Design of a unified data with business rules storage model for OLTP and OLAP systems

This paper reviews the literature concerning the practice of using Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) systems to recall information stored by Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) systems. Such a review provides a basis for discussion on the need for the information that are recalled through OLAP systems to maintain the contexts of transactions with the data captured by the respective OLTP system. The paper observes an industry trend involving the use of OLTP systems to process information into data, which are then stored in databases without the business rules that were used to process information and data stored in OLTP databases without associated business rules. This includes the necessitation of a practice, whereby, sets of business rules are used to extract, cleanse, transform and load data from disparate OLTP systems into OLAP databases to support the requirements for complex reporting and analytics. These sets of business rules are usually not the same as business rules used to capture data in particular OLTP systems. The paper argues that, differences between the business rules used to interpret these same data sets, risk gaps in semantics between information captured by OLTP systems and information recalled through OLAP systems. Literature concerning the modeling of business transaction information as facts with context as part of the modelling of information systems were reviewed to identify design trends that are contributing to the design quality of OLTP and OLAP systems. The paper then argues that; the quality of OLTP and OLAP systems design has a critical dependency on the capture of facts with associated context, encoding facts with contexts into data with business rules, storage and sourcing of data with business rules, decoding data with business rules into the facts with the context and recall of facts with associated contexts. The paper proposes UBIRQ, a design model to aid the co-design of data with business rules storage for OLTP and OLAP purposes. The proposed design model provides the opportunity for the implementation and use of multi-purpose databases, and business rules stores for OLTP and OLAP systems. Such implementations would enable the use of OLTP systems to record and store data with executions of business rules, which will allow for the use of OLTP and OLAP systems to query data with business rules used to capture the data. Thereby ensuring information recalled via OLAP systems preserves the contexts of transactions as per the data captured by the respective OLTP system.

Production of milk foams by steam injection: the effects of steam pressure and nozzle design

Foam properties depend on the physico-chemical characteristics of the continuous phase, the method of production and process conditions employed; however the preparation of barista-style milk foams in coffee shops by injection of steam uses milk as its main ingredient which limits the control of foam properties by changing the biochemical characteristics of the continuous phase. Therefore, the control of process conditions and nozzle design are the only ways available to produce foams with diverse properties. Milk foams were produced employing different steam pressures (100-280 kPa gauge) and nozzle designs (ejector, plunging-jet and confined-jet nozzles). The foamability of milk, and the stability, bubble size and texture of the foams were investigated. Variations in steam pressure and nozzle design changed the hydrodynamic conditions during foam production, resulting in foams having a range of properties. Steam pressure influenced foam characteristics, although the net effect depended on the nozzle design used. These results suggest that, in addition to the physicochemical determinants of milk, the foam properties can also be controlled by changing the steam pressure and nozzle design.

The Poems of T. S. Eliot [Book design by Paul Luna]

Book design, consisting of typographic design and composition formatting, and commissioning of custom scripting and custom typeface design to implement the book's typography.

Improved Road Design for Future Maintenance - Analysis of Road Barrier Repair Costs

The cost of a road construction over its service life is a function of the design, quality of construction, maintenance strategies and maintenance operations. Unfortunately, designers often neglect a very important aspect which is the possibility to perform future maintenance activities. The focus is mainly on other aspects such as investment costs, traffic safety, aesthetic appearance, regional development and environmental effects. This licentiate thesis is a part of a Ph.D. project entitled “Road Design for lower maintenance costs” that aims to examine how the life-cycle costs can be optimized by selection of appropriate geometrical designs for the roads and their components. The result is expected to give a basis for a new method used in the road planning and design process using life-cycle cost analysis with particular emphasis on road maintenance. The project started with a review of literature with the intention to study conditions causing increased needs for road maintenance, the efforts made by the road authorities to satisfy those needs and the improvement potential by consideration of maintenance aspects during planning and design. An investigation was carried out to identify the problems which obstruct due consideration of maintenance aspects during the road planning and design process. This investigation focused mainly on the road planning and design process at the Swedish Road Administration. However, the road planning and design process in Denmark, Finland and Norway were also roughly evaluated to gain a broader knowledge about the research subject. The investigation was carried out in two phases: data collection and data analysis. Data was collected by semi-structured interviews with expert actors involved in planning, design and maintenance and by a review of design-related documents. Data analyses were carried out using a method called “Change Analysis”. This investigation revealed a complex combination of problems which result in inadequate consideration of maintenance aspects. Several urgent needs for changes to eliminate these problems were identified. Another study was carried out to develop a model for calculation of the repair costs for damages of different road barrier types and to analyse how factors such as road type, speed limits, barrier types, barrier placement, type of road section, alignment and seasonal effects affect the barrier damages and the associated repair costs. This study was carried out using a method called the “Case Study Research Method”. Data was collected from 1087 barrier repairs in two regional offices of the Swedish Road Administration, the Central Region and the Western Region. A table was established for both regions containing the repair cost per vehicle kilometre for different combinations of barrier types, road types and speed limits. This table can be used by the designers in the calculation of the life-cycle costs for different road barrier types.

Environmental design : incorporating a rating tool into the design of commercial buildings

Environmental performance assessment or green building rating tools for commercial buildings are one of the more recent responses to encourage green solutions for commercial buildings. This paper discusses the initial stages of a research project that looks at the impact of a rating tool, such as Green Star, on design. There are numerous ways in which an architect can design commercial buildings, but environmental design solutions have consistently failed to become accepted practice. Therefore, how will this tool be incorporated into the building design process? Developed to assist the designer can the inclusion of a rating tool such as Green Star provide an effective framework to encourage the inclusion of environmental design strategies in commercial buildings? A field study, recording the design process of a commercial building, anticipates that a whole building assessment approach towards design, as proposed through the Green Star Rating Tool, will provide an effective framework to set and monitor design targets in order to optimise the environmental design goals in commercial buildings.

The impact of computer display height and desk design on 3D posture during information technology work by young adults

Computer display height and desk design to allow forearm support are two critical design features of workstations for information technology tasks. However there is currently no 3D description of head and neck posture with different computer display heights and no direct comparison to paper based information technology tasks. There is also inconsistent evidence on the effect of forearm support on posture and no evidence on whether these features interact. This study compared the 3D head, neck and upper limb postures of 18 male and 18 female young adults whilst working with different display and desk design conditions. There was no substantial interaction between display height and desk design. Lower display heights increased head and neck flexion with more spinal asymmetry when working with paper. The curved desk, designed to provide forearm support, increased scapula elevation/protraction and shoulder flexion/abduction.

Towards the development of a conceptual design management model for remote sites

Remote and environmentally sensitive sites present unique challenges for participants involved in the design and construction process. Worldwide advances in information technology coupled with improved site accessibility and manageability has enabled the construction industry to undertake such projects with greater ease. Furthermore, research on information technology in construction has begun to focus our attentions on our increased ability to work virtually in distributed teams. These remote sites have a range of development potential as clients have varied interests including; tourism, scientific investigation and resource exploration and processing which impact upon the management of the design process. These sites pose unique challenges to the project teams and in particular for the management of project design. The conceptual design phase is often marked by an iterative and creative process, which tends to be a sociologically oriented world where designers respond to a range of functional, aesthetic, environmental and even spiritual concerns. Strategic decisions made during the briefing and conceptual design stage may impact upon construction logistics and sustainability. Detailed design for construction tends to be a production oriented world. There is a significant body of literature that addresses the application of lean thinking to improving the interface between detailed design and construction production. There is little literature that takes a holistic view of design management for remote sites. The lean design management field of research has much to contribute to the design management of these projects. The review of the literature indicated that much of the lean thinking has been primarily concerned with sequential production. However, lean thinking is based upon principles of flow and value, which is also conducive to the complex process involved in design management for remote sites. A conceptual model is developed that considers both the production and sociological approaches to design management, in response to the peculiar demands of the site and their project teams.

Are aspects of study design associated with the reported prevalence of female sexual difficulties?

Objective: To investigate associations between the prevalence of sexual  difficulties reported in published studies and design features of those studies to determine if differences in design contribute to variation in prevalence estimates.
Design: Systematic review, multivariate analysis.
Setting: Studies published internationally in English.
Patient(s): Not applicable.
Intervention(s): None.
Main Outcome Measure(s): Prevalence estimates of difficulty with desire, arousal, orgasm, and sexual pain reported in published studies.
Result(s): Our systematic literature search identified 1,380 publications. Fifty-five studies met our inclusion criteria (reporting prevalence, sample size and response rate, sample size greater than 100, not clinic based). Reported prevalence of sexual difficulty varied across studies (up to tenfold). Eleven aspects of research conduct in these studies were included in our multivariate analysis as explanatory variables. Five aspects of study design and conduct (data collection procedures, inclusion criteria, duration of sexual difficulty recorded, sample size, and response rate) were associated with the reported prevalence of at least one type of sexual difficulty independently of likely predictors of true variation in prevalence: study location, study year, and age range of participants.
Conclusion(s): This review provides evidence that study design may influence reported prevalence estimates of female sexual difficulties and contribute to the wide variation in published estimates.

Community school teacher education and the construction of pedagogical discourse in Papua New Guinea

Pedagogical discourse in Papua New Guinea (PNG) community schooling is mediated by a western styles education. The daily administration and organisation of school activity, graded teaching and learning, subject selection, content boundaries, teaching and assessment methods are all patterned after western schooling. This educational settlement is part of a legacy of German, British and Australian government and non-government colonialism that officially came to an end in 1975. Given the colonial heritage of schooling in PNG, this study is interested in exploring particular aspects of the degree of mutuality between local discourses and the discourses of a western styled pedagogy in post-colonial times, for the purpose of better informing community school teacher education practices. This research takes place at and in the vicinity of Madang Teachers College, a pre-service community school teachers college on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. The research was carried out in the context of the researcher’s employment as a contract lecturer in the English language Department between 1991-1993. As an in-situ study it was influenced by the roles of different participants and the circumstances in which data was gathered and constituted, data which was compatible with participants commitments to community school teacher education and community school teaching and learning. In the exploration of specific pedagogic practices different qualitative research approaches and perspectives were brought to bear in ways best suited to the circumstances of the practice. In this way analytical foci were more dictated by circumstances rather by design. The analytical approach is both a hermeneutic one where participants’ activities are ‘read like texts’, where what is said or written is interpreted against the background of other informing contexts and texts, to better understand how understandings and meanings are produced and circulated; and also a phenomenological one where participants’ perspectives are sought to better understand how pedagogical discursive formations are assimilated with the ‘self’. The effect of shifting between these approaches throughout the study is to build up a sense of co-authorship between researcher and participants in relation to particular aspects of the research. The research explores particular sites where pedagogic discourse is produced, re-produced, distributed, articulated, consumed and contested, and in doing so seeks to better understand what counts as pedagogical discourse. These are sites that are largely unexplored in these terms, in the academic literature on teacher education and community schooling in PNG. As such, they represent gaps in what is documented and understood about the nature of post-colonial pedagogy and teacher training. The first site is a grade two community school class involved in the teaching and early learning of English as the ‘official’ language of instruction. Here local discourses of solidarity and agreement are seen to be mobilised to make meaningful, what are for the teacher and children moments in their construction as post-colonial subjects. What in instructional terms may be seen as an English language lesson becomes, in the light of the research perspectives used, an exercise in the structuring of new social identities, relations and knowings, problematising autonomous views of teaching and learning. The second site explores this issue of autonomous (decontextualised) teaching and learning through an investigation of student teachers’ epistemological contextualisations of knowledge, teaching and learning. What is examined is the way such orientations are constructed in terms of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ epistemological and pedagogical alignments, and, in terms of differently conceived notions of community, in a problematisation of the notion of community schooling. The third and fourth sites examine reflective accounts of student teachers’ pedagogic practices, understandings and subjectivities as they confront the moral and political economies and cultural politics of schooling in School Experiences and Practicum contexts, and show how dominant behaviourist and ‘rational/autonomous’ conceptions of what counts as teaching and learning are problematised in the way some students teachers draw upon wider social discourses to construct a dialogue with learners. The final site is a return to the community school where the discourse of school reports through which teachers, children and parents are constructed as particular subjects of schooling, are explored. Here teachers report children’s progress over a four year period and parents write back in conforming, confronting and contesting ways, in the midst of the ongoing enculturation of their children. In this milieu, schooling is shown to be a provider of differentiated social qualifications rather than a socially just and relevant education. Each of the above-mentioned studies form part of a research and pedagogic interest in understanding the ‘disciplining’ effects of schooling upon teacher education, the particular consequences of those effects, what is embraces, resisted and hidden. Each of the above sites is informed by various ‘intertexts’. The use of intertexts is designed to provide a multiplicity of views, actions and voices while enhancing the process of cross-cultural reading through contextualising the studies in ways that reveal knowledges and practices which are often excluded in more conventional accounts of teaching and learning. This research represents a journey, but not an aimless one. It is one which reads the ideological messages of coherence, impartiality and moral soundness of western pedagogical discourse against the school experiences of student-teachers, teachers, children and parents, in post-colonial Papua New Guinea, and finds them lacking.

Beyond Simon’s means-ends analysis : natural creativity and the unanswered ‘why’ in the design of intelligent systems for problem-solving

Goal-directed problem solving as originally advocated by Herbert Simon’s means-ends analysis model has primarily shaped the course of design research on artificially intelligent systems for problem-solving. We contend that there is a definite disregard of a key phase within the overall design process that in fact logically precedes the actual problem solving phase. While systems designers have traditionally been obsessed with goal-directed problem solving, the basic determinants of the ultimate desired goal state still remain to be fully understood or categorically defined. We propose a rational framework built on a set of logically interconnected conjectures to specifically recognize this neglected phase in the overall design process of intelligent systems for practical problem-solving applications.

Design of a prototype underwater research platform for swarm robotics

To perform under water robotic research requires specialized equipment. A few pieces of electronics atop a set of wheels are not going to cut it. An underwater research platform must be waterproof, reliable, robust, recoverable and easy to maintain. It must also be able to move in 3 dimensions. Also it must be able to navigate and avoid obstacles. Further if this platform is to be part of a swarm of like platforms then it must be cost effective and relatively small. To purchase such a platform can be very expensive. However, for shallow water, a suitable platform can be built from mostly off the shelf items at little cost. This article describes the design of one such underwater robot including various sensors and communications systems that allow for swarm robotics. Whilst the robotic platform performs well, to explore what many of them would do, that is more than are available, simulation is required. This article continues to study how best to simulate these robots for a swarm, or system of systems, approach.

Graduating Students' Perceptions of Learning Design in an Undergraduate Engineering Course

BACKGROUNDUndergraduate Civil Engineering Course at Deakin University, Australia is relatively a new course. It graduated its second main cohort in 2013. Since its beginning in 2012, this study has been running an internal annual Course Experience Surveys targeted at uncovering the graduating students’ perceptions on three components of contemporary learning system provided by Deakin University learning design, learning environment and the human factor. Learning design covers the learning curriculum, learning resources, learning activities and learning supports; learning environment includes physical environment, virtual environment and psychosocial environment; and human factor includes learners, facilitators/teachers and help/support staff and their culture. There is a common agreement among educators in higher education that these three components of learning system should interact and complement each other in order to maximise student learning. This paper coversonly learning design aspect of the overall surveys from 2012 and 2013.PURPOSEThe aim of this study is to analyse the students’ perceptions of learning design provided by Deakin University to its undergraduate civil engineering students in 2012 and 2013. This will help track down the progresses in different aspects of learning design and to understand whether the learning design provided by the institution have actually helped students in their learning and met their learning expectations.DESIGN/METHODThis study adopts questionnaire approach to collect original data by asking students about their perceptions of learning design provided by the institution. 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire survey (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree) is developed and responses are collected. The responses are then statistically analysed in order to uncover the students’ perceptions of learning design provided by the university.RESULTSThe statistical analysis shows that the graduating students in both 2012 and 2013 did not perceive some important aspects of the learning design of the undergraduate civil engineering program/course as good as they expected. Moreover, in line with the shift in the learning design paradigm from content-centric to more inclusive learning design where soft skills, self-directed learning skills and research skills are incorporated, graduating students clearly perceived these changes. However, respondents’ perceptions on some components of learning design got slightly down in 2013 compared with 2012 particularly the ‘learning resources’, ‘learning activities’ and ‘learning supports’.CONCLUSIONSThe shift in the learning design paradigm of the undergraduate civil engineering program/course at Deakin University from teacher-centric to student-centric between 2012 and 2013 has not been perceived by students positively as expected. Students have clearly indicated that they prefer improved curriculum, quality learning resources, customised learning activities and additional learning supports in order to successfully implement student-centric learning design.

Perceptions of change in office space design: redesigning Barwon Water’s office environment

In early 2015 Barwon Water received State government funding to rationalise and renovate its various Geelong-based administrative offices into one complex. Integral to the renovations is a new green-star retrofit of the existing Ryrie Street complex by GHD Woodhead. The project will consolidate all of Barwon Water’s offices onto one site, increase floor space, provide a new ‘green’ atrium, and adopt an open plan layout. Having set a new strategic direction, Barwon Water is now undergoing a wholesale cultural and operational change in order to realise these strategic objectives. Aspirations for workplace design have been identified as: environmentally sustainable; foster innovation and creativity; establish connections; improve communication and collaboration; provide efficient space for effective work; flexibility over time; welcoming and connected to the community; healthy; and, up to date technology. This paper investigates Barwon Water staff perceptions and apprehensions of this prospective consolidation, particularly the proposed open plan office environment. While most research in this topic is informed by an immediate pre-design workshop of staff needs, this research provides a longitudinal perspective of human perceptions about work place environment change and a review of how changes in office environment synergistically align to architectural responses and changes in corporate strategies.

Optimum design of experiments for statistical inference

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)