Development and Simulation of a Variable Rate Controller for an Air search and Air Sampling Unmanned Aerial System

This report describes the development and simulation of a variable rate controller for a 6-degree of freedom nonlinear model. The variable rate simulation model represents an off the shelf autopilot. Flight experiment involves risks and can be expensive. Therefore a dynamic model to understand the performance characteristics of the UAS in mission simulation before actual flight test or to obtain parameters needed for the flight is important. The control and guidance is implemented in Simulink. The report tests the use of the model for air search and air sampling path planning. A GUI in which a set of mission scenarios, in which two experts (mission expert, i.e. air sampling or air search and an UAV expert) interact, is presented showing the benefits of the method.

An identification tool for the Australian weedy Sporobolus species based on random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) profiles

Based on morphological features alone, there is considerable difficulty in identifying the 5 most economically damaging weed species of Sporobolus [viz. S. pyramidalis P. Beauv., S. natalensis (Steud.) Dur and Schinz, S. fertilis (Steud.) Clayton, S. africanus (Poir.) Robyns and Tourney, and S. jacquemontii Kunth.] found in Australia. A polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique was used to create a series of genetic markers that could positively identify the 5 major weeds from the other less damaging weedy and native Sporobolus species. In the initial RAPD profiling experiment, using arbitrarily selected primers and involving 12 species of Sporobolus, 12 genetic markers were found that, when used in combination, could consistently identify the 5 weedy species from all others. Of these 12 markers, the most diagnostic were UBC51490 for S. pyramidalis and S. natalensis; UBC43310.2000.2100 for S. fertilis and S. africanus; and ORA20850 and UBC43470 for S. jacquemontii. Species-specific markers could be found only for S. jacquemontii. In an effort to understand why there was difficulty in obtaining species-specific markers for some of the weedy species, a RAPD data matrix was created using 40 RAPD products. These 40 products amplified by 6 random primers from 45 individuals belonging to 12 species, were then subjected to numerical taxonomy and multivariate system (NTSYS pc version 1.70) analysis. The RAPD similarity matrix generated from the analysis indicated that S. pyramidalis was genetically more similar to S. natalensis than to other species of the 'S. indicus complex'. Similarly, S. jacquemontii was more similar to S. pyramidalis, and S. fertilis was more similar to S. africanus than to other species of the complex. Sporobolus pyramidalis, S. jacquemontii, S. africanus, and S. creber exhibited a low within-species genetic diversity, whereas high genetic diversity was observed within S. natalensis, S. fertilis, S. sessilis, S. elongates, and S. laxus. Cluster analysis placed all of the introduced species (major and minor weedy species) into one major cluster, with S. pyramidalis and S. natalensis in one distinct subcluster and S. fertilis and S. africanus in another. The native species formed separate clusters in the phenograms. The close genetic similarity of S. pyramidalis to S. natalensis, and S. fertilis to S. africanus may explain the difficulty in obtaining RAPD species-specific markers. The importance of these results will be within the Australian dairy and beef industries and will aid in the development of integrated management strategy for these weeds.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge: A Transnational Comparison of Classroom Learning with Real Clients, Real Money, and Real Advertising Campaigns

In 2008, a collaborative partnership between Google and academia launched the Google Online Marketing Challenge (hereinafter Google Challenge), perhaps the world’s largest in-class competition for higher education students. In just two years, almost 20,000 students from 58 countries participated in the Google Challenge. The Challenge gives undergraduate and graduate students hands-on experience with the world’s fastest growing advertising mechanism, search engine advertising. Funded by Google, students develop an advertising campaign for a small to medium sized enterprise and manage the campaign over three consecutive weeks using the Google AdWords platform. This article explores the Challenge as an innovative pedagogical tool for marketing educators. Based on the experiences of three instructors in Australia, Canada and the United States, this case study discusses the opportunities and challenges of integrating this dynamic problem-based learning approach into the classroom.

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.

An analysis of theories of search and search behavior

Theories of search and search behavior can be used to glean insights and generate hypotheses about how people interact with retrieval systems. This paper examines three such theories, the long standing Information Foraging Theory, along with the more recently proposed Search Economic Theory and the Interactive Probability Ranking Principle. Our goal is to develop a model for ad-hoc topic retrieval using each approach, all within a common framework, in order to (1) determine what predictions each approach makes about search behavior, and (2) show the relationships, equivalences and differences between the approaches. While each approach takes a different perspective on modeling searcher interactions, we show that under certain assumptions, they lead to similar hypotheses regarding search behavior. Moreover, we show that the models are complementary to each other, but operate at different levels (i.e., sessions, patches and situations). We further show how the differences between the approaches lead to new insights into the theories and new models. This contribution will not only lead to further theoretical developments, but also enables practitioners to employ one of the three equivalent models depending on the data available.

A Case of Simple Tool Use in Wild Liontailed Macaques (Macaca silenus)

Three members of a group of liontailed macaques (Macaea silenus) were seen to use leaves for food preparation. Other examples of prey-selection and hunting behaviour in liontailed macaques reflect individual- and group-specific skills. The absence of similar patterns in bonnet macaques (Macaca radiata) living in the same habitat might be related to differences in the social design and indicate the high significance of social aspects for the occurrence and manifestation of innovative behaviour.

Controlled exposure as a management tool for Glasser's disease.

In this study, nasal swabs taken from multiparous sows at weaning time or from sick pigs displaying symptoms of Glasser's disease from farms in Australia [date not given] were cultured and analysed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Within each genotype detected on a farm, representative isolates were serotyped by gel diffusion (GD) testing or indirect haemagglutination (IHA) test. Isolates which did not react in any of the tests were regarded as non-typable and were termed serovar NT. Serovars 1, 5, 12, 13 and 14 were classified as highly pathogenic; serovars 2, 4 and 15 being moderately pathogenic; serovar 8 being slightly pathogenic and serovars 3, 6, 7, 9 and 11 being non-pathogenic. Sows were inoculated with the strain of Haemophilus parasuis (serovars 4, 6 and 9 from Farms 1, 2 and 4, respectively) used for controlled challenge 3 and 5 weeks before farrowing. Before farrowing the sows were divided into control and treatment groups. Five to seven days after birth, the piglets of the treatment group were challenged with a strain from the farm which had were used to vaccinate the sows. The effectiveness of the controlled exposure was evaluated by number of piglets displaying clinical signs possibly related to infection, number of antibiotic treatments and pig mortality. Nasal swabs of sick pigs were taken twice a week to find a correlation to infection. A subsample of pigs was weighed after leaving the weaning sheds. The specificity of a realtime PCR amplifying the infB gene was evaluated with 68 H. parasuis isolates and 36 strains of closely related species. 239 samples of DNA from tissues and fluids of 16 experimentally challenged animals were also tested with the realtime PCR, and the results compared with culture and a conventional PCR. The farm experiments showed that none of the controlled challenge pigs showed any signs of illness due to Glasser's disease, although the treatment groups required more antibiotics than the controls. A total of 556 H. parasuis isolates were genotyped, while 150 isolates were serotyped. H. parasuis was detected on 19 of 20 farms, including 2 farms with an extensive history of freedom from Glasser's disease. Isolates belonging to serovars regarded as potentially pathogenic were obtained from healthy pigs at weaning on 8 of the 10 farms with a history of Glasser's disease outbreaks. Sampling 213 sick pigs yielded 115 isolates, 99 of which belonged to serovars that were either potentially pathogenic or of unknown pathogenicity. Only 16 isolates from these sick pigs were of a serovar known to be non-pathogenic. Healthy pigs also had H. parasuis, even on farms free of Glasser's disease. The realtime PCR gave positive results for all 68 H. parasuis isolates and negative results for all 36 non-target bacteria. When used on the clinical material from experimental infections, the realtime PCR produced significantly more positive results than the conventional PCR (165 compared to 86).

Still in Search of the Good Life

At the 2014 G20 held in Brisbane, Australia took the position that climate change is not an economic issue. Most others thought it was - especially the Turkish Prime Minister who is hosting the 2015 G20. It is certainly an economic issue. But, it is not just an economic issue - either in the source or the solution.

WHIPPET: a novel tool for prioritizing invasive plant populations for regional eradication

Large geographic areas can have numerous incipient invasive plant populations that necessitate eradication. However, resources are often deficient to address every infestation. Within the United States, weed lists (either state-level or smaller unit) generally guide the prioritization of eradication of each listed species uniformly across the focus region. This strategy has several limitations that can compromise overall effectiveness, which include spending limited resources on 1) low impact populations, 2) difficult to access populations, or 3) missing high impact populations of low priority species. Therefore, we developed a novel science-based, transparent, analytical ranking tool to prioritize weed populations, instead of species, for eradication and tested it on a group of noxious weeds in California. For outreach purposes, we named the tool WHIPPET (Weed Heuristics: Invasive Population Prioritization for Eradication Tool). Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process that included expert opinion, we developed three major criteria, four sub-criteria, and four sub-sub-criteria, taking into account both species and population characteristics. Subject matter experts weighted and scored these criteria to assess the relative impact, potential spread, and feasibility of eradication (major criteria) for 100 total populations of 19 species. Species-wide population scores indicated that conspecific populations do not necessarily group together in the final ranked output. Thus, priority lists based solely on species-level characteristics are less effective compared to a blended prioritization based on both species attributes and individual population and site parameters. WHIPPET should facilitate a more efficacious decision-making process allocating limited resources to target invasive plant infestations with the greatest predicted impacts to the region under consideration.

Australia takes prickly acacia biocontrol search to India

A project co-funded by Meat & Livestock Australia and the Queensland Government is putting new life into the search for biocontrol agents for prickly acacia (Acacia nilotica), a Weed of National Significance in Australia.

The machinability of a cast aluminium alloy-graphite particle composite

The microstructure of a cast Al---Si alloy-graphite particle composite is examined using optical and analytical scanning electron microscopy. Specimens containing different percentages of graphite were machined by orthogonal planning with 25° and 45° rake angle tools at both 6.5 and 13.2 m min−1. The machining forces are reported and the chip-rake-face friction coefficients and shear flow stresses are calculated. It is shown that the reduction in machining forces with increasing graphite content is due mostly to a decrease in the shear flow stress rather than to lower chip-rake-face friction. Both the polished and the machined surfaces of the composite are rougher than those of the simple alloy, apparently owing to the greater porosity, the tearing out of graphite particles, or the opening of cracks at the graphite particles in the wake of the tool.

An interactive graphics system for 2-D drawing and design

This paper is about a software system, GRASS-Graphic Software System for 2-D drawing and design—which has been implemented on a PDP-11/35 system with RSX-11M operating system. It is a low cost interactive graphics system for the design of two dimensional drawings and uses a minimum of hardware. It provides comprehensive facilities for creating, editing, storing and retrieving pictures. It has been implemented in the language Pascal and has the potential to be used as a powerful data-imputting tool for a design-automation system. The important features of the system are its low cost, software character generation and a user-trainable character recognizer, which has been included.

Handpumps: problems and search for remedies

This paper gives a brief survey of research and development work done on hand pumps in India as well as elsewhere and sets out the approach adopted by ASTRA Working Group. Ten ways in which a hand pump breakdown in practice have been identified. The physical reasons behind each type of breakdown analysed. Remedial measures have been developed from this analysis. Laboratory test rigs fabricated to evaluate these measures have been described and some experimental results presented. The course of further work has been charted.

Near infrared spectroscopy as a rapid non-invasive tool for agricultural and industrial process management with special reference to avocado and sandalwood industries

Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) can play a vital role as a cost effective, rapid, non-invasive, reproducible diagnostic tool for many environmental management, agricultural and industrial waste water monitoring applications. In this paper we highlight the ability of NIRS technology to be used as a diagnostic tool in agricultural and environmental applications through the successful assessment of Fourier Transform NIRS to predict α santalol in sandalwood chip samples, and maturity of ‘Hass’ avocado fruit based on dry matter content. Presented at the Third International Conference on Challenges in Environmental Science & Engineering, CESE-2010. 26 September – 1 October 2010, The Sebel, Cairns, Queensland, Australia.