Decision making in social neurobiological systems modeled as transitions in dynamic pattern formation

Extant models of decision making in social neurobiological systems have typically explained task dynamics as characterized by transitions between two attractors. In this paper, we model a three-attractor task exemplified in a team sport context. The model showed that an attacker–defender dyadic system can be described by the angle x between a vector connecting the participants and the try line. This variable was proposed as an order parameter of the system and could be dynamically expressed by integrating a potential function. Empirical evidence has revealed that this kind of system has three stable attractors, with a potential function of the form V(x)=−k1x+k2ax2/2−bx4/4+x6/6, where k1 and k2 are two control parameters. Random fluctuations were also observed in system behavior, modeled as white noise εt, leading to the motion equation dx/dt = −dV/dx+Q0.5εt, where Q is the noise variance. The model successfully mirrored the behavioral dynamics of agents in a social neurobiological system, exemplified by interactions of players in a team sport.

Social and cultural drivers of incentive effectiveness in infrastructure projects

Formal incentives systems aim to encourage improved performance by offering a reward for the achievement of project-specific goals. Despite argued benefits of incentive systems on project delivery outcomes, there remains debate over how incentive systems can be designed to encourage the formation of strong project relationships within a complex social system such as an infrastructure project. This challenge is compounded by the increasing emphasis in construction management research on the important mediating influence of technical and organisational context on project performance. In light of this challenge, the research presented in this paper focuses on the design of incentive systems in four infrastructure projects: two road reconstructions in the Netherlands and two building constructions in Australia. Based on a motivational theory frame, a cross case analysis is conducted to examine differences and similarities across social and cultural drivers impacting on the effectiveness of the incentive systems in light of infrastructure project context. Despite significant differences in case project characteristics, results indicate the projects’ experience similar social drivers impacting on incentive effectiveness. Significant value across the projects was placed on: varied performance goals and multiple opportunities to across the project team to pursue incentive rewards; fair risk allocation across contract parties; value-driven tender selection; improved design-build integration; and promotion of future work opportunities. However, differences across the contexts were identified. Results suggest future work opportunities were a more powerful social driver in upholding reputation and establishing strong project relationships in the Australian context. On the other hand, the relationship initiatives in the Dutch context seemed to be more broadly embraced resulting in a greater willingness to collaboratively manage project risk. Although there are limitations with this research in drawing generalizations across two sets of case projects, the results provide a strong base to explore the social and cultural influences on incentive effectiveness across different geographical and contextual boundaries in future research.

Toward making inroads in reducing the disparity of lung health in Australian Indigenous and New Zealand Maori children

Globally, Indigenous populations, which include Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders in Australia and Māori people in New Zealand (NZ), have poorer health than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Indigenous peoples worldwide face substantial challenges in poverty, education, employment, housing and disconnection from ancestral lands. While addressing social determinants of health is a priority, solving clinical issues is equally important. Indeed, ignoring the latter until social issues improve risks further disparity as this may take generations. A systematic overview of interventions addressing social determinants of health found a striking lack of reliable evaluations.Where evidence was available, health improvement associated with interventions was modest or uncertain. 10 Thus advances in healthcare remain essential and these require the best evidence available in 11 preventing and managing common illnesses, including respiratory illnesses.

Improved fabrication of melt electrospun tissue engineering scaffolds using direct writing and advanced electric field control

Direct writing melt electrospinning is an additive manufacturing technique capable of the layer-by-layer fabrication of highly ordered 3d tissue engineering scaffolds from micron-diameter fibres. The utility of these scaffolds, however, is limited by the maximum achievable height of controlled fibre deposition, beyond which the structure becomes increasingly disordered. A source of this disorder is charge build-up on the deposited polymer producing unwanted coulombic forces. In this study we introduce a novel melt electrospinning platform with dual voltage power supplies to reduce undesirable charge effects and improve fibre deposition control. We produced and characterised several 90° cross-hatched fibre scaffolds using a range of needle/collector plate voltages. Fibre thickness was found to be sensitive only to overall potential and invariant to specific tip/collector voltage. We also produced ordered scaffolds up to 200 layers thick (fibre spacing 1 mm, diameter 40 μm) and characterised structure in terms of three distinct zones; ordered, semi-ordered and disordered. Our in vitro analysis indicates successful cell attachment and distribution throughout the scaffolds, with little evidence of cell death after seven days. This study demonstrates the importance of electrostatic control for reducing destabilising polymer charge effects and enabling the fabrication of morphologically suitable scaffolds for tissue engineering.

Design & performance of a networked ad-hoc acoustic communications system using inexpensive commercial CDMA modems

We present a new approach for creating and implementing an ad-hoc underwater acoustic sensor network based on connecting a small processor to the serial port of a commercial CDMA acoustic modem. The processor acts as a "node controller" providing the networking layer that the modems lack. The ad-hoc networking protocol is based on a modified dynamic source routing (DSR) approach and can be configured for maximising information throughput or minimising energy expenditure. The system was developed in simulation and then evaluated during field trials using a 10 node deployment. Experimental results show reliable multi-hop networking under a variety of network configurations, with the added ability to determine internode ranges to within 1.5 m for localisation.

Australian stock indexes and the four-factor model

Stock indexes are passive 'value-weighted' portfolios and should not have alphas which are significantly different from zero. If an index produces an insignificant alphan, then significant alphas for equity funds using this index can be attributed solely to manager performance. However, recent literature sugests that US Stock indexes can demonstrate significant alphas, which ultimately raise questions regarding equity fund manager performance in both the US and abroad. in this paper, we employ the Carhart four-factor model and newly available Asian-Pacific risk factors to generate alphas and risk factor loadings for eight Australian stock indexes from January 2004 to December 2012. We ifnd that the initial full sample period analysis does not provide indication of significant alphas in the indexes examined. However, by carrying out 36-month rolling regressions, we discover at least four significant alphas in seven of the eight indexes and factor loading variability. As previously reported in the US, this paper confirms similar issues with the four-factor model using Australian stock indexes and performance benchmarking. In effectively measuring Australian equity fund manager performance, it is therefore essential to evaluate a fund's alpha and risk factors relative to the alpha and risk factors of the appropriate benchmark index.

The impact of Internet marketing capabilities on international network capability, a cross country study comparison between Australia, Chile and Taiwan internationalised SMEs

The Internet has been shown to positively enhance internationalisation for SMEs, but scant empirical testing limits our understanding of the explicit impact of the Internet on firm internationalisation. This paper highlights key areas where the integration of the Internet can be leveraged through Internet-related capabilities within the internationalisation of the firm. Specifically, this study investigates how Internet marketing capabilities play a role in altering international information availability, international strategic orientation, and international business network relationships. This study provides evidence, indicating that these key relationships may vary between countries. To examine these key relationships this study utilises draws from data small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in three export intensive markets; Australia (215 international SMEs), Chile (204 international SMEs) and Taiwan (130 international SMEs); and tests a conceptual model through structural equation modelling. Results from the data show the impact of Internet marketing capabilities in positively impacting traditional internationalisation elements, which varies between countries. That is, our findings highlight the international business network relationships in Australia and Taiwan are directly impacted by Internet marketing capabilities, but not in Chile. We offer some insight into why we see variance across comparative exporting countries in how they leverage new technological capabilities for internationalisation and firm performance.

Shifting intimacies

Our world is literally and figuratively turning to ‘dust’. This work acknowledges decay and renewal and the transitional, cyclical natures of interrelated ecologies. It also suggests advanced levels of degradation potentially beyond reparation. Dust exists both on and beneath the border of our unaided vision. Dust particles are predominantly forms of disintegrating solids that often become the substance or catalyst of future forms. Like many tiny forms, dust is an often unnoticed residue with ‘planet-size consequences’. (Hanna Holmes 2001) The image depicts an ethereal, backlit body, continually circling and morphing, apparently floating, suggesting endless cycles of birth, life and death and inviting differing states of meditation, exploration, stillness and play. This never ending video work is taken from a large-scale interactive/media artwork created during a six-month research residency in England at the Institute of Contemporary Art London and at Vincent Dance Theatre Sheffield in 2006. It was originally presented on a raised floor screen made of pure white sand at the ICA in London (see). The project involved developing new interaction, engagement and image making strategies for media arts practice, drawing on the application of both kinetic and proprioceptive dance/performance knowledges. The work was further informed by ecological network theory that assesses the systemic implications of private and public actions within bounded systems. The creative methodology was primarily practice-led which fomented the particular qualities of imagery, generated through cross-fertilising embodied knowledge of Dance and Media Arts. This was achieved through extensive workshopping undertaken in theatres, working ‘on the floor’ live, with dancers, props, sound and projection. And eventually of course, all this dust must settle. (Holmes 2001, from Dust Jacket) Holmes, H. 2001, The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things, p.3

The private problem with public service: Rural teachers in educational markets

Staffing rural and remote schools is an important policy issue for the public good. This paper examines the private issues it also poses for teachers with families working in these communities, as they seek to reconcile careers with educational choices for children. The paper first considers historical responses to staffing rural and remote schools in Australia, and the emergence of neoliberal policy encouraging marketisation of the education sector. We report on interviews about considerations motivating household mobility with 11 teachers across regional, rural and remote communities in Queensland. Like other middle-class parents, these teachers prioritised their children’s educational opportunities over career opportunities. The analysis demonstrates how teachers in rural and remote communities constitute a special group of educational consumers with insider knowledge and unique dilemmas around school choice. Their heightened anxieties around school choice under neoliberal policy are shown to contribute to the public issue of staffing rural and remote schools.

Intimate Transactions Stage 4

A telepresence-based interactive installation allowing people at three sites (The National Art Museum of China, Beijing; The Imperial City Art Museum, Beijing; CalPoly University, California, USA) to interact simultaneously using only their bodies. Each participant used a physical interface called a ‘Bodyshelf’ and wore a sound vibration transmission device called a ‘haptic pendant’ around their necks. By gently moving their bodies and engaging through this ‘smart furniture’, they instigated ‘intimate transactions’, which influenced an evolving computationally-generated ‘world’ created from digital imagery, multichannel sound and tactile feedback. Intimate Transactions (Version 4) was the culmination of a long-term interdisciplinary research project developed in four distinct stages. It was launched in in 2008 and subsequently acquired on invitation by Professor Peter Weibel for the ZKM Media Art History Museum Karlsruhe in 2012.

Embodying a future for the future: Creative Robotics and Ecosophical Practice

In recent years I have begun to integrate Creative Robotics into my Ecosophically-led art practices – which I have long deployed to investigate, materialise and engage thorny, ecological questions of the Anthropocene, seeking to understand how such forms of practice may promote the cultural conditions required to assure, rather than degrade, our collective futures. Many of us would instinctively conceive of robotics as an industrially driven endeavor, shaped by the pursuit of relentless efficiencies. Instead I ask through my practices, might the nascent field of Creative Robotics still be able to emerge with radically different frames of intention? Might creative practitioners still be able to shape experiences using robotic media that retain a healthy criticality towards such productivist lineages? Could this nascent form even bring forward fresh new techniques and assemblages that better encourage conversations around sustaining a future for the future, and, if so, which of its characteristics presents the greatest opportunities? I therefore ask, when Creative Robotics and Ecosophical Practice combine forces in strategic intervention, what qualities of this hybrid might best further the central aims of Ecosophical Practice – encouraging cultural conditions required to assure a future for the future?

Temporal

An evolving meditation upon the complex, periodic processes that mark Australia’s seasonality, and our increasing ability to disturb them. By amplifying and shining light upon a myriad of mysterious lives lived in blackness, the work presents a sensuous, deep engagement with the rich, irregular spectras of seasonal forms: whilst hinting at a far less comforting background increasingly framed by anthropogenic climate change. ’Temporal’ uses custom interactive systems, illusionary techniques and real time spatial audio processes that draw upon a rich array of media, including seasonal, nocturnal field recordings sourced in the Bundaberg region and detailed observations of foliage & flowering phases from that region. By drawing inspiration from the subtle transitions between what Europeans once named ‘Summer’ and ‘Autumn’ and the multiple seasons recognised by other cultures, whilst also including bodily disturbances within the work, ’Temporal’ creates a compellingly immersive environment that wraps audiences in luscious yet ominous atmospheres beyond sight and hearing. This work completes a two year long project of dynamic mediated installations that have been presented in Sydney, Beijing, Cairns and Bundanon, that have each been somehow choreographed by environmental cycles; alluding to a new framework for making works that we named ‘Seasonal’. These powerful, responsive & experiential works each draw attention to that which will disappear when biodiverse worlds have descended into an era of permanent darkness – an ‘extinction of human experience’. By tapping into the deeply interlocking seasonal cycles of environments that are themselves intimately linked with social, geographical & political concerns, participating audiences are therefore challenged to see the night, their locality & ecologies in new ways through extending their personal limits of perception, imagery & comprehension.

Black Nectar

Black Nectar is a site-specific light & sound installation, that asks audiences to take slow, sensory walks through the inky-blackness of Bundanon’s forests at night, charting personal courses through seasons of change, animality and imagination – far beyond the blinding lights and howling tones of our contemporary existence. Gathering during a time Europeans once named as ‘spring’ audiences will leave the comfy lights and sounds of Bundanon’s homestead area, to take powerful, personal, silent journeys into the long darks of night, heading ultimately towards the place of ‘Black Nectar’. This most unusual of walks begins with impending darkness, and yet ultimately ends with the faintest, sweetest of glimmers – an en-lightening, re-sounding of our seasonal futures?

Overcoming acculturation: Physical education recruits' experiences of an alternative pedagogical approach to games teaching

Background Physical education teacher education (PETE) programmes have been identified as a critical platform to encourage the exploration of alternative teaching approaches by pre-service teachers. However, the socio-cultural constraint of acculturation or past physical education and sporting experiences results in the maintenance of the status quo of a teacher-driven, reproductive paradigm. Previous studies have reported successfully overcoming the powerful influence of acculturation, resulting in a change in PETE students’ custodial teaching beliefs and receptiveness to alternative teaching approaches. However, to date, limited information has been reported about how PETE students’ acculturation shaped their receptiveness to an alternative teaching approach. This is particularly the case for PETE recruits identified in the literature as most resistant to change. Purpose To explore the features and experiences of an alternative games teaching approach that appealed to PETE recruits’ identified as most resistant to change, requiring a specific sample of PETE recruits with strong, custodial, traditional physical education teaching beliefs, and whom are high achieving sporting products of this traditional culture. The alternative teaching approach explored in this study is the constraints-led approach (CLA), which is similar operationally to TGfU, but distinguished by a neurobiological theoretical framework (nonlinear pedagogy) that informs learning design. Participants and Setting A purposive sample of 10 Australian PETE students was recruited for the study. All participants initially had strong, custodial, traditional physical education teaching beliefs, and were successful sporting products of this teaching approach. After experiencing the CLA as learners during a games unit, participants demonstrated receptiveness to the alternative pedagogy. Data Collection and Analysis Semi-structured interviews and written reflections were sources of data collection. Each participant was interviewed separately, once prior to participation in the games unit to explore their positive physical education experiences, and then again after participation to explore the specific games unit learning experiences that influenced their receptiveness to the alternative pedagogy. Participants completed written reflections about their personal experiences after selected practical sessions. Data were qualitatively analysed using grounded theory. Findings: Thorough examination of the data resulted in establishment of two prominent themes related to the appeal of the CLA for the participants: (i) psychomotor (effective in developing skill), and (ii), inclusivity (included students of varying skill level). The efficacy of the CLA in skill development was clearly an important mediator of receptiveness for highly successful products of a traditional culture. This significant finding could be explained by three key factors: the acculturation of the participants, the motor learning theory underpinning the alternative pedagogy and the unit learning design and delivery. The inclusive nature of the CLA provided a solution to the problem of exclusion, which also made the approach attractive to participants. Conclusion PETE educators could consider these findings when introducing an alternative pedagogy aimed at challenging PETE recruits’ custodial, traditional teaching beliefs. To mediate receptiveness, it is important that the learning theory underpinning the alternative approach is operationalised in a research-informed pedagogical learning design that facilitates students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the approach through experiencing and or observing it working.

Exploring Environmental Stewardship Through Data-Driven Practices

What potential do artists working with environmental data in public space have for producing new forms of engagement with local environmental conditions? Operating on the edge of heavy bureaucracy, these types of data-driven artistic experiments probe the politics of environmental metrics and explore methods of engaging audiences with issues of environmental health. This discussion considers a small collection of cases studies representative of this growing field of practice. These are works by Natalie Jeremijenko and The Living, Tega Brain and Keith Deverell. The case studies considered are examples of strategic design, works that soften, reveal and potentially shift existing regulations and bureaucratic norms. In doing so they open up new possibilities and questions as to what the smart city is and how it might be realised.