Teaching design and emotion in the foundation year : an industrial design approach

This paper showcases two design tools; the ‘storyboard’ and ‘a day in the life’ demonstrated to design students in their foundational year (first year) of study. By employing these tools during the design process the aim was to provoke students to consider and design for emotional experiences for potential users. The assessment asked students to design an MP3 player using these tools. This is demonstrated through a student project that successfully used the tools and method introduced. The teaching theory, project context, student outcome as well as challenges faced by students using this approach are discussed. The paper concludes with implications for teaching emotion theory at an undergraduate level and potential future directions.

Individual dose and exposure of Italian children to ultrafine particles

Time-activity patterns and the airborne pollutant concentrations encountered by children each day are an important determinant of individual exposure to airborne particles. This is demonstrated in this work by using hand-held devices to measure the real-time individual exposure of more than 100 children aged 8-11 years to particle number concentrations and average particle diameter, as well as alveolar and tracheobronchial deposited surface area concentration. A GPS-logger and activity diaries were also used to give explanation to the measurement results. Children were divided in three sample groups: two groups comprised of urban schools (school time from 8:30 am to 1:30 pm) with lunch and dinner at home, and the third group of a rural school with only dinner at home. The mean individual exposure to particle number concentration was found to differ between the three groups, ranging from 6.2×104 part. cm-3 for children attending one urban school to 1.6×104 part. cm-3 for the rural school. The corresponding daily alveolar deposited surface area dose varied from about 1.7×103 mm2 for urban schools to 6.0×102 mm2 for the rural school. For all of the children monitored, the lowest particle number concentrations are found during sleeping time and the highest were found during eating time. With regard to alveolar deposited surface area dose, a child's home was the major contributor (about 70%), with school contributing about 17% for urban schools and 27% for the rural school. An important contribution arises from the cooking/eating time spent at home, which accounted for approximately 20% of overall exposure, corresponding to more than 200 mm2. These activities represent the highest dose received per time unit, with very high values also encountered by children with a fireplace at home, as well as those that spend considerable time stuck in traffic jams.

Who is selling the property?

For sale purposes, the question of who will be the registered owner of the property at completion is normally not difficult to answer. However, the decision in Rolls v Radford [2012] QSC 92 illustrates how things can go badly wrong...

Beat phenomena in metal nanowires, and their implications for resonance-based elastic property measurements

The elastic properties of 1D nanostructures such as nanowires are often measured experimentally through actuation of the nanowire at its resonance frequency, and then relating the resonance frequency to the elastic stiffness using elementary beam theory. In the present work, we utilize large scale molecular dynamics simulations to report a novel beat phenomenon in [110]oriented Ag nanowires. The beat phenomenon is found to arise from the asymmetry of the lattice spacing in the orthogonal elementary directions of the [110] nanowire, i.e. the [-110] and [001] directions, which results in two different principal moments of inertia. Because of this, actuations imposed along any other direction are found to decompose into two orthogonal vibrational components based on the actuation angle relative to these two elementary directions, with this phenomenon being generalizable to <110> FCC nanowires of different materials (Cu, Au, Ni, Pd and Pt). The beat phenomenon is explained using a discrete moment of inertia model based on the hard sphere assumption, the model is utilized to show that surface effects enhance the beat phenomenon, while the effect is reduced with increasing nanowires cross-sectional size or aspect ratio. Most importantly, due to the existence of the beat phenomena, we demonstrate that in resonance experiments only a single frequency component is expected to be observed, particularly when the damping ratio is relatively large or very small. Furthermore, for a large range of actuation angles, the lower frequency is more likely to be detected than the higher one, which implies that experimental predictions of Young’s modulus obtained from resonance may in fact be under predictions. The present study therefore has significant implications for experimental interpretations of Young’s modulus as obtained via resonance testing.

Residential property investment : assessing home ownership long term viability

Home purchase and ownership is seen by the majority of Australians as the basis for a sound investment strategy and to seciure their long term retirement goals. Although home ownership rates in Australia are in excess of 65% of the population, there have been doubts raised as to the effectiveness of purchasing a house as the main source of retirement income. The main issue with this approach is that the house has to be sold to gain access to these funds or the owners have to take out a reverse mortgage to access the capital tied up in their home, which can be more expensive than selling. This paper will carryout a detailed analysis of a number of investment options to determine the effectiveness of home purchase as a long term investment vehicle. This study has found that the long term investment in equities or managed superannuation funds can provide a greater retirement income than the purchase of a residential property for owner occupation

Understanding the airport passenger landside retail experience

The landside environment of an airport terminal is an important area for both passengers and the airport as it is the first area passengers enter and experience, influencing passengers’ overall airport experiences. This paper focuses on landside passenger experiences and factors which influence the quality of these experiences. Data collection occurred through video recorded observations of 40 passengers’ airport experiences at two Australian international departure terminals. The Observer software was used to code and analyse data. Indicative results show that passengers spend over half of their landside dwell time undertaking processing activities. The results highlight the important influencing role passengers’ companions have over the proportion of landside dwell time passengers spend undertaking discretionary activities. The findings provide an understanding of passenger landside experiences and how they can be improved. The significance of these findings lies in their potential application to landside airport terminal design with specific examples outlined. This new knowledge will assist in improving passenger airport experiences through informing future airport planning and design of landside spaces and retail environments.

Experiences with implementing common mathematical operations using field programmable gate arrays

Many computationally intensive scientific applications involve repetitive floating point operations other than addition and multiplication which may present a significant performance bottleneck due to the relatively large latency or low throughput involved in executing such arithmetic primitives on commod- ity processors. A promising alternative is to execute such primitives on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) hardware acting as an application-specific custom co-processor in a high performance reconfig- urable computing platform. The use of FPGAs can provide advantages such as fine-grain parallelism but issues relating to code development in a hardware description language and efficient data transfer to and from the FPGA chip can present significant application development challenges. In this paper, we discuss our practical experiences in developing a selection of floating point hardware designs to be implemented using FPGAs. Our designs include some basic mathemati cal library functions which can be implemented for user defined precisions suitable for novel applications requiring non-standard floating point represen- tation. We discuss the details of our designs along with results from performance and accuracy analysis tests.

A pragmatic approach to intellectual property and development : a case study of the Jordanian copyright law in the internet age

On October 4, 2004, Brazil and Argentina requested that WIPO adopt a development-oriented approach to IP and to reconsider its work in relation to developing countries. In October, 2007, WIPO member States adopted a historic decision for the benefit of developing countries, to establish a WIPO Development Agenda. Although there have been several studies related to IP and development that call for IP laws in developing countries to be development-friendly, there is little research that attempts to provide developing countries with practical measures to achieve that goal. This article takes the copyright law in Jordan as a case study and shows how, in practical terms, a pro-development-oriented approach could be implemented in the copyright laws of developing countries. It provides specific recommendations for developing countries to ensure that their IP laws are aligned with and serve their social and economic development objectives.

Increasing disaster resilience of people and property through fostering collaboration in coastal high hazard zones

As evidenced with the 2011 floods the state of Queensland in Australia is quite vulnerable to this kind of disaster. Climate change will increase the frequency and magnitude of such events and will have a variety of other impacts. To deal with these governments at all levels need to be prepared and work together. Since most of the population of the state is located in the coastal areas and these areas are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change this paper examines climate change adaptation efforts in coastal Queensland. The paper is part of a more comprehensive project which looks at the critical linkages between land use and transport planning in coastal Queensland, especially in light of increased frequencies of cyclonic activity and other impacts associated with climate change. The aim is improving coordination between local and state government in addressing land use and transport planning in coastal high hazard areas. By increasing the ability of local governments and state agencies to coordinate planning activities, we can help adapt to impacts of climate change. Towards that end, we will look at the ways that these groups currently interact, especially with regard to issues involving uncertainty related to climate change impacts. Through surveys and interviews of Queensland coastal local governments and state level planning agencies on how they coordinate their planning activities at different levels as well as how much they take into account the linkage of transportation and land use we aim to identify the weaknesses of the current planning system in responding to the challenges of climate change adaptation. The project will identify opportunities for improving the ways we plan and coordinate planning, and make recommendations to improve resilience in advance of disasters so as to help speed up recovery when they occur.

Employment and industrial law in paramedic practice

This chapter will provide you with the some of the information you may need to make information on decisions in cases such as the one given above. In particular it will help you answer questions such as: 1. As Molly and Vikram are approaching the end of their shift, to attend will force them into overtime; could they refuse to attend the job on the basis of the refusal to do overtime outside of contracted hours? 2. Would their refusal be viewed as a breach of contract and therefore a disciplinary issue? 3. Why? 4. Does the need to attend this possibly gravely ill patient outweigh the demands of the paramedics to finish on time?

Articulation in property programs : an international multi-campus tertiary model

This paper will present program developers and institutional administrators with a program delivery model suitable for cross cultural international delivery developing students from industry through to master’s level tertiary qualifications. The model was designed to meet the needs of property professionals from an industry where technical qualifications are the norm and tertiary qualifications are emerging. A further need was to develop and deliver a program that enhanced the University’s current program profile in both the domestic and international arenas. Early identification of international educational partners, industry need and the ability to service the program were vital to the successful development of Master of Property program. The educational foundations of the program rest in educational partners, local tutorial support, international course management, cultural awareness of and in content, online communication fora, with a delivery focus on problem-based learning, self-directed study, teamwork and the development of a global understanding and awareness of the international property markets. In enrolling students from a diverse cultural background with technical qualifications and/or extensive work experience there are a number of educational barriers to be overcome for all students to successfully progress and complete the program. These barriers disappear when the following mechanisms are employed: individual student pathways, tutorial support by qualified peers, enculturation into tertiary practice, assessment tasks that recognise cultural norms and values, and finally that value is placed on the experiential knowledge, cultural practices and belief systems of the students.

Intellectual property and development : theory and practice

Since the 1960s, many developing countries have introduced IP laws to help them in their social and economic development. Introducing these laws was considered as a civilised act and a precondition of developing countries‘ progress from being =under-developed‘ to becoming =developed‘. In 2004, Brazil and Argentina presented a comprehensive proposal on behalf of developing countries to establish the Development Agenda in the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). They put forward a view that IP laws in their current form are not helping those countries in their development, as is constantly being suggested by developed countries, and that there is a need to rethink the international IP system and the work of WIPO. The research undertaken examines the correlation between IP and social and economic development. It investigates how IP systems in developing countries could work to advance their development, especially in the context of the internet. The research considers the theory and practice of IP and development, and proposes a new IP framework which developing countries could employ to further their social and economic development.

Property law and practice in Queensland : being a commentary on the Property Law Act 1974

A Commentary on the Property Law Act 1974 Queensland

The Australian screen producer: Understanding screen production cultures in a period of industrial transition [Abstract]

The screen producer plays a vital role in shaping the creative, commercial and entrepreneurial dimensions of production. And yet Australian film history is most often presented as an appreciation of film directors or an examination of industrial governance measures. On the other hand, public funding agencies in Australia have, for the most part, supported independent film and television production as a producer-led, or producer-as-auteur production system, and as such the producer has played a critical role in shaping the broader independent production landscape. In recent years, fundamental changes to distribution and consumption practices have had a major impact on the nature of screen production. Screen producers are increasingly migrating into emerging online, transmedia and cross-media production; generating both opportunities and challenges for traditional producers. However, the production cultures and motivations of producers operating in these emergent spaces remain poorly understood. This presentation will focus on the largely unremarked role of the producer in Australian screen scholarship. It will explore the ways in which the practice of screen producing is evolving and the migratory pathways of traditional producers moving into digital/new media production. The presentation’s primary findings are drawn from the 2011 Australian Screen Producer Survey; a national study of the activities of Australian screen producers conducted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), Queensland University of Technology, with support from the Centre for Screen Business /Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). From longitudinal analysis, the presentation will compare and contrast data from the 2009 and 2011 survey across film, television, corporate production and new media industry segments. In so doing the presentation will delineate the practices, attitudes, strategies, and aspirations of screen producers operating in a convergent digital media marketplace and suggest ways forward for a more industrially cognisant approach to screen history.

Pregnancy as public property: The experience of couples following diagnosis of a foetal anomaly

Background: Pregnant women find themselves subject to comments and questions from people in public areas. Normally, becoming ‘public property’ is considered friendly and is relatively easy for pregnant women to deal with. However, following diagnosis of a fetal anomaly, the experience of being public property can exacerbate the emotional turmoil experienced by couples. Original research question: What is the experience of couples who continue pregnancy following the diagnosis of a fetal anomaly? Method: The study used an interpretive design informed by Merleau-Ponty and this paper reports on a subset of findings. Thirty-one interviews with pregnant women and their partners were undertaken following the diagnosis of a serious or lethal fetal anomaly. Women were between 25 and 38 weeks gestation at the time of their first interview. The non-directive interviews were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim and the transcripts were thematically analysed. Findings: A prominent theme that emerged during data analysis was that pregnancy is embodied therefore physically evident and ‘public’. Women found it difficult to deal with being public property when the fetus had a serious or lethal anomaly. Some women avoided social situations; others did not disclose the fetal condition but gave minimal or avoidant answers to minimise distress to themselves and others. The male participants were not visibly pregnant and they could continue life in public without being subject to the public’s gaze, but they were very aware and concerned about its impact on their partner. Conclusion: The public tend to assume that pregnancy is normal and will produce a healthy baby. This becomes problematic for women who have a fetus with an anomaly. Women use strategies to help them cope with becoming public property during pregnancy. Midwives can play an important role in reducing the negative consequences of a woman becoming public property following the diagnosis of a fetal anomaly.