Building and Construction Trades Unions: Are They Built to Win?

[Excerpt] The evidence of labor's declining power in the economic and political arenas is increasingly clear. Despite the tenacious efforts of talented leaders over the past ten years, the labor movement has still failed to turn the proverbial cornet. Some labor leaders now believe that a dramatic change in strategic direction may be necessary to revitalize labor's fortunes. The emerging debate about labor's future touches every sector of the movement. The building and construction trades are no exception.

Happily ever after: Romance, gender and the building blocks of domestic violence

My sister describes the state of something being a psychological or personal 'issue' - such as a trauma, compulsion, phobia, or obsession - as having 'brain spaghetti'. For example, apparently she has spaghetti about me pinning her down as a child and tickling her until she screamed for mercy. She knows this because when her spouse tried to do the same, the experience she had as a child came flooding back as a complex tangle of fears, feelings, and mental images. Notwithstanding the trauma inflicted on a sibling in my youth, the spaghetti metaphor is a simple but useful tool for explaining how complex our experiences are, and I bring it up here because I believe a lot of people have spaghetti about love. So much so, that often love becomes distorted, sometimes to the point of making one completely blind to manipulation and abuse. Part of the blame for 'love spaghetti' can be allotted to media depictions of romance and gender, which helps entrench and maintain our deeply held beliefs about what relationships should look like.

Non-specific conducting polymer-based array capable of monitoring odour emissions from a biofiltration system in a piggery building

A commercial non-specific gas sensor array system was evaluated in terms of its capability to monitor the odour abatement performance of a biofiltration system developed for treating emissions from a commercial piggery building. The biofiltration system was a modular system comprising an inlet ducting system, humidifier and closed-bed biofilter. It also included a gravimetric moisture monitoring and water application system for precise control of moisture content of an organic woodchip medium. Principal component analysis (PCA) of the sensor array measurements indicated that the biofilter outlet air was significantly different to both inlet air of the system and post-humidifier air. Data pre-processing techniques including normalising and outlier handling were applied to improve the odour discrimination performance of the non-specific gas sensor array. To develop an odour quantification model using the sensor array responses of the non-specific sensor array, PCA regression, artificial neural network (ANN) and partial least squares (PLS) modelling techniques were applied. The correlation coefficient (r(2)) values of the PCA, ANN, and PLS models were 0.44, 0.62 and 0.79, respectively.

On the Arrangement of Cliques in Chordal Graphs with respect to the Cuts

A cut (A, B) (where B = V - A) in a graph G = (V, E) is called internal if and only if there exists a vertex x in A that is not adjacent to any vertex in B and there exists a vertex y is an element of B such that it is not adjacent to any vertex in A. In this paper, we present a theorem regarding the arrangement of cliques in a chordal graph with respect to its internal cuts. Our main result is that given any internal cut (A, B) in a chordal graph G, there exists a clique with kappa(G) + vertices (where kappa(G) is the vertex connectivity of G) such that it is (approximately) bisected by the cut (A, B). In fact we give a stronger result: For any internal cut (A, B) of a chordal graph, and for each i, 0 <= i <= kappa(G) + 1 such that vertical bar K-i vertical bar = kappa(G) + 1, vertical bar A boolean AND K-i vertical bar = i and vertical bar B boolean AND K-i vertical bar = kappa(G) + 1 - i. An immediate corollary of the above result is that the number of edges in any internal cut (of a chordal graph) should be Omega(k(2)), where kappa(G) = k. Prompted by this observation, we investigate the size of internal cuts in terms of the vertex connectivity of the chordal graphs. As a corollary, we show that in chordal graphs, if the edge connectivity is strictly less than the minimum degree, then the size of the mincut is at least kappa(G)(kappa(G)+1)/2 where kappa(G) denotes the vertex connectivity. In contrast, in a general graph the size of the mincut can be equal to kappa(G). This result is tight.

Building personas of students accessing a peer-facilitated support for learning program

The modern student represents a change from the traditional learner. More than ever before, additional resources are available online and yet personalised learning and peer-assistance programs are becoming an essential part of tertiary education delivery. This paper presents the first stage in a user-centred design approach to the analysis of the completeness and efficacy of such a personalised, peer-based support for learning program. This approach used an iterative design methodology based on contextual interview, workshops and focus groups to develop personas representing students visiting the program. Initial uses of these developed personas have included training of new personnel as well as the evaluation of the program. Overall the use of this user-centred approach and iterative persona development methodology has yielded an invaluable resource for the design of support for learning programs across the higher education industry within Australia and beyond.

Overcoming the challenges of building heritage projects: Improvements to time, scope and cost performance

This research was undertaken to encompass and identify challenges and impact factors that affect the successful outcomes of heritage building projects, especially those related to finding major causes of delays and cost overruns across projects in all Australian states. This project determined and analysed the causes of such delays and programme issues emanating from the planning and execution phases, whilst also analysing the requirements for management of multiple stakeholder relationships and the influence of unforeseen technical factors. The research proposes "call for action" guidance and was validated by experienced experts in heritage building projects in Australia. The proposed guidance is designed to ensure that realistic cost targets and delivery timeframes are set in future heritage projects, and necessary interventions made at appropriate project stages to ensure decisions are made that will help to prevent overtime and cost overuns.

Building that once served as the J. Krakauer Likoerfabrik Nachfolger; Chausseestrasse, Berlin Business Establishments; Factories

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Dorothea (Dola) Guttmann outside the Zur Stelliner Dampfbaeckerei building Portraits Women

Born April 27, 1922 in Tilsit, died June 8, 2003 Zurich

Product-library-derived specification parameters in building information models augmentation

This paper conceptualizes a framework for bridging the BIM (building information modelling)-specifications divide through augmenting objects within BIM with specification parameters derived from a product library. We demonstrate how model information, enriched with data at various LODs (levels of development), can evolve simultaneously with design and construction using different representation of a window object embedded in a wall as lifecycle phase exemplars at different levels of granularity. The conceptual standpoint is informed by the need for exploring a methodological approach which extends beyond current limitations of current modelling platforms in enhancing the information content of BIM models. Therefore, this work demonstrates that BIM objects can be augmented with construction specification parameters leveraging product libraries.

Biosecurity capacity building for the Australian avocado industry

Project aims to develop diagnostic capacity for laurel wilt and associated ambrosia beetle in Australia.

Rieser family portrait on the steps of an unidentified building Portraits Family

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A Story of Organized Crime: Constructing Criminality and Building Institutions

This is a narrative about the way in which a category of crime-to-be-combated is constructed through the discipline of criminology and the agents of discipline in criminal justice. The aim was to examine organized crime through the eyes of those whose job it is to fight it (and define it), and in doing so investigate the ways social problems surface as sites for state intervention. A genealogy of organized crime within criminological thought was completed, demonstrating that there are a range of different ways organized crime has been constructed within the social scientific discipline, and each of these were influenced by the social context, political winds and intellectual climate of the time. Following this first finding, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with individuals who had worked at the apex of the policing of organized crime in Australia, in order to trace their understandings of organized crime across recent history. It was found that organized crime can be understood as an object of the discourse of the politics of law and order, the discourse of international securitization, new public management in policing business, and involves the forging of outlaw identities. Therefore, there are multiple meanings of organized crime that have arisen from an interconnected set of social, political, moral and bureaucratic discourses. The institutional response to organized crime, including law and policing, was subsequently examined. An extensive legislative framework has been enacted at multiple jurisdictional levels, and the problem of organized crime was found to be deserving of unique institutional powers and configurations to deal with it. The social problem of organized crime, as constituted by the discourses mapped out in this research, has led to a new generation of increasingly preemptive and punitive laws, and the creation of new state agencies with amplified powers. That is, the response to organized crime, with a focus on criminalization and enforcement, has been driven and shaped by the four discourses and the way in which the phenomenon is constructed within them. An appreciation of the nexus between the emergence of the social problem, and the formation of institutions in response to it, is important in developing a more complete understanding of the various dimensions of organized crime.