Class notes: BPM research and education—BPM technology research—the case of Apromore

This month, Jan Recker turns his attention to the technological side of BPM research and education. He engaged in a collaboration with two colleagues at Queensland University, Dr Marcello La Rosa and Eike Bernhard, on an initiative on the development of an advanced BPM technology - an Advanced Process Model Repository called Apromore. In this Column, they use the example of Apromore to showcase how BPM technologies are conceived, designed, developed and applied.

Designing a self-service technology to increase self-efficacy and maintain breastfeeding

Despite the significant health benefits attributed to breastfeeding, rates in countries, such as Australia, continue to remain static or to decline. Typically, the tangible support offered for women to support breastfeeding behaviours takes the form of face-to-face advice from health professionals, peer counselling via not-for-profit organizations such as the ABA, and provision of information through websites, pamphlets, and books. Prior research indicates that face-to-face support is more effective than telephone contact (Britton, McCormic, Renfrew, Wade, & King, 2009). Given the increasing costs associated with the provision of personalized face-to-face professional support and the need for some women to maximize privacy, discretion, and judgment-free consultations, there is a gap that could be filled by the use of m-technologies such as text messaging and other social media. The research team developed MumBubConnect; a two-way SMS system which combined the personalized aspects of face-to-face contact but maintained levels of privacy. The use of SMS was immediate, portable, and overcame many of the barriers associated with embarrassment. An Page 205 of 312 online survey of 130 breastfeeding mothers indicated that MumBubConnect facilitated the seeking of social support using m-technology, increased self-efficacy and maintained the desire behaviour.

Production of liquid fuel and activated carbon from mahogany seed by using pyrolysis technology

The renovation of biomass waste in the form of Mahogany seed waste into bio-fuel as well as activated carbon by fixed bed pyrolysis reactor has been taken into consideration in this study. The mahogany seed in particle form is pyrolyzed in an enormously heated fixed bed reactor with nitrogen as the carrier gas. The reactor is heated from 4000C to 6000C using a external heater in which rice husk and charcoal are used as the heater biomass fuel. Reactor bed temperature, running time and feed particle size have been varied to get the optimum operating conditions of the system. The parameters are found to influence the product yields to a large extent. A maximum liquid and char yield are 49 wt. % and 35 wt. % respectively obtained at a reactor bed temperature 5000C when the running time is 90 minutes. Acquired pyrolyzed oil at these optimal process conditions were analyzed for some of their properties as an alternative fuel. The oil possesses comparable flame temperature, favorable flash point and reasonable viscosity along with somewhat higher density. The kinematic viscosity of the derived fuel is 3.8 cSt and density is 1525 kg/m3. The higher calorific value is found 32.4 MJ/kg which is significantly higher than other biomass derived fuel. Moderate adsorption capacity of the prepared activated carbon in case of methyl blue & tea water was also revealed.

Facilitating first year students’ engagement with planning education : utilising student affinity for technology to increase cohort cohesion and decrease attrition

First year students overwhelmingly indicate that a strong interest in a field of study prompts them to enrol in university (McInnis et al 2000), yet over a quarter indicate that they have seriously considered dropping out of studies during their first year, with boredom most frequently cited by those domestic students who do depart before graduation (Coates and Ransom 2011). While it may be comforting to write off such withdrawals to the presumed apathy of youth, student “disquiet (in) their first year on campus may be a result of courses and institutions that do not match their needs and objectives, rather than any uncertainty or lack of purpose on their part” (James et al 1999). Voting with their mouse clicks, The current research investigate two conceptualized types of student participation in online discussion forums to increase understanding of student affinity for technology and its potential for fostering social network development amongst first year students.

Educational technology in medical imaging education

Purpose The emergence of digital technologies has created enthusiasm for their application to student learning. An evolving issue in medical imaging is how these technologies might be implemented within programs. Method A review of the literature was performed to explore applications and issues of educational technology in medical imaging Results There are a range of applications for educational technology within medical imaging education however limitations do exist. Learners must be supported by the development of skills to utilize education technologies. The digital picture archival and communication environment presents an ideal opportunity to enhance student learning through interaction and engagement with images. Implementation of education technologies to support student placement activities is an area for future development provided equity of access is addressed. Conclusion Education technologies have specific application to medical imaging education as part of a blended curriculum.

On governing collaborative Information Technology (IT) : a relational perspective

Organizations today invest in collaborative IT to engage in collaborative alliances to sustain or improve their competitive positions. Effective use of this collaborative IT in an alliance requires a deeper understanding of their governance structures. This effort is to ensure the sustainability of these alliances. Through the relational view of the firm, we suggest relational lateral IT-steering committees, relational IT operational committees, and relational IT performance management systems as IT governance structures for collaborative alliances. We then incorporate these structures, develop a model for approaches to governing collaborative IT, and evaluate the effectiveness for such governance structures in the IT-dependent alliances. We suggest that IT governance efforts of an alliance should contribute to their collaborative rent. We also suggest that the collaborative rent of an alliance would relate to the business value of its alliance partners. Field survey data containing 192 responses indicates a positive influence of the suggested IT governance efforts of the alliance on the collaborative rent of the alliance. The results also suggest a positive impact of the collaborative rent of the alliance on the business value of the alliance partners.

Pervasive technology and public transport : opportunities beyond telematics

The advancements of technology in the field of public transport have been considerable. Information Technology (IT) has made the dissemination of information effortless, contributing to reduced perceived waiting time, increased sense of security, and value for money. Nevertheless, and in light of the ever more obvious widespread presence of powerful mobile devices, it seems that the use of technology may be geared towards supplementary services other than telematics. Looking at it from a passenger’s perspective, this article provides an overview of what IT-based services are currently offered in public transport and what is their assessed impact. We finalise by putting forward possible directions that future services might follow, and stress out the necessity to come up with frameworks that enable for the impact assessment on service quality and customer satisfaction.

Culture, technology and the city

The 21st century has been described as the “century of cities”. By 2030, 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities, with the most rapid urbanization occurring in the developing world. This paper will draw up geographer Ed Soja’s concept of the “spatial turn” in social theory to consider how the culture of cities can act as a catalyst to innovation and the development of new technologies. In doing so, the paper will develop a three-layered approach to culture as: the arts; the way of life of people and communities; and the embedded structure underpinning socio-economic relations. It will also consider technology at a three-layered element, including devices, practices and ‘logics’ of technology, or what the Greeks termed techne. The paper will consider recent approaches to urban cultural policy, including cluster development and creative cities, and suggest some alternatives, noting that a problem with current approaches is that they focus excessively upon production (clusters) or consumption (creative cities). It will also consider the development of digital creative industries such as games, and the strategies of different cities to develop an innovation culture.

A variable-stepsize Jacobian-free exponential integrator for simulating transport in heterogeneous porous media : application to wood drying

A Jacobian-free variable-stepsize method is developed for the numerical integration of the large, stiff systems of differential equations encountered when simulating transport in heterogeneous porous media. Our method utilises the exponential Rosenbrock-Euler method, which is explicit in nature and requires a matrix-vector product involving the exponential of the Jacobian matrix at each step of the integration process. These products can be approximated using Krylov subspace methods, which permit a large integration stepsize to be utilised without having to precondition the iterations. This means that our method is truly "Jacobian-free" - the Jacobian need never be formed or factored during the simulation. We assess the performance of the new algorithm for simulating the drying of softwood. Numerical experiments conducted for both low and high temperature drying demonstrates that the new approach outperforms (in terms of accuracy and efficiency) existing simulation codes that utilise the backward Euler method via a preconditioned Newton-Krylov strategy.

Tax evasion, inequality, and progressive taxes : a political economy perspective

The standard approach to tax compliance applies the economics-of-crime methodology pioneered by Becker (1968): in its first application, due to Allingham and Sandmo (1972) it models the behaviour of agents as a decision involving a choice of the extent of their income to report to tax authorities, given a certain institutional environment, represented by parameters such as the probability of detection and penalties in the event the agent is caught. While this basic framework yields important insights on tax compliance behavior, it has some critical limitations. Specifically, it indicates a level of compliance that is significantly below what is observed in the data. This thesis revisits the original framework with a view towards addressing this issue, and examining the political economy implications of tax evasion for progressivity in the tax structure. The approach followed involves building a macroeconomic, dynamic equilibrium model for the purpose of examining these issues, by using a step-wise model building procedure starting with some very simple variations of the basic Allingham and Sandmo construct, which are eventually integrated to a dynamic general equilibrium overlapping generations framework with heterogeneous agents. One of the variations involves incorporating the Allingham and Sandmo construct into a two-period model of a small open economy of the type originally attributed to Fisher (1930). A further variation of this simple construct involves allowing agents to initially decide whether to evade taxes or not. In the event they decide to evade, the agents then have to decide the extent of income or wealth they wish to under-report. We find that the ‘evade or not’ assumption has strikingly different and more realistic implications for the extent of evasion, and demonstrate that it is a more appropriate modeling strategy in the context of macroeconomic models, which are essentially dynamic in nature, and involve consumption smoothing across time and across various states of nature. Specifically, since deciding to undertake tax evasion impacts on the consumption smoothing ability of the agent by creating two states of nature in which the agent is ‘caught’ or ‘not caught’, there is a possibility that their utility under certainty, when they choose not to evade, is higher than the expected utility obtained when they choose to evade. Furthermore, the simple two-period model incorporating an ‘evade or not’ choice can be used to demonstrate some strikingly different political economy implications relative to its Allingham and Sandmo counterpart. In variations of the two models that allow for voting on the tax parameter, we find that agents typically choose to vote for a high degree of progressivity by choosing the highest available tax rate from the menu of choices available to them. There is, however, a small range of inequality levels for which agents in the ‘evade or not’ model vote for a relatively low value of the tax rate. The final steps in the model building procedure involve grafting the two-period models with a political economy choice into a dynamic overlapping generations setting with more general, non-linear tax schedules and a ‘cost-of evasion’ function that is increasing in the extent of evasion. Results based on numerical simulations of these models show further improvement in the model’s ability to match empirically plausible levels of tax evasion. In addition, the differences between the political economy implications of the ‘evade or not’ version of the model and its Allingham and Sandmo counterpart are now very striking; there is now a large range of values of the inequality parameter for which agents in the ‘evade or not’ model vote for a low degree of progressivity. This is because, in the ‘evade or not’ version of the model, low values of the tax rate encourages a large number of agents to choose the ‘not-evade’ option, so that the redistributive mechanism is more ‘efficient’ relative to the situations in which tax rates are high. Some further implications of the models of this thesis relate to whether variations in the level of inequality, and parameters such as the probability of detection and penalties for tax evasion matter for the political economy results. We find that (i) the political economy outcomes for the tax rate are quite insensitive to changes in inequality, and (ii) the voting outcomes change in non-monotonic ways in response to changes in the probability of detection and penalty rates. Specifically, the model suggests that changes in inequality should not matter, although the political outcome for the tax rate for a given level of inequality is conditional on whether there is a large or small or large extent of evasion in the economy. We conclude that further theoretical research into macroeconomic models of tax evasion is required to identify the structural relationships underpinning the link between inequality and redistribution in the presence of tax evasion. The models of this thesis provide a necessary first step in that direction.

Exploiting SNOMED CT concepts and relationships for clinical information retrieval : Australian e-Health Research Centre and Queensland University of Technology at the TREC 2012 Medical Track

The Australian e-Health Research Centre and Queensland University of Technology recently participated in the TREC 2012 Medical Records Track. This paper reports on our methods, results and experience using an approach that exploits the concept and inter-concept relationships defined in the SNOMED CT medical ontology. Our concept-based approach is intended to overcome specific challenges in searching medical records, namely vocabulary mismatch and granularity mismatch. Queries and documents are transformed from their term-based originals into medical concepts as defined by the SNOMED CT ontology, this is done to tackle vocabulary mismatch. In addition, we make use of the SNOMED CT parent-child `is-a' relationships between concepts to weight documents that contained concept subsumed by the query concepts; this is done to tackle the problem of granularity mismatch. Finally, we experiment with other SNOMED CT relationships besides the is-a relationship to weight concepts related to query concepts. Results show our concept-based approach performed significantly above the median in all four performance metrics. Further improvements are achieved by the incorporation of weighting subsumed concepts, overall leading to improvement above the median of 28% infAP, 10% infNDCG, 12% R-prec and 7% Prec@10. The incorporation of other relations besides is-a demonstrated mixed results, more research is required to determined which SNOMED CT relationships are best employed when weighting related concepts.

Radiotherapy Monte Carlo simulation using cloud computing technology

Cloud computing allows for vast computational resources to be leveraged quickly and easily in bursts as and when required. Here we describe a technique that allows for Monte Carlo radiotherapy dose calculations to be performed using GEANT4 and executed in the cloud, with relative simulation cost and completion time evaluated as a function of machine count. As expected, simulation completion time decreases as 1=n for n parallel machines, and relative simulation cost is found to be optimal where n is a factor of the total simulation time in hours. Using the technique, we demonstrate the potential usefulness of cloud computing as a solution for rapid Monte Carlo simulation for radiotherapy dose calculation without the need for dedicated local computer hardware as a proof of principal. Funding source Cancer Australia (Department of Health and Ageing) Research Grant 614217

Development of an innovative technology-based youth passenger safety program : an evidence-based approach

Young drivers are overrepresented in motor vehicle crash rates, and their risk increases when carrying similar aged passengers. Graduated Driver Licensing strategies have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing fatalities among young drivers, however complementary approaches may further reduce crash rates. Previous studies conducted by the researchers have shown that there is considerable potential for a passenger focus in youth road safety interventions, particularly involving the encouragement of young passengers to intervene in their peers’ risky driving (Buckley, Chapman, Sheehan & Davidson, 2012). Additionally, this research has shown that technology-based applications may be a promising means of delivering passenger safety messages, particularly as young people are increasingly accessing web-based and mobile technologies. This research describes the participatory design process undertaken to develop a web-based road safety program, and involves feasibility testing of storyboards for a youth passenger safety application. Storyboards and framework web-based materials were initially developed for a passenger safety program, using the results of previous studies involving online and school-based surveys with young people. Focus groups were then conducted with 8 school staff and 30 senior school students at one public high school in the Australian Capital Territory. Young people were asked about the situations in which passengers may feel unsafe and potential strategies for intervening in their peers’ risky driving. Students were also shown the storyboards and framework web-based material and were asked to comment on design and content issues. Teachers were also shown the material and asked about their perceptions of program design and feasibility. The focus group data will be used as part of the participatory design process, in further developing the passenger safety program. This research describes an evidence-based approach to the development of a web-based application for youth passenger safety. The findings of this research and resulting technology will have important implications for the road safety education of senior high school students.

Economic growth and inequality patterns in the presence of costly technology adoption and uncertainty

We develop a stochastic endogenous growth model to explain the diversity in growth and inequality patterns and the non-convergence of incomes in transitional economies where an underdeveloped financial sector imposes an implicit, fixed cost on the diversification of idiosyncratic risk. In the model endogenous growth occurs through physical and human capital deepening, with the latter being the more dominant element. We interpret the fixed cost as a ‘learning by doing’ cost for entrepreneurs who undertake risk in the absence of well developed financial markets and institutions that help diversify such risk. As such, this cost may be interpreted as the implicit returns foregone due to the lack of diversification opportunities that would otherwise have been available, had such institutions been present. The analytical and numerical results of the model suggest three growth outcomes depending on the productivity differences between the projects and the fixed cost associated with the more productive project. We label these outcomes as poverty trap, dual economy and balanced growth. Further analysis of these three outcomes highlights the existence of a diversity within diversity. Specifically, within the ‘poverty trap’ and ‘dual economy’ scenarios growth and inequality patterns differ, depending on the initial conditions. This additional diversity allows the model to capture a richer range of outcomes that are consistent with the empirical experience of several transitional economies.

Constructing Technology Projects with Young Children : Four Detailed Case Studies of Mounting Constructivist Learning Projects Using Dimple Technologies for Young Children

The work by graduate teachers in this volume represent intentional design of learning experiences using technology for Early Childhood settings. They were given a two-part design task: a sequence of lessons organised around a themed project; and the collection of resources to support such activities. The project had to be constructive in nature where the children built objects and representations that were meaningful to them. The excellent works presented here offer a range of approaches that would be suitable in a variety of contexts. Because they are reasoned, these projects offer flexibility in implementation along with confidence that they would be effective.