The complete mitochondrial genome of the yellow coaster, Acraea issoria (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Heliconiinae: Acraeini): sequence, gene organization and a unique tRNA translocation event

In this paper, the complete mitochondrial genome of Acraea issoria (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Heliconiinae: Acraeini) is reported; a circular molecule of 15,245 bp in size. For A. issoria, genes are arranged in the same order and orientation as the complete sequenced mitochondrial genomes of the other lepidopteran species, except for the presence of an extra copy of tRNAIle(AUR)b in the control region. All protein-coding genes of A. issoria mitogenome start with a typical ATN codon and terminate in the common stop codon TAA, except that COI gene uses TTG as its initial codon and terminates in a single T residue. All tRNA genes possess the typical clover leaf secondary structure except for tRNASer(AGN), which has a simple loop with the absence of the DHU stem. The sequence, organization and other features including nucleotide composition and codon usage of this mitochondrial genome were also reported and compared with those of other sequenced lepidopterans mitochondrial genomes. There are some short microsatellite-like repeat regions (e.g., (TA)9, polyA and polyT) scattered in the control region, however, the conspicuous macro-repeats units commonly found in other insect species are absent.

E-government policies for broadband adoption : the case of the UK Government

Broadband technology has been introduced to the business community and the public as a fast and easy way of exploiting the Internet. The benefits of its use (fast reliable connections, always on) have been widely realised and broadband diffusion is one of the items at the top of the agenda for technology related polices of governments worldwide. Broadband diffusion and capacity development are central to debates in many countries concerning the role of the government in developing efficient broadband policies particularly in terms of the usage of public money. In this paper we examine the impact of government polices to broadband adoption in the case of the UK government, a country that is striving to have the most extensive and competitive broadband market in the G7 by 2005. We analyse specific institutional actions related to IT diffusion as pursued by the government with the view to identify best practices in government intervention. We believe that are our analysis is useful for broadband strategies in particular and technology in general when applied elsewhere.

A business perspective of legacy systems

Abstract Legacy information systems evolved incrementally in response to changes in business strategy and information technology. Organizations are now being forced to change much more radically and quickly than previously and this change places new demands on information systems. Legacy information systems are usually considered from a technical perspective, addressing issues such as age, complexity, maintainability, design and technology. We wish to demonstrate that the business dimension to legacy information systems, represented by the organisation structure, business processes and procedures that are bound up in the design and operation of the existing IT systems, is also significant. This paper identifies the important role of legacy information systems in the formation of new strategies. We show that the move away from a stable to an unstable business environment accelerates the rate of change. Furthermore, the gap between what the legacy information systems can deliver and the strategic vision of the organization widens when the legacy information systems are unable to adapt to meet the new requirements. An analysis of fifteen case studies provides evidence that legacy information systems include business and technical dimensions and that the systems can present problems when there is a misalignment between the strategic vision of the business, the IT legacy and the old business model embodied in the legacy.

The impact of mobile phone distraction on the braking behaviour of young drivers : a hazard-based duration model

Braking is a crucial driving task with a direct relationship with crash risk, as both excess and inadequate braking can lead to collisions. The objective of this study was to compare the braking profile of young drivers distracted by mobile phone conversations to non-distracted braking. In particular, the braking behaviour of drivers in response to a pedestrian entering a zebra crossing was examined using the CARRS-Q Advanced Driving Simulator. Thirty-two licensed drivers drove the simulator in three phone conditions: baseline (no phone conversation), hands-free, and handheld. In addition to driving the simulator, each participant completed questionnaires related to driver demographics, driving history, usage of mobile phones while driving, and general mobile phone usage history. The drivers were 18–26 years old and split evenly by gender. A linear mixed model analysis of braking profiles along the roadway before the pedestrian crossing revealed comparatively increased decelerations among distracted drivers, particularly during the initial 20 kph of deceleration. Drivers’ initial 20 kph deceleration time was modelled using a parametric accelerated failure time (AFT) hazard-based duration model with a Weibull distribution with clustered heterogeneity to account for the repeated measures experiment design. Factors found to significantly influence the braking task included vehicle dynamics variables like initial speed and maximum deceleration, phone condition, and driver-specific variables such as licence type, crash involvement history, and self-reported experience of using a mobile phone whilst driving. Distracted drivers on average appear to reduce the speed of their vehicle faster and more abruptly than non-distracted drivers, exhibiting excess braking comparatively and revealing perhaps risk compensation. The braking appears to be more aggressive for distracted drivers with provisional licenses compared to drivers with open licenses. Abrupt or excessive braking by distracted drivers might pose significant safety concerns to following vehicles in a traffic stream.

Evaluation of the Australian Performing Arts Market 2014-2018 - Year One Report

The Australia Council awarded the tender of APAMs 2014, 2016 and 2018 to the Brisbane Powerhouse. The Australia Council, in awarding the contract for the presentation of APAM by Brisbane Powerhouse, stipulated that a formal evaluation of the three iterations of APAM and activity in the intervening years be undertaken. Queensland University of Technology, Creative Industries Faculty, under the leadership of Associate Professor Sandra Gattenhof, were contracted to undertake the formal evaluation. This is the first year report on the Brisbane iteration of the Market. This report has drawn from data collected across a range of sources, drawing on the scoping study undertaken by Justin Macdonnell addressing the Market from 1994–2010; the tender document submitted by the Brisbane Powerhouse; in-person interviews with APAM staff, APAM Stakeholders, Vox Pops from delegates in response to individual sessions, producer company/artist case studies and, most significantly, responses from a detailed online survey sent to all delegates. The main body of the report is organised around three key research aims, as outlined in the Brisbane Powerhouse Tender document (2011). These have been articulated as: Evaluation of international market development outcomes through showcasing work to targeted international presenters and agents Evaluation of national market development outcomes through showcasing work to national presenters and producers Evaluation of the exchange ideas, dialogue, skill 
development, partnerships, collaborations and co- productions and networks with local and international peers. The culmination of the data analysis has been articulated through five key recommendations, which may assist the APAM delivery team for the next version, in 2016. In summary, the recommendations are described as: 1. Indigenous focus to remain central to the conception and delivery of APAM 2. Re-framing APAM’s function and its delivery 3. Logistics and communications in a multi-venue approach, including communications and housekeeping, volunteers, catering, re-calibrating the employment of Brisbane Powerhouse protocols and processes for APAM 4. Presentation and promotion for presenters 5. Strategic targeting of Asian producers.

The psychological and economic factors that influence energy consumption habits of low-income earners

Social marketers and governments have often targeted hard to reach or vulnerable groups (Gordon et al., 2006) such as young adults and low income earners. Past research has shown that low-income earners are often at risk of poor health outcomes and diminished lifestyle (Hampson et al., 2009; Scott et al., 2012). Young adults (aged 18 to 35) are in a transition phase of their life where lifestyle preferences are still being formed and are thus a useful target for long-term sustainable change. An area of focus for all levels of government is the use of energy with an aim to reduce consumption. There is little research to date that combines both of these groups and in particular in the context of household energy usage. Research into financially disadvantaged consumers is challenging the notion that that low income consumer purchasing and usage of products and services is based upon economic status (Sharma et al., 2012). Prior research shows higher income earners view items such as televisions and computers as necessities rather than non-essential (Karlsson et al., 2004). Consistent with this is growing evidence that low income earners purchase non-essential, energy intensive electronic appliances such as multiple big screen TV sets and additional refrigerators. With this in mind, there is a need for knowledge about how psychological and economic factors influence the energy consumption habits (e.g. appliances on standby power, leaving appliances turned on, running multiple devices at one time) of low income earners. Thus, our study sought to address the research question of: What are the factors that influence young adult low-income earners energy habits?

Development of realistic design fire time-temperature curves for the testing of cold-formed steel wall system

Fire resistance rating of light gauge steel frame (LSF) wall systems is obtained from fire tests based on the standard fire time-temperature curve. However, fire severity has increased in modern buildings due to higher fuel loads as a result of modern furniture and light weight constructions that make use of thermoplastics materials, synthetic foams and fabrics. Some of these materials are high in calorific values and increase both the spread of fire growth and heat release rate, thus increasing the fire severity beyond that of the standard fire curve. Further, the standard fire curve does not include a decay phase that is present in natural fires. Despite the increasing usage of LSF walls, their behaviour in real building fires is not fully understood. This paper presents the details of a research study aimed at developing realistic design fire curves for use in the fire tests of LSF walls. It includes a review of the characteristics of building fires, previously developed fire time-temperature curves, computer models and available parametric equations. The paper highlights that real building fire time-temperature curves depend on the fuel load representing the combustible building contents, ventilation openings and thermal properties of wall lining materials, and provides suitable values of many required parameters including fuel loads in residential buildings. Finally, realistic design fire time-temperature curves simulating the fire conditions in modern residential buildings are proposed for the testing of LSF walls.

An open pit multistage mine production scheduling model for drilling, blasting and excavating operations

This paper proposes a new multi-resource multi-stage scheduling problem for optimising the open-pit drilling, blasting and excavating operations under equipment capacity constraints. The flow process is analysed based on the real-life data from an Australian iron ore mine site. The objective of the model is to maximise the throughput and minimise the total idle times of equipment at each stage. The following comprehensive mining attributes and constraints have been considered: types of equipment; operating capacities of equipment; ready times of equipment; speeds of equipment; block-sequence-dependent movement times of equipment; equipment-assignment-dependent operation times of blocks; distances between each pair of blocks; due windows of blocks; material properties of blocks; swell factors of blocks; and slope requirements of blocks. It is formulated by mixed integer programming and solved by ILOG-CPLEX optimiser. The proposed model is validated with extensive computational experiments to improve mine production efficiency at the operational level. The model also provides an intelligent decision support tool to account for the availability and usage of equipment units for drilling, blasting and excavating stages.

Classification of activities of daily living of individual with limb loss

The monitoring of the actual activities of daily living of individuals with lower limb amputation is essential for an evidence-based fitting of the prosthesis, more particularly the choice of components (e.g., knees, ankles, feet)[1-4]. The purpose of this presentation was to give an overview of the categorization of the load regime data to assess the functional output and usage of the prosthesis of lower limb amputees has presented in several publications[5, 6]. The objectives were to present a categorization of load regime and to report the results for a case.

An application of fuzzy DL-Based semantic perception to soil container classification

Semantic perception and object labeling are key requirements for robots interacting with objects on a higher level. Symbolic annotation of objects allows the usage of planning algorithms for object interaction, for instance in a typical fetchand-carry scenario. In current research, perception is usually based on 3D scene reconstruction and geometric model matching, where trained features are matched with a 3D sample point cloud. In this work we propose a semantic perception method which is based on spatio-semantic features. These features are defined in a natural, symbolic way, such as geometry and spatial relation. In contrast to point-based model matching methods, a spatial ontology is used where objects are rather described how they "look like", similar to how a human would described unknown objects to another person. A fuzzy based reasoning approach matches perceivable features with a spatial ontology of the objects. The approach provides a method which is able to deal with senor noise and occlusions. Another advantage is that no training phase is needed in order to learn object features. The use-case of the proposed method is the detection of soil sample containers in an outdoor environment which have to be collected by a mobile robot. The approach is verified using real world experiments.

Proceedings of the Digital Cities 9 Workshop - Hackable Cities – From Subversive City Making to Systemic Change (Workshop) [Edited Proceedings]

The DC9 workshop takes place on June 27, 2015 in Limerick, Ireland and is titled “Hackable Cities: From Subversive City Making to Systemic Change”. The notion of “hacking” originates from the world of media technologies but is increasingly often being used for creative ideals and practices of city making. “City hacking” evokes more participatory, inclusive, decentralized, playful and subversive alternatives to often top-down ICT implementations in smart city making. However, these discourses about “hacking the city” are used ambiguously and are loaded with various ideological presumptions, which makes the term also problematic. For some “urban hacking” is about empowering citizens to organize around communal issues and perform aesthetic urban interventions. For others it raises questions about governance: what kind of “city hacks” should be encouraged or not, and who decides? Can city hacking be curated? For yet others, trendy participatory buzzwords like these are masquerades for deeply libertarian neoliberal values. Furthermore, a question is how “city hacking” may mature from the tactical level of smart and often playful interventions to the strategic level of enduring impact. The Digital Cities 9 workshop welcomes papers that explore the idea of “hackable city making” in constructive and critical ways.

India’s indigenization of military aircraft design and manufacturing: Towards a fifth-generation fighter

India’s desire to transform itself into an international military power has brought about a rapid shift in its approach to procuring military hardware. The indigenization of India’s military manufacturing capacity forms an integral part of the strategic objectives of Indian military services, with its realization being a function of significant government investment in strategic technologies. This has a number of ramifications. An indigenous Indian military capacity, particularly in the field of aviation, forms a key part of India’s ambition of achieving regional air superiority, or even supremacy, and being capable of power projection. This is particularly in response to China’s increasing presence in South Asian airspace. A burgeoning Indian military manufacturing machine based on a comparative advantage in skilled technicians and lower-cost labour, together with strategic collaboration with foreign military hardware manufacturers, may also lead to neighbouring countries looking to India as a source of competitively priced military hardware. In short, this chapter seeks to analyse the rationale behind India’s attempt to become militarily self-sufficient in the field of aviation, discuss the technical, economic and political context in which it is achieving this transformation, and assess the potential outlook of success for India’s drive to achieve self-sufficiency in the arena of military aviation. This chapter will do so by using the case of India’s attempt to develop a fifth-generation fighter aircraft.

Civil service HRM reforms in a new democracy: The case of Bhutan

This research investigates Bhutan Civil Service Human Resource Management strategies, policies and practices, and their contribution to achieving the national goal of Gross National Happiness. The study finds that the HRM of the Bhutanese civil service is meeting its strategic objective of contributing to GNH. The civil service in Bhutan plays an important role in socio-economic development, influences private sector practices, strengthens good governance and provides continuity to the government. Participants in the study were government ministers and senior, highly experienced civil servants. A model of civil service HRM in Bhutan is developed.

Implementation of Art1 and Art2 Artificial Neural Networks on Ring and Mesh Architectures

The Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are being used to solve a variety of problems in pattern recognition, robotic control, VLSI CAD and other areas. In most of these applications, a speedy response from the ANNs is imperative. However, ANNs comprise a large number of artificial neurons, and a massive interconnection network among them. Hence, implementation of these ANNs involves execution of computer-intensive operations. The usage of multiprocessor systems therefore becomes necessary. In this article, we have presented the implementation of ART1 and ART2 ANNs on ring and mesh architectures. The overall system design and implementation aspects are presented. The performance of the algorithm on ring, 2-dimensional mesh and n-dimensional mesh topologies is presented. The parallel algorithm presented for implementation of ART1 is not specific to any particular architecture. The parallel algorithm for ARTE is more suitable for a ring architecture.

Hydrogen and fluorine in crystal engineering: systematics from crystallographic studies of hydrogen bonded tartrate-amine complexes and fluoro-substituted coumarins, styrylcoumarins and butadienes

Three aspects of crystal engineering in molecular crystals are presented to emphasize the role of intermolecular interactions and factors influencing crystal packing. Hydrogen bonded tartrate-amine complexes have been analyzed with the propensity for formation of multidirectional hydrogen bonding as a key design element in the generation of materials for second harmonic generation (SHG). The invariance of the framework in DBT and its possible implications on SHG is outlined. The role of Fluorine in orienting molecules of coumarins, styrylcoumarins and butadienes for photodimerization is described with particular emphasis on its steering capability. Usage of coumarin as an design element for the generation of polymorphs of substituted styrylcoumarins is examined with specific examples.