Poster : Understanding interactions between autonomous animal control and temperament when cattle are subjected to virtual fencing applications

Virtual fencing has the potential to control grazing livestock. Understanding and refi ning the cues that can alter behaviour is an integral part of autonomous animal control. A series of tests have been completed to explore the relationship between temperament and control. Prior to exposure to virtual fencing control the animals were scored for temperament using fl ight speed and a sociability index using contact logging devices. The behavioural response of 30, Belmont Red steers were observed for behavioural changes when presented with cues prior to receiving an electrical stimulation. A control and four treatments designed to interrupt the animal’s movement down an alley were tested. The treatments consisted of sound plus electrical stimulation, vibration plus electrical stimulation, a visual cue plus electrical stimulation and electrical stimulation by itself. The treatments were randomly applied to each animal over fi ve consecutive trials. A control treatment in which no cues were applied was used to establish a basal behavioural pattern. A trial was considered completed after each animal had been retained behind the cue barrier for at least 60 sec. All cues and electrical stimulation were manually applied from a laptop located on a portable 3.5 m tower located immediately outside the alley. The electric stimulation consisted of 1.0 Kv of electricity. Electric stimulation, sound and vibration along with the Global Position System (GPS) hardware to autonomously record the animal’s path within the alley were recorded every second.

Raised Floor System applications for refurbishing office spaces

While raised floors as a building component has been around since the 70's, its application in terms of a holistic system in the fit-out of commercial office buildings has not been fully embraced due to some inherent problems and negative perceptions of the stakeholders involved. Today, the new generation of raised floor systems(RFS) offers a suite of innovative and integrated products and solutions, and as such are not only suitable for the changing office space requirements, but also capable of meeting tbe smart and sustainable challenges, which are becoming the prerequisite in the refurbishment of existing buildings. As there has been a prediction for continued growth in refurbishment projects in major cities around the globe, RFS as an alternative methodology warrants new examination and highlight. This paper introduces research recently completed in Australia that provided a holistic approach to the application of RFS enabled by intelligent building technologies, and examined key issues of project development when refurbishing commercial office buildings. It focuses on the constructability of RFS, and how it will respond to smart feature requirements in buildings while extending service life, meeting new organisational change and workplace health needs for applications in today's office environment. It also introduces key project procurement issues and the integrated decision support when dealing with the refurbishment of office buildings. The paper recommends procurement strategies as well as the justification of adopting the RFS technology in the Australian office building sector. Given the current economic downturn, refitting as opposed to new build .projects will come onto the spotlight. This paper will provide valuable information for building owners and developers alike when contemplating the retrofit of office buildings.

Study of acoustic emission data analysis tools for structural health monitoring applications

Acoustic emission (AE) technique is one of the popular diagnostic techniques used for structural health monitoring of mechanical, aerospace and civil structures. But several challenges still exist in successful application of AE technique. This paper explores various tools for analysis of recorded AE data to address two primary challenges: discriminating spurious signals from genuine signals and devising ways to quantify damage levels.

Analysis of acoustic emission data for structural health monitoring applications

Acoustic emission (AE) is the phenomenon where high frequency stress waves are generated by rapid release of energy within a material by sources such as crack initiation or growth. AE technique involves recording these stress waves by means of sensors placed on the surface and subsequent analysis of the recorded signals to gather information such as the nature and location of the source. It is one of the several diagnostic techniques currently used for structural health monitoring (SHM) of civil infrastructure such as bridges. Some of its advantages include ability to provide continuous in-situ monitoring and high sensitivity to crack activity. But several challenges still exist. Due to high sampling rate required for data capture, large amount of data is generated during AE testing. This is further complicated by the presence of a number of spurious sources that can produce AE signals which can then mask desired signals. Hence, an effective data analysis strategy is needed to achieve source discrimination. This also becomes important for long term monitoring applications in order to avoid massive date overload. Analysis of frequency contents of recorded AE signals together with the use of pattern recognition algorithms are some of the advanced and promising data analysis approaches for source discrimination. This paper explores the use of various signal processing tools for analysis of experimental data, with an overall aim of finding an improved method for source identification and discrimination, with particular focus on monitoring of steel bridges.

An advanced implicit meshless approach for fractional partial differential equation in computational mechanics

Recently, the numerical modelling and simulation for fractional partial differential equations (FPDE), which have been found with widely applications in modern engineering and sciences, are attracting increased attentions. The current dominant numerical method for modelling of FPDE is the explicit Finite Difference Method (FDM), which is based on a pre-defined grid leading to inherited issues or shortcomings. This paper aims to develop an implicit meshless approach based on the radial basis functions (RBF) for numerical simulation of time fractional diffusion equations. The discrete system of equations is obtained by using the RBF meshless shape functions and the strong-forms. The stability and convergence of this meshless approach are then discussed and theoretically proven. Several numerical examples with different problem domains are used to validate and investigate accuracy and efficiency of the newly developed meshless formulation. The results obtained by the meshless formations are also compared with those obtained by FDM in terms of their accuracy and efficiency. It is concluded that the present meshless formulation is very effective for the modelling and simulation for FPDE.

Application of higher order statistics/spectra in biomedical signals : a review

For many decades correlation and power spectrum have been primary tools for digital signal processing applications in the biomedical area. The information contained in the power spectrum is essentially that of the autocorrelation sequence; which is sufficient for complete statistical descriptions of Gaussian signals of known means. However, there are practical situations where one needs to look beyond autocorrelation of a signal to extract information regarding deviation from Gaussianity and the presence of phase relations. Higher order spectra, also known as polyspectra, are spectral representations of higher order statistics, i.e. moments and cumulants of third order and beyond. HOS (higher order statistics or higher order spectra) can detect deviations from linearity, stationarity or Gaussianity in the signal. Most of the biomedical signals are non-linear, non-stationary and non-Gaussian in nature and therefore it can be more advantageous to analyze them with HOS compared to the use of second order correlations and power spectra. In this paper we have discussed the application of HOS for different bio-signals. HOS methods of analysis are explained using a typical heart rate variability (HRV) signal and applications to other signals are reviewed.

Preparation of porous calcium phosphate ceramic scaffold in bone tissue engineering

Calcium Phosphate ceramic has been widely used in bone tissue engineering due to its excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability. However, low mechanical properties and biodegradability limit their potential applications. In this project, hydroxyapatite (HA) and calcium phosphate bioglass were used to produce porous tri-calcium phosphate (TCP) bio-ceramic scaffolds. It was found that porous TCP bioceramic could be obtained when 20wt percent bioglass addition and sintered in 1400 degrees celsius for 3 h. Significantly higher compressive strength (9.98 MPa) was achieved in the scaffolds as compared to those produced from tCP power (<3 MPa). The biocompatibility of the scaffold was also estimated.

Practical introduction to development of sage applications

Throughout this workshop session we have looked at various configurations of Sage as well as using the Sage UI to run Sage applications (e.g. the image viewer). More advanced usage of Sage has been demonstrated using a Sage compatible version of Paraview highlighting the potential of parallel rendering. The aim of this tutorial session is to give a practical introduction to developing visual content for a tiled display using the Sage libraries. After completing this tutorial you should have the basic tools required to develop your own custom Sage applications. This tutorial is designed for software developers and intermediate programming knowledge is assumed, along with some introductory OpenGL . You will be required to write small portions of C/C++ code to complete this worksheet. However if you do not feel comfortable writing code (or have never written in C or C++), we will be on hand throughout this session so feel free to ask for some help. We have a number of machines in this lab running a VNC client to a virtual machine running Fedora 12. You should all be able to log in with the username “escience”, and password “escience10”. Some of the commands in this worksheet require you to run them as the root user, so note the password as you may need to use it a few times. If you need to access the Internet, then use the username “qpsf01”, password “escience10”

Structural dynamics research and applications

Research in structural dynamics has received considerable attention due to problems associated with emerging slender structures, increased vulnerability of structures to random loads and aging infrastructure. This paper briefly describes some such research carried out on i) dynamics of composite floor structure, ii) dynamics of cable supported footbridge, iii) seismic mitigation of frame-shear wall structure using passive dampers and iv) development of a damage assessment model for use in structural health modelling.

Automated proof for formal indistinguishability and its applications

Bana et al. proposed the relation formal indistinguishability (FIR), i.e. an equivalence between two terms built from an abstract algebra. Later Ene et al. extended it to cover active adversaries and random oracles. This notion enables a framework to verify computational indistinguishability while still offering the simplicity and formality of symbolic methods. We are in the process of making an automated tool for checking FIR between two terms. First, we extend the work by Ene et al. further, by covering ordered sorts and simplifying the way to cope with random oracles. Second, we investigate the possibility of combining algebras together, since it makes the tool scalable and able to cover a wide class of cryptographic schemes. Specially, we show that the combined algebra is still computationally sound, as long as each algebra is sound. Third, we design some proving strategies and implement the tool. Basically, the strategies allow us to find a sequence of intermediate terms, which are formally indistinguishable, between two given terms. FIR between the two given terms is then guaranteed by the transitivity of FIR. Finally, we show applications of the work, e.g. on key exchanges and encryption schemes. In the future, the tool should be extended easily to cover many schemes. This work continues previous research of ours on use of compilers to aid in automated proofs for key exchange.

A hardware-based multi-disciplinary design optimization method for aeronautical applications

There are many applications in aeronautics where there exist strong couplings between disciplines. One practical example is within the context of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV) automation where there exists strong coupling between operation constraints, aerodynamics, vehicle dynamics, mission and path planning. UAV path planning can be done either online or offline. The current state of path planning optimisation online UAVs with high performance computation is not at the same level as its ground-based offline optimizer's counterpart, this is mainly due to the volume, power and weight limitations on the UAV; some small UAVs do not have the computational power needed for some optimisation and path planning task. In this paper, we describe an optimisation method which can be applied to Multi-disciplinary Design Optimisation problems and UAV path planning problems. Hardware-based design optimisation techniques are used. The power and physical limitations of UAV, which may not be a problem in PC-based solutions, can be approached by utilizing a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) as an algorithm accelerator. The inevitable latency produced by the iterative process of an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) is concealed by exploiting the parallelism component within the dataflow paradigm of the EA on an FPGA architecture. Results compare software PC-based solutions and the hardware-based solutions for benchmark mathematical problems as well as a simple real world engineering problem. Results also indicate the practicality of the method which can be used for more complex single and multi objective coupled problems in aeronautical applications.

Predicting residue-wise contact orders in proteins by support vector regression

Background The residue-wise contact order (RWCO) describes the sequence separations between the residues of interest and its contacting residues in a protein sequence. It is a new kind of one-dimensional protein structure that represents the extent of long-range contacts and is considered as a generalization of contact order. Together with secondary structure, accessible surface area, the B factor, and contact number, RWCO provides comprehensive and indispensable important information to reconstructing the protein three-dimensional structure from a set of one-dimensional structural properties. Accurately predicting RWCO values could have many important applications in protein three-dimensional structure prediction and protein folding rate prediction, and give deep insights into protein sequence-structure relationships. Results We developed a novel approach to predict residue-wise contact order values in proteins based on support vector regression (SVR), starting from primary amino acid sequences. We explored seven different sequence encoding schemes to examine their effects on the prediction performance, including local sequence in the form of PSI-BLAST profiles, local sequence plus amino acid composition, local sequence plus molecular weight, local sequence plus secondary structure predicted by PSIPRED, local sequence plus molecular weight and amino acid composition, local sequence plus molecular weight and predicted secondary structure, and local sequence plus molecular weight, amino acid composition and predicted secondary structure. When using local sequences with multiple sequence alignments in the form of PSI-BLAST profiles, we could predict the RWCO distribution with a Pearson correlation coefficient (CC) between the predicted and observed RWCO values of 0.55, and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.82, based on a well-defined dataset with 680 protein sequences. Moreover, by incorporating global features such as molecular weight and amino acid composition we could further improve the prediction performance with the CC to 0.57 and an RMSE of 0.79. In addition, combining the predicted secondary structure by PSIPRED was found to significantly improve the prediction performance and could yield the best prediction accuracy with a CC of 0.60 and RMSE of 0.78, which provided at least comparable performance compared with the other existing methods. Conclusion The SVR method shows a prediction performance competitive with or at least comparable to the previously developed linear regression-based methods for predicting RWCO values. In contrast to support vector classification (SVC), SVR is very good at estimating the raw value profiles of the samples. The successful application of the SVR approach in this study reinforces the fact that support vector regression is a powerful tool in extracting the protein sequence-structure relationship and in estimating the protein structural profiles from amino acid sequences.

Quantifying in-plane deformation of plate elements using vibration characteristics

Plate elements are used in many engineering applications. In-plane loads and deformations have significant influence on the vibration characteristics of plate elements. Numerous methods have been developed to quantify the effects of in-plane loads and deformations of individual plate elements with different boundary conditions based on their natural frequencies. However, these developments cannot be applied to the plate elements in a structural system as the natural frequency is a global parameter for the entire structure. This highlights the need for a method to quantify in-plane deformations of plate elements in structural framing systems. Motivated by this gap in knowledge, this research has developed a comprehensive vibration based procedure to quantify in-plane deformation of plate elements in a structural framing system. This procedure with its unique capabilities to capture the influence of load migration, boundary conditions and different tributary areas is presented herein and illustrated through examples.

Augmenting mobile computing with video game elements to support, motivate and engage young people in educational, real-world events

Video games have shown great potential as tools that both engage and motivate players to achieve tasks and build communities in fantasy worlds. We propose that the application of game elements to real world activities can aid in delivering contextual information in interesting ways and help young people to engage in everyday events. Our research will explore how we can unite utility and fun to enhance information delivery, encourage participation, build communities and engage users with utilitarian events situated in the real world. This research aims to identify key game elements that work effectively to engage young digital natives, and provide guidelines to influence the design of interactions and interfaces for event applications in the future. This research will primarily contribute to areas of user experience and pervasive gaming.

An integrated knowledge management framework for managing sustainability knowledge in the Australian infrastructure sector

In Australia, it has been increasingly accepted that sustainability needs to be at the top of the agenda when contemplating infrastructure development. In practice however, many companies struggle to find effective ways to embrace sustainable ideas and implement them in real projects beyond minimum compliance. One of the reasons is the lack of underpinning knowledge and evidence to demonstrate and measure the linkage between sustainability implementations and the relevant outcomes. This is compounded by the fact that very often there are no common understandings between the stakeholders on sustainability and there is a big divide between research advancement and real-life applications. Therefore it is both feasible and timely to develop and expand the body of sustainability knowledge on infrastructure development and investigate better ways of communicating with and managing it within the infrastructure sector. Although knowledge management (KM) is a relatively new and emerging discipline, it has shown its value and promise in existing applications in the construction industry. Considering the existing KM mechanisms and tools employed in practice, this research is aimed at establishing a specific KM approach to facilitate sustainability knowledge identification, acquisition, sharing, maintenance and application within the infrastructure sector, and promote integrated decision-making for sustainable infrastructure development. A triangulation of questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews and case studies was employed in this research to collect required qualitative and quantitative data. The research studied the unique characteristics of the infrastructure sector, the nature of sustainability knowledge, and evaluated and validated the critical elements, key processes, and priority issues of KM for the Australian infrastructure sector. A holistic KM framework was developed to set the overall context for managing sustainability knowledge in the infrastructure sector by outlining (1) the main aims and outcomes of managing sustainability knowledge, (2) the key knowledge activities, (3) effective KM strategies and instruments, and (4) KM enablers. Because of the highly project-oriented nature of the infrastructure sector, knowledge can only add value when it is being used in real projects. Implementation guidelines were developed to help the industry practitioners and project teams to apply sustainability knowledge and implement KM in infrastructure project scenarios. This research provides the Australian infrastructure sector with tools to better understand KM, helps the industry practitioners to prioritize attention on relevant sustainability issues, and recommends effective practices to manage sustainability knowledge, especially in real life implementation of infrastructure projects.