Research report. A subtropical urban community. Investigating medium to high density residential typologies. Findings and recommendations from the Design Charrette

In June 2009 the Centre for Subtropical Design at the Queensland University of Technology conducted a design charrette to research design concepts for liveable subtropical neighbourhoods characterised by higher-density, mixed-use, family orientated housing. Subsequent analysis of the proposed designs evaluated how well these typologies support economic, environmental and social sustainability. The study was led by Ms Rosemary Kennedy, Director of the Centre for Subtropical Design and QUT School of Design Adjunct Professor Peter Richards, Chair of the Centre for Subtropical Design Board and director of Deicke Richards Architects and Urban Designers.

A subtropical urban community. Investigating medium to high density residential typologies. Recommendations from the design charrette

In June 2009 the Centre for Subtropical Design at the Queensland University of Technology conducted a design charrette to research design concepts for liveable subtropical neighbourhoods characterised by higher-density, mixed-use, family orientated housing. Subsequent analysis of the proposed designs evaluated how well these typologies support economic, environmental and social sustainability. The study was led by Ms Rosemary Kennedy, Director of the Centre for Subtropical Design and QUT School of Design Adjunct Professor Peter Richards, Chair of the Centre for Subtropical Design Board and director of Deicke Richards Architects and Urban Designers.

Case study 1 : a subtropical urban community : investigating medium to high density residential typologies by design charrette

The public transport corridor bordering the study site runs NW to SE and is perceived as a source of noise and pollution. The key urban planning strategies adopted by this team were: • Acoustic separation from transport corridor noise source, • A regular grid pattern of urban blocks, and • A clear hierarchy of accessible open space throughout the development.

Report : Case study 2 : a subtropical urban community : investigating medium to high density residential typologies by design charrette

The case study site is physically disconnected from its surrounding community by the rail corridor and future bus lanes and is unlikely to be able to sustain its own commercial retail centre. As a result, it may also be socially disconnected from surrounding suburbs. However, it does offer proximity and access to an extensive „natural‟ area, and this is seen as key opportunity for the proposed development to develop a strong relationship with surrounding suburbs...

Slum free India program. Report on the findings and recommendations of QUT BEE workshop to investigate strategies to deliver better outcomes

As a result of a broad invitation extended by Professor Martin Betts, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, to the community of interest at QUT, a cross-disciplinary collaborative workshop was conducted to contribute ideas about responding to the Government of India’s urgent requirement to implement a program to re-house slum dwellers. This is a complex problem facing the Indian Ministry of Housing. Not only does the government aspire to eradicate existing slum conditions and to achieve tangible results within five years, but it must also ensure that slums do not form in the future. The workshop focused on technological innovation in construction to deliver transformation from the current unsanitary and overcrowded informal urban settlements to places that provide the economically weaker sections of Indian society with healthy, environmentally sustainable, economically viable mass housing that supports successful urban living. The workshop was conducted in two part process as follows: Initially, QUT academics from diverse fields shared current research and provided technical background to contextualise the challenge at a pre-workshop briefing session. This was followed by a one-day workshop during which participants worked intensively in multi-disciplinary groups through a series of exercises to develop innovative approaches to the complex problem of slum redevelopment. Dynamic, compressed work sessions, interspersed with cross-functional review and feedback by the whole group took place throughout the day. Reviews emphasised testing the concepts for their level of complexity, and likelihood of success. The two-stage workshop process achieved several objectives:  Inspired a sense of shared purpose amongst a diverse group of academics  Built participants’ knowledge of each other’s capacity  Engaged multi disciplinary team in an innovative design research process  Built participants’ confidence in the collaborative process  Demonstrated that collaborative problem solving can create solutions that represent transformative change.  Developed a framework of how workable solutions might be developed for the program through follow up workshops and charrettes of a similar nature involving stakeholders drawn from the context of the slum housing program management.

Online alcohol interventions : a systematic review

Background: There has been a significant increase in the availability of online programs for alcohol problems. A systematic review of the research evidence underpinning these programs is timely. Objectives: Our objective was to review the efficacy of online interventions for alcohol misuse. Systematic searches of Medline, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Scopus were conducted for English abstracts (excluding dissertations) published from 1998 onward. Search terms were: (1) Internet, Web*; (2) online, computer*; (3) alcohol*; and (4) E\effect*, trial*, random* (where * denotes a wildcard). Forward and backward searches from identified papers were also conducted. Articles were included if (1) the primary intervention was delivered and accessed via the Internet, (2) the intervention focused on moderating or stopping alcohol consumption, and (3) the study was a randomized controlled trial of an alcohol-related screen, assessment, or intervention. Results: The literature search initially yielded 31 randomized controlled trials (RCTs), 17 of which met inclusion criteria. Of these 17 studies, 12 (70.6%) were conducted with university students, and 11 (64.7%) specifically focused on at-risk, heavy, or binge drinkers. Sample sizes ranged from 40 to 3216 (median 261), with 12 (70.6%) studies predominantly involving brief personalized feedback interventions. Using published data, effect sizes could be extracted from 8 of the 17 studies. In relation to alcohol units per week or month and based on 5 RCTs where a measure of alcohol units per week or month could be extracted, differential effect sizes to post treatment ranged from 0.02 to 0.81 (mean 0.42, median 0.54). Pre-post effect sizes for brief personalized feedback interventions ranged from 0.02 to 0.81, and in 2 multi-session modularized interventions, a pre-post effect size of 0.56 was obtained in both. Pre-post differential effect sizes for peak blood alcohol concentrations (BAC) ranged from 0.22 to 0.88, with a mean effect size of 0.66. Conclusions: The available evidence suggests that users can benefit from online alcohol interventions and that this approach could be particularly useful for groups less likely to access traditional alcohol-related services, such as women, young people, and at-risk users. However, caution should be exercised given the limited number of studies allowing extraction of effect sizes, the heterogeneity of outcome measures and follow-up periods, and the large proportion of student-based studies. More extensive RCTs in community samples are required to better understand the efficacy of specific online alcohol approaches, program dosage, the additive effect of telephone or face-to-face interventions, and effective strategies for their dissemination and marketing.

Elimination of dengue by community programs using Mesocyclops(Copepoda) against Aedes aegypti in central Vietnam

From September 2000 to June 2003, a community-based program for dengue control using local predacious copepods of the genus Mesocyclops was conducted in three rural communes in the central Vietnam provinces of Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, and Khanh Hoa. Post-project, three subsequent entomologic surveys were conducted until March 2004. The number of households and residents in the communes were 5,913 and 27,167, respectively, and dengue notification rates for these communes from 1996 were as high as 2,418.5 per 100,000 persons. Following knowledge, attitude, and practice evaluations, surveys of water storage containers indicated that Mesocyclops spp. already occurred in 3-17% and that large tanks up to 2,000 liters, 130-300-liter jars, wells, and some 220-liter metal drums were the most productive habitats for Aedes aegypti. With technical support, the programs were driven by communal management committees, health collaborators, schoolteachers, and pupils. From quantitative estimates of the standing crop of third and fourth instars from 100 households, Ae. aegypti were reduced by approximately 90% by year 1, 92.3-98.6% by year 2, and Ae. aegypti immature forms had been eliminated from two of three communes by June 2003. Similarly, from resting adult collections from 100 households, densities were reduced to 0-1 per commune. By March 2004, two communes with no larvae had small numbers but the third was negative; one adult was collected in each of two communes while one became negative. Absolute estimates of third and fourth instars at the three intervention communes and one left untreated had significant correlations (P = 0.009-< 0.001) with numbers of adults aspirated from inside houses on each of 15 survey periods. By year 1, the incidence of dengue disease in the treated communes was reduced by 76.7% compared with non-intervention communes within the same districts, and no dengue was evident in 2002 and 2003, compared with 112.8 and 14.4 cases per 100,000 at district level. Since we had similar success in northern Vietnam from 1998 to 2000, this study demonstrates that this control model is broadly acceptable and achievable at community level but vigilance is required post-project to prevent reinfestation.

A subtropical urban community : medium to high density residential typologies - case study 4

On the case study site, using these strategies, the site density achieved was approximately 180 dwellings per hectare. According to ASK consulting engineers‟ acoustic report (in Ecolateral‟s report) the design gives solid consideration to the environmental noise issues associated with the site. The subject structure not only provides significant shielding of transport corridor noise to the suburb, it also minimises the potential for adverse impact on residential amenity within the building itself...

Motivating domestic energy conservation through comparative, community-based feedback in mobile and social media

The progress of technology has led to the increased adoption of energy monitors among household energy consumers. While the monitors available on the market deliver real-time energy usage feedback to the consumer, the format of this data is usually unengaging and mundane. Moreover, it fails to address consumers with different motivations and needs to save and compare energy. This paper presents a study that seeks to provide initial indications for motivation-specific design of energy-related feedback. We focus on comparative feedback supported by a community of energy consumers. In particular, we examine eco-visualisations, temporal self-comparison, norm comparison, one-on-one comparison and ranking, whereby the last three allow us to explore the potential of socialising energy-related feedback. These feedback types were integrated in EnergyWiz – a mobile application that enables users to compare with their past performance, neighbours, contacts from social networking sites and other EnergyWiz users. The application was evaluated in personal, semi-structured interviews, which provided first insights on how to design motivation-related comparative feedback.

Analysing queer student media using a combined queer theoretical and media studies approach

Australian queer (GLBTIQ) university student media is an important site of cultural and political self-representation. These groups exist within university student unions and the unions provide them with space, financial support and resources. Community media is a significant site for the development of queer identity, community and a key part of queer politics. This paper reviews my research into queer community media which is grounded in a Queer Theoretical perspective of identity performativity. Cover argues that Queer Theoretical approaches that study media products fail to consider the material contexts which contribute to their construction. I use an ethnographic approach combined with discourse analysis in order to reveal queer student activists’ media representations of queer, and the production contexts which shape them. My research contributes to queer media scholarship by using a methodology to address the gap that Cover identifies.

Frequency decomposition techniques for increased discriminative 3D facial information capture

Eigen-based techniques and other monolithic approaches to face recognition have long been a cornerstone in the face recognition community due to the high dimensionality of face images. Eigen-face techniques provide minimal reconstruction error and limit high-frequency content while linear discriminant-based techniques (fisher-faces) allow the construction of subspaces which preserve discriminatory information. This paper presents a frequency decomposition approach for improved face recognition performance utilising three well-known techniques: Wavelets; Gabor / Log-Gabor; and the Discrete Cosine Transform. Experimentation illustrates that frequency domain partitioning prior to dimensionality reduction increases the information available for classification and greatly increases face recognition performance for both eigen-face and fisher-face approaches.

Integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches in cross-cultural research

The affects associated with culture, the values inherent in cultures and the identification of cultural assumptions are popular topics in recent management and Information Systems (IS) research. The main focus in relevant IS research over the years, has been on the comparison of cultural artifacts in different cultural settings. Despite these studies we need to ask whether there is a general approach to how culture can be researched in a rigorous manner? What are the issues that arise in cross- cultural research that have a bearing on decisions about a suitable research approach? What are the most appropriate methodologies to be used in cross-cultural research? Which is more appropriate, a qualitative, a quantitative or a mixed- method research approach? This paper will discuss important considerations in the process of deciding on the best research approach for cross-cultural projects. A case study will be then be reported as an example revealing the merits of integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches followed by a thorough discussion on the issues which may arise during this process.

Integrating a sustainable academic career around scholarly learning and teaching activities

To be scholarly in learning and teaching is rigorous academic work. It demands: currency and command of both discipline subject matter and educational theory; inquiring, methodical, and reflective approaches; the collection, evaluation and documentation of evidence of learning and teaching efficacy; and, optimally, entails participation in and communication among a community of teaching professionals. This chapter examines the author’s own practice in this regard to explicate the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of scholarly and scholarship approaches, as much as the ‘what’ and ‘where’ of that endeavour. In doing so, this meta‐analysis is made ‘community property’, in the same way that Shulman (1993: 6) exhorted we ‘change the status of teaching from private to community property’ so that teaching might be more greatly valued in the academy.