On the zeros of the Abelian integrals for a class of Liénard systems

A planar polynomial differential system has a finite number of limit cycles. However, finding the upper bound of the number of limit cycles is an open problem for the general nonlinear dynamical systems. In this paper, we investigated a class of Liénard systems of the form x'=y, y'=f(x)+y g(x) with deg f=5 and deg g=4. We proved that the related elliptic integrals of the Liénard systems have at most three zeros including multiple zeros, which implies that the number of limit cycles bifurcated from the periodic orbits of the unperturbed system is less than or equal to 3.

From the consciousness industry to the creative industries : consumer-created content, social network markets, & the growth of knowledge

In studies of media industries, too much attention has been paid to providers and firms, too little to consumers and markets. But with user-created content, the question first posed more than a generation ago by the uses & gratifications method and taken up by semiotics and the active audience tradition (‘what do audiences do with media?’), has resurfaced with renewed force. What’s new is that where this question (of what the media industries and audiences did with each other) used to be individualist and functionalist, now, with the advent of social networks using Web 2.0 affordances, it can be re-posed at the level of systems and populations as well.

Evaluation of separation management algorithms in Class G airspace

Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in support of government applications has already seen significant growth and the potential for use of UAVs in commercial applications is expected to rapidly expand in the near future. However, the issue remains on how such automated or operator-controlled aircraft can be safely integrated into current airspace. If the goal of integration is to be realized, issues regarding safe separation in densely populated airspace must be investigated. This paper investigates automated separation management concepts in uncontrolled airspace that may help prepare for an expected growth of UAVs in Class G airspace. Not only are such investigations helpful for the UAV integration issue, the automated separation management concepts investigated by the authors can also be useful for the development of new or improved Air Traffic Control services in remote regions without any existing infrastructure. The paper will also provide an overview of the Smart Skies program and discuss the corresponding Smart Skies research and development effort to evaluate aircraft separation management algorithms using simulations involving realworld data communication channels, and verified against actual flight trials. This paper presents results from a unique flight test concept that uses real-time flight test data from Australia over existing commercial communication channels to a control center in Seattle for real-time separation management of actual and simulated aircraft. The paper also assesses the performance of an automated aircraft separation manager.

Documenting reproduction and inequality : revisiting Jean Anyon’s “Social class and school knowledge”

Jean Anyon’s (1981) “Social class and school knowledge” was a landmark work in North American educational research. It provided a richly detailed qualitative description of differential, social-class-based constructions of knowledge and epistemological stance. This essay situates Anyon’s work in two parallel traditions of critical educational research: the sociology of the curriculum and classroom interaction and discourse analysis. It argues for the renewed importance of both quantitative and qualitative research on social reproduction and equity in the current policy context.

Security metrics for object-oriented class designs

Measuring quality attributes of object-oriented designs (e.g. maintainability and performance) has been covered by a number of studies. However, these studies have not considered security as much as other quality attributes. Also, most security studies focus at the level of individual program statements. This approach makes it hard and expensive to discover and fix vulnerabilities caused by design errors. In this work, we focus on the security design of an object oriented application and define a number of security metrics. These metrics allow designers to discover and fix security vulnerabilities at an early stage, and help compare the security of various alternative designs. In particular, we propose seven security metrics to measure Data Encapsulation (accessibility) and Cohesion (interactions) of a given object-oriented class from the point of view of potential information flow.

Rethinking youth cultures : the case of the 'Gothics'

This paper has argued that subcultural social formations, such as the Gothics, did not evolve as resistance to a dominant culture. Instead, they are a response to the governmental construction of youth as an object of knowledge—the by-product of particular forms of government, generated by specific power/knowledge relations. Accordingly, attempts to account for the phenomenon of ‘subcultures’ should begin, not with notions of a shared, resistant class/generational consciousness, but rather with detailed investigations of specific forms of government, such as those involving conventions and customs within the fashion and music industries, the distribution of technologies of marketing and consumption, the adoption of various techniques of self-shaping, the prevalence of different journalistic practices, routines of policing, and so on. ‘Subcultural style’ is not an expression of relationship between a given social class, its material conditions and its economic and cultural aspirations. Rather, it constitutes the construction of particular habitus, shaped by fashion and leisure activities, through which certain youthful personae are given their form.

Virtual reality or virtually real : blended teaching and learning in a Master's level research methods class

This paper examines the enabling effect of using blended learning and synchronous internet mediated communication technologies to improve learning and develop a Sense of Community (SOC) in a group of post-graduate students consisting of a mix of on-campus and off-campus students. Both quantitative and qualitative data collected over a number of years supports the assertion that the blended learning environment enhanced both teaching and learning. The development of a SOC was pivotal to the success of the blended approach when working with geographically isolated groups within a single learning environment.

A Numerical Solution Using an Adaptively Preconditioned Lanczos Method for a Class of Linear Systems Related with the Fractional Poisson Equation

This study considers the solution of a class of linear systems related with the fractional Poisson equation (FPE) (−∇2)α/2φ=g(x,y) with nonhomogeneous boundary conditions on a bounded domain. A numerical approximation to FPE is derived using a matrix representation of the Laplacian to generate a linear system of equations with its matrix A raised to the fractional power α/2. The solution of the linear system then requires the action of the matrix function f(A)=A−α/2 on a vector b. For large, sparse, and symmetric positive definite matrices, the Lanczos approximation generates f(A)b≈β0Vmf(Tm)e1. This method works well when both the analytic grade of A with respect to b and the residual for the linear system are sufficiently small. Memory constraints often require restarting the Lanczos decomposition; however this is not straightforward in the context of matrix function approximation. In this paper, we use the idea of thick-restart and adaptive preconditioning for solving linear systems to improve convergence of the Lanczos approximation. We give an error bound for the new method and illustrate its role in solving FPE. Numerical results are provided to gauge the performance of the proposed method relative to exact analytic solutions.

Middle-class histrionics

Review of 'God of Carnage', Queensland Theatre Company, published in The Australian, 11 May 2009.

Class language

How social class factors into linguistic practices and use, language change and loss has been a major theme in postwar sociolinguistics and ethnography of communication, language planning and sociology of language. Key foci of linguistic and sociological research include the study of social class in everyday language use, media and institutional texts. A further concern is to understand the relationship between social class stratification, intergenerational social reproduction, and language variation. Bourdieu’s model of linguistic habitus and cultural capital offers a broad theoretical template for examining these relations, even as they are complicated by forces of economic and cultural globalization, new media and identity formations.

‘Capitalism’ as False Consciousness

The assertion on which this paper is based is that Capitalism has been superseded by Corporatism. I put forward an argument as to why Marxist scholars can and should abandon the idea that Capitalism still exists based on Marx’s approach to understanding political economy. Further, I argue that Marx’s method can be deployed to better understand and change the corporatist system in which we are currently living first by understanding what it means to be “labour” in a system governed by complex structures of debt.

Space and Cyberspace: on the enclosure of consciousness

In this chapter I argue that the global privatisation of elctromagnetic spectrum marks this period as historically unique. I also put forward conceptual categories for understanding the nature of an emergent cybereconomy. They correspond to classical conceptions of property, value and labour, but in no way treat these categories as singular, simple or unproblematic. From a perspective informed largely by Marx’s critique of classical political economy, I frame the creation of a global cyberspace as the enclosure, or “privatisation”, of conscious activity. I argue that a full and formally defined cyberspace, at least as it is currenty conceived of, must prefigure the eventual alienation of human social existence at its most fundamental and definitive level: consciousness.

'When everything old is new again' : class, consumerism and masculinity in Alasdair Duncan's Metro

Alasdair Duncan’s narrative Metro, set in Brisbane in the early twenty-first century, focuses on Liam, an unapologetically self-styled ‘white, upper middle-class brat’ whose sense of place and identity is firmly mapped by spatial and economic co-ordinates. This article considers the linkages between spatiality and identity in Duncan’s narrative, as well as the ways in which traditional, hegemonic (heterosexual) forms of masculinity are re-invigorated in the enactment of an upper-middle-class script of success, privilege and consumerism. It argues that the safeguarding of these hegemonic forms of masculine identity involves strategies of spatial and bodily expression underpinned by conspicuous consumption, relegating other forms of sexual identity to an exploitable periphery