listening to nature : acoustic monitoring of the environment

The requirement to monitor the rapid pace of environmental change due to global warming and to human development is producing large volumes of data but placing much stress on the capacity of ecologists to store, analyse and visualise that data. To date, much of the data has been provided by low level sensors monitoring soil moisture, dissolved nutrients, light intensity, gas composition and the like. However, a significant part of an ecologist’s work is to obtain information about species diversity, distributions and relationships. This task typically requires the physical presence of an ecologist in the field, listening and watching for species of interest. It is an extremely difficult task to automate because of the higher order difficulties in bandwidth, data management and intelligent analysis if one wishes to emulate the highly trained eyes and ears of an ecologist. This paper is concerned with just one part of the bigger challenge of environmental monitoring – the acquisition and analysis of acoustic recordings of the environment. Our intention is to provide helpful tools to ecologists – tools that apply information technologies and computational technologies to all aspects of the acoustic environment. The on-line system which we are building in conjunction with ecologists offers an integrated approach to recording, data management and analysis. The ecologists we work with have different requirements and therefore we have adopted the toolbox approach, that is, we offer a number of different web services that can be concatenated according to need. In particular, one group of ecologists is concerned with identifying the presence or absence of species and their distributions in time and space. Another group, motivated by legislative requirements for measuring habitat condition, are interested in summary indices of environmental health. In both case, the key issues are scalability and automation.

Best Practice Guide : Consultants

The Guide contains the distilled findings from a major, two-year research project to explore those factors considered by industry practitioners to be critical to the successful adoption of ICT, both within their firms and between their firms and their trading partners. In the context of this project Critical Success Factors (CSFs) have been defined as, “Those things that absolutely, positively must be attended to in order to maximise the likelihood of a successful outcome for the stakeholder, defined in the stakeholder’s terms.” The guide includes: o Perceived benefits of ICT use across the consultants’ sector o Types and levels of ICT used across the sector o Self-assessment tool o CSFs for medium- and high-level ICT users, including o Best Practice Profiles o Action Statements o Barriers to ICT use for low-level users o Action Statements The material contained in this Guide has been generated following a number of principles: o For a given situation there is not a single ‘right answer’, but a number of solutions that have to be evaluated using a range of relevant factors. o As there are as many solutions as there are ‘solvers’, factors for evaluation will ‘emerge’ from collective wisdom.

Best Practice Guide : Subcontractors

The Guide contains the distilled findings from a major, two-year research project to explore those factors considered by industry practitioners to be critical to the successful adoption of ICT, both within their firms and between their firms and their trading partners. In the context of this project Critical Success Factors (CSFs) have been defined as, “Those things that absolutely, positively must be attended to in order to maximise the likelihood of a successful outcome for the stakeholder, defined in the stakeholder’s terms.” The guide includes: o Perceived benefits of ICT use across the subcontractors’ sector o Types and levels of ICT used across the sector o Self-assessment tool o CSFs for medium- and high-level ICT users, including o Best Practice Profiles o Action Statements o Barriers to ICT use for low-level users o Action Statements The material contained in this Guide has been generated following a number of principles: o For a given situation there is not a single ‘right answer’, but a number of solutions that have to be evaluated using a range of relevant factors. o As there are as many solutions as there are ‘solvers’, factors for evaluation will ‘emerge’ from collective wisdom.